The CALL Facility … and other Mysteries of UVIC – Updated July 2022

DEJA CALL … all over again!

So, what exactly IS …
The CALL Facility at UVic?
Well, here goes!
Including new ‘BETA‘ content
for September 2022 !

I have a NEW PDF (and PDF-video!) for a NEW version of The CALL Facility Orientation for September 2022!

⬇️ September 2022 ⬇️
NEW BETA VERSION
The CALL Facility Orientation
⬇️ Click Below to download ⬇️

And just below is my “Director’s Cut” YouTube version, converted from PowerPoint – and less than 2 minutes in length (1:59! LOL!) I will definitely have some updates and upgrades between now and then as I ‘Field Test’ this new approach to showing everyone The CALL Facility and preparing for September 2022.

Previous versions (Page) of my CALL intro had MANY slides of all the available resources for each language/course/Department that used CALL for homework, assignments, WICKET, etc. That has totally changed due to Covid and I wanted a very quick, very informative slide show that ANYONE could quickly see (and show!) and not be resource or ‘click heavy’. I hope I have accomplished that!

I will continue to tweak it and after a few live CALL orientations, I will update these resources! Of course, I retain the right to .. include my brand of humour throughout! Oh, by the way, without a doubt, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is THE BEST STAR TREK SERIES OF ALL TIME! And … Spoiler Alert – this could actually pop up as a Jeopardy Questions in the new September CHD Training Day! You .. never … know!

The CALL Facility is STILL one of the Hidden Gems of Clearihue! Enjoy!

I will have future Bog Blog posts about “Heading Back to UVic“, “Oldest Computers in the World“, “On Vacation“, “Welcome Back to UVic” in September, and even some updated Pages and more totally random stuff that I seem to … maybe … specialize in! LOL!

And … another SPOILER ALERT – a brand new CHD Jeopardy Greg’s Playlist II for September CHD Training too! YAY JEOPARDY!

Thanks to EVERYONE at CHD for participating and your support too! I can’t make CALL Orientations or CHD Jeopardy without all of you and your assistance, support and … rolling eyes!! Thank you!

TTFN!

CALL me Bog Stats

! CALL ME BOG !
! OAC STATS !

I recently found out just where my ‘CALL me Bog‘ blog … ranks here at OAC at UVic in terms of number of Posts and number of Views! NOT that anything I write here is ‘earth shattering’ but … it might just be able to kick up some dust from under an old serial port keyboard some days! LOL!

So, the Top 5 OAC websites at UVic for number of Posts are:

#1 – Centre for Youth & Society’s Community Resource Hub – 1801 Posts
#2 – My UVic Life – 1358 Posts
#3 – UVic Teach Anywhere – 820 Posts
#4 – Scholarly Communication @ UVic – 588 Posts
#5 – The World From Here (Gustavson School) – 586 Posts
#17 – CALL Me Bog at …. 230 Posts!

Yeah, okay, comparing Apples and Oranges and … WINDOWS! But all the rest are all Faculties, Departments, Groups, Organizations, etc. so … maybe I am the #1 individual blog! But each of those sites are amazing and I have actively followed My UVic Life and UVic Teach Anywhere. I recommend them all!

And one more stat is the number of Page Views and with that I rank a bit higher! CALL Me Bog is #7 in Page Views at 13,624!! Always room to improve, grow and get more Views and more Posts and Pages!

The gap to move up is fairly significant so I doubt that I can move up too much with Page Views! But you never know when one of my Posts will go viral at UVic! To Infinity and Beyond! LOL!

And some more mini-updates in CALL – almost done putting in .. TWO MONITORS AT EACH WORKSTATION! Only 5 left to go! I will update the next post, next week with a photo! YAY DUAL MONITORS! Many thanks to my colleagues T, H and G for helping me out and setting them up!

PS: I have a new laptop and monitor and .. added another one too!

Stay tuned for when all the monitors are installed! .. SOON!

TTFN!

GOOD LUCK
ON ALL YOUR FINAL EXAMS!
This is the last week of Finals!
BE READY!!!!

CALL Poster Session PLUS!

! POSTER SESSION !
! The CALL Facility !
! NEW-ish !

More of a ‘Back to the Future‘ vibe as CALL hosted a Poster Session for Linguistics near the end of the semester! A poster session might sound boring but … never in CALL and this one was QUITE UNIQUE!

7 groups needed to present a digital ‘Poster‘ on a computer, with a monitor that could display in Portrait … literally! So SK (Instructor) came down a day ahead and we literally FLIPPED the new monitors (from last August refresh) in CALL … et voila … PORTRAIT MODE! I had to change the preferences to Portrait but that was a few seconds on each computer!

SK had a sample .png file, copied it to the desktop and it worked perfectly with the basic viewer software on each platform (MAC/WIN)!

All the groups had to do was login with their Netlink credentials, copy the file to the desktop and view it as Full Screen and it worked perfectly!

Larger Photos are here and here.

And I am going to recycle some older monitors (from HSD! Thanks H!), slowly, and try to outfit as many workstations in CALL with DUAL MONITORS! That will be very useful and welcomed by all users of CALL! I will have a mix of Landscape and Landscape/Portrait for students to try!

The CALL Facility will be the first and only drop-in classroom/lab that has both Mac and WIN computers, webcams and dual monitors! And so much much more too!

For a quick recap of many new additions and updates, go to this post.

For a quick recap of why The CALL Facility is a ‘Hidden Gems of Clearihue‘, go to this post.

Stay tuned for when that happens!

TTFN!

GOOD LUCK
ON ALL YOUR FINAL EXAMS!
BE READY!!!!

ON VACATION! Back on AUGUST 30!!

I AM NOW ON VACATION!

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!

Return-to-Campus Guidelines now available
Return to campus info for students
Communicable Disease Plan now available
UVic News
Update on getting your COVID-19 vaccine
Remote work arrangements announced for the fall
Working remotely
Post-secondary studies during COVID-19
NEW COMPUTERS IN CALL! YAY!
NEW FURNITURE IN CALL! YAY!

Not to worry . . .

August 30th to prep for
. . . Septem . . . PURR !!!!

Pandemic

I will bring Empire Donuts when I return to UVic!

Bogman

Jeopardy – Revenge of the Memes – Poll for Next Jeopardy in October 2021

“TO INFINITY …. AND BEYOND!“
or
YOU GET TO CHOOSE THE NEXT
JEOPARDY MOVIE QUOTES!

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!

ENJOY!

TTFN!

BE SAFE EVERYONE!

Pandemic

Throwback Thursday . . . Language Quotes!

Throwback Thursday
. . . or . . .
Language Quotes!
(and a bit of nostalgia!)

Learning another language is like becoming another person. One of my favourite quotes, ever!

You can take the boy out of The CALL Facility, but you can’t take The CALL Facility out of the boy!

I have been around for a few days … since October of 1989! Whoa, that seems like yesterday to me! A future post will have some slightly grainy images of what CALL once looked like … well before numerous renovations (scheduled and unscheduled!) and before The Great Flood of 2015! That was some kind of day! There are a few images in a previous post, which includes a pdf of exactly what CALL is!

And the most recent version of my CALL Jeopardy file is here. ALL of the files are there too, including old photos of CALL, the Great Flood and the rebooted CALL!

An earlier post mentioned the 30th Anniversary of The CALL Facility! Technology certainly has changed!

And changes are still coming! Just AFTER we started working remotely from home, NEW FURNITURE ARRIVED FOR THE CALL FACILITY!

I was VERY BRIEFLY back at CHD earlier this month, to upgrade my remote laptop, and went in to look at the new furniture … AND IT LOOKS FANTASTIC! I sure hope we can get back to using our facilities, classrooms and ALL OF UVic soon, but in a safe, VERY SAFE manner!

A fairly busy day today, so some quick quotes about learning languages. I also include quotes in each slide when I give my CALL Facility orientation, so you can click HERE to see those too! They are current to January 2020!

Mostly, these are new, but there are a few favourites in here too!

And some Albert Einstein quotes too! After all … on the Quantum Level … everyone speaks the same language … and other magical things like that! Yeah, too many Marvel movies clunking around my head! But that is a GOOD THING!

All the usual Daily Links and YouTube videos are after the language quotes below!

Enjoy!

As long as I have words at my disposal … … and Google, there will be
Throwback Thursdays!

ENJOY!

TTFN!

Top 20 Quotes
About Language

Inspirational Quotes About Learning
A New Second Language

Quotes About
Learning Languages

Learning Quotes About
Learning a Second Language

Language Learning Quotes

Inspirational Quotes
for English Learners

Language Quote #9

The Best Quotes From
Albert Einstein

Top 20 Amazing Quotes on Patience
From Famous People

Pandemic

Where Are My Keys . . . or . . . Forgotten Computers and Software

Where Are My Keys
. . . or . . .
Forgotten Computers and Software

Where are my car keys? I can just ping them, right? Ah, if Life were that easy. Wait a minute, some car keys DO have bluetooth and only need to be close to the car to open and start it! Remember when car keys were actually … KEYS! LOL!

Full Disclosure – I still have car keys that look, act and FEEL like car keys! Most now have bluetooth and all you have to do is be NEAR the door, NEAR the car and the keys open and start the car! Ah, the good old days of fiddling with multiple keys … good times, good times.

So how many computers have YOU worked on and have … forgotten about! I had a post awhile ago about just that topic, ‘Open the Pod Bay Doors, HAL“.

Whether you bought them or used them at school or work, there are probably a dozen or more … Forgotten Computers and Software over the years. Me? Maybe a couple of dozen computers and many, many more software programs or applications!

Remember when the ENTIRE COMPUTER was one huge modular unit! And the very first computers I worked on at U of Calgary, were either hidden from site and you presented your punched cards (FORTRAN!) and waited for the output!

Then when I started taking ‘Computers in Education’ courses, I was handed the keys to The Vault! I had access to the ‘teletype’ room where I could code in BASIC and run the output on rolls of newsprint! Good times, good times!

The first program I worked on was for Probablity with a simulation of pulling coloured balls out of a ‘Greecian Urn’. And it even printed out an ASCII Greecian Urn! Yeah, I have a printout, somewhere in ‘The Garage’ and will look for it one day! LOL!

I was fortunate enough to be invited to a lecture given by Grace Hopper. And you might rightly say … WHO? Well, she was a TITAN OF COMPUTER SCIENCE! And she gave us all a … NANOSECOND at the end of her lecture! Wait, what?

She concluded her lecture (best lecture of all time!) with how she explained to her Non-Techie Supervisor, how fast light travels and how that impacts any lag or delay with satellite communications! She brought out lengths of ROPE to demonstrate how far light travels in a second and working her way down to a NANOSECOND or a BILLIONTH OF A SECOND! Turns out, it is about a foot!

And she pulled out about 100 small lengths of multi-coloured wire and spread them on the desk for us to take as we walked out. Well, I have never seen such a rush of people to get their ‘Grace Hopper Nanosecond‘! Fortunately I was able to get one for myself! Unfortunately, it has disappeared in my many moves over the years! But what a memory for me!

And I bet I can name a MASSIVE computer related piece of ‘software’ that almost everyone will have forgotten about … Y2K! And if you have NEVER heard of that term … then you are probably not much older than 20 years old!

Y2K refers to a software ‘glitch’ that did not take into account the calendar year 2000 in most computer code developed between 1980-1999. Basically, EVERYTHING!

Typically, amongst other problems, only 2 digits were used to indicate the calendar year, thus ’89’ and ’99’ were used for ‘1989’ and ‘1999’ in databases, calculations, spreadsheets, banks .. YOU NAME IT! So when the decade ended and we entered the year 2000 … uh-oh! Right back to the year 1900!!!!

I remember staying up, hoisting a glass of champagne and welcoming … ‘The End of the World’!!! But, or more punny, ‘Byte‘ nothing happened! LOL!

So that brings up … Y3K! LOL! I sure hope I am still around to toast 3000!

And this post quickly turned to Grace Hopper, didn’t it! I love telling people this story AND most people have never heard of Grace Hopper! AND an even BETTER Grace Hopper story! She is credited with the first EVER case of ‘debugging’ a computer …. LITERALLY!

She crawled into a computer … it was that big! And she found a relay switch, an actual MOVING PART INSIDE A COMPUTER and a moth had become ‘trapped’ beneath the lever! She then proceeded to ….’debug’ the computer and documented it! That document, moth and all, are in the Smithsonian now!

I found SO many articles, images, cartoons and resources while doing my usual bit of research for my post, I have more links below than ever before!

Articles on ENIAC, UNIVAC, Personal Computers, COBOL and most especially, Grace Hopper. Take a trip through time, wax nostalgic, and think back to when a computer took up an entire room, if not an entire building!

Oh, and if you see an old, really old, Apple Computer at a garage sale … maybe think about buying it! It could turn out to be this one! worth almost HALF A MILLION DOLLARS!

What you hold in your hands now is not just a phone – it is the FUTURE that visionaries like Grace Hopper could only DREAM of would eventually be possible!

And as Arthur C. Clarke described in ‘Clarke’s Three Laws” at Wikipedia:

1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

We truly live in a Magical Time now!

Enjoy the Magic!

As long as I have ‘The Garage’ there will be forgotten and old computers stored there . . . and magical OAC posts!

ENJOY!

TTFN!

Computer Pioneers – Part 1

ENIAC – The First Computer

Apollo’s Forgotten Computer
The LVDC

Forgotten Fun
Texas Instruments TI-99/4A

Tano Dragon 64
Unboxing

Panasonic JR-200U

1983 Radio Shack TRS80
Color Computer 2

Tandy 1000

Sinclair ZX81 – British Computer

Why Apple Products
Use 30 Year Old Software

Evolution of Laptops
1975 – 2020

Top 10 Horribly Outdated
Technologies Still in Use Today

Quantum Computers
Animated

“Then the hard drive says to the floppy, 110010001110011…”

‘This is what people had to use before they got antennae.’

Pandemic

Daisy Daisy . . . or . . . Songs About Computers . . . kinda . . .

Daisy Daisy
. . . or . . .
Songs About Computers
. . . kinda . . .

Daisy Daisy … on a bicycle built for DU – PLEX? Well, the HAL 9000 never could carry a tune! This might technically be cheating, as HAL is singing a song, but I prefer to think that this was part of his diagnostics and it truly is a song about a computer. A very lethal computer! LOL!

Full Disclosure – I have never taken ANY music lessons and … it shows! And on my iPhone, I don’t have a single track of music. Not one. I have some movies, but not a single song!

So why songs about computers? Why not! It is my OAC blog and I try to combine computers, languages, words, programming, learning, pop culture and legacy technology …. all in one place! Hit and miss, sometimes you win, sometimes you lose and sometimes …. it rains! Can you name the movie line came from? No computer songs, but a great movie and soundtrack!

Surprisingly, there were not too many actual songs ABOUT computers ‘out there’. Lots of soundtracks geared towards the computer content of a movie, but a little digging and found a few things.

I consider the soundtrack to ANY movie, more like a character IN THE MOVIE! I bet that if I just mention movies with famous soundtracks, you can instantly bring to mind, some of the tunes that are part of that movie – The Hobbit, Pirates of the Caribbean, Pulp Fiction, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Apocalypse Now, Guardians of the Galaxy … you get the idea! At least, that works for me! LOL!

So, after this, I just might put some tracks onto my iPhone! I will probably start with the soundtrack from … Guardians of the Galaxy – Volume I! LOL! Yeah, probably bent my rules a bit to include songs sung by computers, songs written by computers and just plain old … favourite songs and soundtracks! Thus and hence and therefore …. KINDA!!!!! All those data bits gotta end up somewhere!

And the usual YouTube videos to follow with some BRILLIANT and HILARIOUS computer parodies of popular music videos! I was … amused by them!

And especially weird and wonderful – how to make a huge array of floppy disk drives actually perform in concert …. POP MUSIC! Definitely Weird and Wonderful today!

Enjoy!

As long as I have an old iPhone with literally NO music on it … there will be OAC posts! Seriously.. no music!

ENJOY!

TTFN!

Database Skills
Sia Cheap Thrills Parody

Sia – Actual Cheap Thrills

Call Me Maybe – Parody Video
Sys Admin Song

Call Me Maybe – ACTUAL Song

Lady Java

Lady Gaga – ACTUAL Poker Face

Seven Databases in Song

Pikotaro – PPAP
Pen Pineapple Apple Pen

THUNDERSTRUCK
on FLOPPOTRON

Bohemian Rhapsody
on FLOPPOTRON

Sheldon Allman
Univac and Humanoid

Wintergatan – Marble Machine

‘No one does research with such flair. He’s the Boogie Woogie Google Boy of Division B.’

Pandemic

Throwback Thursday . . . or . . . Laughter and Chuckles!

Throwback Thursday
. . . or . . .
Laughter and Chuckles!

Why did the chicken cross the road? Error 404. Road can not be found.
ALMOST a … Dad Joke! Years ago, I once ‘collected’ cartoons from the comic section of newspapers or editorial pages, specifically looking for Math, Statistics or Numbers in general – for use as motivation in my classes! I probably still have them somewhere in ‘The Garage’ and will look for them one day and have a post dedicated to really old math cartoons!

Once, I included a funny math cartoon at the very END of a printed math test for my Grade 12 Math 31 (Advanced) class. This was during my Student Teaching year at U of Calgary.

I had the opportunity to teach ‘Probability’ to my highly motivated International Baccalaureat program at the school I was assigned! Well, this threw them for a loop! “Is this a question?“, “Is this for marks?“, “How do I answer this question?” and ‘What is this for?”

And to his credit, my Supporting Teacher let me do all kinds of crazy things in all my classes! This will be a theme for another OAC post one day!

One small amazing Fun Fact: I ended up being paired with not one, but TWO of my OWN High School Math teachers from my high school years … just by chance! What are the odds on that !!! Well, that is what statistics are for! LOL!

So, some Throwback Thursday humour and random images, YouTube videos and cartoons to maybe provide a chuckle or two!

And that is about it for today! A busy day with some meetings, documents and workshops at the speed of Self Pace too! I might throw new stuff in later! You just never know!

Enjoy!

As long as I have stuff in ‘The Garage’ … and the “World Wide Web“, there will be Throwback Thursdays!

ENJOY!

TTFN!

Why Computer Engineering
is Like Standup Comedy

I’ve Got a Problem with My Apple
The One Ronnie – BBC

One Day, A Computer Will Fit …
… On A Desk – Arthur C. Clarke (1974)

Computer Joke of the Day
May 1, 2020

Modern Upgrades
for Classic Computers

15+ Funny MS Windows Jokes
That Will Make You Laugh

10 Funniest TED Talks
Compilation

Computer Predicts the
End of Civilization (1973)

Arthur C. Clark
Predicts the Internet (1964)

A Funny Look at the Unintended Consequences
of Technology (TED)

BYOD issues were an even bigger problem in the 1950s.

BYOD was not as much of a concern in the office as BYOG.

‘Well, for starters, I’ve never seen a laptop in Roman Numerals.’

“It’s a fantastic computer! It’s so old that none of today’s hackers know how to hack it!”

“That old computer we recycled in 1989 is now worth a fortune.”

“Don’t worry Mac, I’ll have that happy face back in no time.”

Pandemic

Terrific Tuesday … ENCORE! More Computer Humour

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!