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!
“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!
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:
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!
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!
have grown up with! LOL!
(Click Character-for IMDB profile / on Movie/TV Show- more info)
What about the others? Can I help them?
When done, click on the icon of a floppy disk called ‘
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!
