Installing Linux

It’s to put my money where my mouth is. After several years of toying with the idea of installing Linux, I am about to launch out and do it. I have an oldish Windows 98 Compaq computer at home, given to me by a friend migrating to Macintosh. It has an 18gb hard drive and 256mb of memory. It’s not worth upgrading the hardware, and probably won’t take Windows XP. So it’s a perfect candidate for the experiment.
I have bought a disk containing a version of Linux called Freespire, which it cost me NZ$7 to purchase over the internet, including airmail delivery from the USA (it took only three days from order to arrival). So in the next couple of days I will grit my teeth, and do the install. I will blog on the process and the end result.

Turning PowerPoint into movies

I have been searching for many months for a way to convert PowerPoint presentations to some movie format. Why, you might ask? Firstly, PowerPoint files don’t play the same way on different computers, particularly if you are timing slide transitions to an audio track. And secondly, PowerPoint can do some nice visual effects, for instance with text, which are quite difficult in the average low-end to mid-range video programme.
There are some commercial programs which turn PPTs into a movie. For instance, Leawo boasts that it can convert PPT to almost any popular movie format – and there sure are plenty of them: AVI, WMV, MPG, FLV, VOB, MOV and on it goes.
That seems to be the cleanest and simplest method, but being stubborn I looked round for free software to do the job. It would appear there is no one-step program. But it can be done in several steps.
iSpring is a free extension which installs itself into PowerPoint. From within the PowerPoint, you can convert the presentation to a Shockwave Flash (SWF) file. As most web browsers can play flash movies, to play the file, drag its icon onto the icon of your favourite browser. You can also play the file without a browser using SWF Opener.
The next stage is to convert SWF to FLV format, and here there is a gap in the chain. None of the free programs I tried worked successfully on my computer. I finally went to Moyea and downloaded a trial version, which worked perfectly (but the full version costs US$30).
For the last step, I found that Leawo has a free FLV to AVI converter, which also works very well. An alternative is Pazera free FLV to AVI converter.
Considering all the hoops I had to jump through to get from PPT to AVI, the heavier weight Leawo looks like a good buy!
Talking of converting videos, what if you want to download and convert a YouTube video to watch on your iPod, cell phone, or maybe convert to another video type. You might want to try the freebie YouTube Downloader. It runs as a small applet and is exceedingly simple to use. You can convert to many different formats, including for the iPod, iPhone, cell phones, PlayStation Portable, as well as common PC formats including MPEG and Windows Media (.wmv).

Microsoft to buy Apple - really??!!

In a move shocking the tech world, the NZ Herald proclaims, Microsoft has just announced the acquisition of Apple Inc. Um, yeah, right. The date of the article should give the clue.

Lost internet connections

I had a continual run of problems with my internet connection for about a month at the beginning of this year. The Local Area Connection icon said the computer was connected, but not a thing was happening. I ran numerous virus checkers to make sure I hadn't been unwittingly invaded, and tried unplugging and replugging the router and the wireless modem (which resets them), but none of this helped. After consulting with Those Who Know More Than Me in the IT firm next door, I concluded the problem was at the service provider's end. Possibilities include overloading of the circuits in our area, etc. Suddenly the problems vanished, and things have been fine for the past three weeks, which almost certainly indicates the problem was not on our computers.
From talking around, it seems the problem is fairly common. For another take on what can be going on, see this response at PC World to a query by one Margie Miller, who keeps losing her internet connection and asks, is it the router, the modem, her PC, or something else?

These drums are so cool!

I don't who is the genius behind this, but this desktop drum kit, which you can play on your PC keyboard, is so cool! Turn up the volume on your speakers and freak out your office colleagues. The ideal way to relieve stress for a couple of minutes.

Tutorials

I've been itching for ages to have a play with Garageband, one of the stars in the Macintosh universe. (It is a program that helps you compose music tracks, by playing around with bits of music called "loops". Sadly, there is no real equivalent in the PC world.) I was able to get access to a Mac at the weekend, but oh dear, the program was not as intuitive as devotees make out, and the online manual was not written for people like me in mind. (Have you ever noticed that manuals never do help when you have a question? That's because they're written by computer geeks rather than real users.) What to do? Answer: Turn to YouTube. Search on "tutorial" and "garageband" and straight up pops a man who understands perfectly my dilemma and proceeds to lead me through the steps.
There are tutorials at YouTube on just about everything you care to think of (and a few you should not). In fact, if you are are struggling with any computer problem, or just about anything else in life, the internet is a mine of helpful tutorials. Here are a few websites to get you going:
Webmonkey has a high reputation and is one of the most popular on the internet. eHow claims to be the world's most popular place to find step-by-step instructions on how to do just about everything. Then there's the Intute virtual training suite and Tutorialfind.