I Excel at PowerPoint . . . or Computer Puns and Jokes

I Excel at PowerPoint
. . . or . . .
Computer Puns and Jokes

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 & Sindarin — **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!

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!

And more ‘Product Placement’ as I posted a previous Bog Blog about … Puns titled ‘When is a Door Not a Door? When it is a Jar“!!

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!

Enjoy!

As long as there are words out there, there will be interesting topics!

ENJOY!

TTFN!

30 Awful Computer Puns
(in Less Than 2 Minutes)

31 Jokes for Nerds

Think Different or . . . Apple Commercials Through the Years

Think Different . . .
. . . or . . .
Apple Commercials
Through the Years

Think Different Albert Einstein — **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!

Kevin Costner - Lisa — **Kevin Costner – Lisa**

And at the time, obscure actors might have shown up too! Kevin Costner will forever be linked with the introduction of the Lisa computer, which is a whole different post too!

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!

Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson did this perfectly in his ad for Siri a few years ago. I doubt Apple could afford him now!

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!

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

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!

Enjoy!

As long as there are words out there, there will be interesting topics!

ENJOY!

TTFN!

Think Different
Narrated by Steve Jobs

What Will Your Verse Be?
Apple iPad Air

1984 Super Bowl Ad

The Real Story Behind
Apple’s 1984 Commercial

Best Apple Commercials 2020

29 Best Apple Commercials
of All Time

Complete 66 Mac vs PC Ads

Best Apple Commercials

Every Apple Computer Ad

Top 10 Iconic Apple Ads

Best Apple Commercials

30 Years of Mac Ads
1984 – 2014

15 Funny Apple Ads

iPhone Parody
A Taller Change

Open Book Exams … or My Favourite Textbooks

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!

Enjoy!

20+ Funny Textbook Doodles That Are So Clever, Teachers Won’t Be Mad

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!!

ENJOY!

TTFN!

Steve Jobs …..
History of One More Thing

Throwback Thursday … A Stroll Down RAM-ory Lane

Throwback Thursday
A Stroll Down
RAM-ory Lane

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!

The single greatest comic in the history of HISTORY is Calvin & Hobbes. And that is an understatement! So many years ago and still relevant and still … Calvin & Hobbes! The official Calvin & Hobbes site is here.

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!

Enjoy!

As long as there are words out there, there will be a site that Google finds!!

ENJOY!

TTFN!

And then some random-ish comics that are currently located on … The World Wide Web! LOL!

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

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

Remember Aldus PageMaker . . . or Desktop Publishing

Remember Aldus PageMaker
or
Desktop Publishing

Excel might have put the Mac on everyone’s radar, but PageMaker put the Mac on everyone’s DESK!! SPOILER ALERT – I once went to a demo by Microsoft unveiling a new product …. EXCEL 1.0 ON THE MAC!

FULL Disclosure: My first thought on using Excel was for keeping track of … HOCKEY POOLS!

DOUBLE Full Disclosure: And the first PageMaker project I worked on … was for Musical Scores! And I can’t carry a tune in a bag .. but I could print out the concert songs!

Desktop Publishing was THE hot concept in the 1980s! But I was doing the “yet to be named”, Desktop Publishing, even BEFORE it became a buzzword application! Yes, I formally declare that I now claim to have invented Desktop Publishing! But I chose to release it into the free range, organic wild and thus everyone benefits to Infinity … AND BEYOND!

My first teaching job after graduating was quite unique – I helped to run a small computer classroom of VIC-20 and Commodore 64 computers, teaching a module of Computer Literacy for adult students. There were minimal course requirements, other than .. computer literacy! I was literally designing courses, teaching them and re-designing them ON THE FLY! I was doing this during the day at my regular job and then doing it AGAIN AT NIGHT for what was very similar to what Continuing Studies is now at UVIC! It was absolutely thrilling and terrifying … AT THE SAME TIME! Good times … good times!

So, faced with NO curriculum, NO textbook, NO workbook and … NO INTERNET – I had to improvise on a daily basis … actually more of an HOURLY BASIS! Once I found out I could DESIGN AND ‘PUBLISH’ my own resources in-house – Desktop Publishing was born!

Over the course of the next 2 years or so, I wrote numerous manuals, guides, workbooks, handbooks and even a manual for SpeedScript, a free word processor for the C-64! Hint: That might even be a future Bog Blog post!

They were all tailored for the academic units I worked for! I literally used cut and paste OLD SCHOOL with scissors and tape, cutting out cartoons, printing text on dot matrix printers and handing a final mock-up version to the Printing Department in the basement! Then and only then I could exercise final creative editorial decisions such as .. colour of the front cover and colour of the magic coils to bind them all! The magic of double-sided tape is severely under-rated!

A few titles are below and you can click on each one to get a larger image in a new tab. But come back here!

Business Education Computer Literacy Instructor’s Course Handbook

Hotel and Restaurant Computer Literacy Student Handbook

Fast Forward a few years to working at UVic in the relatively new CALL Facility and Desktop Publishing has a brand new KILLER APP – ALDUS PAGEMAKER! And then it became ADOBE PAGEMAKER! Nothing like re-branding a product after it is bought out!

And how did I get involved in even MORE ‘Adventures in Desktop Publishing’? I was the only one who knew how to use a Macintosh at the time – a screaming fast Mac II!

And how did I actually LEARN how to use PageMaker at the time? I had a Secret Plan which I will now share with you! I was given about 42 academic papers to be published. And they literally came in on paper, floppies (Mac/WIN), 5.25″ floppy and in every possible format at the time – text, Word, WordPerfect, email, etc. My only recourse, which proved successful, was to pre-select which paper to work on FIRST!

I ranked all the papers from what I thought was EASIEST to HARDEST and jumped into the deep end of the Apple Laserwrite Toner Pool! AND IT WORKED!

I taught myself one new technique, one new feature, one new .. SOMETHING with each and every new submission that required special editing! Image placement, borders, indents, importing, saving, data recovery and the single most important feature I already knew – BACKUP! BACKUP! BACKUP!

It may seem trivial now in the age of 128G USB thumbdrives, but I only had a single CD-ROM burner to make backups on CD! And so it would take about an hour to prepare a weekly, or sometimes daily, backup to make sure nothing was ever lost!

I produced a series of Conference Programmes, booklets and proceedings over the next 3 years as The CALL Facility became a focus of literally, world wide attention – thanks to the efforts of Mary Sanseverino and Dr. Peter Liddell. Yup, using their names here, as they deserve all the credit for pulling this off!!! And that includes INVENTING THE CALL FACILITY TOO!

TRIPLE Full Disclosure: Mary hired me way back in the Fall of 1989 and Peter had hired Mary only a few months earlier too! And the rest is history!

If you were to go up to a current generation of digitally saavy and internet trained students from birth, I bet they would not have even HEARD of the concept of ‘Desktop Publishing’! But OH, do they know everything about social media, Insta-everything, searching and RELYING on the internet for education, training and careers! And that is a VERY GOOD THING!

Students can whip up an absolutely jaw-dropping webpage with so many applications (computer, phone, tablet) that I won’t even bother listing them. There are websites that help you make websites! And companies that specialize in publishing with free software! You can design and print your own book in a fraction of the time it took me!

Absolutely astonishing! It took me 6 months the first time I put together the CCALL2 proceedings. And about half that time, the SECOND proceedings! I am definitely ‘Old School’ – digitally!

And the usual assortment of recently searched interesting links, videos and other cool stuff – but beware, you will probably never ever use PageMaker …. but you never know!

Enjoy!

Desktop Publishing – Wikipedia
Adobe PageMaker – Wikipedia
Aldus – Wikipedia
Aldus Pagemaker 1985
30 Years Ago, Aldus PageMaker Changed Life on Planet Earth
Aldus PageMaker 5.x
Aldus PageMaker 1
Aldus PageMaker: The First Widely-Used Desktop Publishing Program
Aldus Pagemaker: The Mac’s Savior?
Aldus PageMaker Introduced
Aldus Pagemaker
Four reasons the LaserWriter mattered
Apple Laserwriter – Wikipedia
List of Apple printers – Wikipedia

As long as there are words out there, there will be interesting topics!

ENJOY!

TTFN!

“If you do not know where you come from, then you don’t know where you are, and if you don’t know where you are, then you don’t know where you’re going. And if you don’t know where you’re going, you’re probably going wrong.”

I Excel at PowerPoint . . . or . . . Computer Puns and Jokes

… it is always my NEXT ONE!

Enjoy!

As long as there are words out there, there will be interesting topics!

ENJOY! TTFN!

30 Awful Computer Puns (in Less Than 2 Minutes)

31 Jokes for Nerds

Share this:

Think Different . . . . . . or . . . Apple Commercials Through the Years

Enjoy!

As long as there are words out there, there will be interesting topics!

ENJOY! TTFN!

Think Different Narrated by Steve Jobs

What Will Your Verse Be? Apple iPad Air

1984 Super Bowl Ad

The Real Story Behind Apple’s 1984 Commercial

Best Apple Commercials 2020

29 Best Apple Commercials of All Time

Complete 66 Mac vs PC Ads

Best Apple Commercials

Every Apple Computer Ad

Top 10 Iconic Apple Ads

Best Apple Commercials

Best Apple Commercials

30 Years of Mac Ads 1984 – 2014

15 Funny Apple Ads

iPhone Parody A Taller Change

Share this:

Open Book Exams . . . . or . . . . My Favourite Textbooks

I took this course … THREE TIMES … before I passed it! HARDEST.COURSE.EVER!

Enjoy!

ENJOY! TTFN!

Steve Jobs ….. History of One More Thing

Share this:

Throwback Thursday A Stroll Down RAM-ory Lane

Enjoy!

ENJOY! TTFN!

Share this:

Remember Aldus PageMaker or Desktop Publishing

Enjoy!

ENJOY! TTFN!

“If you do not know where you come from, then you don’t know where you are, and if you don’t know where you are, then you don’t know where you’re going. And if you don’t know where you’re going, you’re probably going wrong.”

72 Short Cut Key Adobe PageMaker

History of Desktop Publishing

History of Desktop Publishing (DTP)

The Computer Chronicles Desktop Publishing Part I (1986)

The Computer Chronicles Desktop Publishing Part II (1986)

The Dawn of Desktop Publishing Computerphile

The Apple IIC and Imagewriter II Desktop Publishing in the 1980s

The Font Wars Postscript, TrueType, the Mac and the Success of Desktop Publishing

Share this:

I Excel at PowerPoint
. . . or . . .
Computer Puns and Jokes

ENJOY!

TTFN!

30 Awful Computer Puns
(in Less Than 2 Minutes)

Think Different . . .
. . . or . . .
Apple Commercials
Through the Years

ENJOY!

TTFN!

Think Different
Narrated by Steve Jobs

What Will Your Verse Be?
Apple iPad Air

The Real Story Behind
Apple’s 1984 Commercial

29 Best Apple Commercials
of All Time

30 Years of Mac Ads
1984 – 2014

iPhone Parody
A Taller Change

Open Book Exams
. . . . or . . . .
My Favourite Textbooks

I took this course
… THREE TIMES …
before I passed it!
HARDEST.COURSE.EVER!

ENJOY!

TTFN!

Steve Jobs …..
History of One More Thing

Throwback Thursday
A Stroll Down
RAM-ory Lane

ENJOY!

TTFN!

Remember Aldus PageMaker
or
Desktop Publishing

ENJOY!

TTFN!

72 Short Cut Key
Adobe PageMaker

The Computer Chronicles
Desktop Publishing Part I (1986)

The Computer Chronicles
Desktop Publishing Part II (1986)

The Dawn of Desktop Publishing
Computerphile

The Apple IIC and Imagewriter II
Desktop Publishing in the 1980s

The Font Wars
Postscript, TrueType, the Mac
and the Success of Desktop Publishing