Let's see, what's on the menu for today? Well It was a hodgepodge of things that we haven't really hit on clear back to chapter 3 and as far forward as page 577. I posted an example from class in the downloads section and on the z: drive so you get get a feel for what we are doing.
We covered how to turn a form into an Mdi parent and trap a child within it. I also showed you how to add another form and even how to add an pre-made About form that will gather info from your projects attributes. We managed to create a menu system and status bar area for our Mdi forms. Then I went over a little bit of how to utilize a message box that returns a value that you can check for in order to let the user make decisions.
Your exam will be on Tues. Come prepped, ready, and on time so you can work up til the last minute if necessary. The study guide is in the downloads section.
Wow! In nearly 8 years I don't believe I've ever had a class with just one student. I think my record was 2 which I've hit several times, but never just one. So Aaron and I went over RAID and what each level consists of. We then took the time to install an IDE controller card and setup several RAID senerios, including using windows to create a dynamic disk. There won't be any shopping work over this weekend so you guys can have more time to study for the exam on Tues. I'll have the study guide up shortly. Man....today was a good lecture to. For those that missed it was really important info that I just won't have time to go back over.
Capstone is firing up again this semester and this time I'm in charge. By now those who are in the class should have received 2 emails from me. If you have not please let me know asap. If you have please hit reply and let me know you got them so I can check your name off my list. The syllabus has been posted and I will update you as to the goings on probably by tomorrow morning.
Well I decided to throttle back some so that everyone could catch a little breather. Tonight's demos were very easy and you should be able to pic them up very quickly. I showed how to resize an image (pay attention to how big it is in the first place). I then showed how to resize the image canvas. The super easy tools of the evening were the count, notes, and ruler tools. The next up were the eraser, magic eraser, and background eraser tools. They require a little finesse when being used.
The most difficult part of the evening came when I introduced the extraction filter. That functionality was pulled from CS4 but is available via free download. The demo folder for tonight has the 32-bit extraction plug-in whereas I had to quickly download and post the 64-bit for those using CS4-64. The extraction filter's capabilities have been built into another tool in CS4 and we will go over that on the next instructional day. I do feel however that it is a very useful tool and should really be taught.
To finish out the evening I included a portion of the recommended text so that you could learn some more about layers and have a tutorial to follow along with.
Next week will be the mid semester exam. Come in, sit down, get ready asap. You will not have any time to waste on the exam if you feel your skills are lacking. Practice Practice Practice!!! The homework for this week will help. I doubt I will post a study guide, since it is so difficult to do for Photoshop. Just go over the activity archive and see what we have done and practice. Your homework for this week is posted below. Click the pics to get great big images.
Glad we could meet early today! Since we were ahead of the curve last semester and added sound to the wolf and the rabbit game this should be a bit of a refresher. This go round I want you to add sound to your game and post this generation of it. I gave you 55 different sites to get audio from and 25 editors so no excuses why your game is silent! BTW if you really want to fix that annoying frog/fly game and take the sound out of it I'll give you extra points. Just remember to post it on the wiki.
This was a day to work on finishing up and debug your VB code for 4.1 and 4.2. Everyone seemed to have a little something going for it so I didn't have to cut points for not trying. By the looks of things though a couple of you have a long way to go before Thursday! Better get some caffeine and get your code on! BTW try and make your program stand out some. Let's try and not be so drab and boring with straight up gray forms.
This program will be due on Thursday and we will then finish up chapter 4 and start in on 5. There will be an exam on Tues 3/30. I will have your guide posted asap. As stated in class you may have a partial coding exercise on the pc and then the rest will be writing out code by hand. Or now that I think about it, I'll try and go green and have the entire thing to where you code on the pc. Hrmmm....the posibilities.....
After a quick pit stop for some free pizza I lectured on chapter 7. Lecture seems so much better with food.The chapter was on hard drives and a little on floppy disks and drives. We will be going over RAID in the next class and if there is time left over I hopefully with give you guys another lab assignment on shopping for parts. I think we are finally at a point where you can pick the correct parts to order, to get a machine up and running. There will be an exam on chapters 4-6 on Tues 3/20. I'll post a study guide asap. By Tues have your online question up through 6 done.
I know you guys play a lot of Open Arena especially with Rick. I have partaken a few times but not as often as I would have liked. I however vow not to cheat for fear something like this will happen. Not only did this guy cheat the game but he managed to cheat death as well. I wonder if his attacker will be able to roll a saving throw against a PMITA prison sentence?
"An argument between Counter-Strike players at a Chinese net café over suspected use of a 'wallhack' cheat led to a 17-year-old boy being stabbed through the head with a foot-long knife - and living to tell the tale. "
"Inspired by popular video games like World of Warcraft, an Indiana University professor is applying game design principles such as clear, well-defined goals and gradual, incremental rewards to his college classes. A hit with students, the approach has some employers showing interest, too.
Students at several of Indiana University's game design courses begin their class with zero "experience points," which corresponds to an F grade. Instead of completing presentations, they'll perform "quests;" sitting exams becomes "fighting monsters;" and handing in assignments becomes "crafting." Students even team up into "guilds" to tackle group projects.
Setting assessments in the context of video game achievements helps students get motivated, according to the courses' coordinator, Indiana University's Lee Sheldon."
I have turned in mid term grades. 99% of everything that have been turned into me has been graded. Those few things that have not been graded were not used in calculating your mid term grade. You can all log in to the gradebook and see what you have and don't have. If you see 0's for grades that means you didn't turn anything in. Several people have lots of stuff missing. It isn't that I didn't grade it, it is because you are irresponsible and didn't do the work. If you find any error (I am human and make mistakes) let me know about it. I'm usually good for possibly 1 fudge up a semester but it never really seems to affect the overall outcome. I will not accept late work as outlined in my new policy from last month. There may (if I'm not overwhelmed with things) be a week at the end where you can turn things in to make up some work but the grades will take a stiff penalty.
OMG!! I can see now why I have been putting off grading the photoshop class's homework. What a train wreck it is! The first homework basically you got points just for turning in the work. 4 pics = 100 points = 25 points each. Not to hard. The next was the same deal only I took a little off if it looked like you could have done better. I don't know what is going on but my blog clearly shows exactly the number of pics you are to turn in and I'm not getting them. The 3rd homework was graded a little on quality and a lot on if you just turned something in.....not many people did!? I can't understand you had 2 weeks to do 7 pics. BTW I gave a separate grade for the photoshop contest pics. If you turned them in and posted to the website you got credit. Otherwise 0 for you.
Now comes the insanity. FROM NOW ON YOU MUST NAME THE PICS ACCORDING TO WHAT THE HW CALLS FOR!! It is making me insane trying to figure out what photo you are trying to get credit for. There are people turning in extra pics that haven't been used, and others more than what was asked for, yet I don't know what you were doing so where to give extra credit???? Some I can't even tell what was done because the originals are missing.
THE BEST ONE: With few exceptions almost everyone didn't put their photoshop pics in with their homework when turning everything in to me! I had to go on the website and try to figure out who's pics were who's. Not to hard according to most of the user names. However a user by the name of umbrellaangel turned in pics for all 3 contests, yet I haven't a clue who it is!! None of their pics were in homework folders, and the user name doesn't match any email address or give a clue as to who should get credit. If you are this person I suggest you make your self known asap if you want 100 points added to your grade.
Not a bad evening. We meet in the classroom and did the activities for chapters 4 and 5. I think we really may need to take the time to go back and install a server core version of 2008 since there seem to be more and more activities relying on running both at once. Man I guess the people who wrote the book think that every IT classroom must have some badass computers in it to be running an OS and 2 Server edition VM's all at once! Even with dual cores and 2 gigs of ram I think we are pushing those rigs now much less throwing in another VM. Sheesh! Continue working as the schedule shows. We will meet via Skype the Thursday we come back from break.
Well class was sort of put to the side today. Allison worked on her own while I had the WebEx meeting with the Globaloria folks. Things are getting back on track and we are almost where we should be. Remember if you make any upgrades to your game I want you to post it.
Well I decided to throttle back some so that everyone could catch a little breather. Tonight's demos were very easy and you should be able to pic them up very quickly. I showed how to resize an image (pay attention to how big it is in the first place). I then showed how to resize the image canvas. The super easy tools of the evening were the count, notes, and ruler tools. The next up were the eraser, magic eraser, and background eraser tools. They require a little finesse when being used.
This was a day to work on finishing up and debug your VB code for 4.1 and 4.2. Everyone seemed to have a little something going for it so I didn't have to cut points for not trying. By the looks of things though a couple of you have a long way to go before Thursday! Better get some caffeine and get your code on! BTW try and make your program stand out some. Let's try and not be so drab and boring with straight up gray forms.
OMG!! I can see now why I have been putting off grading the photoshop class's homework. What a train wreck it is! The first homework basically you got points just for turning in the work. 4 pics = 100 points = 25 points each. Not to hard. The next was the same deal only I took a little off if it looked like you could have done better. I don't know what is going on but my blog clearly shows exactly the number of pics you are to turn in and I'm not getting them. The 3rd homework was graded a little on quality and a lot on if you just turned something in.....not many people did!? I can't understand you had 2 weeks to do 7 pics. BTW I gave a separate grade for the photoshop contest pics. If you turned them in and posted to the website you got credit. Otherwise 0 for you.