To get a true picture of the performance differences, I took snapshots of CPU and memory usage of Mac Pro and of MacBook Air while the computers where producing the movie discussed in my previous blog entry.

The picture above shows the CPU usage of my Mac Pro, and the picture below that of my MacBook Air.

I am spending a lot of time with podcast production. During the process of learning this trade I have gone through lots of hardware and software. From Windows to Mac, from USB microphones to condenser microphones etc.

The French ministry of education organized a meeting entitles “L’Apprentissage des Sciences dans L’Europe de la Connaissance” that is right now taking place in Grenoble. Minister Xavier Darcos, the French minister of education, is talking and mentioned that, in France, during the last several years, physics has lost in average 5.5% of the student body a year. Several other countries report similar trends.

The JEM server was down most of today, Saturday, September 27. The JEM server is located in a machine room of the Physics Department, and, of course, none of the administrators of the machine room was reachable off hours. Together with Antti Alamäki I then went to Campus, got the security guard to let us in to the machine room, and rebooted ubu, the JEM server.

This blog comment is related to Olga Caprotti's blog entry "Mission Accomplished."

We are in the business of advancing the use of information technology in education. At times I feel that this is a Mission Impossible.

The basic calculus course at the University of Helsinki has been offered online for many years. The course was completely revised this time. We are trying to activate students by asking them to contribute to weekly forum discussions, and by giving generous extra credit for that. Next time I may make that a compulsory part of the course.

I got wrong advice. Or perhaps I asked a wrong question.

I am right now taking part in the ICME 11 conference, the most important international meeting of mathematics educators. ICME conferences meet every four years. This time the meeting is taking place in Monterrey, Mexico. Together with Olga Caprotti I organized a workshop entitled eLearning Mathematics and participated in the activities of the meeting in general.

I have been creating Podcasts using Keynote and iMovie. This has been working fine, and I have created podcasts that cover a basic calculus course completely.

Yesterday I needed to create another podcast. I started my Keynote, produced and recorded the presentation, and exported it to Quicktime. But no sound. The recording did not play anymore when the presentation was exported to Quicktime.

I found out that the culprit was the new version (4.5) of Quicktime. See

This semester I have been teaching two large sections of calculus I at Florida State University. FSU is a big time BlackBoard user. The system has been in use for many years and always worked fine. Until this week. This is also the last week of classes. Final examinations are next week. Hence this week is extremely busy time students using BlackBoard to prepare for the final examinations or to submit course work. Hence closing down BlackBoard and restarting it is not really an option.