Catch the Wave

Recently I rediscovered the photo software ‘Picasa’. I’d had version 2 on my old laptop,but hadn’t got around to downloading it onto my new laptop. Then one of the teachers I work with wanted a programme to make a collage of photos and I suggested Picasa. Once we’d downloaded it, I discovered that Picasa 3 is a real improvement on the old version. It has a lot of choices for collaging photos and also makes neat photo stories similar to Photo Story 3. These can be then be uploaded to youtube – directly from PIcasa. Then all you have to do is copy the embedding code and paste into your blog. That makes it pretty easy. The collage I made is of classic cars which were parked outside my apartment building a couple of Saturdays ago.

Living in Whakatane I’m noticing how quickly the seasons change. We’re only 7 days into spring, but already the sky is bluer, the sun is warmer, the sea sparkles and everything looks greener. I even feel inspired to go for a walk.

Recently I’ve made several freeware discoveries. Teachers I work with needed a programme which would compress photos in bulk. ‘Jpeg 4 Email ‘ does this and it’s really easy to use. You just need to set the size you want, make multi-selections and drag the photos into the Jpeg for email window. You can then save the compressed photos into a new folder. It’s really useful for adding photos to a blog as well.

The second goodie is ‘Switch’, which converts sound files (e.g. .wma) to MP3. You can also multi-select.

Another discovery is the ‘vidtoMP3 website‘ which will save just the music from a video as an MP3. I know you’ll find a use for that one!

I also added the chroma key to Windows Movie maker so I can make blue screen movies. Follow the steps on this wikiHow page I think it’s better to use a green screen though because lots of people wear blue clothes. I ended up with an armless person in my underwater movie because she was wearing a long sleeved blue top!