Comments

Comments from this week, maybe a bit late:

http://lostscribe459.blogspot.com/2010/10/week-7-muddiest-points.html?showComment=1288548418904#c1670622886336089087

http://iandtupitt.blogspot.com/2010/10/reading-notes-for-111.html?showComment=1288548668466#c2415067922999300795

Muddy Points

Still no muddy points. 

Reading

As the first 2 readings covered basically the same ideas, this will be a ^short entry.

These were some of the most useful readings so far.  Sadly, I know very little about HTML, and creating websites.  The first two readings helped me a lot.  I know HTML when I see it, and knew how to do the little things, like inserting links and images, but these were very informative.  On top of being informative, they were very easy to read and understand.  I liked that we could follow each lesson and try it ourselves.

The second reading was a bit more difficult to understand, mainly because I have no experience having to use CSS.  The guide was very informative though, and will stay in my bookmarks so that I can go back to reference it in the future.

I'm trying not to use the tools in blogger to change font sizes, I'm trying to use my new HTML skills.

Readings

The howstuffworks.com reading was actually very interesting to me. A lot of us take for granted that the internet "just works."  We often don't think about how or why it works.  I've learned what all of the acronyms (HTTP, IP, DNS, URL, etc.) stood for long ago, but I've forgotten them as the years have gone by.  As our last set of readings showed us, networks are everywhere now, and are completely simple to set up in one's own home.  This reading reminded me what a network really was, and what it really takes to make it work.

The ILS reading was interesting for me, as a library employee.  I've had experience working with a few of the ILSs that the article mentions, Sirsi Dynix and Millenium.  Right now I work a lot with the Voyager ILS.  The article is correct in that librarians often don't think about the ILS, because it is generally not viewed by the public.  Most of the librarians in the library that I work for wouldn't even know how to use one, to be quite honest.  They have, for the most part, very ugly GUIs and aren't very flexible.  But, I do think that they do the job that are tasked to them.  They make MARC records very easy to read, and make editing and adding/subtracting record easy as well.  I don't know enough about the innovations in the ILS world to comment on that part, but I do understand the need because, as I said, they are very clunky and unintuitive.

The Brin and Page talk was very interesting to listen to. Probably the most interesting part to me though, was thinking about how much has changed in the last 6+ years that this was filmed.  Google was a relative baby in the internet game at this point, but was already huge.  I'd like to see an updated version of a talk with the two founders. 

Muddy points fasttrack

No muddy points from last weekend's lecture.

Comments

http://lostscribe459.blogspot.com/2010/10/week-7-readings.html?showComment=1287709547654#c4927098265106678477

http://elviaarroyo.blogspot.com/2010/10/week-7-internet-and-www-technologies.html?showComment=1287709791357#c1885491082640374191

Assignment 4

My CiteULike link:

http://www.citeulike.org/user/mer7/library

OE: Online Education
GS: Google Scholar
CUL: CiteULike

Assignment 3

Jing Video:
http://www.screencast.com/users/mer7/folders/Jing/media/fca7c9dc-18ec-4177-b995-558ce32560b5

There is a little bit of audio, but too quiet and distorted to really understand.  The idea that I was going for was to show the user how to access Pitt's online resources from a home computer.  In order to do that, one has to first sign in through the sremote service.  After that, you can access any of the databases.  I chose Academic Search Premiere to show off.  I also showed how you can limit your search results within Academic Search Premiere.

Screen Captures from Flikr:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/40907783@N03/5072914189/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/40907783@N03/5072914259/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/40907783@N03/5072914299/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/40907783@N03/5073512350/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/40907783@N03/5072914403/

comments

http://pittlis2600.blogspot.com/2010/10/week-six-reading-notes.html?showComment=1286382788067#c296791945062445939

http://lostscribe459.blogspot.com/2010/10/week-6-readings-computer-networks.html?showComment=1286382518750#c3241731895482378828

Readings

There really isn't much to write about for this week's reading assignment.

I became familiar with local area networks many years ago, for its great use in gaming.  In high school, some of my friends and I had "LAN parties" almost every weekend.  We would all get together and log in to the common network and played computer games.  Nerdy, I know, but it introduced me to a lot of networking skills.  I've since lost a lot of those skills because everything is so automated today.  Just plug your ethernet cord into the cable modem, and you're good to go.  I've helped some friends set up their wireless networks, but even these are super automated and simple now. 

The various computer networks described in the second wikipedia article and the youtube video were very interesting.  I didn't really know the history of networks and networking, so it was a good introduction to that.  The "hardware components" section of the second wikipedia article was the most unfamiliar thing for me in this week's readings.  I have heard of many of these things, but never really knew what each one did. 

It is interesting to think about how far networking has come in just the last few years. It is now possible for a person to stream content from their computer to a TV that is equipped with internet access.  I have my computer streaming music, movies, and pictures to my TV through my Playstation3.  All of this can be done with a simple wireless router.