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Comment: Fix computers and network that way for local jobs (Score 3, Interesting) 332

by j-stroy (#38850461) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Money-Making Home-Based Tech Skills?
Everyone knows someone with computer trouble and often its not that hard to resolve. Especially if you can do it as a house-call.

Additionally, people with computers are often trying to do things with them.. websites, imagery, newsletters, blogs, etc. and many folks don't know how.

Setting them up document templates, blogs, and other workflow in addition to good free software, and advising on purchases is a good way to go for someone with even modest experience.

Computer experience is a "culture" of knowledge that many people aren't connected to. By having face-time with your clients you can know them well enough to do remote desktop or phone support from home on their projects as they do them. They will recommend you to everyone they know if they are happy and that can lead to bigger contracts. In home-based you need both the big and the small contracts.

This can also lead to doing contra with any local businesses you are a customer of. woohoo!

Comment: Re:Magnetic field + conductor = Electricity? (Score 1) 153

by j-stroy (#38788561) Attached to: 'Electric Earth' Could Explain Planet's Rotation
It might have been the difference in potential between ground points.

My brother was doing some sort of Geo survey work where they ground a wire in a creek and then run it quite a distance to another location for sensing purposes. He told of big static discharges that could really set you down on your ass by contacting the wire once it was at the other location.

Comment: lol - trolling the fineprint (Score 1) 237

LOL this entire submission is better suited for April 1.. Read the fineprint in it, and then check all the threads. No body has read it all or fulfills it all. Each of the threads ignores the part of the submission that excludes their suggestion re: specific platform support, specific tools, etc. Its doubtful there is actually an answer.

A workshop that meets weekly and they "actually create a game, start to finish" without programming, but programmers can work on it.. Platform specific, but excluding most dev tools for those platforms.. without skills but has to be a skillful task. Perhaps the only solution satisfying all that is a checkers game using everyones smartphones as the gamepieces.

Comment: Re: Unity version control (Score 1) 237

Since packages can include all those components and relationships. If you make a "hierarchy" of packages that you import and Unity project folders that contain things that you sellect & export packages from in their entirety, that can work around most of that suffering. (ie click on your scene, select dependencies, uncheck common things you don't want in the package and export)

Comment: Javascript - for both Unity3D and HTML5/Webkit/CSS (Score 1) 237

Javascript is what you should teach them. Not the high fallutin everything about it, just the code ganking basics. That way they can use both Unity(free) and make simple and neat HTML5 / Webkit CSS stuff (free). Get their feet wet fast & give them real life skills and a subject they can geek out on in their own time.

Teach them a little bit about "objects" and then using .CSS and an HTML5 / Webkit browser with extensive documentation.. such as Safari *ahem*. It really can do some amazing things without a lot of overhead. If you've missed developments there, then go look. This will also let them make cool web projects that aren't so interactive for the lower achievers.

Build something simple using a browser. Lots of gui events and behaviours are handled by the .CSS objects. Strap it together with a bit of Javascript. Check online.. lots of little demos for you to find and use for your curriculum. The result will work cross platform depending on the various implementations of webkit.

Then for the real deal, Unity. Its great. Altho you'll need more of a structured programming plan and an understanding of how unity is auto-magically "helping" you and where you need to take over and make your own event handlers.

Unity supports both Javascript and C#. To get around project-build / version control problems: export all your modules as a package and submit that into your version control. Then to get the newest version into your project, update your packages & then just re-import that package into your project.

Comment: Undamaged Replica? (Score 5, Interesting) 612

by j-stroy (#38306804) Attached to: Iranian TV Shows Downed US Drone
Despite extensive covering on the underside, to me it looks TOO fresh and undamaged. It doesn't look used at all

I think this is a mold reproduction of whatever they did get, faired out the damaged areas, swapped over a few parts and the paint is is still wet. There is nothing underneath it, its just a surface shell that looks right.

Comment: Re:Youtube songs are good family fun (Score 1) 210

by j-stroy (#37758474) Attached to: Doctors Recommend Against TV For Kids Under 2
Kids know the difference between real and make believe, but I just can't tell if you trollin' You ever cringed at a horror scene? Cheered at a sports moment? Done call and response with recorded music? Heard your goofy roommate "zomgwtfbbq!1 *giggle*" to Jersey Shore? Or spoke to bad sci-fi plot devices whether anyone was listening or not. Empathic enagement, same diff. You just roll with it to have fun. Children are wise, learn from them.

Comment: Youtube songs are good family fun (Score 4, Interesting) 210

by j-stroy (#37757936) Attached to: Doctors Recommend Against TV For Kids Under 2
My 2 year old daughter loves ( L - O - V - E - S - !) the Fiest 1,2,3,4 Sesame Street video and has watched it since she was a little younger than 1. She dances and sings and it has never gotten old. In the beginning she was so enamoured with it, it was like watching those old movies of Beatles fans grasping their heads and shrieking with delight. She'd wave at the characters and definitely was interpretting it right from the start. It had less than 7 million hits a year ago, and at 14 million and counting, I am sure she is not the only fan.

Introducing music to kids is great and I'd add that its fun for me to do too.. I'd have to say that this is different than plugging her into a TV set to watch the eye-candy slackjawed n drooling and I noted the ADHD link with fast edit kids media recently It is a much more interactive thing where she picks her favourite videos to watch as a treat. We talk about the characters and animals and sometimes do drawings after. Another favorite is a Woody Guthrie classic and we sing it together sometimes. She digs the iPad since she can click on suggested videos at the end of one... OF course it is a supervise activity.

Hempstone's Question: If you have to travel on the Titanic, why not go first class?

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