Today's computer brain explosion
At the moment I still only have a murky sense of the various different ways to install software on this machine, but at least my internet searches also tell me this can be kind of a murky thing anyway. I'm generally going with the Ubuntu Software GUI and the synaptic GUI, as this murky understanding indicates that's least likely to cause horrible package conflicts.
Video recording: I had a weird hack going for recording lecture videos with some Movavi tools, but eventually found something called vokoscreen that looks like it basically does what I want, in combination with cheese. Essentially, I like being able to show slides as a pdf, while having a thumbnail video of myself showing, with a second webcam pointed at a table with a piece of paper on it so I can write and draw next to the slides. It sounds cumbersome but tends to work as well as lecture videos can possibly work, given the limitations of the medium. Messing around with the iPad has really reconfirmed how much I hate tapping on glass screens. I'm reminded of how a lot of people think an electronic keyboard is a perfectly acceptable replacement for a real piano.
A quick look around seems to indicate that OpenShot will be reasonably straightforward for me to get up and running with, as a replacement for Movavi for video editing.
Master PDF Editor also looks fine as an Acrobat replacement. I'll probably pony up for a license to get rid of the watermark pretty quick here. I think I said this before, but I have no problem whatsoever with paying for software, just so long as I'm not paying for a subscription service.
And I might try and learn how Scribus works. In the short term I may just keep my lectures in Keynote. I generally export my lectures as PDFs because the classroom lecture computers are all Windows machines, but my initial clicking around in Scribus suggests there's going to be a learning curve for editing existing slides.
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Now I should probably just shift over to the work computer to work on syllabi and schedules, because classes start next week. I don't think I'm going to reach a stage anytime soon where I have this laptop set up to a point where it will become the main home for my teaching files. Instead it's more likely I'll switch back over to the work computer for that, just using this laptop as a supplementary resource for work. I'll also bring the backup hard drive home again, and spend some time deciding how I want to load and organize personal and research files from it onto the laptop.
This entry was originally posted at https://rebeccmeister.dreamwidth.org/1515618.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
Video recording: I had a weird hack going for recording lecture videos with some Movavi tools, but eventually found something called vokoscreen that looks like it basically does what I want, in combination with cheese. Essentially, I like being able to show slides as a pdf, while having a thumbnail video of myself showing, with a second webcam pointed at a table with a piece of paper on it so I can write and draw next to the slides. It sounds cumbersome but tends to work as well as lecture videos can possibly work, given the limitations of the medium. Messing around with the iPad has really reconfirmed how much I hate tapping on glass screens. I'm reminded of how a lot of people think an electronic keyboard is a perfectly acceptable replacement for a real piano.
A quick look around seems to indicate that OpenShot will be reasonably straightforward for me to get up and running with, as a replacement for Movavi for video editing.
Master PDF Editor also looks fine as an Acrobat replacement. I'll probably pony up for a license to get rid of the watermark pretty quick here. I think I said this before, but I have no problem whatsoever with paying for software, just so long as I'm not paying for a subscription service.
And I might try and learn how Scribus works. In the short term I may just keep my lectures in Keynote. I generally export my lectures as PDFs because the classroom lecture computers are all Windows machines, but my initial clicking around in Scribus suggests there's going to be a learning curve for editing existing slides.
-
Now I should probably just shift over to the work computer to work on syllabi and schedules, because classes start next week. I don't think I'm going to reach a stage anytime soon where I have this laptop set up to a point where it will become the main home for my teaching files. Instead it's more likely I'll switch back over to the work computer for that, just using this laptop as a supplementary resource for work. I'll also bring the backup hard drive home again, and spend some time deciding how I want to load and organize personal and research files from it onto the laptop.
This entry was originally posted at https://rebeccmeister.dreamwidth.org/1515618.html. Please comment there using OpenID.