Tag: Computing Facilities

WELCOME BACK TO UVIC September 2022!

! WELCOME BACK !
! to UVIC !
! September 2022 !
! … and The CALL Facility too !

A full week has  passed since classes started at UVIC! That would cover every day that has classes! It has been extremely busy on campus, especially outdoors with so many orientations, booths, tents and activities like Thunderfest for all students, especially new students! WELCOME TO UVIC!

The  Computer Help Desk had tents up at Thunderfest as well as the day before classes started last week. CHD had a brand new PRIZE WHEEL to give away prizes! YAY CHD!

A couple of photos of the tents for all the activities and staffed by ALL kinds of CHD staff from new Coops to Consultants to Supers to Full Time Staff to our Associate Director too! GREAT TEAM EFFORT FROM EVERYONE! Those tents DO require team effort to setup and take down! YAY CHD!

All sorts of exciting stuff will be happening throughout September
& all upcoming semesters!

Did you know you can reserve Student Study Spaces, including the desks at the back of The CALL Facility? There are Project Rooms in BEC, Group Study Tables in Clearihue (CALL), Virtual Reality (VR) Studio in BEC and a Digital Media Studio in HSD! ALL from THIS WEBSITE! Photos below!

A few more Dual Monitors

CALL now has DUAL MONITORS ON ALL COMPUTER WORKSTATIONS! And that is on all the Macs and WIN computers! I was able  to re-purpose a bunch of monitors heading towards recycling and they now have a new lease on life in CALL! And it did not cost a penny! I used all available cables,  monitors, dongles and power bars! BONUS FOR BEING A GREEN CALL FACILITY! Here are many UVIC Green Recycling Sites to check out too! These and the best of my Pages are always at the right hand side of each of my Bog Blog Posts. 

I am always tinkering with my CALL Facility orientation, starting as a PowerPoint and with the goal to be under 5 minutes TOTAL as a presentation! I have tweaked my BETA version  and now have what I think  I will use as my file! And as a YouTube video as well!

CHD Jeopardy Greg's Playlist II
                     CHD Jeopardy Greg’s Playlist II

AND I have the next CHD All Staff Training Jeopardy ready!  Greg’s Playlist II and all new questions, answers, prizes and lyrics and CHD questions to try and answer! I even have NEW TYPES OF QUESTIONS TOO! But you will have to wait and .. also be staff at CHD to get the invite to the training! Come for the training … but stay for the food … and CHD JEOPARDY!

And huge HUGE NEWS THAT … I can’t really tell you about …  but WILL! There are new computers coming! Wait, they are ALREADY HERE! But wait, they are not yet ready to deploy! YES NEW  COMPUTERS! CHD staff unpacked them and we have to store them for now, as classes have started, so maybe  by Reading Break I will  let everyone know where they will be deployed! YAY NEW COMPUTERS! Stay glued to my Bog Blog for that and any other breaking Computer Help Desk news!

And how about a new feature every so often – a Throwback Link to topics … somewhat close to this one! LOL! And even some parting advice at the end of this blog, if you read that far!  I sure hope you do!

The best feature of the CALL layout (thanks to rolling desks!) is distancing to make sure everyone has enough room, should they want it. There are lots of open workstations for students and of course, all new computers from last August 2021 too.

CALL has  hosted many mid-terms, Finals and special workshops including a Chat Café with Korea! Really! So come on down and see what you  have been missing out on as a study space for yourself and fellow students!

Thanks to EVERYONE for all your help and support over the past 2+ Covid years. Without my colleagues support and friendship, I have no idea how I would have fared! THANK YOU ALL! And hey, to quote one of my favourite  TV shows of all time …. Hill Street Blues ….. and I have to mention St. Elsewhere too. AWESOME SHOWS! ENJOY!

CALL Towering Tech Arrivals

CALL Computer Refresh Deja Vu .. All Over Again

The Recycling of CALL … and HSD!

Early Computer Help Desks!

TTFN!

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!

Video Playlists at OAC – COOL!

! VIDEO PLAYLISTS!
! AT OAC !

I discovered a feature of WordPress here at OAC that can create Video Playlists in a post! I have used Photo Gallery quite a bit, once I learned how to use them, and published some of my favourite photographs I have taken at this post, Photography Gallery.

This feature allows you to build a .. Video Playlist .. as the name indicates. Very much like a YouTube Playlist, but for OAC purposes, based on media you have at your own OAC Media Library.

The Online Academic Community has some great Tutorials on Organizing Content and the using The Dashboard too!

All you have to do is have some video media (MP4/M4V work best) uploaded to your Media Library. Then in your new or already existing Post/Page, click on the “Add Media” button. Under “Actions“, click “Create video playlist“.  All the videos that are in your Media library will now appear. Click on the ones you want to be in your playlist and a Blue Checkmark will appear on each one.

Then in the bottom right hand corner, click on “Create a new video playlist“. Then click “Insert video playlist” …
et voilà …your video playlist is inserted into your Post!

You can change the order if you want by editing the Video playlist quite easily, if you want to change the order from how you  uploaded them.

If the OAC Media Library does not want to upload your video, use Handbrake to convert to either MP4 or M4V. Free software for both Mac and WIN and works like a charm for converting SO MANY FORMATS! 

A few more helpful links for creating a Video Playlist at OAC. Not all the features mentioned  will work at OAC but there are many hints and images at these sites to help create your Video Playlists at OAC. ENJOY!

  1. Tutorial: How to create a WordPress video gallery
  2. Insert an Audio or Video Playlist
  3. How to Create a Video Gallery in WordPress (Step by Step)
  4. How To Make A Playlist On YouTube (2022)

TTFN!

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

CALL Dual Monitors

! CALL DUAL MONITORS !
! NOW INSTALLED !

CALL Instructor Stations #37 & #38
                            CALL Instructor Stations #37 & #38

The CALL Facility now has dual monitors on each workstation! Well, not all of them. The Instructors stations (#37 & #38) are connected to the VDP and can project to the entire room. And room is needed for laptops and materials at each station. 

The idea to install them came from a Poster Session for Linguistics, described in an earlier post! It was so successful that the monitors at HSD (in storage) that were headed to be recycled, a box of HDMI-DVI dongles and some DVI cables were found …. DUAL  MONITORS! And at absolutely no cost at all! I joke that I found a penny under a station, so my budget not only came in UNDER budget .. but showed a profit!!!!

There are combinations of Portrait and/or Landscape and relatively easy to switch around. I will survey students throughout the summer to see what combination might be preferable. 

Most students are away for the summer and fewer classes are actually scheduled so it will still look like ‘new’ equipment for September!

Thanks to colleagues T, H and G for helping me set them up! Those cable trays are heavy, awkward and filled with .. cables! LOL! And a very green mini-project, saving tech from a landfill too!

Some previous posts on recycling are “The Recycling of CALL and HSD!“,  “CALL Computer Refresh Deja Vu ….. All Over Again” and “UVIC Recycling Links“.

TTFN!

BE READY!!!!

READY!

CALL me Bog Stats

! CALL ME BOG !
! OAC STATS !

I recently found out just where my ‘CALL me Bog‘ blog … ranks here at OAC at UVic in terms of number of Posts and number of Views! NOT that anything I write here is ‘earth shattering’ but … it might just be able to kick up some dust from under an old serial port keyboard some days! LOL!

So, the Top 5 OAC websites at UVic for number of Posts are:

#1 – Centre for Youth & Society’s Community Resource Hub – 1801 Posts
#2 – My UVic Life – 1358 Posts
#3 – UVic Teach Anywhere – 820 Posts
#4 – Scholarly Communication @ UVic – 588 Posts
#5 – The World From Here (Gustavson School) – 586 Posts
#17 – CALL Me Bog at …. 230 Posts!

 

 

 

Yeah,  okay,  comparing Apples and Oranges and … WINDOWS! But all the rest are all Faculties, Departments, Groups, Organizations, etc. so … maybe I am the #1 individual blog! But each of those sites are amazing and I have actively followed My UVic Life and UVic Teach Anywhere. I recommend them all!

CALL Me Bog Page Views
                                 CALL Me Bog Page Views

And one more stat is the number of Page Views and with that I rank a bit higher! CALL Me Bog is #7 in Page Views at 13,624!! Always room to improve, grow and get more Views and more Posts and Pages!

The  gap to move up is fairly significant so I doubt that I can move up too much with Page Views! But you never know when one of my Posts will go viral at UVic! To Infinity and Beyond! LOL!

And some more mini-updates in CALL – almost done putting in .. TWO MONITORS AT EACH WORKSTATION! Only 5 left to go! I will update the next post, next week with a photo! YAY DUAL MONITORS! Many thanks to my colleagues T, H and G for helping me out and setting them up!

PS: I have a new laptop and monitor and .. added another one too!

Trio Grande
                                                                            Trio Grande

Stay tuned for when all the monitors are installed! .. SOON!

TTFN!

GOOD LUCK
ON ALL YOUR  FINAL EXAMS!
This is the last week of Finals!
BE READY!!!!

READY!

CALL Poster Session PLUS!

! POSTER SESSION !
! The CALL Facility !
! NEW-ish !

More of a ‘Back to the Future‘ vibe as CALL hosted a Poster Session for Linguistics near the end of the semester! A poster session might sound boring but … never in CALL and this one was QUITE UNIQUE!

7 groups needed to present a digital ‘Poster‘ on a computer, with a monitor that could display in Portrait … literally! So SK (Instructor) came down a day ahead and we literally FLIPPED the new monitors (from last August refresh) in CALL  …  et voila … PORTRAIT MODE! I had to change the preferences to Portrait but that was a few seconds on each computer!

SK had a sample .png  file, copied it to the desktop and it worked perfectly with the basic viewer software on each platform (MAC/WIN)!

All the groups had  to do was login  with their Netlink credentials, copy the  file to the desktop and view it as Full Screen and it worked perfectly!

Larger Photos are here and here.

And I am going to recycle some older monitors (from HSD! Thanks H!), slowly, and try to outfit as many workstations in CALL with DUAL MONITORS! That will be very useful and welcomed by all users of CALL! I will have a mix of Landscape and Landscape/Portrait for students to try!

The CALL Facility will  be the first and only drop-in classroom/lab that has both Mac and WIN computers, webcams and dual monitors! And so much much more too!

CALL New Layout
             CALL New Layout

For a quick recap of many new additions and updates, go to this post.

 

 

 

Hidden Gems of Clearihue
      Hidden Gems of Clearihue

For a quick recap of why  The CALL Facility is a ‘Hidden Gems of Clearihue‘, go to this post.

 

 

Stay tuned for when that happens!

TTFN!

GOOD LUCK
ON ALL YOUR  FINAL EXAMS!
BE READY!!!!

READY!

NEW CALL LAYOUT !

! NEW !
! The CALL Facility !
! LAYOUT !
! NEW !

All the new furniture has arrived in CALL! Okay, that is not necessarily ‘new‘ news! But I have repositioned the furniture to allow for better distancing, better sight lines and better viewing of the entire CALL Facility, at least from my perspective. The old layout is after the new layout photos below.

The best feature of this new layout (thanks to rolling desks!) is distancing to make sure everyone has enough room, should they want it. There are lots of open workstations for students and of course, all new computers from last August too.

You might notice that the LARGE rolling whiteboards are not at the back of the room. I have moved them into strategically ‘hidden‘ locations in CALL!

They are still IN CALL,  and can be moved anywhere quickly. I just found that some students (not all!) were using them at the back to hide that they were removing their masks and eating in CALL. Masks must be worn at all times and no food or beverages in any classrooms at UVic. There are also 2 smaller rolling whiteboards too!

Thanks to EVERYONE for all your help and support over the past 2+ years. Without my colleagues support and friendship, I have no idea how I would have fared! THANK YOU ALL! 

And how about a new feature every so often – a Throwback Link to topics … somewhat close to this one! LOL!

CALL Towering Tech Arrivals

CALL Computer Refresh Deja Vu .. All Over Again

The Recycling of CALL … and HSD!

GET – THE COMFY CHAIR!!!


TTFN!

 

NEW CALL FACILITY FURNITURE !

! NEW !
The CALL Facility Furniture
HAS ARRIVED!
! NEW !

All the new furniture has arrived in CALL! Many thanks to Marcus and Adam for arranging all of this! Adam was up on campus yesterday, social/physical distancing of course, putting the new furniture into CALL, and taking these photos too! 

The students will certainly be in for a nice surprise when we are all back at UVic and their favourite lab now has spiffy furniture! We will work on the best layout and with wheels on the upright stations, students can move things around to suit their needs! I can hardly wait to get back to UVIC … for even more reasons than just new furniture! 

Thanks everyone who helped out on spiffing up The CALL Facility for students so they can colllaborate and thrive in their studies even MORE!! And a comfy chair suits the bill!

THANKS TO ALL
WHO HAVE HELPED!

GET – THE COMFY CHAIR!!!


TTFN!