The Computer Help Desk had our first ALL STAFF In-Person Training session recently and I was able to present CHD Jeopardy Greg’s Playlist for the FIRST TIME SINCE COVID STARTED! And I introduced brand new fun CHD Jeopardy questions, including Fill in the Blanks, Multiple Choice and TOBLERONE PRIZES for solving puzzles and scavenger hunts! Thanks to everyone who participated and WON!
CHD Jeopardy Greg’s Playlist II
AND I am almost done my September CALL Jeopardy Greg’s Playlist II! I like to have it all ready WELL in advance of the next training session! And there will be more new Jeopardy questions, MORE Toblerone prizes and NEW ways to win NEW PRIZES TOO! And maybe even …. Spoiler Alert …. A GROUP JEOPARDY QUESTION TOO WHERE EVERYONE CAN WIN SOMETHING!!!
I try to do one or two new different participatory slides each time and the next Jeopardy will be BIGGER AND BETTER WITH MORE CHANCES TO WIN PRIZES! Listen closely …. do you want to know what …. and how to win Jeopardy prizes …….
SSssshhhh ….. can you keep a secret? Well …. so can I! LOL!
And, Spoiler Alert … I am also working on a brand new CALL Orientation PowerPoint for September!
And you never know … there might even be a Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Jeopardy question too! ANYTHINGcan happen in the UVIC Multiverse of Madness! (And subtle joke … notice how I tied Marvel AND Star Trek, into the title of this Bog Blog post ….. a chocolate bar to the first CHD Staff person who reads this far ANDtells me the connection! (WAY easier than you think to solve!)
Jeopardy VI Reboot Version Jeopardy VI Dual re-BootJeopardy VIII Triple re-BoJeopardy VIII Triple re-BootJeopardy IX Memes “R” UsCHD Jeopardy Generation CHD
Jeopardy XI Greg’s Playlist
CHD Jeopardy XII Greg’s Playlist II
Thanks to EVERYONE at CHD for participating and your support too! I can’t make Jeopardy without all of you! Thank you!
A Brief History of Time, Space & … JEOPARDY At The Computer Help Desk
The CALL Facility
The Computer Help Desk had our first ALL STAFF In-Person Training session this past Saturday in The CALL Facility! Around 2.5 YEARS since our last one, probably around February in 2020 before … well … you know what happened after that!
The CALL Facility
CHD has still had training sessions throughout working remotely, but used other collaborative software applications such as Blackboard, Zoom, Skype and now TEAMS to offer training for all our new Coops and returning Consultants! SPOILER ALERT – I prefer TEAMS to all of the alternatives! YAY TEAMS!
This post will be a brief recap of ALL the CHD ‘Jeopardy’ training sessions and how it has changed from the very first workshop I presented at .. and it was not even Jeopardy back then!
CHD Workshop
The very FIRST Saturday CHD Workshop presentation was a general introduction to The CALL Facility and WICKET! WICKET was essentially an attendance program, custom written for CALL to keep track of student ‘attendance’ in CALL. Many Departments, including Spanish, Italian, German, French, Linguistics and more, required a lab component to their classes for students, typically an hour a week, with at least one visit. WICKET would identify the student and class(es) they were taking and staff would assign a location for them. When they left, they would ‘sign out’ at the front counter and their time and visit would be logged!
CALL Jeopardy I
Next was the first ever CALL version of Jeopardy! And I take NO CREDIT for the template that was used! Sherri originated the template for a Systems social event, so …. I just acquired the template! And it truly was a CALL Version. But over the years, I have mostly titled them ‘CALL Jeopardy’, but they really are just ‘Jeopardy’ or ‘CHD Jeopardy’ now! It was bare bones, no Trivia, and just pick a number under a category. But it was a start for Jeopardy!
CALL ++ Jeopardy
Then I started to get a bit more … imaginative … and introduced Jeopardy II CALL ++ Version! I started playing around with themes, backgrounds, puns, jokes and … TRIVIA under each category! Yeah, you are probably saying .. what took you so long! I even put in a ‘Daily Double’ but only for cosmetic reasons! Why not! And the side benefit was … I was learning about more features of PowerPoint! Many of my CALL orientations were using Keynote slides – which have awesome special effects! But PowerPoint has been a mainstay of Jeopardy from the beginning!
Jeopardy III Knee-d-Full Things
And then even more adventurous with the next rendition of Jeopardy III – Knee-d-Full-Things! At the time I was having knee surgery, and I think Stranger Things was just taking off too! AND a Star Wars movie was out too so .. the theme basically wrote itself! I even started to use some graphics within the trivia part of the categories too. But that has fallen a bit to the side! Trivia was barely an option back then!
Jeopardy IV Endgame
Then came the truly first ‘themed’ version of Jeopardy ENDGAME! Most of us at CHD are huge fans of Marvel, Star Wars, Star Trek, Doctor Who, Pokémon … OR ALL OF THEM! So this version full blown Trivia was in force as each question required knowing where each Marvel movie ‘quote’ came from, either the movie or the character! And of course, Endgame had just come out too! So … Spoiler Alert: there WERE SPOILERS in Jeopardy!
Jeopardy V Pop Culture
Next up would be Jeopardy V Pop Culture! This was fun because I started to put a few more GIFs in each slide and … it was becoming quite challenging to come up with new and fun questions for all the new Coops, and Consultants to try and figure out! Each new Jeopardy I add a new layer of … something … to make it better and more interesting for everyone, especially myself! Pop Culture let me pick SO MANY NEW Trivia questions too! This was one of my favourite Jeopardy sessions!
Jeopardy VI Reboot Version
Then came a series of remote training sessions, based on the idea that we were all really trying to ‘reboot’ ourselves into a new world of remote computing and nobody, NOBODY, had any idea how much our work at the CHD would be affected by being home for so long. Jeopardy VI Reboot Version was the first attempt at using Blackboard, I think, and it was a bit disastrous! I ran out of time, the AV was a bit wonky too. I had been in Teams and perhaps Zoom just PRIOR and I was in the wrong Blackboard channel and the problems just continue to mount with a weird double-echo in my headset. So I basically abandoned this one mid-training! LOL! But this was a learning moment for me too! What NOT to do .. before Jeopardy!
Jeopardy VI Dual re-Boot
And of course, the obvious title for the next session would be Jeopardy VII Dual re-Boot! That was also a pun on all the CALL computers … which were Dual Boot MAC/WIN at the time! There is always a slightly skewed reason for all the titles, question, trivia and answers! Spoiler Alert: That won’t change anytime soon! 🙂 And, I also ran out of time with this version of Jeopardy! But the silver lining to having incomplete Jeopardy, is that CHD Review was introduced and given about 5 minutes at the conclusion of each CHD (Super) Review, there was time to finish of any Jeopardy questions! YAY! Jeopardy was no longer … in Jeopardy! 🙂
Jeopardy VIII Triple re-Boot
And then came the first ‘Triple Header’ called Jeopardy TRIPLE re-BOOT! This was not the first use of actual video links in Jeopardy, but I included a link to a brief orientation of CALL for everyone, and also
Jeopardy VIII Triple re-Boot
for when I would be away for my major knee surgery – I am either part Borg or part Terminator with my new left knee! THAT was 6 months away from work, so there was a gap in training session participation for me! And I seem to have a version of Triple re-Boot Jeopardy with a different start screen! Ah, I need a RAM upgrade soon as I am forgetting my own Jeopardy sessions! 🙂
Jeopardy IX Memes “R” Us
Then came a ‘ground breaking’ version of Jeopardy IX MEMEs ‘R’ Us! I discovered a site that EASILY made a custom meme with whatever you wanted to put on it! Every slide had a unique CHD Meme on it, usually poking fun at the question, CHD, staff and even myself! This was a fantastic new addition, for me, as it opened up all kinds of possibilities! And if I could not find a ‘blank’ existing meme/gif then I was able to create one with Handbrake as a brief video from a source video, slice out a few second, then turn that video, complete with my own text, into the EXACT meme I wanted, at ezgif.com!
CHD Jeopardy Poll
And then a new approach to be inclusive of all our CHD staff! I wanted to ask THEM what kind of Trivia questions they would like to answer, prior to the actual CHD style question! CHD was mastering Teams and I created a Poll to ask what Trivia and … the winner was … DISNEY!
Jeopardy X Generation CHD
But the runners up were all Disney too – so that narrowed it down considerably … but also made it more challenging too, to find more recent as well as classic quotes from … DISNEY! LOL! And the CHD crew were up to task and it was another favourite training session that was Jeopardy Generation CHD!
Jeopardy XI Greg’s Playlist
And the most recent one, last Saturday was Jeopardy Greg’s Playlist and is also my most favourite Jeopardy of All Time! This version had everything – GIFs, Trivia, Emoji Hints, Animation, Puns, Jokes, Links on almost every page … and the best part … LIVE AND IN PERSON FROM THE CALL FACILITY! Yeah, I had fun and I sure hope everyone else did too! And also for the first time, JEOPARDY RECORDED! I should go and look, but would probably just … not sure what! LOL!
And the next Jeopardy will be a continuation or … arguably … a sequel to Greg’s Playlist … Greg’s Playlist II! And I have already started to work on it … AND … I am asking Consultants when they are in CALL, what is THEIR #1 song on THEIR OWN PLAYLIST! So that way I can make it even more inclusive and involve more people from CHD! And I will still have some of my own songs too – Maybe including ‘Hotel CALL-ifornia‘ from The Eagles! LOL! You can check out … but you can never leave … CALL!
The entire roster of Jeopardy PowerPoint slides is here, or click on the BOG BLOG PAGES to the left and then on CALL Jeopardy Opus. And each of the individual slides above, if you click on each one, takes you DIRECTLY to that particular version of Jeopardy in pdf format! They don’t have all the animations, GIFs, etc. So if you want to see those, let me know and I can send you the PowerPoint file through Teams.
Thanks to EVERYONE at CHD for participating and your support too! I can’t make Jeopardy without all of you! Thank you!
“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:
This will be my list of my favourite computer/AI voices from Movies and TV shows that I have seen and grew up with! They can be human or actually computer generated. So some of them will no doubt be VERY obscure for many of you young folks! LOL! But that does not mean you should disregard them! They might prove to be dated, but they have all influenced how we percieve computers and AI, to this day!
The voice of EVERY computer in every episode and movie of Star Trek is Majel Barrett, who was married to Gene Rodenberry! She even voiced the computer in the Star Trek:The Animated Series too! Outside of Michael Dorn (Worf), Majel Barrett has appeared in more episodes than ANY OTHER ACTOR!
Robocop morphed a critically injured policeman with state of the art technology to enforce police protection. What could go wrong? Well, more than you can imagine, including a horrible remake of this classic movie!
And at the time, TRON was the greatest computer movie OF ALL TIME! The graphics were amazing, the storyline was new and amazing and I remember watching it multiple times!
And then they made a reboot of it TRON:Legacy .. and I liked that one too! It got bad review, but I still liked it! And the graphics were amazing too!
And how could ultimate cuteness and the end of the world combine any better than in WALL-E! Eve and WALL-E have instant chemistry, albeit confrontational at first, but it is still one of my favourite animated series and WELL ahead of its time in terms of environmentalism!
And probably the most iconic computer/AI interface, at least recently is the combined character of Vision in theMCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe). Vision is ‘powered’ by the Mind Stone, one of the Infinity Stones.
And … if you got this far, then you have seen the movies! Vision is a weird blend of the personality of Tony Stark (Iron Man), Ultron (his ‘Frankenstein-like AI), JARVIS (his own AI ‘butler’) and the power of Thor to kick-start him! Yeah, you had to be there … multiple movies and multiple personalities … what could go wrong! Actually, he is a pretty good character and very strong too!
And the rebooted series is fantastic too! The new robot, although not named Robbie, is unique, integral to the storyline and has amazing graphics! And it is filmed in Vancouver too! But only one season left! Sigh …… I remember building a model of this robot too!
Another TV show ahead of its time was Knight Rider! A virtually indestructible AI car (K.I.T.T. – Knight Industries 2000) guided by a secret organization dedicated to fighting injustice! Whoa, wait … NOT ELON MUSK! LOL! It kind of looked like a cross between Elon Musk and a Cylon! And we don’t want to go THERE either!
And having mentioned HAL 9000 above, did you realize that there was a SEQUEL to 2001? 2010: The Year We Make Contact featured SAL 9000 (voiced by Candice Bergen) as the upgrde to HAL that did not quite meet factory specifications! LOL! The most obvious difference (no spoilers here!) is that SAL is a blue orb’!
And coming up to just a couple more examples! There are SO many, that I really did limit myself this time! I had previously written posts about favourite computers in all kinds of media at “Shall We Play a Game . . . or Fictional Computers” but that did not focus on anything but the computers themselves. This post is on their actual voices used! Okay, a small distinction! So that does mentioning a previous post count as … Product Placement or what! LOL!
War Games! Just go find it somewhere and have a great popcorn time! A young hacker breaks into a High Security computer, unknowingly trying out a ‘game’ called Global Thermonuclear War and … well, the use of the modem is hilarious! But the voice of WOPR is amazing! If it makes you think of Stephen Hawking …. no spoilers here! A great, great movie!
And I will never hear the end of it from all my colleagues if I don’t include those two wacky robots from a relatively unknown cult classic … C-3PO and R2-D2. Did you ever wonder WHY they are called … R2-D2 and C-3PO?
Perhaps the quintessential use of voice to convey language! C3PO is designed to be able to talk to ANYONE with his linguistics programming and R2D2 happily whistles, clicks, bings and we can all understand exactly what is going on! The classic straight man out of vaudeville humour and it works so well! Arguably the best parts of Star Wars are those two! Note: Yoda is NOT a computer! LOL!
All the voices mentioned above are in YouTube videos below. I hope I got them all! I might even do a sequel to this in a future post – there were many I have left off and they deserve a listening to as well!
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!
including Fill in the Blanks, Multiple Choice and TOBLERONE PRIZES for solving puzzles and scavenger hunts! Thanks to everyone who participated and WON!
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 ‘
And … if you got this far, then you have seen the movies! 
And a childhood favourite that I waited for each Sunday night was Robbie the Robot from 
And the 
Another TV show ahead of its time was 
All the voices mentioned above are in YouTube videos below. I hope I got them all! I might even do a sequel to this in a future post – there were many I have left off and they deserve a listening to as well!
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!
