This weekend I came across a website that offered links to university podcast, and always interested in knowing more, I started browsing. One of the most intresting things I found was a complete course at Berkely !

This podcastscalled Foundations of American Cyberculture given by Greg Niemeyer and Joe McKay to the firsts years students at Berkley goes in 30 lessons of 45 minutes trough all the main issues of culture and (new) media.
Here a short review of how it is to listen

Subjects
The complex interactions between new media and perceptions and performances of embodiment, agency, citizenship, collective action, individual identity, time and spatiality. (that is a quote actually)

Pros
-Greg has a clear and warm voice which is pleasant to listen to
-The subjects are filled with nice examples and anecdotes so never a dull moment
-Its all for free
-Because of some spontaneity of the class you actually get the feeling of being there.

Cons
-The audio listener isn’t taken that seriously all the time, comments from students aren’t hearable, nor are the movies that are played (movies on a podcast?)
-There is a lot of useless information about when homework has to be hand in, and what the assignments for next week are.
-Files aren’t named accurately 20 have numbers and no names, and 8 have names and no numbers and two files are doubled and two are missing.

Conclusion
Although some lectures could have some extra after-editing, my overall feeling is very positive, all the things I already knew, and more, are presented in a logical way filled with extra examples and anecdotes from the teacher’s own experience. If Berkley would put some extra attention into recording, and did some cutting I think I would actually be prepared to pay for this content.

When do I listen to this you ask? Well when I’m biking to the train station, and off course when I’m shopping for food.

One week ago I bought my first laptop, and my first Mac! Here’s a small story how we’ve met, and how we go along. Already before I graduated I was looking for a laptop, the main reason at that time (and probably now too) is that at all the conferences it attended, the guys who owned a laptop where done with their blogpost when the conference was over. For me it was only starting than, going trough my notes and hoping I got make some story out of it. Most times 2/3 of the notes I didn’t use anymore because it was late in the evening all the other blogs where updated and I didn’t felt the use anymore.

So I went looking for a laptop, I’ve met a lot of people with Mac’s during my last year, but wasn’t really a mac-fan than ( and still aren’t worshipping the software) but I liked the machines. In the mean time I visited almost every mayor laptop builder site, and read many reviews. I saw the macbook a few times, but thought it was too expensive for what you got. It was probably because of my total lack of money I didn’t ended up with buying a hp or an lenovo. In that time I also started my first freelance job, and it actually looked like I had some money to spend, so I started browsing again. I wanted to have a laptop that was at least as fast as my current pc, light and smaller than 15” (because I didn’t want that the weight of my laptop would be the reason to leave it at home)

So off I went, for months on row I visited the mediamarkt, till one day I crossed the street and went to the “ expensive” computer store. Once I got in, a little shiny black laptop was blinking for my attention. I thought hey, that is the nicest little laptop I’ve ever seen, and when I got closer I noticed to my disappointment it was a mac. From then I new they got me, their hardware design was so incredibly smooth, that I was willing to throw away years of windows experience and start learning all over again.

Lucky for me I still hadn’t the money, which prevent me from buying a macbook from the first generation, and went for one from the second gen. Which has hopefully all hardware bugs fixed (haven’t found one yet). So one week after the freelance money came in, I went to the Staffhorst shop to pick it up. And here it is.

What I like about it already is the track path with the double finger scroll and the double click is rightclick thing. I noticed yesterday that I tried to scroll with to fingers on my mouse, which didn’t work off course.

An other thing is that its starting up soo fast, in the time of staring my pc, I could have started my mac, got all my mail, read it and closed it down again. (Which has its nasty side affects like reading your mail before you go to work, or read it just before bedtime)

I think one of the reasons why the macbook is looking so much better than other brands, is the screen that fold behind the laptop itself, instead of on top of it. This and off course that everything is in one color, Later on perhaps I will write a separate post how you recognize a mac from a dell laptop post.

So now for some cons, what I don’t like is that there isn’t a decent text editor. I can make music, dvd’s, comics and complete movies, but I can’t write a decent letter.

I do miss my taskbar, where all the programs are, and I actually miss the start menu. Somehow I had the feeling that I was better able to control and understand my windows pc. Although that is perhaps just a matter of learning time.

And last thing, the outside gets dirty so fast, that after two days it looks like it has been used for years, recently I found out that Apple actually sells screen cleaner liquid, so I guess I just have to search for case cleaner than.

But besides those small points I’m awfully excited about it!