Movie theatre for us, geeks
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Did you know that for the price of two movie tickets you can spend the full month watching interesting stuff that matters ? This is true, as long as
a) your definition of of "interesting stuff that matters" is a bit on the nerd site of a spectrum
b) you do not get full package with your movie ticket - I mean popcorn + soda - just the ticket.
If you do go for popcorn, we should say "for the price of 1.2 movie ticket", because the amount we talk here about is $25 USD, which still is almost the same amount in loonies. As for the case a), do you find that an example of interesting stuff that matters is video tutorials about development in Ruby on Rails (22 hours), advanced techniques in Photoshop or even Silverlight essentials ? If yes, look at the Lynda movie library. It is subscription based service that offers over 2'000 tutorials on wide variety of all things digital, covering both deeper, developer level areas as well as more general user topics.
The videos must be watched on-line (no downloads are available, just the stream), but the streaming is very smooth and image quality is very acceptable. Most of the tutorials are screencasts with voice-over, some are combination of slides and demos. The lessons are cut into reasonably short (3-15 minutes) pieces, which fits well into busy schedule. To have an idea about the quality of the stuff, many tutorials have few free few chapters - check them out.
If you prefer to pay as you go and want deeper, very ruby-esque and rails-ish topic, look at the Peepcode. I do not like the name - but the content is good, screencasts done by the guys who know what they are talking about. The single "show" (about an hour long, give or take) costs $9 for single download, or in packs of 5 ($40) and 10 ($70). Unlike the Lynda, these screencasts can be downloaded and as nice surprise, the downloads are reqular Quicktime movies, without the DRM nonsense. Recomended.
And speaking of evil things like DRM, you may not be aware that something unpleasant is possibly going to happen in that great country of ours: Canadian version of DMCA. Look at this, this and this and if you care, join the crowds - or at least, help spread the word.
Author Miro Adamy
LastMod 2007-12-06
License (c) 2006-2020 Miro Adamy