winkingstar, posts by tag: computers - LiveJournal

I made the OTW [blush]! Hee! :D

We had a mini-conference at my library on Wednesday to show off our awesomeness demonstrate our digital projects, and one of the afternoon sessions was about our e-journal publishing, for which we use OJS (Open Journal Systems). Someone in the audience asked if OJS could support multimedia and our e-journal librarian wasn't sure since we haven't tried that yet, but I piped up and mentioned Transformative Works & Cultures since they use OJS, too, and they are totally multimedia. And then one of the library interns tweeted about it! She came up to me after the sessions were over to squee because she's a fan and she's also on one of the OTW teams. We now have plans to grab lunch together sometime and also to brainstorm ideas for social media gaming stuff to go along with some of my digital projects. I am terribly excited at the prospect of a kindred spirit!!

Oh, I also gave a speech at our mini-conference! :O And although I was rather sick to my stomach beforehand, it went really well. AND two people from another university told me later that my projects are "inspirational"! So Wednesday was a terribly exciting day all around! \o/

And today two of our tech geeks were able to help me fix some problems with my online exhibit site (one of said problems having to do with Microsoft being stupid and making things needlessly complicated, grr). It is pretty cool having tech geeks around. And our geeks are all awesome and friendly. Also, I think I've mentioned before how we have these geeks on hand to develop and maintain our open source software initiatives, and I was telling my dad about how much I love being part of an open source team even though I don't actually write any code or anything, but then I realized I am a software developer of sorts! In that, I am helping test our new digital library software so I get to try to break it. :D

This entry was originally posted at http://winkingstar.dreamwidth.org/….

Not my first computer program ever, 'cause I took an intro computer science class before I started my master's, but for that course we just used some Microsoft language I can't even remember the name of, rather than a language that anyone actually uses. So now I've written my first program in a language that is used more widely. It's just a dumb little program that just asks for your first and last names and then displays them, but I still feel quite accomplished. :)

See, as part of my real-world education, I am taking an online computer science course to learn the basics of programming. It's super-cool because 1) it's an MIT course for free via their OpenCourseWare program and 2) there's a group doing it together on a DW comm (intro_to_cs) so there are classmates and deadlines to keep you motivated. I ♥ the internet!

(I am already behind on the course, though, because I had to wait for my new laptop before I could start. But hopefully I will get caught up soon!)

I am already a baby!programmer! eee!! :)

.edit: Also, one of the readings mentioned that programming errors are called bugs for "whimsical reasons", so naturally I scampered over to the Oxford English Dictionary to check out the first usage!

bug, n.²
definition b. A defect or fault in a machine, plan, or the like. orig. U.S.
first recorded usage:
1889 Pall Mall Gaz. 11 Mar. 1/1 Mr. Edison, I was informed, had been up the two previous nights discovering 'a bug' in his phonograph—an expression for solving a difficulty, and implying that some imaginary insect has secreted itself inside and is causing all the trouble.

♥ the OED. :D



This entry was originally posted at http://winkingstar.dreamwidth.org/….

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This entry was originally posted at http://winkingstar.dreamwidth.org/….

1) I went up to Baltimore yesterday for a space shindig. :D NASA + other space sciency folks were celebrating 50 years of Maryland's "Place in Space", since a lot of the companies involved in space exploration and technology are based in Maryland. There were booths and speakers and robots (and supposedly WALL-E, though I sadly did not see him) and space geeks galore. And they had goodies, too, so now I have some pretty Hubble litho prints and two posters (a pretty Earth Day one and a Hubble Service Mission 4 one with the space shuttle and Hubble). Of the speakers, there was Ricky Arnold, who spoke about his time on the ISS (I have such a massive crush on the ISS♥), and two Tuskegee Airmen, and then there was a mini-documentary about the history of telescopes (this year being the 400th anniversary of Galileo looking at Jupiter through his telescope). And I also stopped by the Baltimore Harbor, to get a dose of the sea, too.

2) My stepdad is awesome and he is going to buy a new, lighter laptop and send it to me to take to Germany. So that way I can wait to buy my own new laptop until I have more money. (Or, um, any money.) (Hoping, of course, that Lizzie (my current laptop) makes it to the end of the year.) Yay for awesome parents! \o/

3) Podfic! I'm back in action! Sort of. It's a short story (~800 words) and reading that was still making my throat go a bit itchy. But here 'tis:

// The Breath Before Our New Beginning by such_heights (Merlin, M/A)

And I've already got a massively blush-inducing comment on it, for which I blame lavvyan, even though she didn't write it. ♥

Alas, amplificathon is over tomorrow. I had such great plans, but then I got the triple plague. See, I was going to do some podfic gifties for my fans. I'll still try to do them, but now I'm getting busy again, so we'll see.

I must beg a favour, flisters. Would anyone be willing to beta-read my Fanlore study? I've got the professor as my communities of practice/theory specialist, I've got friends and family I can con into being grammar/spelling/does it make sense to outsiders specialists, but I would also love some fandom specialists. I'm writing this for publication (!) and so I want to make sure it makes sense to a general audience. I will probably (hopefully) have a draft later this week for the version I need to turn in for the class, and then will have another draft sometime in May or June for the publication version.

So, any beta-readers? *bats eyelashes winsomely*

*

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What's not to love about a poem that makes fun of Microsoft? :P

I can finally get into the class website I was whingeing about the other day! On my own computer! \o/

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Why, yes, I am spending my Friday night fretting about classes and vanquishing stupidity. Because I am that lame.

... and I'm already behind. *headdesk*

See, for my Communities of Practice class, we're doing a lot of stuff on a social networking site, so the professor sent out the link for us to sign up for that on Monday. I registered, but it won't let me get past the sign in page. When I enter my username and password, it just clears the form, like I mistyped the password or something, which I didn't and it doesn't give me any error messages at all so I have no clue what's going on. I did everything I could think of, including clearing my cookies, manually adding the site to my "accept cookies from" list, switching from the wireless connection to the landline, and renewing my IP address. My antivirus is up-to-date and just did a full scan on Monday, and I updated and ran my anti-adware program. But nothing works. And the bloody thing won't give me any error messages. I sent an email to the support team and haven't heard back. We were supposed to read a couple articles for class today if we had time, which I couldn't do because they were posted on the site. So I stopped in a computer lab on my way to class this afternoon to check if I'd got a reply from the support team yet (still no) and then try logging in again to see if it had magically fixed itself. And— it worked! I didn't have time to do anything, though, as I had to dash off to the actual class. So I tried logging in again as soon as I got home and the bloody thing still doesn't work. ARGH. And lab computer has the exact same version of Firefox as I have. Apparently it just hates my computer. I am utterly baffled, supremely annoyed, and altogether very GRRR. I've sent another email to the support team to add that it only hates my computer and an email to the professor to obtain next week's readings via attachment.

On the bright side, the class seems awesome and I only slipped on the treacherous seas of ice once today (without serious bodily harm, even).

But dude, I was already panicking about term papers last weekend (before classes even started), and I'm also starting to panic about graduation (in December, if all goes to plan), and now this course site hates me, so apparently this is just going to be a super-fun semester. *kicks things*

*sulks*

I have been at the Uni for four hours now, working on the PowerPoint for the management presentation. D: I just got back from taking a quick lunch break though, and when I got up to the Stu-U there was some random band playing outside. So I took my food out and sat in the nice terrace area, in the lovely sunshine, with some cheerful music. :)

On the other hand, cramps like whoa and I forgot to bring Advil with me. :( And I still have more work to do on the PowerPoint. And then when I go back to the house, there is more JavaScript woe awaiting me.

But the computer lab I am in is very nice and pristine and neat and the computers are new and running Windows XP. Very exciting! I'm glad at least the iSchool (nee CLIS) cares about their computer equipment. The labs I've been in elsewhere on campus are horrible: messy, bits of paper and trash all over the floors, monitors coated in dust, and the computers run Windows 2000. Also, this is apparently a secret lab, so I have it all to my self. :)

Back to work!

This week in my computer class we've been studying databases, which seems likely to be the most helpful bit for a future librarian. I was a tad worried on Monday when the lecture nearly bored me to tears, but in lab today it was much more understandable (and interesting!). I guess I'm just better with hands-on learning with computer stuff. :)

And a poem to match my mood...

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I currently have 119.3% in my Computer Information Systems class. I pwn teh computerz. I think I'll probably still do the extra credit paper, just to be on the safe side, since we're heading into more unfamiliar territory for me now (programming-ish things). And I'm a dork, too. :P

I didn't get to post my poem yesterday because my stepdad was having work problems and was therefore hogging the network when I got home from class last night, so it's a twofer today.

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And now I'm off to a babysitting gig.