So ………… Back to Campus January 2022 … but on-line for a couple of weeks!
UVic is back to remote learning but only until Monday January 24th, when it is expected that in person classes will resume. Make sure you keep up to date with every UVic notification about returning to campus safely.
This is basically a sequel post to my last one ‘What’s Next for September?‘ as I have not had time to post ANYTHINGsince returning to work on campus, full time, face to face, as everyone else did too!
BUT the exception is TODAY, my first scheduled RWA (Working Remotely) to .. work remotely once a week. Working with my amazing colleagues at CHD, we each submitted our RWA to our Asscciate Director, making sure we cover each other on our respective RWA days. We have been doing that anyways for years, this merely formalizes it for specific days for each of us. AND if I am needed on campus that day for an orientation, demo or something … I just come to campus that day! Thanks to all of M, T, H and G for working together on this! Teamwork and communication!
And so NOW, the ultimate question is … What IS Next for 2022?
I have absolutely no idea! I can only reflect on this past semester – the challenges and successes I encountered returning to The Computer Help Desk and The CALL Facility … in a nutshell!
The biggest change was of course, full face to face with students, staff, faculty and … SO MANY PEOPLE ON CAMPUS! Mask wearing was mandated and basically, we were all back into the swing of things … instantly!
I fielded so many requests for CALL bookings, resources, hours of operation and … bewildered 1st AND 2nd Year students being on campus for the FIRST TIME! And new Instructors, new pedagogy based on technology (Brightspace, Zoom, Teams, OAC, Echo 360, … you name it!). AND many, many regulars of CALL returned if they had not graduated already! Thank you all for your patience and for returning to The CALL Facility!
I even changed the configuration of my desk so that there would be social distancing between CHD Consultants and myself in CALL! Okay, just switched sides, but that is an important change – and now I can see people when they come into CALL!
CALL had a marked increase in usage for American Sign Language, Korean (Chat Cafe!), French, Spanish and Italian! With the need for distancing and masking, I had to modify my approach AND content to everyone, even the Instructors! That was actually SO MUCH FUN and basically I was re-learning my duties and job .. ON THE FLY!
I literally was hosting a 3 minute ‘demo’ of what CALL is, how to use the NEW computers and even a super fast demo of Audacity at one point, using both WIN and MAC on the VDP!
Anytime you are dealing with new equipment, new computers and new students and expectations from new Instructors …. be afraid! But I was thrilled that ALL THE COMPUTERS AND TECHNOLOGY WORKED FLAWLESSLY!
The WiFi worked flawlessly even for upwards of 40+ students and their own laptops! The ‘Korean Chat Cafe’ with Zoom worked instantly, Brightspace was in high demand and students could CHOOSE WIN OR MAC! That was VERY welcome amongst students! And ASL mid-terms and Finals just … WORKED! CALL will be hosting the ASL Final exams which make use of webcams, Brightspace, Macs and Windows, recording and … CALL is the only facility that can offer that .. okay, CLE A103 has a room of iMacs, and they work flawlessly too! YAY TKAT!
Korean Chat Cafe
ASL American Sign Language
One of my favourite tasks was creating a new Keynote for each new semester, with all the new ‘stuff’ in CALL. But it was not worth the time to do that, considering I was able to do quick demos, as the class came in, with a minimum of fuss. But, the last ‘5-ish Magic Words” lives on as a downloadable file and at YouTube too!
Oh yes, NEW COMPUTERS and NEW FURNITURE! Just click on those links and you will see previous posts about all the new stuff, now all installed in CALL! MANY thanks to everyone at CHD who helped moving a literal ‘Mountain of Tech‘ that came in during the summer! And it would be remiss of me to again mention that CHD recycles as much as possible – plastics (hard and soft), cardboard and paper.
The ‘NEW STUFF‘, EACH computer (Mac Minis & DELL WIN) makes CALL quite unique! CALL is the ONLY computing facility on campus to offer: a blend of MAC and WIN computers, webcams on each computer, 24″ monitors, ethernet and solid WiFi, external optical media drives (Mac only), USB headphones with stereo microphones, private booths (with and without computers), table space, 55″ monitors at 2- ‘office/desk’ locations, 4 rolling whiteboards (2 big, 2 small) for use anywhere in CALL – AND DROP-
New CALL Furniture
IN USE, unless CALL is scheduled!! Yeah, that makes CALL very, very unique! Oh and lots of new furniture too … hint, hint!
I have even been returning as much media and resources TO each Humanities Department, for their own decisions about what to do with old CDs, DVDs, software, VHS tapes, etc. The CALL Facility, under the umbrella of Systems, has never ‘owned’ or ‘bought’ any language resources. That was always based on Departmental needs and their syllabus for each language course. So, returning it frees up much needed room.
And a ‘Not-So-Hidden-Agenda Item’ is to re-introduce myself, The Computer Help Desk and of course, The CALL Facility to all the new staff in each Department, usually beginning with their Office Manager! Yes, there IS a method to my madness!
I have kept a few very, VERY unique software packages, including McMaster French, the very FIRST software ever installed in CALL .. and needs MS:DOS to run! THANK YOU Patrickfor keeping it going for so many years, I did not have the heart to return it for shredding! So, it lives on in 3.5″ floppy disk format in the CALL closet! The last group to use it was LMF 23 summers ago, pre-Covid.
And instead of returning to in-person training, CHD is scheduling separate 1-hour afternoon sessions on specific topics for all new and returning staff, including Coops. So that does not give me an opportunity to do a full Jeopardy. BUT, at the end of our CHD Reviews (2-3 times a week) I am hosting a ‘Blast From Your Past‘ Jeopardy! I have about 9 previous Jeopardy training sessions, 180+ ‘Questions’ and going through them all to give a sense of history and .. whimsy .. to CHD, CALL and training! A nice way to end each session too – 2 or 3 questions and have some fun at the end of some training.
What else … I decided to buy my own new PURPLE IMAC too, although it is more of a … Lavendar! My computers at home were too old to really be secure, so .. NEW COMPUTER! 1TB SSD, 16GB RAM, extended keyboard and …. PURPLE(Lavendar!)
And that is about it for now! A longer post, but catching up on the most important changes and improvements in The CALL Facility.
Challenges remain – we are still in the Covid Pandemic and everyone should keep wearing your masks, social distancing, wash your hands and stay as safe and healthy as possible. I am including Covid information below as well. I hope to do more Bog Blogs in the future, especially on RWA Wednesdays! And who knows what new Tech is around the corner for us at CHD, The CALL Facility and UVic in general!
Who ya gonna CALL? THE COMPUTER HELP DESK!Stay safe everyone!
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!