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Using geolocation information in photos for documentation?

  1. During documentation writing today, I noticed that my WlGallery suddenly (?) started displaying the geotags in pictures taken with my Palm Pixi which I set a long time ago to store (and share) location information. I t looks like this has started working  earlier, but gone unnoticed. pixi-wlgallery-geotag I also looks like it uses cell tower triangulation, not GPS data (when the latter is not available?): pixi-wlgallery-geotag2 At such a granularity, this feature can not be useful for generating documentation. But maybe for excursions?
  2. But seems still a bit iffy, on the Pixi side of things: I am pretty sure that previously, I could not see geotags in my photos, even though I tried several image metadata viewers. Also, the Pixi does not always add geotags: is this limited to pictures taken when there are network connectivity issues?
  3. Also seems like editing operations in wlgallery, including create panorama, “eat” the geotags in the output image….

LRC assistant responsibilities: A checklist (on reception desk next to your screen)


For larger view, click “Full screen”windows in lower right corner. Mote that the sheet with LRC assistant responsibilities is handily posted right under your screen at your work station – refer to it as needed,

reception-desk-responsibilities

How to use the online Portuguese pronunciation help to generate phonetic alphabet transcriptions and text-to-speech

2011/10/20 1 comment
  1. Go to http://www.co.it.pt/~labfala/g2p/
  2. Write or  paste your text into the textbox:“Grafemas”
  3. Choose your preferred phonetic alphabet (IPA, SAMPA) and other options.
  4. Press button: “Converter” to see results.
  5. Press button: “Sintetizar” to hear results.
  6. Like so:
  7. demo-portuguese-Conversor-de-Grafemas-para-Fonemas
  8. Or click here to view a demo (requires Windows Media Player) with audio (download requires Windows Media Player). Our example was:
    1. Input: Tudo bem? É o jeitinho brasileiro. Oí, árbitro! Cadê o penalty? Não, não posso faze-lo.
    2. Output: tˈudu bɐ̃ĩ ˈɛ u ʒɐitˈiɲu bɾɐzilˈɐiɾu oˈi ˈaɾbitɾu kɐdˈe u pˈenalti nˈɐ̃ũ nˈɐ̃ũ pˈɔsu fˈazɘlu

How to link screencasts from MS-SkyDrive

  1. I am trying to replace – in the routine cases that do not need post-editing, but where speed is of the essence – my practice to post-process my screencasts in MS-Expression Encoder (installed on one machine only) and upload the result with a page to load a Silverlight Control – all hosted on my MS-Windows Azure portfolio.
  2. Much easier and quicker would it be to store screencasts in MS-SkyDrive (mapping to drives in MS-Windows enables a more robust drag and drop than the still browser-specific web version on live.com), and top take advantage the embed links provided.
  3. Unfortunately, WordPress.com, my blogging platform,  does not support iframes with videos from MS-SkyDrive.
  4. However, by linking to the URL in the embed code, to open in a new window (with the inelegant instruction to “click on the thumbnail that opens”; if it loads slow, the thumbnail ALT displays essentially the same),: linking-screencasts-thumbnail
  5. I can get the  user to an MS- Silverlight control which loads:linking-screencasts-silverlight-player
  6. and plays the video: linking-screencasts-silverlight-playing
  7. more user-friendly and robustly (This has been tested to work on MS-Windows 7 with IE9 and Firefox 3.6) than distributing the bare WMVs of my screencasts directly.

How not to book LRC equipment: Avoid scheduling conflicts by not using “Show times as free”

2011/10/18 1 comment
      1. Appointments and Meeting requests default to “Show time as busy”. owa-calendar-appointment-show-time-as-busy-avoids-scheduling-conflicts
      2. Before you change this, like so: owa-calendar-appointment-show-time-as-free-leads-to-scheduling-conflicts-use-busy-instead. Note this “Gotcha”: “If you have already specified that this is an all day event, Save As is set automatically to Free “.
      3. consider this: a scheduling conflict can easily result, if people coming after you cannot see the resource as “busy”, they might inadvertently book over your booking: owa-calendar-appointment-show-time-as-free-leads-to-scheduling-conflicts
      4. Remember this is a platform for collaboration, not for spreading confusion: If you leave your appointment as “busy”, per the default, voilà, others can see that the resource is busy, and work around it: owa-calendar-appointment-show-time-as-free-leads-to-scheduling-conflicts-use-busy-instead-prevents-conflicts

Film-and-media-collection.xlsx online database under construction

2011/10/13 1 comment

Sneak preview (larger view here) of the searchable online database with internet background information lookup (Note: work in progress, hard-“head” area!):

Friends of the UNCC-LRC can open this link in Excel-web-app (in your web browser, internet explorer or Firefox): https://skydrive.live.com/edit.aspx?cid=0025C841818181C2&resid=25C841818181C2%21164

More than one LRC assistant can edit the sheet at the same time, just not the same cell. so: if there is more than 1 lab assistant on duty, the one whose first name is closer to the end of the alphabet starts from the bottom row of the spreadsheet and works her way up

Click on the link “try UPC lookup”,

On the page that opens, if there is a picture of the movie with “buy from amazon”, right click on the link to amazon.com, select “copy shortcut”, and paste the shortcut into the column “buy from amazon”

Find the original movie title on the page, copy it into spreadsheet  column “UPC title original”,

If there is title English translation, copy it into “UPC title English translation”

Click on link “try worldcat”,  do the same as above with the spreadsheet columns “ISBN title original” and “translation”,

How to set up your laptop to use with the LRC portable Projector

  1. re LCD projector
    1. First, book the projector from this list of bookable items (manual included). 
    2. Here is what we have as Projector: CIMG0016<
    3. connect the VGA-adapter which is in the package: CIMG0017 
    4. CIMG0018 (if your laptop does not have a secondary VGA connector, you may need to bring an adapter).
    5. power the projector on: CIMG0019 (also always power it off using the power button; never just pull the power plug).
  2. on your laptop:
    1. find the key combination to enable the secondary output
    2. CIMG0037CIMG0038
    3. right-click the windows desktop, access the graphics card settings; CIMG0041
    4. Enable the graphics card to send a video signal to the projector you just connected.  CIMG0040. I the projector native resolution is not automatically recognized, it is 1024*768.
  3. If you want to show a slideshow on the projector, go to PowerPoint 
    1. ribbon, (1) Slide Show/ item: (2)) set up show, and bring up the (3) set up show dialogue  CIMG0042
    2. here you can configure to show on monitor 2 (numbers correspond toe the numbers 1 and 2 in the graphics card dialogue above): CIMG0044. Same principle as with other dual screen computers, like the teacher station in LRCCOED434.

How to get from our Film-collection.xlsx to in-depth bibliographic data on worldcat.org and upcdatabase.com

  1. To access more in-depth (and accurate, especially foreign language-wise) information about the films in our media collection that we can possibly maintain ourselves, we added the ISBN and UPC/EAN identifiers from the collection items to our new online film-collection list. This allows us to link collection items to
  2. worldcat.org,
    1. film-collection-isbn-worldcat
    2. The link is based on the item’s ISBN (barcode-scanning was rarely possible, thus checksum checking becomes mandatory).
  3. upcdatabase.com
    1. film-collection-upc-upcdatabase
    2. The link is based on the item’s UPC/EAN which do come with barcodes, but lookup resources leave things to be desired:
      1. http://www.upcdatabase.com/item/[upc # here]: yields some info for some items (newer DVDs which usually also have ISBNs?)
      2. http://gepir.gs1.org/v32/xx/gtin.aspx?Lang=en-US, on spot-checking, yields only “Trade Item Ownership”, but “no Trade Item Info”, and does not support GET operation.
  1. This links another isolated and non-professional language resource center media collection to the world of non-pseudo libraries,  where the power of crowdsourcing has long been known.
  2. The original plan – which will take more time to implement, especially since it can be automated only in a very limiting way – was to pull into the local collection spreadsheet accurate and multi-faceted bibliographic information, to prevent the common failures of even our usually basic item searches by title:
    1. foreign-language diacritics, given that non-foreign-language-librarians edited the local collection spreadsheet. This requires that foreign character input to be installed on the LRC help desk computers (done for Western) and that student assistant personnel can be trained (theoretically done – will need more practice)
    2. English translations: may provide a safety net for searches, short of automated flattening of all title diacritics.