I'm not sure that c2k is the right list for this, so if you're
not intimately involved with the tedium of c2k, now would be
a good time to hit 'd'.
> 1) How did Demo Day go?
The frustration felt by all of us from school work and other
pressures did get to us a bit. Several miscommunications
between us led to many problems, but we held together as
a team and pulled off a good presentation in the end, if a bit
more disorganized than usual. Special thanks to Dale for
his "take-charge" attitude concerning the presentations.
1) The VGA-=>TV converter is only about 600x400 (ie, not 640x480)
which means you can't see (ever) the bottom of the computer
screen (ie, Pace, Important, Content)
I tried to do a "quick fix" to classpad and make it resizable,
but in the end, all I did is make a bug that I didn't have
time to figure out- a priority for the week.
Whose idea was it anyway to remove the window controls? <grin>
2) The missing cable: We jumped Mikol as he was the last person
associated with the "magic" cable to connect the toshiba
to the internet. All we seem to have are cables that "look"
like they fit, but don't. (actually dialogue with Randy)
Randy: Here's the cable.
Me: No, that's not it.
R: Yeah it is, here, see? It fits there.
M: No it doesn't, try it...
R: Oh yeah... That's weird.
You can substite Randy with anyone else (me included) in this
group- my point is that, well, I'll get to that in a minute.
But for now, suffice to say that we have many confusing cables-
even to the most experienced eyes.
> 2) What is the hardware situation? Dale hinted that there
> were problems with a number of units and this was backed up
> by Jason's mail.
Three units were out before hand- of those, I think the one
with the missing pen drivers can be salvaged.
Two units are experiencing odd memory problems which may or may
not be classpad related or missing windows files related.
More probing necessary.
The other units, with much elbow grease (which Dale and Valerie are
currently pumping into) will probably be okay.
> 3) Are the notes for Tuesday's lecture available yet? I don't
> see them on the Web syllabus yet. Once the student's notes are
> available, they need to be informed on how to access them.
Some student notes were taken on machines with no disk space.
It appears that classpad respond gracefully (not thanks to me)
but the downside is the studend may have only seen like, 7 total
slides. And no complaints. So, those students only have a limited
number of notes.
Dale and Val are working on getting the students notes transferred
now- and this is NO SMALL TASK given the state of the machines.
We owe them a Supreme Pizza.
> 5) I will be identifying 4-5 long-term subjects for this quarter's
> class. They will begin taking notes in Tuesday's class, unless
> something comes up on Monday to prevent that.
On this issue: You have Jason selected- as Riker would say,
"I feel it's my duty to inform you captain, that he has had
a class on HCI taught by Ben Schneiderman which seems counter
productive to our goal of picking students without prior HCI
experience."
On this note- look for my comments to Wendy's comments in a future
mail...
> 6) Any progress/reports on Web or audio logging?
Mikiya has the system scripts ready, so we can start practicing
on the mirror data... unfortunately, I'm not the Unix guru he
thinks me to be, and I have to consult with him for a bit...
And now here's something we hope you really like...
Based on this week's experiences, and how it looks like other
folks (FCE) are going to be regulary using the equip. as well---
***IMPORTANT THOUGHT #1***
we need to (re?) organize the equip. area. This includes putting
stuff in the new black cabinet, and providing labels to where things
should go- cables, machines, etc. Also, we should strive to keep
unit specific cables (like the ethernet cable) with the units
that they work with, and not just a big pile of ethernet cables.
***IMPORTANT THOUGHT #2***
With the need to minimize setup time, I think I thought of a way
to make the process quicker- details at the meeting tomorrow
upon request.
About the meeting.
#$%$^%%$^&$%. If there's one thing that I have formed an impression
about Tech, it's that they invariably schedule important meetings
to coincide. There's a grad meeting (with free pizza no less!)
that I'm missing tomorrow... :(
(sob, sob)
Jason