Monthly Archives: February 2011

VisualBee – how to easily enhance your powerpoint presentations. . .

Having a good looking presentation or just blank slides with text can make the difference receiving top grades or going through with that business deal. And now you don’t need to be a pro to make amazing looking presentations. I’m a very lazy person and I like cutting corners and taking shortcuts; and have found the perfect tool for making my life just a little bit easier.

VisualBee (http://www.visualbee.com/) is a plugin for microsoft powerpoint (2007 tested, should also works with others). Its the easiest thing to use. Just make your blank powerpoint with your text or any other graphics you would like to add. Then click enhance presentation, to simply enhance your presentation.

You will need to register for free with VisualBee to be able to use the service. It reads your presentation, searches for keywords, finds appropriate pictures and adds them to your presentation, along with rearranging layouts and adding animation.

Here is an example of my stupid geography presentation on glass recycling and as you can see I am very very lazy with my presentations =)

Glass recycling withouth bee

Now after a few simple clicks on VisualBee this is the result:

Glass recycling visual bee

I did not add any pictures or edit any layouts, etc. VisualBee provides you with 5 different types of presentations to chose from and you can also edit your layout or change the pictures manually not totally happy with what it does. My whole presentation took me literally 2 mins and I think VisualBee is one of the most useful tools for lazy people like me!!

Watch their demo at :
http://www.visualbee.com/index.php/demo.html

=)

 

&theater – how to get rid of the new facebook theater view for pictures

Facebook has just started using the new theater view. Its supposedly an upgrade to their photo view system which might save users and facebook some data bandwidth. But in all honesty, its FUGLY!!

owh and if you don’t know what fugly means . . .urbandictionary is your best friend =)

Back to the point, heres a screenshot of the different photo views:

Although its meant to be an upgrade and i can really see it working its not so good. I see how they’ve maybe tried to make it look better and more like a flash gallery, with a faded background, but the black background just looks UGLY !! Also you can click anywhere to go to the next picture, while to go back to the previous one, you have to carefully align your mouse pointer to the back arrow and click and hope it doesn’t go to the next picture.

So here I’m going to list the ways I’ve discovered, been told, or just found online to get rid of the new theater view.

The URL edit:

If you look closely at the url while viewing a photo in the new theater mode you will notice it ends with ‘&theater’. Well just simply delete ‘&theater’ and press enter. You will be back to the normal photo view.

The F5 refresh:

The simplest way by far, is to simply refresh the page. It can easily be done by pressing F5 and BAAM you are back to the old photo view. Notice that the ‘&theater’ is still in the URL, however you are back in the view type.

The New TAB:

Another great way to get rid of the theater view is to simply right click on the photo and open in a new tab. This will by default open picture in a new tab in the old photo view type.

Greasemonkey:

Greasemonkey is a great addon for Firefox, that is now also available for Chrome. It allows you to add custom scripts and provides a great resource for a large variety of possibilities.

The facebook photo theater killer . . .available at http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/96773 . . . is a greasemonkey script that while in use will automatically only open the facebook photos in the old photo view type.

Greasemonkey can be downloaded for firefox here at : https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/greasemonkey/

Greasemonkey for Chrome (called Greasemetal) is available here at: http://www.mychromeaddons.com/chrome-addon-greasemetal-greasemonkey-for-chrome/

=)

 

Video Editing . . .

So its public speaking day on 18th feb 2011 at slough grammar school . . .and i just got this video of a few teachers delivering a teacher training session on ‘what makes a good speaker?’. . .its all part of the preparation for the speaking day . . .

I got requested to edit the video . . .after trying  out loads of different things . . .i finally made it . . .

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JF7L7vZ4IKk]

I started editing in Windows Live Movie Maker . . oh yes . . .as expected it was very slow . . .but actually quite simple to use? Didn’t get too far with it though . . .and i realised it is pretty crap when i started using Corel VideoStudio 12 . . .but simply because its like my first video that im every editing . . .i did not have a clue on how to use that thing . . and i’m just assuming its very limited . . because i could not get very much out of it . . .but in the end i still finished editing on Corel VideoStudio. . .

I did use Audacity to edit the track . . .and it is very simple and easy to use and worked perfectly =D . . .and i also ended up downloading the trial for adobe after effects . . .which looks good from youtube video reviews and how-to’s but i haven’t actually tried it out . . .

But i’m guessing its good simply because is Adobe and they have been great in media editing softwares and Photoshop is just amazing . . .

And just in case you’re thinking ‘public speaking day’????? Well yea its just a school’s try on doing extra/different/interesting things apart from academics . . .hopefully its interesting . . .all i care is that i have no lessons that day =) fun fun fun . . .

 

Tie’d down?

So I left in the morning  in a hurry (as always) and on my way to the train station I noticed something odd =O

I wasn’t wearing a tie . . .now this comes as a shock to me simply because I’VE NEVER LIKED WEARING A TIE, but as its part of the school uniform I should have had a tie. Instead of wearing it, I usually just leave it hanging around my neck till I am forced by some old woman in authority (teachers? and not just women but male teachers generally share the pain so don’t bother), to tie my tie. And me because I am me, likes the perfect windsor knot. There’s nothing wrong with the windsor knot but thought I’d mention what I like anyway.

So I had forgotten my tie which got me thinking why to we wear a tie anyway? Why do men have to be tie’d down “pardon the pun” ;) (and yes that was quoting from Come Fly With Me, and if you don’t know what that is, watch it here  . . .http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkz4TRcRrJs it is quite hilarious )?

In simple words I was thinking WHY DO I HAVE TO WEAR A TIE? IT’S THE MOST USELESS PIECE OF ACCESSORY . . .EVER!! So I went online during the train journey and found out that apparently it boosts your ego? And that it started off as handkerchiefs around one’s neck to show status or something of that sort. . .and again something to do with status in wars . . .bit of history here for you.

my vast? collection of charity (well mostly) badges =)

So I thought I’d share my TIE! THIS IS MY SCHOOL TIE. In fact I have two, simply because my freakishness hobby of “tie-badging” got out of hand and not all the badges fit on one tie? One of them is crawling up the neck? So while one of these hangs on a nail in my wall, the other usually hangs around my neck with not so many badges.

Conclusion? Badges look great on the most useless piece of clothing ever =)

 

Hello world!

Hello world!

So I have been sitting here for the past 3 hours uninterested in my French assignment due tomorrow, thinking of something new to do. Something different, well at least for me anyway. After 3 hours of no breaks and serious thinking, I came to the conclusion of creating a blog. How nice of me. . .

 

So here it is . . .just another blog page =)

 

Haven’t really decided what I’ll be blogging about . . .but it’s a start . . .