Well, our group made a discovery about the home page. Apparently it doesn't want to be renamed. Sadly, we learned this the hard way. We discussed changing the name of the home page to something more descriptive, and Wikispaces acted like it was OK with changing the name of the home page. However, much our surprise, it renamed the page and then set up a redirect for the home page. The bad thing about that is that it also put a nice message at the top of the screen stating that the page was a redirect. It was quite an annoying message, and it was large, too. So, that had to go.
The difficulty is that once set up, it took some doing to get the deed undone. This made for an interesting day earlier this week. I had twenty-five messages waiting for me when I got home from school that day.
The good news was that it was fixable.
The strange part was that I was needing to start my classes that day with a disclaimer. I did this because I could only see the emails stating that there was a problem, but I couldn't get a the wiki page to fix anything. So, I would start my classes with the comment, "If I laugh hysterically or manically, here's why..." My students had mixed reactions to my troubles. Mostly they reacted better than I expected actually.
But now its all better, and I am going to get kicked off the computer. So bye.
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Sunday, April 13, 2008
The Dreaded Upgrade
There are times that technology intrudes on our lives. I say this as a computer geek and just as a normal person. It isn't that the computer geeks try to make computers intrude. They just do it seems.
This is the reason that when I was teaching computer science, there were days that I couldn't bring myself to turn on my computer -- not even to play a video game. It was work. I wanted to leave the computer alone, and I wanted to leave the computer alone.
I say all this because my sister has been having a strange weekend this weekend. Generally, she is a chemist. Indeed, her degree and job title say that she is. Some of her co-workers do wonder, however.
She has been working with the IT folks at the, um, local pharmaceutical company, doing a rollout of a new version of some software. The software runs on some critical (and pricey) pieces of equipment. The other thing that makes the rollout unusual is that the data stored in the systems involved is mission critical data. Well, I suppose that's not unusal. Most company's data is mission critical to the company -- otherwise, why are they bothering? Well, anyway. She has been playing IT person this weekend. So, I've been hearing stories of how things have been. I must say that the problems (all too familiar) do sound different when they are someone else's problem (even my sister's). The good news is that she (and the rest of the IT folks) were done and that she was home.
This is a good thing. This was attempt number 2, and this weekend is Mom's birthday, and attempt number 1 was during our brother's birthday. So, as I said, the silly computer were intruding. The computer thought that it would be best to be upgraded during Mom's birthday. What a silly computer, but of course, it still got its way.
This is the reason that when I was teaching computer science, there were days that I couldn't bring myself to turn on my computer -- not even to play a video game. It was work. I wanted to leave the computer alone, and I wanted to leave the computer alone.
I say all this because my sister has been having a strange weekend this weekend. Generally, she is a chemist. Indeed, her degree and job title say that she is. Some of her co-workers do wonder, however.
She has been working with the IT folks at the, um, local pharmaceutical company, doing a rollout of a new version of some software. The software runs on some critical (and pricey) pieces of equipment. The other thing that makes the rollout unusual is that the data stored in the systems involved is mission critical data. Well, I suppose that's not unusal. Most company's data is mission critical to the company -- otherwise, why are they bothering? Well, anyway. She has been playing IT person this weekend. So, I've been hearing stories of how things have been. I must say that the problems (all too familiar) do sound different when they are someone else's problem (even my sister's). The good news is that she (and the rest of the IT folks) were done and that she was home.
This is a good thing. This was attempt number 2, and this weekend is Mom's birthday, and attempt number 1 was during our brother's birthday. So, as I said, the silly computer were intruding. The computer thought that it would be best to be upgraded during Mom's birthday. What a silly computer, but of course, it still got its way.
Thursday, April 3, 2008
Camtasia and Screencasting
Camtasia was an interesting program. It seemed to work in a very intuitive fashion (which is rare) and the tutorials that they provide are actually helpful. That much impressed me.
The process of doing the screen casting was about what I expected, but it did take time. The first thing that took a while was looking through the five or six tutorials that seemed interesting. I'm glad I did, but it still took time.
The process of setting up the training and having everything ready wasn't too bad, but I did end up needing to re-do a little bit. That is a bit tricky. I must say that I didn't attempt to narrate while working through the tutorial. I can see how that would be possible, but you'd really have to be able to multi-task your brain to be able to pull it off.
My part was the recording of the original video, and I put a few callout (arrows) in the one video also. I started putting titles into the same video, and I split the video where the titles would go, but after seeing the result, I'm not sure if the final project will have titles or not. Oh well.
The one surprise was that moving the project from my computer to one of my team member's was actually pretty tricky. It wasn't the program's fault, either. The program has a mechanism for saving the files as a zip, and it seemed to work just as advertised. The problem was that sending a 20, 30 or 40 meg file was making my computer (or something) unhappy. I'm pretty sure that my school (FC not IUPUI) email would have rejected or eaten files of that size, and it probably would have turned up its nose at a zip attachment (with good reason). However, the OnCourse messages seemed to be perfectly happy sending the zipped attachments. I suppose that is because some class work might need that capability, this one for example. Who knew?
Well, at any rate, my portion of the tutorial process has been handed off, and the process is moving on to the next phase. I suppose it will be interesting to see how it turns out.
The process of doing the screen casting was about what I expected, but it did take time. The first thing that took a while was looking through the five or six tutorials that seemed interesting. I'm glad I did, but it still took time.
The process of setting up the training and having everything ready wasn't too bad, but I did end up needing to re-do a little bit. That is a bit tricky. I must say that I didn't attempt to narrate while working through the tutorial. I can see how that would be possible, but you'd really have to be able to multi-task your brain to be able to pull it off.
My part was the recording of the original video, and I put a few callout (arrows) in the one video also. I started putting titles into the same video, and I split the video where the titles would go, but after seeing the result, I'm not sure if the final project will have titles or not. Oh well.
The one surprise was that moving the project from my computer to one of my team member's was actually pretty tricky. It wasn't the program's fault, either. The program has a mechanism for saving the files as a zip, and it seemed to work just as advertised. The problem was that sending a 20, 30 or 40 meg file was making my computer (or something) unhappy. I'm pretty sure that my school (FC not IUPUI) email would have rejected or eaten files of that size, and it probably would have turned up its nose at a zip attachment (with good reason). However, the OnCourse messages seemed to be perfectly happy sending the zipped attachments. I suppose that is because some class work might need that capability, this one for example. Who knew?
Well, at any rate, my portion of the tutorial process has been handed off, and the process is moving on to the next phase. I suppose it will be interesting to see how it turns out.
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