Arranged Delirium

One of the most frustrating and frequent technical dilemmas I face regularly involves printing. Any kind of printing. Images, syllabi, assignment sheets, reimbursement forms - you name it, I’ve got problems printing it. Laser or inkjet, I’ve got problems with it.

Now, something that concerns me, is that I’m actually (believe it or not) fairly technically inclined. So, I can find my way out of most of these problems (although admittedly it annoys me greatly since its typically 5 minutes before class). But I’ve had a number of students complaining of their own printing issues as well, so I offer up this decent article from MacWorld that does a nice job of sorting through some common printing problems. My own issues tend to come from driver problems which Apple has tended to address via system software updates, but I think I’ve probably faced each of the examples in the article at least once.

BTW, I also have difficulty photocopying…

With thanks toward A.W. (a friend from high school) I present you with Nic Cage as Everyone. Admittedly, some of the Photoshop work is poor, but it’s still funny. It also underscores why folks should think twice about posting pictures to the web. Granted, you may not be a public a figure as Mr. Cage, but…

If you’ve been following some of my earlier posts on moving away from cable and satellite service, You might be interested in this article from the New York Times. It seems that television via Internet is going mainstream…

Students in New Media are beginning to edit their films in earnest this week. For this intro class, we’re using iMovie. There are a number of useful guides online for learning the specifics of the software (and of course, there’s always the book!), including Apple’s site as well as this handy MacWorld article regarding customizing work space, which can be useful when learning new software tools.

Several students have been asking about my web development course being offered this spring, so this seemed the most efficient way to share details. ITL 370 is our introductory web design and development course. We focus foremost on learning the coding necessary for creating web content (XHTML and CSS, currently), and forego the use of WYSIWYG editors until the final project; however by that time most students tend to just keep working with the text editor. We also focus of design issues - specifically addressing how our knowledge of the basic design principles impact usability and effective communication. This course also addresses basic scripting.

Our advanced course (ITL 409) looks at dynamic web development and focuses on the underlying technologies that generate web content on the fly. My own areas of expertise/interest are MySQL and PHP. I think that to truly be able to become an effective web developer, you need both courses. If you just want to learn the basics ITL 370 alone is enough.