30th of April 2012.

Today in class we discussed about an application that we will be using quite a number of times during this unit called Audacity. I finally have installed it onto my USB with ease.

Questions
What is a portable application?
A portable applcation is an application that can be carried around on a portable device, such as a USB and can be used on any computer.

The advantages of portable applications.

• You can take your applications anywhere with you, as long as you have a portable device.
• You can set it up in any way you like.
• You don't need to worry about the computer losing files or setting up differently.
• They are free so you don't have to worry about paying for your application.
• There are a variety of applications that are avaliable as portable.
• Portable applications clean your registry.
• They are secure in computers and thumbdrives. 

The types of software avaliable as portable applications.
There are many types of software avaliable on the internet as portable applications. They can be put into many different categories. Some examples are stated below.

Accesibility

• Firefox Accesibility Extension
• On-screen Keyboard Portable
• Virtual Magnifying Glass Portable

Development

• AkelPad Portable
• Database Browser Portable
• Frhed Portable
• Geany Portable
• Notepad ++ Portable

Education

• BPBible Portable
• Celestia Portable
• Gramps Portable
• Marble Portable
• TypeFaster Portable

Games

• Big Solitaires 3D Portable
• Brutal Chess Portable
• Cube Portable
• Frets on Fire Portable
• Get Sudoku Portable
• Puzzle Collection Portable

Graphics

• Blender Portable
• Dia Portable
• GIMP Portable
• Inkscape Portable

Internet

• DamnVid Portable
• Google Chrome Portable
• Juice Portable
• Maxthon Portable
• Mozilla Firefox, Portable Edition
• Skype Portable

27th of April 2012.

Today, in our first lesson of IST for Term 2, we began our new unit on sound. We were allocated to do the activity Audio Sampling Rate and Sample Size for this lesson, as well as Installing  Audacity Sound Editor.

Task One:

Making Sound- Questions

1. Sound moves through what medium? Sound moves through the pressure waves of air.
2. Briefly describe how a microphone works, in particular what does it gather and what does it produce? A microphone works through vibrations and electrical signals. This process occurs as microphones consist of small membranes that vibrate, as well as a mechanism that gathers the vibrations of the membrane and produce them into electrical signals.
3. What unit is used to measure sample size? The unit used to measure sample size is bits or decimal digits.
4. What unit is used to measure sampling rate? The unit used to measure sampling rate is Hertz (Hz) or samples per second.

Audio Bit Depth Sample Size and Sampling Rate- Questions

1. How does sound quality vary with sample size and sample rate? Sound quality varies with sample size and sample rate as the quality of the sound is dependent through the sample size and sample rate.
2. What is another name for sample size? Another name for sample size is sample format.
3. From the above information which offers better quality sound, FM radio or AM radio? As evident above, the better quality sound can be produced by FM radio is at 96 kbits. This because it's bitrate value is higher than AM radio's, which is at 32 kbits and it is the closest to the Standard Bit Rate quality which is at 128-160 kbits.
4. Why not record all sound in extremely high sample sizes and sample rates? The reason why not all sound can not be recorded in extremely high sample sizes and sample rates is because large files can not be transferred as easily as small files can.