Looking for a GREAT introduction to computer science? Harvard has made CS50, it’s intro course, available to the world through iTunes. Just open iTunes on your computer, and search for CS50.

You not only get the lectures by David Malan (an extraordinary teacher), you get an entire learning environment, all the notes, source code, and even video “walkthroughs” for each assignment presented by highly skilled teaching assistants.

What do I mean by a learning environment?

Well, the class literature tells you how to download and set up VirtualBox (a FREE program that let’s you run other operating systems on your Mac or Windows computer). It then let’s you download from Harvard, for FREE, a complete virtual Fedora Linux operating system especially configured for this course, so that you are working in EXACTLY the same computing environment as the students taking this course at Harvard. Same software. Same toolset.

Do yourself a favor. Watch Malan’s first two weeks of one hour lectures (two per week, four in all). If you’re not hooked, no problem. But if you have ever wondred what this stuff is all about, you probably will be on board. Just follow the clear instructions in the second problem set, and you’re on your way!

Want to see what you can do with the FREE 3D modeling/sculpting/texturing/animating/compositing and video editing program called Blender?

SEE WHAT IT CAN DO HERE!

(This has HEAVY traffic. Pause it as soon as you can and wait for the whole thing to load [i.e. the grey bar under the video fills all the way to the right], then watch from the beginning.)

Have you ever learned about a great piece of software that you could really use, but – horrors – it wouldn’t run on your computer’s operating system?

I ran into that recently when I wanted to use Microsoft’s Visual C# 2010 Express to learn programming. No Mac version. (Yes, you can use MonoDevelop – also free btw – but the course I’m taking uses Visual C#).

Previously, I had found quite a few open source programs are only available for Linux, or ran better on Linux.

What to do?

VirtualBox to the rescue!

Available from Oracle, VirtualBox is a FREE, open source program that lets you simulate other sytems on your computer, in real time, without rebooting. It even lets you share your files among systems.

Here’s my setup: I run OSX Lion on a 27″ iMac with an i7 processor and 8 GB memory. Using VirtualBox I run Windows 7 AND Linux Ubuntu 11.1 simultaneously, with their windows acting as if they were native Mac windows, and share all my files among all three systems.

Now, I did have to buy Windows 7. I got an OEM version of Windows 7 Pro from Microcenter for about $150. The Ubuntu version of Linux is free here.

You can use VirtualBox to run Windows and Linux on a Mac, Linux and Mac Server (not regular OSX) on Windows PC, or Windows and Mac Server on a Linux box.

VirtualBox is available here.

Just a quick tip I picked up yesterday from MrPLD in the Writer’s Cafe on Kindleboards.com:

There are a boatload of free fonts available from google. Even better, they are open source he says, so you can use them for commercial purposes without fear of violating a copyright!

Go here to check them out!

3DBuzz.com is a great site to learn all about software for programming, 3D modeling and animaton, and game creation. (Yes, you can create your own 3D games in the free Blender software, or the free Unity software).

The folks at 3DBuzz have begun to focus in on Blender (about time), and have a set of 63 (yes 63) tutorials, each lasting from 4 minutes to 20 minutes, that do the best job i”ve seen yet on getting someone up to speed on this powerful software.

You can download them here.

If you’re a noob, Blender is a free open source program with powerful 3D creation, animation and video compositing tools.

See more at Blender.org.

Also, check out Sintel, an animated film made entirely with free open source software, primarily Blender.