Category: Textbooks

My Favourite ‘Favourites’ at OAC!

! MY Favourite ‘Favourites’!
! AT OAC !

It occurs to me that …  I really like blogging here at OAC! I published a daily blog in the initial months of remote computing and all of a sudden, I had published almost 230 Posts! And a handful of Pages too. What is the difference between a ‘BogPost‘ and a ‘BogPage‘, welPages and Postsl, I wrote a Post about that called “Pages and Posts … What Gives?“

And of course, that led me to think about which ones were my … favourites amongst them all! Yeah, not fair, but … I make the rules here! So I will now attempt to list, in no particular order, my “Top 10 Favourite Posts”

I will  have one ‘filter’ though … the Post had to have the word “favourite” in  it somewhere – preferably the title! So that will sub sort it quite a bit! So,  HERE GOES!

TOP 10 FAVOURITE POSTS
AT MY ‘BOG BLOG‘

  1. “Think Different or . . . Apple Commercials Through the Years” would be a favourite at anytime, simply because of the sheer imagination of Apple Commercials. A long ago summer project was to learn how to create a DVD and what better source than … Apple commercials! And I think my favourite Apple commercial is for an iPad … “Your Verse Apple iPad Commercial – What Will Your Verse Be?” Watch it and try to disagree with me!
  2. “I’m Sorry Dave or . . . My Favourite Computer AI Voices in Movies and TV” easily makes my Top 10. A gimme if ever  there was one as we reference many phrases and moments almost DAILY at CHD! In other  words, Make it So,  Bogman!
  3. “1, 2, 3, . . . . or My Favourite Language Lesson of All Time!” and to this day, it is STILL my favourite language lesson of ALL TIME! My first ever TEACHING job was in Calgary,  teaching  basic computing  skills. Including BASIC as a programming language! Beginner’s All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code! Literally … BASIC!
  4. “Open Book Exams . . . . or . . . . My Favourite Textbooks“. How can anyone LIKE a textbook much less make it a Favourite? Well, I did! I have kept many of my favourite textbooks throughout the years! Why not! They helped me get through many a tough course and … that I enjoyed them was a side bonus!
  5. “CART2D2 – There is no try! Do or Do Not Young Skywalker!” THIS is a favourite because CART2D2 is a favourite! We are still playing around with this to find some great uses and the next big use will be at our first IN PERSON  CHD TRAINING SESSION on May 28th! YAY! There is no try … Do or Do Not!
  6. “Comparing Apples and Oranges but not actually ….. Oranges!” Recycling is HUGE at UVic and I try to recycle as much as I possibly can. And when CHD had quite literally a MOUNTAIN OF TECH show up last summer, CALL was used as a staging area for so much tech! And with so much PACKING AND CARDBOARD TOO! So any chance I get to promote recycling, I take it! And we are in the beginning  stages of a new refresh so … warm up your Blue Bins, UVic!
  7. “Throwback Thursday . . . or . . . Language Quotes! (and a bit of nostalgia!)” Who doesn’t enjoy a quick quote as a comeback or as a poster in their office! I probably only have a few stored in my long term PRAM that could be ZAPPED at any moment! So quotes about computers, life and especially Languages, is right up my alley in CALL!
  8. “Bold Italics Comic Sans . . . or Word Processors Through the Years” One of my first ever Computer  Science assignments, on punched cards no less, was to write a program to replace 3 words (that my Instructor had set in a paragraph (read from a mainframe!) with 3 other words. THAT WAS VERY HARD! But now, Gmail docs, Office, Pages … all have keyboard SHORTCUTS for Find and Replace! And none of them use punched cards as source code! Only shows that I correctly guessed that my future career … was NOT to be a Programmer!
  9. “I Excel at PowerPoint . . . or Computer Puns and Jokes” What would any Top 10 List be without including a post about my favourite jokes and puns! I never let an opportunity to ‘pun’ go unpunished! And I am usually RESTRAINING myself too!
  10. “CALL CHD JEOPARDY OPUS“. How could I create a Top 10 and NOT include Jeopardy! Okay, a bit of a cheat here as this is actually a PAGE that can be accessed anytime from any of my Posts. AND is always updated to the most recent version of JEOPARDY! In fact, the first IN PERSON CHD Training will be on Saturday, May 28th and I will have a brand new Jeopardy – Greg’s Playlist! And it will have new elements such as Fill-in-the-Blanks, Multiple Choice and even some Scavenger Hunts for prizes!

So many Posts/Pages … so little time! I am not writing at the same pace, but reserve my Posts/Pages for my remote day, unless something comes up.

It might take awhile, here’s to my next 230+ Posts and Pages and Randomness at UVic! YAY!

TTFN!

New CHD Staff Training
Coming UP
… and a new Jeopardy too!

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!

  1. Return-to-Campus Guidelines now available
  2. Return to campus info for students
  3. Communicable Disease Plan now available
  4. UVic News
  5. Update on getting your COVID-19 vaccine
  6. Remote work arrangements announced for the fall
  7. Working remotely
  8. Post-secondary studies during COVID-19
  9. NEW COMPUTERS IN CALL! YAY!
  10. 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~~

 

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!

  1. 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