What an exhausting and long year since last August – my last full vacation!
And exhausting … for ALL OF US! I am so fortunate to have been able to work with such amazing and incredible colleagues at The Computer Help Desk over the past … 500+ DAYS! Yes, it has been that long since we started working remotely, late in March of 2020!
Without ALL of their support, humour, leadership, imagination, guidance and every single possible ‘intangible‘ that each and every single one of them, ALL BRING to our Teams meetings, emails, texts, GIFs, Emojis, Jeopardy, Quote Contests, it would have been impossible to accomplish a fraction of what WE ALL DID AS A TEAM!
THANK YOU ALL!
A few key UVic and BC websites for returning to campus in September for everyone!
Later today, Monday June 14th, BC will announce the next phase of easing Covid requirements for the province!
And the ultimate question is … What’s Next for September? And there really is no firm answer yet. We have had Safe Work Plans in place for staff and students to use the Clearihue Computing Facilities classrooms on the 1st Floor, since September. As well as SWP for our offices too. That information is posted on the (locked) entry doors to the computing facilities, CLE A112.
CALL, & other computing classrooms, are getting new computers! Over the past few weeks, all the older iMacs have been removed, accumulated and are currently waiting to be recycled! Most of the new hardware had been put in place, but is not quite ready yet! The biggest change will be that there will no longer be dual-boot computers, running on Apple computers. Dual-Boot? What is that? It just means that with the right kind of Hogwart’s Magic, you can run both WINDOWS and iOS on an iMac! Just partition and install. Oh, if it could be THAT simple, but … let’s just say that those old iMacs served us very well!
It was always satisfying to hear from some students, that Windows running on one of our CALL iMacs was often FASTERthan their OWN Windows laptop! But time catches up to all of us, and technology advancements are even faster!
New dedicated Windows and Mac are strategically located at workstations for individual and/or group work starting in September! AND THEY ARE REALLY FAST COMPUTERS!!! And the new BIG SCREEN MONITORS ARE AMAZING! They were barely installed when … we were all sent home! I did a sneak peak a few posts ago, “SSShhhh . . . Clearihue’s Hidden Secrets . . . & GEMS” and at the bottom are the new monitors! SO MUCH MORE COMING!
And there is SO MUCH ROOM for individual studying, quiet workspaces, quiet group workspaces and comfy furniture too! A BRAND NEW CALL!
More details on the NEW computers will be in a future post, but looking back at how over the past ~9 years, the ‘old’ iMacs certainly don’t owe us anything. Every single iMac that was used since the last refresh in ~2012 was still working! That was a total of 52 computers! And I always like to say CALL had 104 COMPUTERS making it the largest computing classroom at UVic!
The CALL Facility CLE A025 – Post Flood!
Some were moved to other locations AFTER ‘The Great CALL Flood of 2015‘ and continued to work for students as drop-in with newer operating systems! We did lose some keyboards and mice and kept a wary eye on the iMacs that were doused, but amazingly, the design, the curvature of the back of the iMac, helped displace the water and they survived!
And below is the last look at all the ‘old’ iMacs from CALL! Thanks for the memories … well … maybe the memory, all 8GB of onboard RAM! Colin and crew removed ALL THE HARD DRIVES IN ONE DAY! THANKS COLIN!
Oh, and the very last photo – I even included my own work iMac, so I have reconfigured my desktop, literally, for when I am on campus! The first time in MANY YEARS, at UVic that there has not been a Mac computer on my own desktop! Lots of Macs around though! And every blog has been created on my DELL laptop at home! So, WIN wins in the end … for now!
CALL Recycle of iMacs
More iMacs
Even MORE iMacs
Yeah, more iMacs
All inventoried too
Back side
CALL Before iMacs Recycled
CALL Super Computer
Lots of recycle
Other stuff too
One last long look
MY ‘new’ Desk in CALL
But, one last bit of trivia is that … we have kept a couple of the slightly newer Post-Flood CALL iMacs for testing purposes. They can run iOS up to Catalina, but since all the new Macs in CALL will be running Big Sur, they really are test iMacs in case we need to test out support for similar hardware. They too will eventually go at some point in time.
“TO INFINITY …. AND BEYOND!“ or YOU GET TO CHOOSE THE NEXT JEOPARDY MOVIEQUOTES!
The NEXT JEOPARDY is already in the planning stages!! The Categories, such as “SkyNet”, “Altair 8800” and “Slide Rulers” will be my choices, but the Quotes will be suggestions from CHD Consultants!
I knew going in to the June Jeopardy this year … might … be a “Blast From MY Past”! And although many are well known Science Fiction movies … not so well known amongst our Consultants! 🙂
So next time, I will let ALL the CHD Consultants give me feedback on the movies quotes THEY want to try and guess … from THEIR generation! This is, to quote Robbie the Robot … “DANGER WILL ROBINSON! DANGER” time as I may not have seen any of the movies THEY have grown up with! LOL!
I created a Poll at MS:Office 365, using Forms, for all the Consultants to fill in. I guessed at some movies and also left room for ‘Others..’ and a text box for comments too! Not only did it refresh my skills at Polls (it had been a year!) but it will bring everyone together again and might even add a bit of competitiveness to Jeopardy next time.
And imagine the Consultants … the “Jeopary Shaming” if someone gets one wrong! OH, the horrors!
The actual Poll is below (screeen grabs) and each has a clickable link TO the Poll, but I have limited access to “Only people in my organization can respond“. Security reasons! A good test of settings too!
And it will eventually generate some stats and comments too, all part of Forms at MS:Office 365! Early results are in, below, but a long way to go! And if you haven’t noticed, I am a big fan of MS:Office 365! So much more is coming in the weeks and months to come! Make sure you check out the Microsoft Office 365 at UVic OAC Blog Page for all the latest stuff!
“DANGER WILL ROBINSON!“ or “I’m sorry Dave.
I’m afraid I can’t do that“ Famous Computer Quotes !
ANOTHER CALL JEOPARDY YESTERDAY FOR HELP DESK! The theme this time was ‘MEMES‘ and the movie quotes were all from famous SF computers, androids, robots, AI, replicants, ‘bots or even organics (people!) forthem!
Click On Jeopardy ‘MEMEs R US” to go to a PDF version in another Tab
I sure had fun creating this new updated version, which included all kinds of memes and .gifs that are Computer Help Desk related! So, for a new feature here, will identify EACH QUOTE in EACH CATEGORY below, with a link to the IMDB movie page too! And as most of them are potentially ‘older’ movies, many Consultants have not SEEN these awesome movies! So a quick way to go to EACH MOVIE that I referenced! I will call this .. CHDMDB for Computer Help Desk Movie Database!
(Click Character-for IMDB profile / on Movie/TV Show- more info)
Next Jeopardy (October 2021??) will involve Movie Quotes, again, for the categories, but … the CATEGORIES will be based on a Poll in Teams that I will create soon! So they will be more current i.e. released AFTER most of our Consultants were BORN! Some of the movies I referenced, some of the PARENTS of our CHD Consultants .. might not even have seen!
With the help of all my fellow Penguins (Benguins too!) in The Tigloo (you know who you are!) I attempted a High Risk High Reward demo at our CHD meeting yesterday, while I was IN CALL!
AND IT WAS SO WORTH IT! Cool technology with CART2D2 (C2D2 for short) from myprevious post and … well, just some photos for now of the setup as I am working on documentation on how to set up C2D2 for mobile broadcasting and recording! SO COOL! TAK TAK PENGS!!!!
Instructor Station – Source of Video Side View of Setup Behind View of Setup Back View Other Side Student View of Screen Instructor Vantage Point
Above is the original video, shot from my iPhone SE, but with a twist. The original video is just me, slightly pushing C2D2 down the lower hallway, AWAYfrom myself, slowly. It took a few takes to get it to go relatively straight, and of course, slowly and safely!
I imported it into Photos like a normal media clip. Then exportedto the desktop of my iMac. Then I importedit into Final Cut Pro, edited out a few seconds at the beginning and end and then … used a built in FCP feature to ‘Reverse Clip‘ the video! Really, only a couple of clicks and it looks like C2D2 is coming … towards me under its own power! The only real ‘giveaway’ is if you listen real close, you might hear the tell tale sounds of a .. reverse clip audio effect!
Final Cut Pro ‘Reverse Clip’ Converted to GIF
Then I converted the new ‘reversed‘ MOVIE clip to a GIF using my favourite website, EZGIF.com! The result is above!
Then I added text with … you guessed it … EZGIF.com again! NOW it looks like I am using ‘The Force‘ to bring C2D2 towards myself! “CART … I AM YOUR DRIVER!“
Text Added to GIF
Then for even more editing, I cropped the GIF to get rid of the black borders and then resized it 150% too! And yeah, EZGIF.com again! See below!
Cropped GIF to Eliminate Black FrameEnlarged GIF by 150%
MORE
OAC WordPress Tips . . . . . . . or . . . CopyCatPost!
TIME for more OAC WordPress Hints and Tips! I have a previous post about OAC WordPress Tips here so this will be some new, brief ones that might save you some time or make your publishing a bit easier and more satisfying!
Copy Post
10)Copy a Post! If you have a previously published Post that is very similar to what you want to create in a NEW Post, then .. just Copy it, and edit out what you don’t want, keep what you want and start creating! That is what I did for THIS post, from my earlier post! Just click on Posts/All Posts, find the Post you want to ‘Copy’ and .. click on Copy! Rename it and you are off to the races!
Add Media to Library
9) Media Library Images – Simply dragany .GIF, .JPG, .PNG, .PDF into the .. Media Library! That is it! I have found that if you want to put a new image INTO your post, then SAVE your draft post FIRST. Then drag the new image resource(s) into the Media Library, then you can add them. If you drag them into the Media Library first, then try to place them in your post, they will not be visible .. until you update your new post.
Snipping Tool (WIN)Mac Screen Grab Keystrokes
8) Screen Capture to Media Library! Ah, if only a simple screen grab (Mac or WIN) could be simply .. taken and pasted into an OAC post. Nope! It must be saved as an accepted format (.jpg or .png) and then put into the Media Library. So Mac is (Command-Shift-4) and WIN (WIN-Shift-S) will give you a crosshair to capture a portion of your screen. Mac instantly makes it a file on the desktop (BONUS!) ready to put into your Media Library. WIN – I use the built in ‘Snipping Tool’ application, then I can edit it in Paint 3d, save it as a .png and then drag into my Media Library. A couple of extra steps, but still quite easy!
7) Small .GIFS are BETTER! I ran into a problem creating some .GIFs in a previous post. Turned out … the ORIGINAL .GIF files were simply TOO LARGE for OAC to animate! So I used ezgif.com to shrink them down to about 25% of original size and they worked fine after that!
Media Library Add NewInsert as URL
6) YouTube videos! Although I have tried to resize them, I can’t figure out how. So, you can insert them with the original URL copy/pasted where you want the video to be IN your Post, or copy/paste and Insert them through the Media Library/Insert from URL section. Both work! Neither can be resized! The trick to resize them is to do a screen grab of a frame. Then put that screen grab in the Media Library, then link it to the actual YouTube Video. Cludgy, but it works, such as at my Post about UVic’s YouTube Channel!
Captions Here NOW!Edit Image
5) Captions for Images! Once I discovered how to put a Caption BENEATH each image, I was off to the races! Adds a nice little touch to each image. AND you can also make it a clickable link to open in a new Tab to a site or even a larger image. It is basically anchored text to the image!
Adding the Caption can be done when you add a new image to the library or on the fly, by clicking on the inserted image, then on the Edit icon and then update the Caption field. It is THAT easy! I do NOT want to go back and edit EACH image, to include a Caption. So when I place one, and it does NOT have a caption, I update it .. and it is there for all the subsequent uses. It does not update older placed images, as far as I know.
Search my Media Library for ‘Capybara‘
4) Search your Media Library! I have … many … images in my Media Library! I should have been including Captions, ALT-Text and Descriptions initially but … did not know! About as simple a search as possible! Will find your criteria in any of the categories associated with your images (Alternative Text, Title, Caption, Description etc.) and even including the file name if you edit it BEFORE adding it to your Media Library. The image above is when I searched my own library for ‘Capybara‘.
shift-return (enter)
3) SINGLE SPACING! This is simple. Sometimes you want to separate a paragraph, image, text by a single line, not the default double when you hit Enter. Just hit SHIFT-ENTER (or RETURN) and … single space. Works especially well for formatting … poetry!
Paragraphs
2) Paragraph/Section Titles! You can use Paragraph and Headings throughout your Post! I use them for titles to YouTube videos and seemingly … out of the blue too!
This post has TWO purposes! First is a post on how to add Text to GIFs! And secondly … to announce the next Jeopardy version MEMES ‘R US is ready for training, sometime in May!
It took me a bit of expermenting with a site called EZGIF.com to come up with easy ways to include formatted and positioned text, in any GIF. I chose to work with GIFs that had NO text, as … I wanted my own text!
How to turn this …. into THIS!
The original GIF, whether you found it or created it yourself, will not be modified at all, just a copy, so you can try all kinds of things with a copy. And worst case, you can just start all over, upload the original GIF and keep on trying new features!
Go to EZGIF.com and click on Add Text. (I have edited out ads)
Click on ‘Choose File’, locate the GIF you want to edit, then click the blue Upload! button. I am using the iMac GIF above as an example.
The GIF will load, start to play, and beneath, all the frames will be displayed in the order they play.
EACH FRAME needs to be edited (for THISGIF) to have the colour in the frame. So I typed EACH ‘colour’ into EACH text box i.e. “BONDI” in the first box and THEN CLICKED SET! That will edit the default settings and put the word ‘BONDI’ IN the frame, with the default settings. Each time you edit each frame, you mustclick SET! I will change ‘BLUEBERRY’ to a different font, position, colour and size to show the differences you can edit, as shown below:
This particular GIF needs edited text in EACH FRAME. Other GIFs, that have more animation, will be a ‘best guess’ as to the timing of the text. But each frame shows a frame, OF the GIF, so actually not that hard. But any text you enter, you must hit the SET for each frame!
When done, at the very bottom of the page, which might be longer, depending on how long your GIF is, will be a blue button to Create GIF!
Click it and in a few seconds, your GIF will be created and run! If it is not quite right, go back and edit those frames you want to change! Then … Create GIF! again!
When done, click on the icon of a floppy disk called ‘save‘ and the site will export your newly ‘Textified‘ GIF to your downloads folder! It is THAT SIMPLE! The … more artistic part comes when you have more frames, more text, a message at the top, followed by a message at the bottom, making text disappear half-way through … etc. AND that is only THIS SECTION of EZGIF.com.
So, crazy question – what IS the difference between Bondi and Blueberry! LOL! Maybe, in person, there is a noticeable difference!
Totally free, easy to use and many more features. With this iMac GIF, I had to use the resize feature as the original GIF was HUGE! I resized it to about 25% (trial and error) and then it was perfect for legibility and running in OAC. The bigger the GIF, the greater the chances it might not actually display in OAC. So … just resize it first!
I have also used Video to GIF as sometimes, you have a .. video clip, and this will convert it to GIF and then .. ALL the controls are there for your new GIF.
I have MANY MANY new MEMES/GIFS for our upcoming CHD Training, and I will put a few below, for fun:
TODAYis Day 407 since Help Desk staff – ALL of us, have been working from home!
Sounds like an entry in a Doomsday Diary!
And … kinda right about that! So, of course, I immediately think of Time Travel! But, to keep it centred on TECH .. I will offer proof that the Commodore 64, and in fact, my own Commodore SX-64 is .. THE FASTEST COMPUTER OF ALL TIME! So .. Time Travel between different Techs and how fast they actually .. Travel through Time …. stay with me!
Absolute video proof that it is faster than any computer … AT STARTING UP! Hey, Time Travel is possible … but for now .. only forward!
You can see that my SX-64 is fully booted .. even before the Apple chime HAS FINISHED on my Apple 27″ iMac! BOOM! Hands down WINNER.. for starting up!
And as you can probably guess, my SX-64 is fastest at … shutting down too! Just turn the switch off! My 27″ Mac has to go through the proper shutdown sequence, and that can take anywhere from 30-60 seconds.
So, literally, my SX-64 is fasterthan my 27″ iMac – coming and going! I also have an old Mac SE, amongst other computers, too! But that needs a FLOPPY to boot up – and installs a RAM disk and … well if you know what a RAM disk is … good times … good times! And the SX-64 would still beat it! I even have an old external SCSI 100MB drive. That is NOT a typo – 100MB drive! Sure was an upgrade from 800K floppies!
OH, and that is my pet Flerken, Lilly! She is always on, so she wins by default! Don’t mess with Lilly!
Original iMovie
So, sometimes old tech, even ancient tech, might still have a purpose! I want to do a post about the original, ORIGINAL version of iMovie! Yes, WAY back when! I created some training videos WAY before I joined The Computer Help Desk!
Back to the Future
And I still have an old 24″ iMac in CALL, dedicated (i.e. NO internet at all!) for analog to digital video conversion using a Pinnacle Movie box. Works incredibly seamlessly, and literally, I can digitize a 90 minute VHS movie in about 90 minutes of real time conversion! Then burn it to a playable DVD (Single or Double-Density!) in about the same amount of time. BOOM DONE! And uses either USB or Firewire .. how quaint!
But that is another OAC Post .. in the future of course! BACK to the Future of course!
PS: This is my 200th published post here at OAC! First person to email me with this ‘200’ number wins a … chocolate bar!
with such amazing and incredible colleagues at The Computer Help Desk over the past … 500+ DAYS! Yes, it has been that long since we started working remotely, late in March of 2020!
Whatever CAN be recycled 
have grown up with! LOL!
(Click Character-for IMDB profile / on Movie/TV Show- more info)
What about the others? Can I help them?
With the help of all my fellow Penguins (
When done, click on the icon of a floppy disk called ‘
TODAY 
