All posts by grantboulanger

Backpack Gets My Money

Geeks,

I’m an educator. I’m a pretty damn good potter, an avid doityerselfer, and a wannabe geek. But at the end of the day, I’m an educator. But, lately I’ve been struggling with my own levels of productivity.
I know I can get more done during my day at school and at home, but so many things get in the way.

So, when I came to the first GGM over at Patrick’s house and started perusing his journal, his efforts at coming to terms with his org-fu, as he calls it, struck a cord with me. The theme of de-cluttering rings true with me, as does the mantra of less, less, less.

I signed up for a free Backpack account and started using it as my website at school for parents and students to visit for assignment information, extra credit offers, additional information for curious students, etc. I thought I’d give it a try before ponying up the $5 per month that they ask for for a real account. And, happily, that’s lasted me for quite some time.
Here’s one of the uses I came up with: Spanish Immersion Backpack page

But, the ghosts of scattered brains still haunt me.

I emailed the nice people at 37signals.com in response to their offer of a free Basecamp account for educators. They hooked me up and I dived right in, trying to see if this were the tool for me. It’s more than I need. And it’s really geared toward project management and collaboration, which isn’t really waht I need. It’s myself I need to collaborate with most of all!

So now I know what BP can do for me and am familiar enough with it to say that I think it could help in other aspects of my life- Today I made the decision to really give Backpack a try and I upgraded my account. I think there’s money to be made in creating a webapp like Backpack for teachers…

I’ve created pages for different home projects, areas of my professional life including the two thinking-skills initatives I’m leading at school, a text formatting tips page for easy access, and a page dedicated to creating a business for my pottery.

I’m more curious now then ever to see how Patrick is organizing his pages, and I’m wondering if any of you geeks out there are also using Backpack. (If not, just mention my referral number when you sign up ;) )
I suggest we have a GGM centered around organizational tools we all use- tools that really help, rather than bog you down.

WOW! OVER 10 TIMES the capacity of a floppy!

Weird Al’s song, Mr. Popeil, from 1984 spoofs the infomercial culture: “Now how much would you pay Mr. Popeil?”

when I saw this promotional article for FlashDisks “for sharing” it made me think of it.

I wonder just how good of a marketing move this is, given that some people really are still holding on tight to their floppies…

I know I haven’t used one since 1997 (except at work where the cd-burners that come with the Omni-no-brand P.O.S. computers are intentionally locked).

Digging in the Sandvox: a Rival for iWeb

Scottie posted the other day about Google’s Page Creator. Well, just before Apple announced the new iLife suite, Karelia.com launched the first public beta of Sandvox.

Tonight I decided to download it to take it for a test run. I’ve been playing with iWeb a bit here and there and managed to get a pretty decent start on a webpage for Amaya. I like it. It’s simple and attractive, despite being glitchy and a processor hog for my G4 700 mghz iMac. The worst is how they’ve chosen to implement image masking.

I haven’t liked RapidWeaver, BlogWave Studio (you’ll see why), or Site Studio. But I want to see what else there is. I’ll report back and let you know what I find out about Sandvox.

What is a Geek?

So I have this new tool called the Visual Thesaurus. I encourage you all to check it out. It reminds me of the Flickr Related Tag Browser we discussed at a previous Geek Gather. I think it has tons more potential than its current version.

But, I thought I’d look up just what exactly is a Geek according to them.

Geek

The result wasn’t altogether disheartening, though it lacks a certain something… I don’t think we’ll use it’s definition in our bylaws.

A cool function is the ability to save these definitions or email them directly. A good tool for teachers in particular.

Death.

There has been death all around lately. 2 very close friends have lost loved ones and I recently lost my uncle. It’s hitting closer to home and some day I’ll have to really deal with it. I’m realizing that in so many ways, I just don’t get it yet.
Son of a funeral director, I took my childhood experiences of vacuuming large open chapels with Mr. Eisenmeyer in a coffin behind me (constantly looking over my shoulder), or delivering flowers to the family, or helping to dress a cadaver in sunday best as the norm and never questioned the grossly overblown tradition of the american funeral until relatively recently. A friend in St. Paul started a green burial business- cheapest burial in town and environmentally friendly to boot.

I read blog posts like these that explain how my friend Elizabeth bathed and dressed her partner after her death. Caring for her during her last weeks, days, breaths… Makes me realize that I just don’t get it. There may not be anything more valuable on this earth than to be with a person you love as they die.

All that because I saw this other guy’s crazy idea- to witness his own funeral. I think it’s brilliant! Leave it to a thesbian. Those artists save my world from collapsing in on me.

Ooopsiegooglies

The new Google Video online store came up at our latest GGM. Wish I had cached a version of their front page from that day. Turns out they spruced it up on Tuesday after a month of flat-lining (maybe because their most exciting offer accessible by one click from the front page was MacGyver). It was so bad they even came out and publicly said they made a big mistake.