Tag: tech

Free and Useful Tech Tools for Students

Carl Setzer2 Comments

This week I started my coursework for my new career: full-stack web developer (for more about that decision, head here). In the few days since courses launched (online, as we’re still practicing social distancing), I discovered/reinforced the importance of several tech tools.

1.Grammarly

I started experimenting with this about a week ago. I’d seen ads for the free app, and, well, haven’t been too interested. I think I’m a solid writer. But I finally wore down and decided to try it. I’m actually quite pleased. And, as the syllabi that I’ve read the past few days state pointedly, grammar, spelling and syntax in the online posts are a part of our grades. So, that much more valuable. Though less delightful, but important, I’ve seen I’m not so perfect a writer. Having these, shall we say “nudges” helps make me that much better. So, I recommend it.

2. Evernote

This tool is one I’ve been using for at least 10 years. It’s my journal, and main note-taking tool. Articles I’ve read, want to read, brainstorming sessions, projects I’m working on, travel info, checklists…all of this an more are dumped into this tool. The searchability is great! And the ability to customize your organization system is excellent, too. Whether you prefer to have custom “notebooks” or you prefer to “tag” notes, you’re covered by Evernote. I also appreciate that there’s geocoded information in the notes, and also a number of third-party tools to explore.

I’ll post other ones as I discover them. Do you know of any I should explore? Leave a comment and let me know.

4/16: Editted as WordPress converted my manually typed numbers into a <ol> list.

Why I’m starting a new career into Web Development

Carl Setzer1 Comment

Just over a month ago, I learned I was being let go from my current role. I’ve wandered this path before, so I, initially, wasn’t terribly concerned. However, the more I thought about it, the more concerned I became. Mainly, I’d been laid off twice in less than a year. Thinking further, since 2009, I’d been laid off 4 times. I’m a bit tired of that. Yeah, even being a tech-savvy executive assistant/project coordinator, that work is too easy to outsource. Plus, with digital assistant growth, the lessening of friction for scheduling, the ease at which most folks can book their own travel, and you see the recipe for a dying career. I’m ready to be, shall we say, more essential.

Pretty much all of my life I’ve had a fascination with technology. As a young boy, my love of robots and radios (I had a particular fascination with shortwave radios), evolved into space and aviation, then into computers. Early PC games and BBSs then morphed into a vocational certificate in Information Processing (mainly databases and spreadsheets). Looking back, my biggest contribution to most of my past roles has been digitally based. Whether it’s my ability to fix a copier, 90% of PC issues, set up and manage a network, use things like Photoshop and AutoCAD, or build a website, those were the things that added the most value to the world around me.

I believe that the web holds our future. We will interact with most systems and data with web tools. SaaS models are already driving there…in the fast lane. Web development is a fast-growing path (projected 27% growth over the next 10 years), with decent salaries to boot.

So, it looks like fun, and there’s a need, which seems like a great combination. Thus, off I go.

Exploring Canva Premium

Carl Setzer

I’ve fiddled with Canva for the past few months, mostly for editing images on my Samsung S9, but have mostly been an adherent to Photoshop for anything serious. I have some free time (good ol’ Covid19), so decided to experiment with the premium version. I have a 30 day free trial, and it looks easy enough to cancel it if I don’t want to keep it.

I like it a lot for mobile editing. I think it creates fine images, especially for posting to Instagram or Facebook. Most of what I’ve done is put some of my haiku on some photos I’ve taken. I also have created some images for a real estate agent friend’s Instagram and Facebook pages. I’ll see what I like and don’t, then go from there. Right now, I do like the tool, the way the UX works, and the final products. But we’ll see as I try to be more deliberate with it and, perhaps, have a production sort of mindset.

If you’re interested in trying Canva out yourself, check it out here. Full disclosure: this is a rewards link. It gives me some Canva credits if you download and use the app. This page explains it more.

 

New To Zoom? Check Out This Great Intro Video

Carl Setzer

With coronavirus forcing us to transform education and interpersonal communication, the folks at Zoom now find their tool becoming the defacto standard, education and beyond. Plenty of organizations (churches, businesses, non-profits) are utilizing Zoom (why Zoom and not Google Hangouts? Skype? I’m not entirely sure at this point, but think it was because the reached out first…I should explore this at some point).

I’ve been a fan of Steve Dotto for years, and highly recommend his videos for guidance about things tech. Steve created this video (below) as a tutorial for many of the basic features. So, if you haven’t used Zoom, or haven’t used it extensively, I highly recommend Steve’s video. My wife (a teacher), who’s used Zoom quite a bit the past few weeks picked up some great tips. It’s highly worth your time.

 

 

Google Tip: Deleting Old Google Sign-In Accounts

Carl Setzer

As many of you know, I just left a job. Part of my process for that is clearing out any data I’ve captured. One thing I always need to do is clear out any of the old Google accounts I’ve used. Like what you see in this view: 

 

The first step to getting rid of the other screens is to sign out of everything:

Next, go to the login screen, which will now look like this:

Click on “Remove an account”, and you’ll be able to choose the account(s) to remove from the screen. And, boom, it’ll be nice and clean for the next log-in.

Animated PNGs

Carl Setzer
Yesterday, it took me ages to figure out how to convert a .mov to an animated PNG. One of our services can’t use gifs at all, only pngs. (Here’s more insight into the format.) I remembered that there were such things, but damn, I’d never created one before. It looks like browsers don’t support then that well, so that Adobe doesn’t support their creation natively. I saw in several forums that you can download a plug-in to do that, but no one linked to one. I found EZGif.com, a free website that let me do the conversion. It’s not the most elegant process. It works fine if I open it in a browser, but not if I try to open it in Windows. My, what a pain!

Some thoughts on sound

Carl Setzer

The past few days have brought a few opportunities to edit some sound files. I’ve used Audacity in the past, but it hit me that Adobe’s Audition is part of my Creative Suite subscription. I found it slick and fast. Now I was only trimming the files and boosting the audio. It felt much easier to me. That might be due to my decades of experience in Abode products. This, their UX is somewhat natural.

Next. I want to spend some time exploring balancing sound, cutting out noise and such. It should be fun.

What’s your favorite tool? I lean towards Audacity mainly, if for no other reason, free!

Tech Research Pet Peeve

Carl Setzer

Currently, I’m looking at an online service for the Snohomish County Youth Chorus (my son sings with them, and I’m on the board). One of the first things I always want to do is look at pricing. I want to avoid spending hours of time researching features and whatnot, when the product doesn’t fit into the org’s budget.

When it’s not available, or not easily findable, I get annoyed. I don’t want to sign up for a “free trial” to answer the most basic of questions. A couple of thoughts with this:

  • If you won’t tell me the costs plainly, I expect that I will need to worry about being “sold” to all the time. Sure, it might make it easier for you to sell to me, but it both annoys me and erodes my trust.
  • If you won’t tell me upfront so that you can apply high pressure sales, what other things will I need to endure to get basic service.

Anyway, if you craft content for a business, these are a few things to keep in mind.

Google’s Tea Uglow Featured On This Week’s Design Matters

Carl Setzer

I’m sad to say that I’ve never heard of Tea Uglow until this evening when I was able to listen to the most recent Design Matters podcast (if you haven’t subscribed, you need to change that). Tea is the Creative Director of Google’s Creative Lab in Sydney, which sounds like an invigorating role.

Tea comes to tech with a delightfully unique mindset. Not from the computer science world, but art and design. A mindset that’s critically important right now, at this point in tech history. I deeply believe that design thinking is the future of tech. And, really, the now of tech. She’s done some other videoed talks, which I’ll explore later. It’s awfully late today.

This talk covers a lot of ground, from sexuality and gender identity to diversity and inclusion in tech. Such broad wandering inspires and engages me.

Give it a listen. It’s well worth your time.