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.
Open Book Exams . . . . or . . . . My Favourite Textbooks
This may be the FIRST and ONLY blog post on the internet about … Favourite Textbooks! Textbooks are usually the bane of most students! LOL!
But I really enjoyed getting new textbooks, especially in Grade 12! For the first time, we had to venture to DOWNTOWN CALGARY to actually BUY AND OWN our textbooks! Previously, we were issued them, had to guard them throughout the semester and RETURN THEM at the end! But now, we could OWN THEM!
And what a great textbook for Grade 12 Math – ‘Modern Intermediate Algebra‘! And the trick was, to buy the book that had the ANSWERS IN THE BACK! Only a few of them DID have the answers, and I was lucky enough to get one of those! Quite an adventure for me at the time!
And if you haven’t figured it out by now, I still have these textbooks! Yup, weird, but … I collect books of all kinds! A future post will be on REALLY OLD TEXTBOOKS that I have!
The next 4 textbooks are all from when I attended the University of Calgary from 1975-1982. Yup, some gap years in there to travel, live and work in Banff and explore the world! Might sneak an old photo of me in there somewhere too! LOL!
And how boring – a book on .. evaluating student progress? And even more boring, THAT IS THE TITLE TOO – ‘Evaluating Student Progress’!
And here I thought I would finally find out all the tricks and secrets of passing exams … and for the most part, I did pick up some ideas, especially when my first job out of university was evaluating exams, something called Item Analysis! And it was fun! Basically, how does an exam actually MEASURE student knowledge! Yeah, boring, but at the time, I actually USED this textbook in a real life setting!
And then one of my All Time Favourite themes – STATISTICS titled ‘Elements of Statistics‘! All kinds of neat formulas, algorithms and magical numbers with REAL WORLD RESULTS! And for the first time – a new studying technique! We were allowed to bring in a small 4×6 recipe card with ANYTHING WE WANT WRITTEN ON IT! This was such a great learning tool, that I used it in all my future classes! This forces you to actually STUDY and WRITE DOWN anything you were not as confident with, thus FORCING YOU TO RECOGNIZE AND STUDY YOUR WEAK POINTS! And it worked flawlessly! (At least, for me!)
This has been a bit of a ‘Top 10 Favourite Textbooks‘ countdown, except only a ‘Top 5‘ of them! My bad! And the next 2 textbooks bring back fond memories … and some not so fond …. of courses I took … sometimes twice and three times! How about them apples!
The BEST stat course EVER was on games of chance! And the Instructor LIVED HIS TEXTBOOK – ‘Basic Probability and Applications‘! When introducing himself, he said he might be late for some Monday morning classes as he would be enroute BACK FROM LAS VEGAS as he spent most weekends there …. GAMBLING! That is one amazing course intro! And he had his own TEXTBOOK TOO!
And my FAVOURITE TEXTBOOK OF ALL TIME is entitled ‘Excursions Into Mathematics‘ for the exceedingly misnamed course ‘Elementary Mathematics From and Advanced Viewpoint‘!!!
I took this course
… THREE TIMES … before I passed it! HARDEST.COURSE.EVER!
First time was with a friend and BOTH of us dropped it at Christmas as it was just too freaking hard! Second time was with my entire Education Year colleagues (9 of us!) and the 10th student in the class dropped it too – and he was in Honours Math at the time! Why did HE drop it? It was lowering his GPA!
Finally, passed the course in the summer, and all I did was Math for a solid month, literally every day, and got a B+ on it! YAY! The Instructor apologized to me .. I was literally ONE POINT AWAY FROM AN A- …. but I did not care. I HAD PASSED THE COURSE and could now graduate! WHEW!
Still, the textbook is awesome and even though I may have ONCE understood many classical concepts – it is like Quantum Physics, another favourite topic! I may not understand ANY of it … but it is as close to MAGIC as we will ever get in this crazy world/universe/multi-verse we live in! LOL!
Oh, and whenever there was a so-called ‘Open Book Exam‘ – they were the toughest exams in the history of education. You better KNOW YOUR STUFF, because if you spent the time looking for the answer in your ‘textbook’, you wasted so much time, you never finished the exam!
And as Steve Jobs liked to say … ‘… one more thing….’!
My favourite math book was my ‘Mathematical Handbook‘ that had all kinds of formulas and simplified explanations of my favourite theorems and numbers! Served me well all through High School and University!
And one more …. one more thing! If I didn’t include a dictionary … ANY DICTIONARY in this list, then I would be remiss! I had ve saved many of my old dictionaries, including my pocket French/English dictionary, but I now tend to use dictionary.com and thesaurus.com on an almost daily basis! Big thumbs up to both of those sites!
And not that many funny extra sites out there. I found most of them quite rude and in bad taste and many offensive. The only funny one is above. And just doodles on existing images in each book. Sometimes you win. Sometimes you lose. Sometimes … it rains! (Ask me about THAT quote, which literally comes out of … right field!)
And same with videos. Lots of bad taste ones out there, sand offensive ones, so today, only a compilation of Steve Jobs ‘One More Thing‘ below, to wax nostalgic today!
As long as there are words out there, there will be a site that Google finds!!
How about some computer cartoons and other media today! Maybe some old ones that make us chuckle from where we have come from! And a busy day today too! LOL!
To start, my favourite scene from Captain Marvel! Many of us from The Computer Help Desk went together to see this movie together (Thanks again Marcela!) and this scene was THE funniest for me!
Remember, it takes place in the 1980’s and Captain Marvel is from an incredibly technologically advanced planet! And even today … I often get to use the classic phrase … ‘It’s loading“! LOL!
And what would a Bog Blog Post be without some Homer Simpson memes!
And some Classic Bloom County from WAY BACK WHEN that many of you probably will never have heard of! My first car was a Black Subaru that I named … OPUS!
And Foxtrot always had a befuddled Dad playing around with their newest iFruit computer! The usual assortment of familh members, all with varying degrees of computer expertise from genius to … less than genius!
Back from a few days off! Lot to catch up on and rejoin Teams! Tuesdays will have a ‘Terrific’ Theme of just about anything … TERRIFIC!!
I have been planning a retro look at all the Apple/Mac operating systems since the first Mac, but might do that later on this week, or just … later! For now, some computer cartoons, language posters and other random chuckles!
But will include a bit of a preview with one YouTube video about the history of Mac Operating Systems!
As long as there are words out there, there will be interesting topics!
Throwback Thursday and Even MORE Favourite Posters and Cartoons!
So many websites! So much information! So many ideas! If you aren’t a bit overwhelmed each time you GOOGLE, then you aren’t searching enough!
Some new cartoons, posters and stuff to quickly peruse today! Nothing earth shattering and sometimes you just go where Google takes you!
And just some random favourite sites that I use or like! A totally random post, and since there is no such thing as truly random …. I have NO idea why!
Some future posts will be about ‘The Greatest Computer Ever Built‘, ‘Old Computer Textbooks‘, ‘CALL Hall of Fame Software‘, ‘A Brief History of Time and Space … and The CALL Facility‘, ‘Legacy Photos of The CALL Facility‘, ‘More Puns‘, ‘More English Words‘, ‘CALL Haiku of The Day‘, ‘Cartoon of the Day‘, ‘Poster of the Day‘, ‘TED Talks about Languages‘, ‘Training Links‘, ‘Best Language Quotes‘, ‘Language Podcasts‘, ‘Throwback Thursdays Encore‘, ‘Terrific Tuesdays Encore‘, ‘Weird Word Facts‘ and …. that is just what I thought of this morning!
Sometimes I make up a topic the morning of my post and just go with the flow! I have always like Einstein’s quote:
Imagination
is more important than knowledge.
Imagination
is the language of the soul.
And on a far more philosophical note, my favourite quote of ALL TIME is atributed to Robert Brault:
Enjoy the little things,
for one day you may look back
and realise
they were the big things.
Terrific Tuesday and More Favourite Posters and Cartoons!
Another very busy day this morning! I started with a different OAC Bog Blog Post about Desktop Publishing!
But soon, we were TEAMing more test scripts for Adam! I am testing scripts in Mail using macOS Catalina So the Desktop Publishing Bog Blog will be tomorrow … unless more stuff comes up! And a full CHD Training Session after lunch too! AWESOME!
And just a peek at aDesktop Publishing cartoon too! And, so true … so very, very true!
So some fun posters and cartoons over the past few years to round out the day and keep my daily OAC Bog Blog post going!
Sometimes the image has to be reduced in visible size, to meet the installed theme here. Just click on the images and a bigger, original sized graphic will appear in a new tab.
DEFINITELY NOT my most productive morning since working from home!
Full Disclosure: Having a relatively frustrating morning, with, you guessed it … my computer! So, probably a short post today.
DOUBLE Full Disclosure: Taking a Tea Time Out, breathing and … over it now!
FIRST AND FOREMOST – amazing colleagues! I can’t say enough about everyone I work with at the Computer Help Desk! Thanks everyone! And they are doing the same for Students, Staff and Faculty with knowledge, humour and steadfast patience!
My laptop went wonky this morning! Still a bit wonky, but still doing what it does best – allow me to work from home during these interesting times! Everyone was quick to help, offer suggestions and give advice and I am back doing my morning OAC post!
The only downside, would seem to be my bookmarks/Favourites in Edge have gone rogue! And if THAT is the worst thing that has happened on ‘Yet Another Manic Monday‘, then I am good to go with that! I spent the better part of the morning finding and re-setting my bookmarks and access to them. NAILED IT! Well, maybe … THUMBTACKED IT!
I had to take my own advice and just … let it go! I can easily, slowly, rebuild my Favorites and just keep on working at home! A few things that I always try to remember and put into perspective:
PERSPECTIVE! Yup, just how important is it.
Tea! Better than coffee for stress reduction
Meditation – just letting things go. Thanks to Henri at UVic’s Multifaith!
Breathing… kind of a sub-category, at least for me!
Not too much more. Those work for me and me alone. Yes, a big bag of oversimplification, but, it works for me.
So, a perspective story! My lawnmower started on the second try this weekend! YAY! But the rip cord to start it .. RIPPED OUT! So, standing there, lawnmower RUNNING and no way to start it again… Command Line Decision – just start cutting and don’t stop! Just like in Finding Nemo – “Just keep swimming!”, except … mowing the lawn!
I even emptied the catch bag – WHILE IT WAS RUNNING – and kept on mowing! Whew, finished frontyard, lane, alleyway and backyard in about 50 minutes while on FULL THROTTLE!
Makes a good story and then the best part – there are kits to replace the staring cable for under $10!
In hindsight,it was not as stressful as at the moment! But … I decided to …. just keep mowing, just keep mowing and it relieved my stress! Thanks Dori!
Did you know that coffee dates back to 800 A.D.? And that in Arabic, it literally translates into ‘wine’! Cool! There are multiple links below, as always, and you can try a few out and find out even MORE interesting facts about the World’s Most Popular Beverage, by far – if you don’t count … TEA!
And what about coffee here in Victoria! You basically practice some Italian every time you go into a Starbucks – Grande, Venti, And Trenta. But what about some great coffee locations here in Victoria!
Full Disclosure – I like ALL the coffee shops in town! They are all amazing! But the best part of coffee is always … the conversation and companionship with coffee buddies! Check out CoffeeCrew.com for a list of all the great LOCAL coffee shops here in town, updated to April of this year! Nope, I don’t get anything from this at all. It is just a great site for finding local coffee! And you probably already know who runs the site!
Full Disclosure: Contrary to many rumours, I do not speak Klingon. I just like to have the Netflix Closed Caption on for any Science Fiction movie that has … space languages!
DOUBLE Full Disclosure: Early disclosure but my favourite made up language is from the movie ‘Arrival‘. Not only is it a fabulous movie, but they managed to add something new to a language that is CRITICAL to the storyline! WARNING!:- spoilers below about what that is!
The most popular and well known ‘Alien’ language is without a doubt, Klingon! Star Trek has become part of our Pop Culture ever since Spock first said ‘Illogical’. For many years, I would imbed an ‘Easter Egg’ in my CALL Facility demos that had Klingon as one of the many courses taught at UVic. And then … IT REALLY HAPPENED!
And of course, one of the biggest blockbusters of all time, Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings and prequel The Hobbit, contain MANY made up languages by J.R.R. Tolkien! And another UVic course was offered as well, but treating Middle Earth more as a history course than a Linguistics course!
SPOILER ALERT!: And my favourite of them all, that would be top of my own list to learn would be ….. HEPTAPOD B! This is a language that is quite literally … FLUID or maybe SMOKE or maybe SENTIENT INK! And it allows for Time Travel! There simply is no other cooler language than Heptapod B! I will be the first to register when it is offered at UVic!
And if Heptapod B ever IS offered at UVic, since it is a Time Travel kind of language, you would never have to do any homework because … you would have already learned it! That is my kind of course!
Imagine ordering Take Out in …. Heptapod B! They would already know when and what you wanted and it would arrive … INSTANTLY! So many benefits!
And I leave you with the best Elvish script from The Lord of the Ring:
Of Unconscious and Precocious Surveillance of Foudroyant Chrysanthemums or . . . Hard to Spell English Words!
Yet another sentence that you won’t find at Google. BUT, each word IS spelled correctly! And the reason being … SPELLCHECKERS!
Full Disclosure: Eye I am knot bad at spelling, but I am not grate at grammar! Bear with mee!
DOUBLE Full Disclosure: My Grade 1 teacher traumitized me when under constant threat of being whacked with her ruler, could not properly spell ‘cat’ in her presence! All that could come out of me when challenged by her was ….. ‘KAT’!
WAY back when, I took a computer science course at the University of Calgary. One ‘advanced’ assignment was to read in a random paragraph, generated by the Prof, then scan the paragraph and change some words to … OTHER words! They weren’t misspelled, but it was the pre-cursor to spellcheckers, grammar checkers and word processing! Oh, did I mention … we had to program in FORTRAN and … ON PUNCHED CARDS!!!! Good times, good times … KNOT!
Everyone probably has a few words that they consistently misspell, including the word, misspell!
It just doesn’t ‘look right’ with a double-s in the middle! Other words that always seem to throw me are: pronounce, pronunciation, comfortable, principle & principal, compatible & compatible, weird, catchup & ketchup, and of course … CAT! Some are context based confusion for me, some are just … they don’t look right!
So why do some people misspell words? Turns out, it can be a major cognitive challenge!
It turns out thatmisspelling in the brain(if it’s not being influenced by some kind of learning disorder, like dyslexia, which is another matter entirely) is a multi-layered problem involving diverse areas of brain tissue and multiple processes. Spelling, neurologically, isn’t as simple as rummaging in a brain-bin, finding a word, and reproducing it perfectly on paper. There are many stages where things can go slightly awry, and new science means we can pinpoint exactly where in the brain various processes are going wrong. Not much of a comfort when you’ve misspelt the main word in the title of your Powerpoint presentation, but there it is.
And one of my favourite words and that I often spell wrong is QUIXOTIC! It has a neat pronunciation and an imaginative, literary and historic background! Beauty and Chaos all in one word, including how to pronounce it!
What a wonderful word quixotic is! While it is most often used to mean equally impractical and idealistic, it also has the sense of romantic nobility. Its source is from the great Spanish novel “Don Quixote,” whose title character is given to unrealistic schemes and great chivalry. In the middle of a recession and high unemployment, it would be quixotic to imagine that you could quit your job and find another easily.
Spellcheckers are amazing … and annoying at the same time! If I recall, our lab computers have spellchecking turned on automatically for documents in Word/Office. And that causes a clear 50/50 split amongst students using Office! Literally half the students want it turned OFF when it is ON. And you can guess the other half! You can’t hope to win …. best you can hope for is a tie!
Personally, I just crank out the text, I try and catch my spelling mistakes, but I know that upon another read through, I will let Bill Gates decide what word I want to use. OOPS, forgot about that US vs Canadian spelling! And that might also be a future post too – different spellings for common words in US, Canada, UK, Australia, etc. and more curiouser and curiouser … WHY?
And nice to know that Word has spellcheckers in foreign languages too! That is always a ‘weight off my shoulders’ for First Year German students! LOL!