Simple Bytes

Summer is right around the corner, and along with family vacations and relaxing in the sun are opportunities to brush up on your technology skills.  The Wakerly Training Academy has announced its 2012 summer workshops. 

Opportunities exist for all ages including a technology refresher for adults, animation camps for kids and a multi-generational digital storytelling camp.  Learn how to use the software and cameras you already own or work with equipment provided by the program.

Courses are offered in full and half-day sessions as well as afternoon and evening. 

Check out http://www.muwta.com for day, time and to register!

I used to be amazed at the number of people my father knew; everyone from the clerk at the grocery story to the toll-booth worker on our way into (or leaving) Iowa seemed to be his friend.  His friendly chatter and smile was indeed infectious.  It carried on to all of his seven children.  I don’t believe any of us would be considered shy by today’s standards.

I was reminded of my dad the week I started at Marquette University.  Assistant Dean Rose Richards and I were walking down Wisconsin Avenue and a homeless person was passing.  Rose looked into their eyes and said “good morning, how are you?”.  This person smiled back and said “well the day is sunny so I’m doing good”.  As we walked on, Rose turned to me and said, “you know Carole, people just want to be acknowledged”.  She was right, and so was my father.  People need to be acknowledged, to be seen, to be spoken to by another person.

My father passed away in 2000 and Dean Richards has moved on to making a difference in the lives of students from Messmer High School.  But I think of both of them as I walk down Wisconsin Avenue.  I am sure I am known as the crazy lady at Marquette because I will look at anyone I can catch eye contact with and say “hello”.  Most of the time I get a smile and a nod-but often times my words fall on deaf ears.  Not because the person doesn’t want to hear my words, but because they can’t.  Ear buds are securely fastened restricting sound and allowing each individual to walk to the soundtrack they choose for their life.

How sad for them, because you see, smiling and meeting people’s eyes is what charges me up.  It gives me passion for my job and for the challenges of the day.  The world is far too serious and I need to make sure I am able to laugh at small mistakes or missteps.  Smiling is one way to make sure I don’t take my self too serious.

Another way is by talking to strangers.

Yup – I’m that person.  The one that talks on elevators and mentions simple things like the way ours seems to get phone calls from the information booth at the union, or at the street corner, mentioning how the salt on the side of the car has created a decoration in the shape of the Nike logo making it look just like a large shoe.

Today I stopped in the bank and spoke with the personal banker greeting people at the door.  We chatted for a bit and exchanged names.  Although I’m not positive she remembers me, I remember her name was Tracey.  When I left my pace was a little quicker and my heart was a little lighter.  It was going to be a good day.

In the world there are arguments about politics, religion, cheating sports teams, people’s rights, salary and percentages.  I know that when I was young and my father was driving us to Dubuque these same problems existed.  But perhaps we were more willing to be thoughtful of others because we took the opportunity to stop and talk.  We knew our neighbors and store clerks, we understood their position and they understood ours.  We were willing to bend a little because it helped make someone else’s life a little easier.  That was all because we took the time to communicate.

When I started at Marquette ten years ago and walked down the street with Rose, life wasn’t any easier, but still, an element of patience and understanding existed.  We were smiling and talkative as we returned to work.  I may have been on a “I have a great new job” high, but for some reason the air felt lighter and the halls seemed brighter.

I miss those days, but I know – that they don’t have to be gone from existence - currently they are just hidden behind technology.

I know I’m a bit late on this – but if you haven’t made a Lenten promise, perhaps it can be to put down the technology when you walk down the street, just once a day, and instead of checking emails or tweeting, meet the eyes of a stranger and say ‘hello’ – or ask how they are and really mean it, wait for an answer and listen to it.  You may be surprised how much nicer the world will become and how much stress is reduced.

It won’t cost you anything to try, and for a bonus, the only side effect it will produce is freedom.  Freedom to just be who you were when you were young.  Naive, carefree and happy.  Who knows, you may find a new friend or help someone else’s day to be a bit better – interpersonal communication is contagious – pass it on!

It amazes me that we will sit in line over night, in a driving rain, to see the latest movie. But ask anyone of your friends to go see a live play and they often times will think up a million reasons to not go. Lets look at the difference.

A movie can be seen for months – even years after its initial release. The movie will always be the same experience, with the same actors, sets and costumes, and unless it is released in 3D it will always give you the same experience.

A live play is only around 2, maybe 3 weekends. While the actors will, most of the time, complete the entire run, sometimes the understudy will take a major role. The costumes will flow with the wind and the lines can vary depending on the energy in the audience that night. Once it is over, you will never have the opportunity to experience it again.

A movie will cost you about $7 for a matinee, $9 for an evening show. A live play generally runs around $12, but the cost evens out when you get to refreshments. Popcorn and soda at a movie will easily remove that $10 bill from your wallet, while the live show has soda and candy for a mere $1 each.

Often times the live show will even allow you a break during the action in the form of intermission, making refills of your favorite snack as well as a bit of conversation to discuss plot and story line an enjoyable experience.

All of this seems to lean to the side of the live performance being a great way to spend an evening or Sunday afternoon.

So, why did I just attend the latest show at the Helfaer Theatre with roughly only 20 other people in attendance?

It isn’t due to cost (see second paragraph above).

Could it be because it wasn’t a “known show”? Seriously?

That excuse just doesn’t sit well with me – I mean – with the exception of Star Wars how often do you go see a movie and already know the storyline? OK – I’ll give you that the movie has probably been written up in every paper and teasers have flooded the theater, but hey – we do that for the Helfaer’s shows. Don’t believe me? Check out the many different avenues taken to get the word out – flyers, buttons, websites, electronic newsletters and friends of the theatre; there was a talk back and a introduction speech on two separate occasions – perfect chance to discuss the human condition and the place of science in the world.

It couldn’t be for lack of rehearsal by the actors-it was obvious that many hours of work went into this production.

In fact, the show I saw was excellent. I could tell that the cast and crew worked long and hard to assure that I had a professional level experience. I was not disappointed. The afternoon was sunny, but I didn’t see too many people out so I am wondering what could have kept them away from seeing the show. I’m sure that it couldn’t have been a show on television (I checked, but nothing good was on), or maybe the latest video game was keeping them inside and out of the seats, perhaps it was studying for mid terms – no, that is at least a week away, plenty of time to study.

So what could it be?

I’m hoping it isn’t because they forgot – I sent out plenty of notices, flyers were posted everywhere, and trailers were created and playing on YouTube to help advertise the show. So the only thing that makes sense is that people have forgotten the value of live theater.

The value of great art and a strong storyline. The joy of seeing the action play out right before you. No CGI, no green screens, no digital animation – just good, strong acting.

From as far back as man can document live theater has been the entertainment of choice. But not today, today we have so much more to look forward to, we can sit on our couch and let the world come to us. We can have food delivered and never have to change out of our pajamas. That way we don’t have to socialize or take the chance at learning of a new author or playwright that may just broaden our understanding of the world we live in. We don’t have to think or go deeper into understanding. We can just be.

I know you probably didn’t even think of those things. It has been a long time since live theater received the respect it deserves, so lets start a new trend. The final show of this season is “The Comedy of Errors” by William Shakespeare.

To make it easier for you here is a quick summary: Egeon, a merchant of Syracuse, is condemned to death in Ephesus for violating the ban against travel between the two rival cities. As he is led to his execution, he tells the Ephesian Duke, Solinus, that he has come to Syracuse in search of his wife and one of his twin sons, who were separated from him 25 years ago in a shipwreck. The other twin, who grew up with Egeon, is also traveling the world in search of the missing half of their family. (The twins, we learn, are identical, and each has an identical twin slave named Dromio.) The Duke is so moved by this story that he grants Egeon a day to raise the thousand-mark ransom that would be necessary to save his life.

OK – I don’t want to give up too much – but if you want to know more you can always check out the play from the library.

It may seem like a lot of time to give up, but give it a try. You can sit back and relax, turn off your phone and instead of multitasking, focus on one thing for a while. It will be the best gift you can give yourself, and I can guarantee – you won’t be disappointed.

In case you’re interested – here are those websites I mentioned!

http://diederich.marquette.edu/COC/Theatre-Arts.aspx

http://diederich.marquette.edu/COC/Mainstage-Season.aspx

Trailers can be found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5PmxikL8VQ&list=UUA0LZmQZpgzZBt99PrieZTA&index=1&feature=plcp

Hope to see you at the next play – in fact – stop in and I’ll sit next to you – refreshments are on me!

——————

I realized something last week while I was creating my ebook and away from my desk.

I get too many emails.

In fact, I get so many that I delete most of them without reading. This really brought me to the realization – I get so many emails is because I’ve entered some form of contest or downloaded a free app that has requested my email address.

Step one to email recovery – create a ‘pseudo’ email you can use to give out for home improvement show contests or at trade fairs, I mean, after all I really only wanted the free pen and not all the hassle that goes with it.

Step 2 – unsubscribe from any emails I really don’t want.

*insert sound of screeching tires here*

It really isn’t all that easy. Some sights can take the rejection like adults and simply allow you to leave with a nice ‘thanks for knowing you’.

Then there are the others, the ones that need to be coddled and want to know why you’re leaving. OK, I’ll answer your questions, but I still want to leave.

After answering the questions I receive another prompt – are you sure? What if we only bother you once a week?

For a second I falter and almost hit the check box allowing the weekly information. But I stand strong and hit unsubscribe.

*Ding*

my email notification goes off – I have received an email from the site I just unsubscribed from telling me I unsubscribed, and if it was in error I can click ‘here’ to re-subscribe.

Some sites just don’t take rejection well.

Then there are the ones that hope a ten day trail separation will be enough to bring you back or get you to change your mind.

Finally there are the sites that don’t want electronic rejection notes. They want to know in person why you’re leaving.

After chatting with the customer service representative and holding on strong to my unsubscribe mission I am finally junk mail free.

At least until the next hour goes by – somehow the 185 ‘unsubscribe’ emails I’ve waded through were just the tip of the iceberg. I turn my back for a mere second and ‘BAM’ more email appears.

I feel like I’m fighting a losing battle, but I stay the course and continue to unsubscribe for the remainder of the afternoon. I notice my incoming mail beep is getting further and further apart.

After three days of unsubscribing I can only hope the end is in sight. But lesson learned. That trip for two may sound nice, but in the end I know I won’t get the trip and instead receive daily annoying emails hoping I will purchase whatever it was they were selling.

Proving once again that my dad was right. You get what you pay for!

My goal this week was to create, from scratch, an interactive equipment manual for students and faculty in the college to access via mobile device.  I admit, it was an ambitious goal but I felt it was obtainable, especially since my Einsteins had created most of the video and graphic material I needed.

I didn’t quite make the goal.  I will have all the major components ready by the end of the day today – but I have some issues I want to resolve before I fully publish.  Things I want to make sure I understand (like, can I re-publish and replace the book if I make changes after initial upload) before I place this project on the almighty Apple iBook Bookshelf.

If you are toying with the idea of creating an iBook – here are some pointers for you.

1)  Use a word processing program to create the initial dialog.

iBook can import from Pages or Microsoft Word – this would have saved me a ton of time.  Instead I wrote everything directly into the iBook document, sometimes jumping from manual to online information to reference material so I made sure I called the equipment specifications by the proper name.

2) Don’t be afraid to move ahead and return to problem areas later.

I know I wrote that I was going to worry about hyperlinks and page/chapter order when I was finished, but somehow I got side-tracked and spent almost a half a day on the bookmark/hyperlink dilemma.  Which, by the way, is still not working properly.

3) Become a member of the lonely hearts club

Much time was lost due to interruptions for the other components of my job.  If you are going to be a successful author head for that cabin in the woods, bring lots of music and food (so you don’t have to run to the store for supplies and end up talking to the clerk about the new video game coming out) lock the door and don’t emerge until you are finished.

4) Be prepared to change layouts or delete pages.

Another good reason to create the content in word first, if you need to re-shuffle pages or change the layout you will be able to re-import the original content from the word document.  As it was I ended up recreating an entire chapter, which also put me off target.

5) Allow yourself to fail

I was so worried about meeting my goal that I spent way too much time in the office chair this week.  This resulted in sore muscles, eyes, and some paragraphs of information that truly made no sense.  Those have been removed.

In the end this will be a great tool for many applications.  There are some updates I hope to see released soon (like ease of hyperlink – think iWeb style) which will make the process more smooth for future – I solved the end note problem (for my minor publication) by creating the old-fashioned footnote in the next and adding a separate page at the end with my ‘works cited’.  I can tell you this is probably not something I would want to do all the time, but again, if I have created something in word (using footnotes) that may be easier.

Well there it is, barring any problems with publishing from Apple you should be able to download my e-book ”The Hitchhikers Guide to Technology” early next week.  Remember, it is a first time draft project, completed in a little less than two weeks so be kind.  However, I would love to hear from you and get your comments or suggestions.

Day two of my life with Apple’s iBook Author finds me deep in re-arranging. I now have a fairly good handle on the many features of the application and have completed another chapter. I only have about eight more to go, but each one has a familiar feel which will help move it along. My goal for publishing this Friday may have been a bit ambitious, but where would we be without ambitious goals – right?

Remember when I said on day one that I would worry about Hyperlinks on Thursday? Well, I lied.

I really wanted to see how my Index would easily jump to different topics so I tried to link it to the pages inside the chapter.  It isn’t as easy as I would hope it to be.  In fact, I seem to have lost ground working most of the day on this task.  I should have waited until Thursday.  But let me share with you my dilemma…

The thing that is frustrating me about the bookmarking feature is how to define a new hot link. I can’t seem to get the software to add headings or single lines of text to the book marks.

For those of you unfamiliar with this term, a bookmark in a digital text will allow end users to quickly move from section to section. I even opened up the ‘help’ function to try and see if there were any tricks I was missing. So far nothing is jumping off the page saying ‘do this to get your link to work!’

If you know the trick, please comment and share your knowledge.

I look at my list on the white board for the next step and try to clear my head of the book mark challenge.  I know it will come back to visit me soon and I will most likely spend the evening reading other blogs and Mac hints in search of a solution.

The other part of this is how to distribute beyond Apple’s iBook app.  You see, I hope I am able to create an inter-active PDF easily when I am finished so that I can share the book with those end users that may not have an Apple mobile devices (yes, they do exist).

But, that may have to wait for later this month.

Back to the book now, that chapter on Digital Voice Recorders isn’t going to write itself!

I would love to say that my first day as an iBook Author was smooth and seemless. But that would be a lie. Truth be told, much of the day was spent reading through tutorials and layout of the Resident Einstein Equipment Guide. I find it interesting that the first step of creating a manual is to read the manual for the software I’m about to use!

I put my digital storytelling skills to work and drew out a quick storyboard to guide me along the way. I have all the content I want to use, most of it created by the Einsteins; but I still need to add the narrative (text) portion. It is funny. Ask me just about any question and I’ll give you a 2-3 minute answer. Ask me to write that same question on paper and my mind goes completely blank. Talk about test anxiety!

For the next four days, this will be my life. Building, reviewing, editing. I have to say I am fairly proud of the first few pages. This morning I took the time to place them on an iPad to preview how it will look when completed.

This led me to a new discovery. It is difficulty (even for me) to think in interactive terms. On the first page of the manual I have outlined what can be found in the text. You know what would make it really spiffy?

Hyperlinks

Wrote that down for Thursday’s task. I want to keep moving forward with what I have and I will worry about interactivity, hyperlinks and glossary items on Thursday. This will keep me moving in a linear fashion. I am, after all, a programmer at heart.

So to sum up – here is the lesson from day one:
Plan – have an idea of what it is you want to include in your text
Gather – get all photo’s, video and URL’s together so you don’t have to stop your forward progress to locate them later.
Sketch – create a flow chart or storyboard of what your book will look like
Share – ask others to look over your plan and give you ideas for interactivity or confusion
Preview – probably the biggest component – be sure to keep previewing yoru progress. Without it I would never have thought of the hot links to different areas of my book.
Log – I am planning on using this blog to log my progress and check back for ideas I want to include in the end.

If you are near the Wakerly, stop and look in the window. I have the preview of the book up for viewing and you can watch the process first hand!

See you in the papers!