Finished Portfolio :-)

I finished my portfolio and overall I am pleased with the result. I wish we had more formal instruction on style sheets. It took me about 4 hours to figure out how to make my page heading larger and brick read.

My portfolio

On the way to a completed portfolio…

Well, I figured out what the problem was with my file name and my portfolio page not appearing on the web as it should. I mistakenly named the file “portfolio_slade.html.html” and that is why it wasn’t showing up. It’s always the simplest things that seem to gum up the works. However, when you only have an inkling of what you’re doing and figuring out part takes ten times longer than the actual task-completing part…and little mistakes cause major delays in moving forward with the project and major headaches.

This afternoon I am going to try and figure out how to format headings and margins with my external style sheet. I’m not having a problem with the syntax of the actual style sheet. Additionally, my style sheet communicates the background color and the body text formatting perfectly. But the other formatting for the headings and margins the gets lost somewhere. Now comes the process of trial and error to pull a very simple solution out of thin air. I think learning Japanese would be less frustrating.

Incognito Portfolio

My portfolio page does not want to be called “portfolio_slade.html.” A webpage by that filename gave me an error message. I checked the permissions and the file’s location and those checked out. After trying several more things I changed the file name to “slade.html” on a whim and now my portfolio is visible. I really don’t get it.

Webpage 2

Fragment of American Notes, by Charles Dickens with links.

Jargon Generators

There are two jargon generators that I would like to recommend.

John's Jargon Generator for Information & Library Scientists
This jargon generator is on the server of The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. This generator is just for fun.

AND

A CS Research Topic Generator
This generator is published through the Computer Science Department at Purdue University. The interesting aspect of this generator is that in addition to creating a random computer topic…there is also the option to select “Perform Literature Review,” which searches Google Scholar for your topic. Very cool!

Jargon—friend or enemy?

Throughout the Dickens Fragment assignment I became aware of how much computer jargon is out there. Some of it is straightforward and understandable and some of the computer jargon I came across really sounds outlandish and it makes me wonder why would we even use it instead of standard English. Jargon does indeed serve its purpose. It eliminates the need for extensive explanation of processes and concepts (both simple and complex) within the conversational framework between peers.

But you can’t use jargon with someone who doesn’t understand it. Take knitting instructions, for example. If you are a non-knitter, then knitting instructions sound like mumbo-jumbo. The following is an introductory paragraph on how to complete a “long tail cast-on.”

“This cast-on is the favorite of many knitters. It creates a discreet edge that looks good with stockinette stitch and is stretchy enough to accommodate ribbing. It's easier to knit from than the simpler Backward Loop cast-on, and it's easy to execute once you get the hang of it. Recommended for beginners, or anyone.”

As information professionals we mostly likely will not be giving kitting instructions but we do need to be keenly aware of the words we choose when we are working with someone to meet his information need. Shop talk may feel comfortable for those in the field but it is confusing and frustrating for those who don’t understand it.

How I managed to put “the fragment” on the Internet

First, I downloaded PuTTY, Kompozer, and FileZilla onto my computer. Next, I logged into PuTTY. I found “public” but I couldn’t find “html” or “index.html.” I ended my PuTTY session. I decided to check out FileZilla and confirmed that “html” or “index.html” didn’t exist. Then when I went to log back into PuTTY denied me access. I would type my username and then the system would prompt me for a password and then wouldn’t accept my password. I did try this several times—no caps lock and I typed my password very carefully. I called the Helpdesk to find out why my access was denied. The IT person I talked to didn’t know what the problem was and very adamantly refused to find out. He told me to install WinSCP, which is a free SFTP and FTP client for Windows. I installed WinSCP and discovered the “html” file had appeared in “public.” The “html” file was also now visible when I logged into FileZilla. I used Kompozer and FileZilla to post my webpage. This was very easy barring a minor freak-out monument on the road to figuring out the URL of my page.

Webpage

Fragment of American Notes, by Charles Dickens

Access Denied

I'm locked out of unixs.cis.pitt.edu.

This isn't good.

The Return of Jing

The Jing sunshine has suddenly reappeared. It’s very odd. I thought computer programs only did what humans told them to do. I haven’t accessed Jing or reinstalled it. However, the Jing sun that had disappeared from the top, center of my computer screen has now reappeared. Prior to this reappearance when I turned my computer on and the prompt from Jing appeared I just when into the Windows Task Manager, selected Jing, and clicked, “End Task.” Now (inexplicably) Jing has reinstalled itself.

During the break from classes in August I really should just back up my files and wipe this computer.

A few more thoughts on Koha

I figured out that if you use funkier barcodes, then the system will let you add your item to your list. For example, “236524896523245236521” does not work but “f6asdfsdf245sdf2” does. I guess the key is to mix some letters in.

Also, I decided that I would explore Koha. I looked up the patrons and then I looked up my name. When I found that I had a library card within the system I decided I would checkout a book. Koha wouldn’t let me checkout a book. Maybe the system is designed to prohibit self-checkout.

Koha >:-(

I am having two problems with this system:

1: When I click to save an imported MARC record I receive an error message that reads, "Can't save this record because the following field aren't filled: *tag 003 subfield 0 control field in tab 0." What is this?

If I click "ok" then Koha moves along as it should (I guess) and saves the record. I then create a barcode and save the record again. This then leads me to my second problem.

2: When I attempt to add my catalogue item to my list the system won't do it and gives me the following message "A record matching barcode 125364589642563214862 has already been added." However, I can't see any items in the list and the count says that there are "0 item(s)." What is going on here? Am I missing some important step like checking a box or setting preferences or something?

Gripe: How come there are no results for any searches of the Koha catalogue...even when you search for items you just added?

The disappearance of Jing

Jing’s little sunshine icon remained at the top, middle part of my screen until just recently when it disappeared. Now when I turn on my computer Jing pops up with a message that encourages me to reinstall it. How Jing ever uninstalled itself I’m sure I have no idea.

Book Recommendation

During our last class we talked a little bit about how people who have advanced degrees and people with good enough degrees (GED) compare when viewed through the lens of our discriminating society.

I would like to suggest the following book. It puts a whole new spin on how to view success.

Gladwell, M. (2008). Outliers: The Story of Success. New York: Little, Brown, and Company.

Port problems

I work for a Pitt entity in a UPMC building. The Internet ports, along with other types of hardware like the phone lines and such, are owned by UPMC. However, in order for the Pitt employees who work in the office to connect to a Pitt server, the ports were mapped to the Pitt VLAN (Virtual Local Area Network). This set up is true for all of the ports in the office except for one, which wasn’t mapped to the Pitt VLAN by the request of the Ethicist who currently occupies the office where this lonely port is located. The Ethicist is moving to an office across the hall. He needs a UPMC port in that office. He’s moving to a smaller office because there are five women and a large grant moving into our office space at the end of next month. The women are Pitt employees. With the exception of the office the Ethicist is vacating the other offices these women will occupy have been vacant for some time.

Mission: to get the UPMC helpdesk and the Pitt helpdesk to communicate with each other to have ports activated (if necessary) and to get a UPMC port mapped to the Pitt VLAN.

My office is a real gray area. It’s a clash of jurisdictions.

(In regards to the Ethicist and his new office…I think it should be pretty easy to ask UPMC to install a port, because at least we won’t have to worry about having to get the two helpdesks to communicate for task.)

A story of a request for a SMTP exception

We have a new printer/copier in our office. It’s a SHARP MX-M283N. It’s very nice. It has a scan-to-email function, which is not set up. I called the printer/copier company to find out how we get this feature set up and our printer/copier representative said that we needed to put in a ticket with CSSD and request and SMTP exception.

SMTP stands for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol and we need an exception made in the firewall so that we can email our scans from the copier. Right now the port is a one-way street with information (print jobs) going in and once the exception is made it will be a two-way street with the ability to emails to go out.

In order to complete this request CSSD needed the IP address of the printer/copier and the number of the port. We ran into a problem here because we are a Pitt entity in a UPMC building with Pitt-owned ports. None of the ports are labeled. Therefore, we needed to find the MAC address or Media Access Control address, which also can be called the hardware address or the physical address. You can find the physical address of your computer (if it is running Windows) if you go into the Command Prompt and type “ipconfig /all” and hit return. However, finding the physical address of a printer/copier is a little bit trickier.

The user has to login to the printer/copier as an administrator, follow a chain of menus via the touch screen, and then print a test page, which is actually a configuration report—the MAC address is listed in that report.

Can we scan-to-email now? No, but we should be able to do this when we come into work on Monday 6/28 after the upcoming Change Management period according to CSSD.

Two recent articles on cloud computing

There are two articles in May/June 2010 issue of EDUCAUSE Review Magazine on cloud computing that I think add to last night’s discussion on the subject. The following are links to these articles:

Cloud Computing and the Power to Choose
By Rob Bristow, et al.
"Examples from Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom illustrate both the opportunities and the risks involved in adopting cloud computing and cloud services."

Looking at Clouds from All Sides Now
By Richard N. Katz, et al.
"Higher education and corporate leaders offer their perspectives on the promise and peril that may lie ahead for cloud computing and above-campus services."

EDUCAUSE Review Magazine Volume 45, Number 3, May/June 2010

First impression of Omeka

I added an item in Omeka but it didn’t go into my collection. I thought it would because first I went to collections and then I selected my collection and then I went to “Add an Item.” However, this didn’t exactly work. I added an item but it ended up in no man’s land! Super confusing. Also, is there a way that I can import an item into Omeka and not have to go through the tedious process of having copy and paste the information into the Dublin Core fields. I’ll just work at it until I get my 15 items IN my collection.

Lingering thoughts on the Zotero screen cast

Once I figured out how to complete the Zotero assignment it was fairly easy. At first I forgot about using screencast.com. That was my main problem in posting my screen cast on my blog and the screen cast was too big to upload. The only thing that I am still a little sad about is that setting the size of the screen cast didn’t work out as I had hoped it would. When I set the size it was either too big or too small. I can’t really tell….but I suspect that Blogspot doesn’t have the ability to offer the option to set imbedded links to open in new windows.

How to Install the Firefox Extention Zotero

Thoughts on installing…Firefox, Jing, and Zotero

First I installed Firefox. I didn’t install it before now because I know that with my computer it would take FOR-E-VER! And it took about 20 minutes because my browser froze the first time I attempted it. Installing Zotero was easy except I wasn’t sure what website to visit to begin the installation. However, before I looked into installing this extension I Googled how to uninstall it. It’s good to have a backup plan.

There is a version of Zotero you can install from http://addons.mozilla.org and there is a version you can access from www.zotero.org. I visited the first site and decided I would complete a trail installation so that I would know what I was talking about when I recorded my screencast. When I clicked to download I received a security warning. Rather than risk destroying an already crippled computer I attempted the trail installation from the second website and still received a security warning so I figured it wouldn’t matter which site I used.

Next, I went about installing Jing using my new Firefox browser. This was a frustrating experience. First, I couldn’t find my “sun.” The demo said I should have one but I couldn’t find it anywhere on my toolbar or hovering about my screen. I assumed that Jing must not have been installed properly and I began the steps to install it again and found that new programs are listed in a little ready-to-install-box. Is this just a Jing thing or is this a Firefox thing? Either way I thought it was annoying that the installation wasn’t a straightforward series of menus prompting the user to read the directions, check the appropriate boxes and then click, “next” until the user can click, “finish” and be done with it.

I recorded my screencast. Old headphones with the fuzzy pads ripped off are a good substitute for a microphone. I’m fairly satisfied with the result of the recording except my gimpy computer was slow to restart Firefox so viewers have a nice long shot of my desktop.

Now, I’m sitting here typing my frustrations away and wishing that I had been able to upload my screencast video. It simply couldn’t get past the “Processing video” stage. Thirty minutes of that seems a little excessive. I’ll try again later. Now off to bed.

Thoughts on hard drives and storage:

I thought the schematics and labeled photos of the hard drives in the presentation were very informative. I really didn’t know how hard drives worked until Tuesday’s class and I think using pictures was the best way to go about it since the terminology for all of the different parts is a little odd. I’m curious to know why the individual who invented the hard drive called the disk space a “platter.” It seems to be more of a culinary rather than a mechanical term.

The concept of RAID (redundant array of independent/inexpensive disks) has me a little confused. I am not clear on how this exactly works. Is more than one disk drive recording the same thing at the same time? Are the drives different physical objects or are they virtual drives? Finally, what are the differences between RAID 0, 1, and 5?

Interesting thing about IP addresses…

The interesting thing about IP addresses is that if your office or section has already been assigned your allotted number of them, then it is tricky to get the new person in the office access to the Internet. There is an intern in my office for the summer and the office to which she was assigned needed a computer (just the tower) and Internet connection. A rebuilt computer was installed in her office and then came the Jenga game process of determining which IP addresses in the office were in use and which ones were not. Ed (the IT guy) did this and I observed. He gave the intern an address previously assigned to one of the faculty members who rarely comes into the office and who doesn’t have a computer or much of anything else in his office.

In class we talked about static and dynamic IP addresses. As I understand it the set amount of IP addresses allotted to our office are static IP addresses. I assume that the reason our office has a set amount of IP addresses is money. So, that leads to me to question…how much does an individual static IP address cost?

Another thought or two about Refworks:

This program would be great for a researcher who has a lot of source documentation to organize, because it pulls (for the most part) all of the pertinent information a researcher would need to properly cite a source and Refworks can format this information to comply with a variety of style methods. However, as I was combing through my reference list, I noticed that not only was some of the important information missing, but that some of the information was incorrect. For example, I discovered that one journal citation was missing the volume and issue numbers. So, I looked up the article in question to ascertain where it is located in the scheme of this journal’s publication. I learned that the page numbers in the citation were incorrect. Researchers who use this program need to proof read their citations. Refworks has the potential to be a friend to those who want to be lazy.

A few thoughts about Refworks:

I began my Refworks assignment this past Monday and much to my dismay I am still working on it. However, I am determined to finish before Friday so that I can enjoy the long weekend. Figuring out Refworks and Scopus were fairly easy. I just poked around and tried a few things until I got the hang of it. I work and learn much better from a hands-on approach. Although, I had to use the help guide in Refworks to learn that I needed to set my preferences in Google Scholar fist before I would have the option of exporting my source to Refworks. Overall, I think that Refworks is an easy-to-use and helpful program. My only hang-up is that it doesn’t always capture all of the information needed to complete a citation. I have my 100 citations and I’m currently working on filling in the holes that Refworks left behind. Sometimes the information is in the Refworks record but was left out of the citation, and sometimes the information simply isn’t there and I need to look up that work again to find it. I’m also looking though my collection of references and marking the ones that I found using Scopus to separate them from the references from Google Scholar. I looked but Refworks does not appear to have the capability of carrying out this task for me.

My thoughts on operating systems:

Unfortunately, I do not a lot of experience with different types of operating systems. A lot of my computer experience is PC-based and Windows-based, except for that bit in college when I was Editor-in Chief of the Setonian. It’s a bummer now that I can’t remember what version of OS was on the Macs at Seton Hill University when I attended there. I have come to the conclusion that it had to have been something between OS 10.1 and 10.3. With all of the time, money, and research that Apple puts into creating and updating their operating systems, it’s a shame that neither OS 10.1 through OS 10.3 made an impression on me. I must not have a very close relationship with my computers.

Lastly, (and I don’t think this was in the slides on 5/18) but there are programs that allow you to run Windows on a Mac. How about that? I did not know this until recently when I conducted a little casual research. Apple says that their computers are “built for compatibility.” The Apple site the previous link takes you to is very promotion-focused, but informative.

I guess I just take MS Word and friends for granted.

My thoughts on hardware:

The hardware portion of a computer is interesting. It is, of course, what we can see and how we can physically interact with the processes of the computer. Hardware is also what comes to mind first when I think about computers. Additionally, I think that it is interesting that while I can see these letters that I am typing I know that they are not physically there, but are a visual representation of a series of ones and zeros. Also, I would like to say that I think a motherboard looks like a miniature city. Lastly, I am still not sure how RAM works.

Computer experience:

My experience with computers began in elementary school. My first grade classroom had three Apple computers and what I remember the most is that these computers were large, beige, and before any work could start I needed to type “home” to move my curser to the top of the page.

When I entered 4th grade I changed schools and became acquainted with PCs. As a kid I don’t recall noticing any differences between Apple computers and PCs other than my new school had a lab with rows and rows of computers and that these computers had games you could play.

In high school I took a typing class and a class that focused on teaching the different programs that are part of Microsoft Office. I also took a Computer Science class. The most advanced program I wrote was a white dot the bounced across the screen.

I worked with both Apple computers and PCs in college, which gave me experience with a variety of software. All of the computer labs on campus contained PCs except for the Mac lab, which was reserved for Graphic Design majors and students who worked on the school's literary magazine or the Setonian, the school paper. I served as editor-in-chief of the Setonian for a year.

Currently, I sit in front of a computer all day. It’s a PC. As part of my job I am the content manager for two websites: CompassionateCareforAll.org and POWHER (Project on Women's Health, Empowerment, and Rights.)

I understand some HTML, but it is definitely not a language that I dream in.

Introduction:

This is the second blog I have ever created. I created the first one as an undergrad at Seton Hill University for an Internet Journalism class. I was neither impressed with my writing nor keen on preserving the content for all time so I deleted my first blog. The writing, which is to follow in biweekly posts, will be an exploration in learning about computers and the importance of these machines to communication, information sharing, and digital libraries.