Expanding Your Algebra Knowledge

Welcome to the wonderful expanding world of Algebra.

Yep, we're talking Distributive Law, Binomials, Polynomials, Perfect Squares, and all that sort of fun stuff.

If you would like to see the above "wall" full size, then click the link below:

Click to open the Wall full size in a new window.

This wall has been set up for the maths students at my school to have 24x7 online help for the current Algebra Unit we are doing. If you would like to know how to set up one of these colossal and colorful walls, then click the following link:

Click here to view a PDF on how to use Wall Wisher.

Here is a PowerPoint presentation that has been converted into a Flash slideshow using Open Office Org. Click on the current slide to advance forward.



I plan on printing some of the slides in color, and then doubling their size from A4 up to A3 with a color photocopier.

From previous efforts I have found that PowerPoint leaves a lot of empty white space around the edges of the slides.

So what has to be done is to color print them onto A4 paper, then cut off the wasted white space around the edges of each sheet. We then color photocopy enlarge them by a factor of 175%, onto A3 paper.

I then laminate these A3 printouts, and use them as wall posters in my Maths classroom.

I call them "stick ups" because they are summary notes that can be stuck up onto the wall in any room I am teaching in. Plus I get to crack the repeated dumb joke to the class of "Hey guess what, it's a stick up!"

If you would like to download a copy of the unanimated PowerPoint, (In MS-2003 format) then click the link below:

View "Distributive Law" Presentation as an MS 2003 PPT

Here is another PowerPoint of "stick ups" I made for Binomial Expansions.
Click on the current slide to advance forward.



If you would like to download a copy of the unanimated PowerPoint, (In MS-2003 format) then click the link below:

View "Binomials" Presentation as an MS 2003 PPT

Finally, here is a really good video made by "Yaymath.org" about expanding Binomials using the distributive law as the "FOIL" rule.

The presenter does a really great job. I have shown the video in my Algebra classes and it has been well received. A number of my students are now regular users of "Yay Math".



The Yaymath website is 100% free and is an awesome effort by a guy called Robert Ahdoot who is a high school Math teacher in the USA.

I highly recommend you visit his site at: http://yaymath.org because it has lots of really great material on it for Algebra.

And to finish up, here is the most bizarre maths video I have seen on YouTube to date. It is so different, it is kind of good. :) See what you think.



Well that's about all I need to distribute to you for this post.

Enjoy,
Big (Passy Wasabi)

World Wide Web Revealed

From examining the following photographs, I can only conclude that giant mutant spiders must have spun these endless cobwebs of telephone lines.

That must be why they call it the "World Wide Web" !









Enjoy,
Big Passy Wasabi

P.S. I have not blogged much lately, because I have been very busy with some guitar things. More details on this in an upcoming blog post.

World's Number One Radio

Click on the 128K windows media symbol to listen to any of the online radio stations on the above menu. But if you want to open the 1.FM website full size in a new window, then click on the 1.FM logo below.



1.FM at http://www.1.fm is in my opinion the world's best internet radio station. As shown below, there is a wonderfully diverse range of radio stations in the 1.FM family.


as well as these stations:


Listening is available in streamed Windows Media Player 128K format, and others, as shown above. WMP 128K gives great quality sound when put through some decent PC speakers like Creative T-20's or T40's. There is also mobile phone access, as described in the "Mobile" section of the site.

Here is a quick review of some of the stations available.

Otto's Baroque Classical Music
This station has wonderful violin and chamber orchestra music, as shown in the screen capture below.




Bay Smooth Jazz
Great laid back Jazz Fusion music.
Pleasant for background music while working away on other things.




Power Rock
As the name suggests modern heavy guitar music, for lifting your energy levels in an active kind of way.



There are plenty of stations for all tastes and musical genres.

1.FM's main role is to broadcast a full range of music styles.
However, their website also has a photo gallery, as well as a nice Videos section which has good comedy videos.

Take some time out to explore 1.FM and I am sure you will not be disappointed.

Enjoy,
Big Passy Wasabi

The Funky Cool Gizmos For Guys

In today’s busy world mobile phones are the best means of communication. Whether it is stylish slider phones offered by Nokia or other swish phones, mobile phones have certainly changed the life of the people in the world. With the upcoming advance technology with internet buying new mobile phones has become quite feasible. Mobile phones offered online gives you a variety of amazing options to buy mobiles such as Sim free mobile phone, contract mobile phones etc. These are some powerful and cool gizmos which have changed our way of surviving by giving all the comforts which are needed to stay in this world.

You can get trendy mobile phones like Samsung E900 gold and also Samsung D900 red with the help of contract mobile phone deals. Be charmed by the attractive Samsung E900 Gold. This handset is super stylish and will allure you with its dashing looks. This is a slider handset which works very smoothly. This handset is full of different mechanism and functionalities. This adorable mobile gizmo also gives facility like Bluetooth which further gives the facility for wireless devices for example transfer of some data for its management in your laptop.

There are many more cool and new gizmos which give seductive looks. And their multimedia facilities are incomparable and they are plenty in number.

Image Creativity and Star Wars

Part 2 of this tutorial is here:



The two 6 minute videos above, are all about using "GIMP" image editor to create a Star Wars light saber effect. Adobe Photoshop can do the same thing, but "GIMP" is a really nice software package for editing still images because it is 100% free.

For moving pictures, Adobe "After Effects" is often used to make Star Wars light sabers, as well as Star Trek phaser guns. There are lots videos on the web about "Rotoscoping" and using Adobe Premiere, Photoshop, and After Effects to make fabulous Light Saber frame by frame magic.

Here is a rather humorous one minute Japanese video using Light Sabres:



There are lots of videos on You Tube, but the masters of light saber duals must be these two guys: Ryan and Dorkman. This is their first movie (I think they have about four or five) and I have given them 10 out of 10.



So what brought all this on... well 40th Lunar-Landing anniversaries bring out a bit of the Lunatic in everyone I guess.

Enjoy,
Darth Passy Wasabi

Using TinyURL for Blog Post Emails

The above screen capture shows how I used the "tinyurl" online utility, to make a second version of this really long blog post URL address:
http://passyworldofict.blogspot.com/2009/07/making-web-pages-at-google-sites.html
as the much shorter alternate address of:
http://tinyurl.com/PwGoogleSites .

It was necessary to do this, because every time that I emailed the original long address link to anyone, the email process split up the link text into separate words. This meant that the link failed when the mail recipient clicked on it.

According to Wikipedia:

The TinyURL homepage at http://tinyurl.com/ has a submission form box that is used to submit a long URL for shortening. For each URL entered, the server adds a new alias in its hashed database and returns a short URL as http://tinyurl.com/xxxxxx in the following page.

If the URL has already been requested, TinyURL will return the existing alias rather than create a duplicate entry. The short URL forwards users to the long URL, without any noticeable time delay.

Short URL aliases are seen as useful because they are easier to write down, remember or pass around, are less error-prone to write, and also fit where space is limited such as IRC channel topics, email signatures, microblogs, certain printed newspapers and magazines, and email clients that impose line breaks on messages at a certain length.

People posting on Twitter make extensive use of shortened URLs to keep their tweets within the service-imposed 140 character limit.

Starting in 2008, TinyURL allowed users to create custom, more meaningful aliases. This means that a user can create descriptive URLs rather than a randomly generated address. For example, http://tinyurl.com/wp-tinyurl.

On the tinyurl homepage, they even supply HTML embed code, that we have modified slightly, so that we can put the tinyurl'er directly onto our web page like this:

Enter a long URL to make tiny:

So if we have a long URL from one of our blog posts to email to people, it is best to make a tinyurl version to send as well. This means that if the email process breaks up the long link, our contacts can always use the short link. The tinyurl link also looks a lot neater and professional than the big "gangly" blog address.

Enjoy,
Big Passy Wasabi

Online Jukebox at PLAYLIST.COM

The above set of songs was made at Playlist.com.

If I was teaching Guitar, then these would definitely be a great set of "classics" for my students to study.

The playlist in this blog is set to start automatically on this screen (so turn your speakers on to hear the sound). If you want to stop listening, simply click on the twin vertical lines "Pause button" at the top left corner of the player.

Playlist.com has an advanced music search engine for music files. The company that runs the site uses various types of web spiders and robots to continually trace and link to legalized music files all over the web.
(Playlist.com is kind of like a "Google" of music files).

People can join up at the site for free, and search in Playlist for music that they like. This music can then be grouped into "Playlists", which can be listened to online 24x7. Links to each of these lists can also be emailed to friends.

In addition, Embed HTML code is supplied for our playlists so that we can add them to web pages or Blogs. This allows users the experience of sharing and connecting with other users musically.

Playlist also allows user submission of links which offer legal or free music on the Internet. Upcoming artists can use this as a tool to generate exposure in the competitive music market and get noticed by music fans and hopefully some industry labels as well.

The Playlist site is at : http://www.playlist.com/

The following PDF gives a full review of Playlist. It also goes through step by step on how to join Playlist and gather your sets of tunes.

If you would like to have your own full size copy of this PDF, then simply click the save disk icon button on the PDF viewer, and you should be able to save it to your own hard disk.

Alternatively, you can view or save the full size PDF by clicking the link below:
Click here to open or save the “How to Use Playlist” PDF


If we decide we want to play along on Guitar with some of the legendary greats, then a quick search in Google, or at sites like: http://www.fretplay.com/ should soon find the desired “Guitar Tab” to play the song:

Eg. Tablature for the “My Sharona” riff was easily obtained from:
http://www.fretplay.com/tabs/k/knack/my_sharona-tab.shtml :



Also at the same website are some very fancy demonstrations of how to play enhanced versions of these riffs, such as this example for “Sunshine of Your Love”:

Sunshine Of Your Love by Cream - Spanky Wilson Cover A

So that’s it… we went off track a bit with the Guitar playing items, but we assume in the future that we can continue to make as many Playlists as we like, for all occasions, and we will be having lots of fun doing this.

For music teachers, Playlist is great for providing samples of songs that students need to learn to play. For the rest of us it is great to have our favourite tunes online, and share them with friends.

I think there might also be something similar to Playlist at "Blip-TV" where you can be a DJ and set up an online list of songs for other people to listen to. This will need to be investigated another time.

Enjoy,
Big Bopping Passy Wasabi