DropBox

DropBox is a free program that allows to create a DropBox file in multiple computers and all computers with that file will be updated each time it connects to the internet with the info that has been put into the files. Also a backup copy will always be stored in http://www.dropbox.com/ so you can check there, download or recover the archives.

It is completely free to a maximum capacity of 2GB, though it can be increased by paying a fee.

I'll probably look into the problem and us it as a backup file.

Vacations in Poland

This vacations we travelled to Poland, from July 30th to August 29th. It was very good and different to what I had seen other years in other places. We went to Cracow by plane, with a stop in Brussels, on July 30th. Cracow is probably the second most important city in Poland, and was the ex-capital of Poland.

The city was very pretty, especially the old section of the city. There was quite a lot of turism and many Spanish also. Shops worked practically the 24hr, including restaurants and most didn't even close on Sundays. Streets were very wide and statues of the polish Pope could be found everywhere, as well as churches. They had the city walls and a medieval Barbican perfectly conserved in the city. They ate in large cuantities, especially meat and cheese, including in breakfast.

We also visited the concentracion camp of Auswitz and the Salt Mines. Both were very good, though the Polish lack a lot in organization skills. The Salt Mines were the most important in Europe and the oldest, still working since the Middle Ages.

Roads were terrible. My parents said they were like here 40 years ago. It took us 4 hours to travel 110 km south. So when we went to see Warsaw for 3 days we got the train. It took us 3 hours by train, but it took 4 by car!! Warsaw had been almost utterly destroyed during the Second World War, but it was very well rebuilt. It was pretty and the old part was very good. Not like Brest in northern France, which was horrible and had also been destroyed during the war.

When we went back to Cracow we visited small towns in the country-side, but they are nothing special. Very dispersed and weakly centralised, with no shops or anything prepared for tourists. The country-side was very green and very flat, small hills and enourmous territories of green flat lands. There were quite a lot of mosquitoes, and wildlife. We saw a pair of foxes and a hare.

We had a very good weather. It was hot when the sun shone. But it was very changing. In one single day you could have clouds, sun, rain and sun once again, all in a single day.

There was a lot of pratiotism in Poland. Apart from all the memorials to the dead and deported during the war, you could see Polish dressed as second world war soldiers marching around the city singing pratiotic songs.

The Polish language is very hard to learn, and only learned a few words in all the vacations. They speak very fast and pronounce the "w" as a "v". It surprised by that they said for hat, chapel (txapela) which is very similar to euskera. I think the language is sort of a mix in between Russian and German. Words I learned where thank you (yenkuye, not sure hot it was written) and good bye (dubitzenia)

In conclusion I had a lot of fun during my vacations, they were very good. Next time I'd like to go and see the Baltic, where amber is very common, though amber could be found in shops all around Poland.

1.- Track
Audio tracks contain digitally sampled sounds. Channels of sound are represented by one mono audio track, a two channel sound by one stereo audio track.
2.- Editing
Editing is about cutting, placing, fading, cross−fading, shifting, duplicating and adjusting the volume (also referred to as level) of audio material. Mixing is a form of editing too of course.
3.- Boom Pole Operator
The boom pole is an extendible stick with a microphone attached to it. This is used to record dialogue during filming or not.
4.- Sound Mixer
He records the sound catched by the Boom Pole Operator via cable or wirless divise to tape, optical disks or hard drive.
5.- Production Sound
The raw sound material of a show is called production sound and the only desirable parts it usually haves is dialogue and body sounds.
6.- Post Production
Now they shorten and adjust the sound so the transitions and coordination in between sound and movement is smooth.
7.- Added Sounds; Ambience; Effect
After they add sounds in. They introduce ambience like the conversation of people in a tavern which during the filming is not there. Then effects are recorded separately like explonsion, bell rings, slaps, weapon shots...
8.- Split: What happens when you split a sound file for?
You get two different tracks.
9.- What do you split a sound file for?
You split is so you can move it around an change its position or to hear two things at the same time.
10.- Fade in/Fade out
It applies a linear fade in or out the file

Audacity

1- What is a sound?
A form of energy.
2- What is the speed of sound?
340.29 m / s
3- What is faster, the speed of light or the speed of sound?
Speed of light.
4- How do you record a sound?
With a microphone.
5- What is the difference between digital and analog sound?
The key difference between analog and digital technologies is that analog technologies record waveforms as they are, while digital technologies convert analog waveforms into sets of numbers, recording the numbers instead. When played back, the numbers are converted into a voltage stream that approximates the original analog wave.
6- Write 3 advantages of digital sound over analog sound?
Unlike digital audio systems, analog systems do not require filters for bandlimiting.

One aspect that may prevent the performance of practical digital systems from meeting their theoretical performance is jitter. This is the name given to the phenomenon of the variations in spacing of the discrete samples in time within the stream of samples that make up a (decoded) digital signal. This can be due to timing inaccuracies of the digital clock. Ideally a digital clock should produce a timing pulse at exactly regular intervals.

Analog systems do not have discrete digital levels in which the signal is encoded. Consequently, the original signal can be preserved to an accuracy limited only by the intrinsic noise-floor and maximum signal level of the media and the playback equipment, i.e., the dynamic range of the system. With digital systems, noise added due to quantization into discrete levels is more audibly disturbing than the noise-floor in analog systems.
7- What are the factors that determine the quality of digital sound?
The sample rate and the sample format
8- What audio file formats does Audacity support?
AUP;IRCAM;WAV;MPEG;AIFF;Ogg Vorbis
9- Write the difference between PCM audio files and Compressed ones?
The PCM is every number on a digital audio file represents a waveform. In the compressed by algorithms that are able to squeeze the waveforms in less space.
10- Write examples of each one of them.
MP3: compressed Wav: PCM

3rd Term Projects

1.- Typing - typing web.com -> advanced lesson we must complete the advanced lesson and complete all the ones that go before it

2.- Audio - editing -> radio program of 3 minutes, it must have music and voice, can be an interview, music, documentary... we can use audacity that is free, or movie maker wich is worse and I will not use, the best is Garage Band that comes with the Mac or iMovie but Garage Band is must better

3.- Digital Poster Making - glosster.com -> we must do a digital poster on any subject we want, it can be for a school project also

Scribus

Scribus is a desktop publishing (DTP) application, released under the GNU General Public License as free software. It is based on the free Qt toolkit, therefore native versions are available for Linux, Unix-like, Mac OS X, OS/2, and Microsoft Windows. It is known for its broad set of page layout features, comparable to leading non-free applications such as Adobe PageMaker, PagePlus, QuarkXPress or Adobe InDesign.
Scribus is designed for flexible layout and typesetting and the ability to prepare files for professional quality image setting equipment. It can also create animated and interactive PDF presentations and forms. Example uses include writing small newspapers, brochures, newsletters, posters and books.
Scribus supports most major image formats including scalable vector graphics (SVG). Professional type/image setting features include CMYK colors and ICC color management. It has a built-in scripting engine using Python. It is available in more than 24 languages.
Printing is achieved using its own internal level 3 PostScript driver, including support for font embedding and sub-setting with TrueType, Type 1 and OpenType fonts. The internal driver supports full Level 2 PostScript constructs and a large subset of Level 3 constructs.
PDF support includes transparency, encryption and a large set of the PDF 1.4 spec as well as PDF/X3, including interactive PDFs form fields, annotations and bookmarks. While PDF export is very good, it is not currently able to import/edit PDF files, and PDFs exported from Scribus 1.3.3.x and earlier are not searchable in Acrobat Reader if the fonts were outlined/subsetted as vector objects.
The file format, called SLA, is based on XML. Text can be imported from OpenDocument text documents, as well as OpenOffice.org Writer, Microsoft Word and HTML formats (although some limitations apply).
Scribus cannot read or write the native file formats of commercial programs like QuarkXPress, Microsoft Publisher, or InDesign; the developers feel that reverse engineering those file formats would be prohibitively complex and could risk legal action from the makers of those programs.
Due to licensing issues, the software package does not include support for the Pantone color matching system (PMS), which is included in some commercial DTP applications.
Although Scribus supports Unicode character encoding, it currently does not properly support complex script rendering and so cannot be used with Unicode text for languages written with Arabic, Hebrew, Indic and South East Asian writing systems.

GIMP

GIMP (the GNU Image Manipulation Program)

GIMP is a free software raster graphics editor. It isprimarily employed as an image retouching and editing tool. In addition to offering freeform drawing, GIMP can accomplish essential image workflow steps such as resizing, editing, and cropping photos, combining multiple images, and converting between different image formats. GIMP can also be used to create basic animated images in the GIF format. At present GIMP is entirely suitable for amateur or professional work with images intended for viewing on monitors and printing on inkjet printers; GIMP does not yet offer the CMYK separation and color management functionality which is essential for prepress work. The product vision for GIMP is to become a high-end graphics application for the editing and creation of original images, icons, graphical elements of web pages and art for user interface elements.

It i also sometimes compared to Photoshop and as a good alternative to it, though maybe not so much level in profesional ground.

Maria Amelia, la Blogera de 95 Años

Maria Amelia, de la provincia gallega de Murxia recibio por su 95 cumpleaños un blog de su nieto. Se entusiasmo con el y gracias a el olvido la soledad que sentia anteriormente y se metio de cabeza en la comunidad del internet.


Murio en 2006, casi 3 años despues de meterse en el mundo de los blogs. Aun asi dejo su legado y mensaje en España y todo el mundo. Durante sus tres años en la red, Amelia intento meter en el Nuevo Mundo que es la tecnologia, a otros ancianos como ella que desconocian el elixir de vida que ella habia descubierto gracias a su nieto.

“Mi blog es para entretenerme y comunicarme con mis blogueros. Y para animar
a todos los ancianos a que tengan el Internet. Y para que sus familiares hagan
un esfuerzo por enseñarles. Así podrán conocer gente nueva, comunicarse y
aprender cosas todos los días. A mí me sacó 20 años de encima. Todos los
ancianos, con un Internet”.

Esto es uno de los principios que Amelia dejo tras si despues de su muerte.



Ella incito el movimiento del Viejo Pescador, que busca atraer a su mundo a los ancianos que no conocen aun la soledad que Amelia evito gracias a su blog y sus seguidores. Estos quieren promever el premio de Premio Internacional para Blogueros Mayores.

Amelia recibio el prestigioso premio internacional BOBs que se otorga en Alemania, y Zapatero tambien la recibio. Y todos los seguidores de Amelia, aun ahora, intentan llevar a los mas mayores de la sociedad hacia la otra comunidad que es el internet.

Blogs en Honor a Amelia:
http://premiomariaamelialopez.blogspot.com
El Blog de Amelia:
http://amis95.blogspot.com.

Questions & Answers: Fonts

1- What is a font?
It is the design for a set of characters. It's the combination typeface and design characteristics of pitch, spacing and size.
2- What is a pitch? And fixed pitch?
It is the width of a character in a font, the number of characters that can fit in an inch. Common pitch values are from 10 to 12.
Fixed pitch (or monospace) is when all the characters of a same font have the same pitch.
3- What is a font family? Name some...
It is a group of fonts that are similar in the design. Memebers of this family can be bold or italic. Some are Times New Roman, Script, Comic Sans, Arial and Courier. And the diferent categories are... serif, sans-serif, cursive, fantasy and monospace.
4- What is the difference between font and typeface?
Times New Roman is a typeface, which defines the shape of the character. But it has many different fonts (sizes and styles).
5- What is the difference between vector and bitmap fonts?
Bit map is formed by an arranged number of dots, so you need a design for each kind of font in each kind of typeface. Instead vector is made geomatrically so it can be scaled to any size or style. So you only need one design per typeface.
6- What are the synonyms of vector and bitmap fonts?

7- Which of these two is scalable?
The Vector Graphics System.
8- What are the most widely used scalable font systems?
PostScript and TrueType.
9- What kind of printers use scalable fonts?
Laser printers.
10- What is tha main problem using fonts on the web?
They do not look very good when very samll like iin screen size.
11- How do you call the web-safe fonts?
Those that are not hard to read.
12- What are the safest fonts on the web?
Arial, Arial Black, Coriour New, Georgia, Times New Roman, Verdana and Trenbuchet MS.
13- Why should you choose "sans serif" fonts for the screen?
You shouldn't because experts say it is harder to read. http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/S/sans_serif.html
14- What is the simplest solution if you want to use a very specific font?

15- Choose your favorite font.
InkpenScript2 or Blackladder ITC or French Script