Want to know the distance you walked/ran/biked but don’t have a GPS-savvy device to track yourself? Gmap Pedometer is a website powered by Google Maps that lets you enter your route without limiting you to driveable roads or places it thinks you should walk, e.g., you can navigate along a bike path.
Tip: first type in the state or country you are in, then further zoom down until you can see the streets and other navigation points to start your route mapping.
Things that fell out of my mouth today during a meeting:
Inter- means “between groups.” Intra- means “within one group.” (e.g., “interscholastic competition” means a contest between different schools;”intra-team communications” means talking amongst your teammates)
Get to “yes” first, from all parties involved, to avoid later “no”s.
Escalate responsibly…
Random thought after explaining to a non-IT person how they broke a piece of the internet (though not totally their fault – combining a 1980s app with arcane Exchange 2010 features frequently does not end well):
A key communications skill when explaining tech to nontech users seems to be anthropomorphizing the effect of their actions on the application.
I’ve been using the music notation software Sibelius for 4+ years (after initially using an inexpensive app, Noteworthy Composer, which surprisingly is still available!), with occasional forays into Finale since my bandmate uses that. All this time I’ve been “winging it” with Sib… which if you know me means I intuit a lot of it, and Google for info on more arcane functions if I can’t find it in the 500-page not always well indexed pdf manual.
I’ve felt that there are probably more efficient methods to accomplish time-consuming tasks (e.g., inputting notes) than how I do it. But the only accessible source I found for that was Berklee’s online courses, which cost $1,200 (non-credit; more if credit) for a 12-week session. So I was excited to see the Sibelius Blog mention another online course, which costs $199 for a 10-week session!
Granted, it will cost me a bit more than that, because the course specifically covers Sibelius 7, and I only finally upgraded to version 6 in January (while I’m on the cutting edge of a lot of things, I avoid software upgrades like the plague as long as my current version does what I need, since there’s always some “gotcha” requiring hours of tweaking to remediate). But thankfully my educational discount from B&H comes through again, pricing the upgrade at $45 less than retail.
AND… here’s another way to discount that you can use: the course’s website platform WizIQ.com offers new users a 20% discount coupon. Just go to their course listing page and fill out your contact info in offer box to be emailed a code for 20% off one course. NOTE: don’t do this until you find a course you want to take, as the coupon expires in 15 days.
The Sibelius 7 course, and also a Finale 2012 course from the same instructor, start June 18th. But they will apparently be run again in the fall. Also FYI this is not a “live” class – all the materials are presented in view-on-demand videos, so you can view and do the exercises on your own schedule.
Check out the other music courses presented though this site, too – besides standard stuff like music theory and guitar lessons, there are some interesting non-Western courses, such as lessons in Indian classical music and Carnatic violin and vocals!
If Guitar Center is the only brick and mortar game in your town for buying music gear, keep in mind that their in-store prices tend to be significantly more expensive than many web stores. However, with a little effort you can work around that and still get a great price on gear you can physically check out.
This is because GC has a price-matching policy – any time within 30 days of your purchase if you find the same gear for less elsewhere they will refund the difference plus 10%. However, if you don’t want to make a 2nd trip back for that, do your research: