seankeane

I wanted to do this a couple years ago really bad. I went on the web and researched. the cheapest new projectors cost like $1500 and i knew there would be people messsing with cheaper hacks. The first digital projector i ended up with cost about $300. It was a VGA LCD overlay and an overhead projector. I used tinfoil to mask out all the excess light leaks. My friends and family loved it. We watched tons of DivX movies (this was… 2002.) and I liked it a lot.

I checked back at ebay a year later and realized prices for XGA projectors were really dropping. businesses were upgrading or something. anyway, i picked up two infocus xga projectors for around $640 each. then someone ended up giving me an older self contained infocus VGA projector. Now i guess i have 4 digital projectors. i dont really have enough walls.

For summer parties at night i would setup the projectors all in my backyard and around the pool. I used frosted showercurtains as screens. great stuff.

so that was like 2 years ago now – so prices for these things must be really low. don’t pay more then $700. ask if there are dead pixels, ask if the lense has scratches and if it focuses uniformly. projectorcentral.com (?) has great spec info in a database. projectors are rated on lumens. if you want to watch a movie in a totally dark room you don’t need all the lumens in the world. 1000 lumens or more is for stupid business people who don’t want to shut the lights off during a presentation so they will pay twice the price for the device that can be brighter. 800 is fine. i have one at 150 which is perfectly suitable for watching movies on. oh. and resolution. you want XGA if you want to have a desktop screen replacement kinda thing going on (Gyration wireless mice go well with that). but you only need VGA if you want to watch movies…

i guess one way to fix education in america is to … become education in america?

I’ve started a bit… its hard. Once you’re in the trenches it’s kinda nice because you see simple ways here and there that you actaully can fix whats wrong… well – at least one kid or class at a time, ya know? I guess the way to do this is to think globally (er, nationally) and act locally? It helps you to make you feel like you are doing something about it i suppose.

If anyone is interested in researching education reform/philosophy, i really recommend reading some John Dewey from about 100 years ago. That dude had it head on. Blame Thorndike for the mess of a system we have.