Terrific Tuesday . . . . ENCORE . . . . MORE Computer Humour!
Let’s take a breather today and just have a few chuckles about computers and our digital lives! That and I have multiple meetings, training sessions AND I get to pick up a refreshed laptop today too! So I just want to chuckle and laugh today!
There is no doubt working from home or remote working, continues to be very challenging!
So a little diversion is very welcome, at least for me! And for me, meditation, getting up and walking around, stretching, a walk in my yard, tea and honey, scheduled and impromptu chats, coffee breaks and conversations with my colleagues are SO important to me! I haven’t quite reached the stage of throwing my computer across the room yet!
Bold Italics Comic Sans . . . or . . . Word Processors Through the Years
Typewriter! Whiteout! Ribbon! Carriage Return! That was MY technology when I was writing term papers back in 1975-1982 at the University of Calgary!
Those late nights AND early mornings, pounding away, literally, on my Smith Corona typewriter – trying to balance SPEED with ACCURACY! There was no such thing as DELETE or UNDO … unless you count going through gallons of whiteout! BUT, I had a very HI-TECH version of correcting mistakes!
Basically, it was a dry ‘tape’, with dryer white ‘chalk’ on one side, and a more inert opposite side. But first, you had to recognize that you did INDEED make a typo, AS YOU WERE TYPING! There were no spellcheckers back then! And then, backspace manually TO THE MISTAKE, insert the correction tape, powder side TOWARDS the error, TYPE THE ERROR AGAIN to literally WHITE OUT the mistake, backspace AGAIN, and manually type in the corrected letter! Good times, good times! All this with a single, ORIGINAL, piece of paper in the typewriter! ARGH! And no automatic page feeds so I often ran out of room on my PRISTINE and ORIGINAL PIECE OF PAPER! DOUBLE ARGH!
And then I took my first computer science course! Although technically NOT a word processor, a massive desk with a punched card reader could be consider an early form of a word processor! Every mistake in code (FORTRAN!) I made, took about 30 minutes to actually DISCOVER from the Punch Card Elders who took my deck and ran it into the giant Punched Card Monsters! Then I had to dig out the SINGLE CARD that had a typo or bad code, and type it in again!
The day I discovered the ‘Function Switches’ feature, which would mirror all the text was like a miracle! I would press the copy button, then STOP, type in the corrected command or typo, then continue with copy and the card would appear at the end! Reinsert, hand over the deck and … ANOTHER TYPO FURTHER INTO THE DECK! Repeat as many times as necessary! Good times, good times!
Commodore SX-64
And then, I graduated, not only from U of C, but onto SUPERIOR TECHNOLOGY! Well, at least, at the time, it certainly WAS superior technology! My first teaching gig was not only teaching a Beginner Computer Science course, but DESIGNING IT AS WELL! I earlier posted about Desktop Publishing, but … it was really just basic Word Processing with Apple and Commodore Computers!
Yes, that is the manual for my own Commodore SX-64 that I used for some Grad courses at U of C! And I used the worlds best FREE word processor at the time … SPEEDSCRIPT! A future post will discuss just how amazing the SX-64 computer was! AND IT STILL WORKS!
SpeedScript was free, had a spell checker and even had a PREVIEW of the final page, which was YEARS ahead of anything else out there! And did I mention it was … FREE! YES FREE! And amazingly, it used a markup language that is INCREDIBLY SIMILAR TO WHAT HTML IS NOW! Commodore computers were definitely ahead of their time!
And then a commercial word processor –PaperClip came along and … well, due to budget cuts, only 1 copy was purchased for me! Free is free, right!
And the first ever ‘office suite’ was actually a cartridge based system for .. you guessed it … my SX-64! It was called VIZASTAR and had … EVERYTHING you ever needed for what is now considered an ‘Office Suite’ – Spreadsheet, Database and Graphics … but no word processor sadly!
Why here? A future post will be about my SX-64 AND the cool software I still have, including one of he worlds first ever … LIGHT PEN called Flexidraw! VERY COOL even by today’s standards!
I brought up my Commodore SX-64 to our Systems Open House a few years ago! The theme was ‘Time Travellers – Meet the Team:Systems Through Time‘ Click here to see some photos from a previous post! (Yes, always, more Product Placement!)
And then .. progress marches on. The next generation of hardware and software was WordPerfect on a Commodore IBM clone. What? I bet you didn’t know that Commodore made IBM clones! THEY DID!
And I might start an argument, but I always preferred Corel WordPerfect (MAC) to pretty much any flavour of Word through the years! Okay, so maybe now Office 365 is better! But when I was helping to publish our CALL Proceedings, I made WordPerfect the recommended application. Of course, everyone ignored it, but WordPerfect did Word, BETTER THAN WORD back then! AND IT WAS CANADIAN TOO!
And then there is another package that I have briefly used, and is free for both current WIN and MAC platforms called Libre Office, which was once known as Open Office. I have only used it sparingly, basically enough to answer basic questions about it, and I am not sure it is installed on any computers at UVic anymore, with Office 365 kinda taking over … for free for students and staff! Which, by the way is a VERY GOOD THING!
And then there are now Text Editors – basically a blend of raw ASCII text with minimal word processing features. So, yeah … they are word processors! There are SO many of them, we all have our favourites and they are quick and dirty to see CONTENT as far as I am concerned. If you are using a text editor for word processing …. then let’s talk! LOL!
Old School Cat
And if you think about it, creating a post here on OAC is a perfect blend of word processing AND text editor! I can switch to Text if I want to change some nuts and bolts thing with HTML, or just use the New Post and … see what happens! YAY FOR OAC! Many thanks to “mvh” for his patience whenever I have an OAC question for him!
Some interesting links to tickle your funny bone or perhaps feel compelled to put pen to paper – in a manner of speaking! Remember, I am old school!
I Excel at PowerPoint . . . or . . . Computer Puns and Jokes
Taken
I don’t know who you are or why you stole my copy of Microsoft Office …. but I will find you. You have my .. WORD! I hope I have ‘Taken‘ your attention away from whatever you were doing! Just when you thought it was safe to blog again … COMPUTER PUNS AND JOKES!
CALL Facility Klingon
I always try to sneak in jokes, puns or riddles into many of my CALL Facility orientations and handouts too! I once included ‘Klingon‘ in a handout of languages that The CALL Facility had resources for! And it is still at ZOHO!
Soothsayer Cat
And then UVic goes and offers a course in Alien Languages (Klingon & Sindarin!)! That makes me a soothsayer! I wonder if that means a pay raise or not! My guess …. NOT!
The best part of puns are when they are impromptu and happen instantly! All too often, my eyes widen or roll about and that is an early warning system for colleagues … PUN ALERT! PUN ALERT! People know me all too well! I would be horrible at poker! LOL!
I found one site where a computer was programmed to CALCULATE the funniest puns and it came up with the following….. and …. yeah, NO! Even I have lines I do not cross … and they are often … lines of code! LOL!
I often say that if I am having fun, then the students are having fun too! There is so much stress nowadays that humour IS good medicine! I won’t bother telling you my absolutely favourite jokes and puns other than …
… it is always my NEXT ONE!
Some interesting links to tickle your funny bone, or perhaps, seek medical attention afterwards!
Think Different . . . . . . or . . . Apple Commercials Through the Years
Think Different
Think Different. As iconic as the ‘1984’ Mac commercial is, this may be one of the most remembered Apple campaigns … EVER! Well, at least for me. I have this poster in my office at home. I uncovered a bunch of them years ago, doing an annual cleanse of some closets we once used as storage! Serendipitous for me!
There is no question that Apple has one of the best marketing programs … in history! This post is predominantly about their ads in video format, which range from poignant and dramatic, to humorous and sometimes silly! They truly do …. Think Different …. all the time!
The BEST ads are cast with actors who don’t take themselves too seriously and actually parody their on-screen presence … and blend it with their off-screen personality!
The Rock x SIRI
Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson did this perfectly in his ad for Siri a few years ago. I doubt Apple could afford him now!
What Will Your Verse Be?
My absolute favourite commerical of ALL TIME is probably not what you might think. Oh yes, I do like the 1984 commercial (Directed by Ridley Scott – Gladiator, The Martian, Thelma & Louise, Blade Runner, Alien .. yes THAT Ridley Scott!) but my favourite is for the iPad Air with Robin Williams narrating his poetry speech over some amazing world moments. Do you remember which movie this came from? HUDDLE UP!
As a summer project many years ago, I decided to find as many Apple Commercials on YouTube as I could and learn how to create movies and burn a DVD, dedicated to only Apple Commercials!
YouTube was relatively new and it might not have even been bought by Google yet! Still, I learned how to create and edit movies, burn DVDs and improve my knowledge of various video formats, editing techniques and making movies!
iMovie HD 2005
A future post, once we return to UVic, will be about using iMovie HD! What? You have never heard of that version? That doesn’t surprise me!
iMovie HD was one of the very first versions (2005!) and can only
MovieBox DV
run under a macOS that is named after a kitty! But it is surprisingly robust, has simple and intuitive editing controls and works with some old hardware called MovieBox DV (2003!) that can digitize VHS cassettes! Sometimes you can teach an old dog new tricks!
And one more thing … Apple has long been the target of parody ads! There is one for a new iPhone at the very end of the videos below. But the BEST one is called ‘The Power to Crush the Other Kids”. It is nowhere to be found on the internet and YouTube has pulled it due to copyright infringement concerns, by NBC’s ownership of Saturday Night Live. If you can find it, it is truly hilarious!
Some interesting links below with even more background to Apple’s numerous ads throughout the years!
As long as there are words out there, there will be a site that Google finds for each of us!
This will be my list of my favourite computer/AI voices from Movies and TV shows that I have seen and grew up with! They can be human or actually computer generated. So some of them will no doubt be VERY obscure for many of you young folks! LOL! But that does not mean you should disregard them! They might prove to be dated, but they have all influenced how we percieve computers and AI, to this day!
The voice of EVERY computer in every episode and movie of Star Trek is Majel Barrett, who was married to Gene Rodenberry! She even voiced the computer in the Star Trek:The Animated Series too! Outside of Michael Dorn (Worf), Majel Barrett has appeared in more episodes than ANY OTHER ACTOR!
Robocop morphed a critically injured policeman with state of the art technology to enforce police protection. What could go wrong? Well, more than you can imagine, including a horrible remake of this classic movie!
And at the time, TRON was the greatest computer movie OF ALL TIME! The graphics were amazing, the storyline was new and amazing and I remember watching it multiple times!
And then they made a reboot of it TRON:Legacy .. and I liked that one too! It got bad review, but I still liked it! And the graphics were amazing too!
And how could ultimate cuteness and the end of the world combine any better than in WALL-E! Eve and WALL-E have instant chemistry, albeit confrontational at first, but it is still one of my favourite animated series and WELL ahead of its time in terms of environmentalism!
And probably the most iconic computer/AI interface, at least recently is the combined character of Vision in theMCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe). Vision is ‘powered’ by the Mind Stone, one of the Infinity Stones.
And … if you got this far, then you have seen the movies! Vision is a weird blend of the personality of Tony Stark (Iron Man), Ultron (his ‘Frankenstein-like AI), JARVIS (his own AI ‘butler’) and the power of Thor to kick-start him! Yeah, you had to be there … multiple movies and multiple personalities … what could go wrong! Actually, he is a pretty good character and very strong too!
And the rebooted series is fantastic too! The new robot, although not named Robbie, is unique, integral to the storyline and has amazing graphics! And it is filmed in Vancouver too! But only one season left! Sigh …… I remember building a model of this robot too!
Another TV show ahead of its time was Knight Rider! A virtually indestructible AI car (K.I.T.T. – Knight Industries 2000) guided by a secret organization dedicated to fighting injustice! Whoa, wait … NOT ELON MUSK! LOL! It kind of looked like a cross between Elon Musk and a Cylon! And we don’t want to go THERE either!
And having mentioned HAL 9000 above, did you realize that there was a SEQUEL to 2001? 2010: The Year We Make Contact featured SAL 9000 (voiced by Candice Bergen) as the upgrde to HAL that did not quite meet factory specifications! LOL! The most obvious difference (no spoilers here!) is that SAL is a blue orb’!
And coming up to just a couple more examples! There are SO many, that I really did limit myself this time! I had previously written posts about favourite computers in all kinds of media at “Shall We Play a Game . . . or Fictional Computers” but that did not focus on anything but the computers themselves. This post is on their actual voices used! Okay, a small distinction! So that does mentioning a previous post count as … Product Placement or what! LOL!
War Games! Just go find it somewhere and have a great popcorn time! A young hacker breaks into a High Security computer, unknowingly trying out a ‘game’ called Global Thermonuclear War and … well, the use of the modem is hilarious! But the voice of WOPR is amazing! If it makes you think of Stephen Hawking …. no spoilers here! A great, great movie!
And I will never hear the end of it from all my colleagues if I don’t include those two wacky robots from a relatively unknown cult classic … C-3PO and R2-D2. Did you ever wonder WHY they are called … R2-D2 and C-3PO?
Perhaps the quintessential use of voice to convey language! C3PO is designed to be able to talk to ANYONE with his linguistics programming and R2D2 happily whistles, clicks, bings and we can all understand exactly what is going on! The classic straight man out of vaudeville humour and it works so well! Arguably the best parts of Star Wars are those two! Note: Yoda is NOT a computer! LOL!
All the voices mentioned above are in YouTube videos below. I hope I got them all! I might even do a sequel to this in a future post – there were many I have left off and they deserve a listening to as well!
I’ll Take WIN WIN WIN for $200 Alex . . . or . . . CALL JEOPARDY REBOOT!
CALL Jeopardy is one of my favourite parts of working for The Computer Help Desk!What could be better – a captive audience, a fun way of training current, new and returning Consultants and … brekkie and lunch provided!
I realized that the MOST RECENT version of CALL Jeopardy: ReBoot, had not been made available for anyone to try! It is based on the very first CALL Jeopardy, a few years ago, but updated with new information, yet a bit of a retro feel to it!
Unfortunately, it did not really work out the day we tried it online/remote! Somehow, I had an echo, it literally stopped opening up each slide and it fizzled out spectacularly! Oh well, if you are not trying, you aren’t learning!
The original format is PowerPoint but OAC WordPress does not permit PowerPoint files. But the versions here are all in .pdf format, which works equally well, except for some animation and other whiz bang effects that I usually include! Why put a Fireworks option into software without any disclaimers about … design! LOL!
CALL Jeopardy: REBOOT VERSION
The most recent version is clickable on the images beside and below, and your browser should download a .pdf version or present the .pdf in a new browser tab. Either way, you can meander through using the menu or just going through slide by slide. That way, you are assured of seeing each ‘Question’ and ‘Answer’.
I always have a ‘Twist’ to each Category and question. This time, the categories are “OSX …. but not Cats”, “WIN WIN WIN”, and “CALL Stuff”.
In true Jeopardy fashion, each ‘answer’ must be phrased in the form of a question, identifying which movie each quote came from! No, it has nothing to do with ANYTHING at CHD, but the next slide does!
CALL Jeopardy: Famous Movie Quotes
And all of the previous Jeopardy versions are below and all you have to do is click on any image and it will do what your browser does best – either download it or present it in a new Tab to try.
And the first training session below is a history of CALL. It is NOT in ‘Jeopardy’ format, so just ‘slide’ through it if you want to find out a bit more about CALL over the years.
And I am all for accepting any questions you think should be included in any future version of Jeopardy!
And thanks to Tomoyo and Scott for ‘driving’ for me – actually running the computer & PowerPoint file, while the rest of us have fun with CALL Jeopardy in our training sessions!
And now for something completely different … mostly! I do have favourite topics and have officially changed today’s name to TEDnesday in honour of TED Ideas Worth Spreading!
Everyone has heard of TED Talks! The first time I was told about them, my first thought was … who is this Ted person and why should I listen to him!
TED is a nonprofit devoted to spreading ideas, usually in the form of short, powerful talks (18 minutes or less). TED began in 1984 as a conference where Technology, Entertainment and Design converged, and today covers almost all topics — from science to business to global issues — in more than 100 languages. Meanwhile, independently run TEDx events help share ideas in communities around the world.
Just a slight sidebar here … I usually discover something amazing (ie. LEARNsomething new!) if you look for an ‘About’ or ‘Who We Are’ or even a dedicated search engine WITHIN a website to uncover hidden jewels of information! And it is usually just one click away, or even visible as a magnifying glass icon!
This might be obvious to almost everyone, but … when that one person that lights up because you showed them a neat new trick at a website …. priceless!
Many of TED Talks are also found at YouTube as well, but there are so many extra benefits at TED.COM that I recommend looking there first. You never know what you might find!
And using an abundance of caution and a balance of fair play and common sense, I did a search for ‘Worst TED Talks of All Time‘ and came up with this:
But I do DISAGREEwith Arthur Benjamin – A Performance of Mathemagic on that list! No way that almost 10,000,000 of us can be wrong! That is my Inner Math Teacher speaking! LOL!
IT Security Quotes . . . . or . . . . What Could Go EvenWrongER!
I work from the Desk of VicU Computers Helpers. Pleeze conform to me your pazzword or your Internet will dissolve.
Yeah, right. IT Security is a huge, HUGE issue and is now part of our digital lives – both personally and professionally. And for good reason.
So, right off the top, the best and most informative sites are HERE AT UVIC! If you haven’t visited, read or been told about these incredible resources, then now is your chance. And since a picture is worth 1000 words …. here are 6000 words!
Click on each image below to go to the UVic site.
Information SecurityUniversity Systems status update PhishingPhishing emails spotted at UVicPhishing Awareness Training CampaignAntivirus Software for StudentsVIDEO: 5 Common Cybersecurity Questions AnsweredPersonal Perspectives from UVic’s Chief Information Security OfficerUVic Team Triumphs at National Cybersecurity Competition
Enroll in any computer security training that UVic has to offer! Refresh your Cyber Spidey Sense Skills all the time! Be aware of Phishing attempts! And be even MORE VIGILANT now that we are working from home – the same skills you are honing for work, are as important for your home digital security too!
“If you spend more on coffee than on IT security, you will be hacked. What’s more, you deserve to be hacked.” – Richard Clarke
“My message for companies that think they haven’t been attacked is: You are not looking hard enough.” -James Snook
“The five most efficient cyber defenders are: Anticipation, Education, Detection, Reaction and Resilience. Do remember: Cybersecurity is much more than an IT topic.” – Stephane Nappo
“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and few minutes of cyber-incident to ruin it.” – Stephan Nappo
“USBs are the devil. They just are.” – Overheard at SecureWorld, Atlanta
“IoT without security = Internet of Threats” – Stephane Nappo
“One Person’s “paranoia” is another person’s engineering redundancy.” – Marcus J. Ranum
“Two things about the NSA stunned me right off the bat: how technologically sophisticated it was compared with the CIA, and how much less vigilant it was about security in its every iteration, from the compartmentalization of information to data encryption.” – Edward Snowden
“If security were all that mattered, computers would never be turned on, let alone hooked into a network with literally millions of potential intruders.” – Dan Farmer
“You have to make sure that your hard drive is external from your computer. If you put yourself in the minds of the thief, they want to make a quick buck. They don’t really care about your hard drive, just your computer. An external hard drive is critical. In my case they left the hard drive behind and I was able to plug it into my new computer. It was the key to everything.” – Michael Stelzner
Oddly, there aren’t too many current IT Security videos at YouTube that I hoped for. So that means, as I mentioned above, check UVic’s own sites for the most current and most pertinent information about computer security! My Go To pages! They are listed below too!
If I had a single favourite quote, it would be this ……
Famous Computer Quotes . . . . or . . . . What Could Go Wrong!
Since the advent of computers and digital technology, there have been some funny, outrageous, prophetic and downright WRONG quotes about computers and technology. Let’s go down that winding path this morning!
I will just intersperse quotes with some images of quotes too! A mishmash of data, graphics and historical perspectives!
“Computers in the future may weigh no more than one-and-a-half tonnes.” – Popular Mechanics, 1949
“I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won’t last the year.” – Chief Business Editor, Prentice Hall, 1957
“I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.” – Thomas Watson, Chairman of IBM, 1943
“There is no reason anyone in the right state of mind will want a computer in their home.” – Ken Olson, President of Digital Equipment Corp, 1977.
“Loop, Endless: n., see Endless Loop.” – Random Shack Data Processing Dictionary
“Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.” – Brook’s Law
“An elephant is a mouse with an operating system.” – Anonymous
“BUG, n.: An undesirable, poorly-understood undocumented feature.” – The Devil’s Dictionary to Computer Studies
“640k is enough for anyone, and by the way, what’s a network?” – William Gates III, President of Microsoft Corporation, 1984.
“Microcomputers are the tool of the 80’s. BASIC is the language that all of them use. So the sooner you learn BASIC, the sooner you will understand the microcomputer revolution.” – 30 Hour BASIC Standard, 1981.
I want to change the world but they don’t give me root access. – Unknown
And these are just a few of my favourite ones! There are literally hundreds of amazing quotes out there, and I as usual, have put a bunch of links below for you to search, should you need that perfect quote about computers!
The single best quote, ever, and ever so true even now, came from John F. Kennedy …..
So today, a plethora (I like dictionary.com!) of comics, cartoons, YouTube and other appurtenances (I likethesaurus.com too!)
I had started off with a theme of MS:Office and my long history with Excel, Word and PowerPoint. But I quickly found a far more interesting topic for today … Working From Home! I am forever the optimist (I hope!) and try to find the humour in most things (I try!) and quickly changed topics!
And today is a fairly busy day with some creative work in Teams for a Poll (Thanks to Kelly, Gary, Tomoyo and Heather!) and trying to be creative, relevant, funny, factual and learn a few new things every so often! Maybe this old dog CAN learn a few new tricks!
Some funny cartoons, websites and truly miscellaneous items for a quick post today.
about it, and I am not sure it is installed on any computers at UVic anymore, with Office 365 kinda taking over … for free for students and staff! Which, by the way is a VERY GOOD THING!
And … if you got this far, then you have seen the movies! 
And a childhood favourite that I waited for each Sunday night was Robbie the Robot from 
And the 
Another TV show ahead of its time was 
All the voices mentioned above are in YouTube videos below. I hope I got them all! I might even do a sequel to this in a future post – there were many I have left off and they deserve a listening to as well!
Unfortunately, it did not really work out the day we tried it online/remote! Somehow, I had an echo, it literally stopped opening up each slide and it fizzled out spectacularly! Oh well, if you are not trying, you aren’t learning!
So, right off the top, the best and most informative sites are HERE AT UVIC! If you haven’t visited, read or been told about these incredible resources, then now is your chance. And since a picture is worth 1000 words …. here are 6000 words!
Enroll in any computer security training that UVic has to offer! Refresh your Cyber Spidey Sense Skills all the time! Be aware of Phishing attempts! And be even MORE VIGILANT now that we are working from home – the same skills you are honing for work, are as important for your home digital security too!
“If security were all that mattered, computers would never be turned on, let alone hooked into a network with literally millions of potential intruders.”
“Loop, Endless: n., see Endless Loop.”
“BUG, n.: An undesirable, poorly-understood undocumented feature.”
And today is a fairly busy day with some creative work in Teams for a Poll (Thanks to Kelly, Gary, Tomoyo and Heather!) and trying to be creative, relevant, funny, factual and learn a few new things every so often! Maybe this old dog CAN learn a few new tricks!
