Scorched Silicon :: Southern WV Community & Technical College (News)

IT192 3/11... Shave and a Haircut 2 Bits

I gave a quick intro on counting and keeping track of a running total. I'll have the examples up on the website shortly, they are on the z: drive right now though. The rest of the time was spent on working on 4.1 and 4.2 from the book. The hair salon example is a pretty good way of keeping count and displaying a total. Hint use check boxes for the items available for purchase and raid buttons for the discount rate. This is not due the day we come back, however as I said in class if you have nothing more than a form setup and haven't attempted any of the code I'm taking 50% off the top of your grade.

IT180 3/11..Ghost Town

Man it was quiet today. Only 2 people showed up again. I wish we could get the regulars + the sporadics to show up all in one day. Then the 4 people that I actually know could be called a class! Anyhoo we finished up the 1st Nerds video and then went over the chapter on RAM. It is the shortest chapter in the book being only 22 pages in length. No lab today. Get your question sets worked on up through the RAM chapter over spring break.

IT145 3/9 - Plug it in...Plug it in

Wow another monster night in the Photoshop class! Sorry for having to cram so much in but seeing as we have lost a ton of class time there really is no other way to do it. I'll try and back off some after spring break to give you all a chance to work in the lab.

To start off we took nearly 30 min to figure out how to post our pictures to the web site. Listen folks, in 2 weeks nobody tried posting until about an hour before class. Come on how do you expect to learn without trying! Also 99% of everyone's problem stemmed from mis-spellings. If you can't figure out what you named a file and then manage to type it back out, heaven help you. To me that is like naming your kid and then forgetting how to spell its name. Please take the time and type out the url of your picture name before trying to post it, if it works and then you can't post to the website, YOU DIDN'T TYPE THE URL CORRECTLY!

As for the topics we covered, today was based on learning layers, plug-ins and brushes. Here are the tools I went over in the order they were presented in class:

Dodge,Burn, Sponge Tools
Red Eye Reduction Tool
Lens Correction Filter
Vanishing Point Filter (Note: I figured out the crashing problem, see notes)
Flaming Pear's Flood and Freebies Plug-ins
Brushes and how to load and unload them (tutorial included)
Layer Tutorials - Layer masking and wedding pop out. (tutorials included)

Please download the super huge zip file located in the downloads section. It is categorized on each subject and tutorials in either txt or doc format are included with several of them. The Freebies plug-in has a html help file with it.

Note: I had problems with the vanishing point filter all day and of course it crashed several times in class. I suspected it had something to do with a video driver, I was partially right. For those of you running Windows 7 or Vista you must turn off the Aero Theme to your desktop (the transparent taskbars). Do this by right clicking the desktop and choosing Personalize and then choosing windows 7 basic theme. Once you do this the vanishing point filter will work perfectly without crashing.

Homework: You will owe me 7 pics. One for each of the topics EXCEPT dodge,burn, sponge, and lens correction.
Min (1) pic each for Red Eye, Vanishing Point, Flood, Freebies, Do the brush tutorial that is in the center of the doc included in the brush folder, wedding pop out, and the layer masking tutorial.

IT275 3/9

Well we more or less did some collision detection last semester with the bunny program. If you managed to get it last semester and followed along then you should also have score keeping working as well. Just spend today updating all of your blogs so that I can give you a mid term grade and post your tutorials as requested.

IT192 3/9

Went over the first part of chapter 4. I put some examples of if statements in the IT192 folder on the z: drive. I will post them to the downloads section later on. After going over the basics I wanted everyone to create at least a basic if statement on their own for an in class project. This was not going to be turned in however you need to get the basics down in order to do the homework. For Thursday I want you to create a simple form with a couple of text boxes and a button. I then want you to write an IF statement do do a value compare from both boxes on your form. This is a very simple assignment. If you look in the downloads section there is an example of this. Although it was written in VB6 it can still be opened and viewed with our current compiler.

IT180 3/9

Small class today with only 2 guys showing up. That's ok. We still managed to get though chapter 5 and check out cpu-z, gpu-zm and hardware monitor. We finished up the day by watching the majority of the first Triumph of the Nerds videos. We will have to get to SiSoft Sandra and the end of the video on Thursday since we ran low on time. BTW the video below is just a little reminder of the smell that was going on out in the hallway this afternoon.

IT215 3/4

Great night tonight! Although the image was super huge we managed to get Server 2008 installed faster than we could copy the VM. It blows my mind that the new machines will not run the VM's because they are missing the instructions from the processors. I think everyone had a pretty good time getting a little hands on doing the activities from the chapters. It worked so well that we will meet again next thursday to finish up chapter 4 and possibly chapter 5 activities before spring break.

IT275 3/4

Good meeting tonight. Worked on the scrolling background tutorial and updating/organizing the wiki some more. I'm glad to see the level of organization come up so that everything gets posted and you can better see where you are overall. Nice blog posts BTW.

IT192 3/4

I was all prepared today to start giving a lecture on chapter 4, however everyone was having problems with the assignments that were supposed to be due today. Instead of lecturing I went ahead and had a work day so that you all could get caught up. I want the hotrod math program and the program for 3.8 turned in by tues 3/9.

IT180 3/4

Took our exam on chapters 1-3. Then moved on to chapter 4 and talking about processors. I want you guys to work on your chapter 4 questions of the weekend.

3/2 Classes Cancelled For Campus Testing

No Classes due to MAPP testing on campus. BTW it was great. Not only did we miss another day of class but I drove all the way from Charleston to come proctor the exam. Nobody showed up for my group so after waiting for 20min I turned around and went home. What a waste of an afternoon. Hopefully the school will get their heads out of a dark stinky place and utilize their testing center over the course of a week or two too let students come in on their own time.

IT215 2/25

Again I suspended our lab day. I think it was for the best since 20 min arriving home the skies opened up with the snow. Since I had lab planned and not an online talk we met as long as my voice held out which was only for about an hour. I tried to lecture on chapter 4 but there is only so much you can say about DHCP. Most of the chapter was activities relating to DHCP. I will create a VM and have it ready for next week so we can all monkey with the settings and such. Keep working on the LabSims and the online questions.

IT275 2/25

Cut class short tonight due to snow being on the way and me losing my voice. We will talk online and work from home this evening. Remember no class on Tuesday. We will meet again for Thurs.

IT192 2/25

Worked on the Hot Rod Math project some. I was hoping that everyone would have at least tried it since that was what I had asked of you. The reason being I was wanting you to modify it by turning Option Strict On. This will make you better programmers since the compiler will not allow you to get away with any BS. I gave you a hand out that shows a shortcut on doing some of this, however the chapter does the same thing only the slightly longer way around. I will post it in the downloads section in case you didn't get it. The best way to approach the problem is to get your program working with Option Strict Off then going back and turning it on and adding in the appropriate code. My example will be in the downloads section as well.

Your homework between now and next Thursday is the Hot Rod Math program with Option Strict On and Project 3.8 from page 157 in the book. This will make you think a bit.

IT180 2/25 - Reassemble Stephanie!

Well it was a small class today. Only 2 showed up. We spent the entire time taking a pc apart, documenting the pieces, then reassembling it, and doing some research on where to find the drivers. You are to type up what you documented and send it in via email. Since there will be no class on the 2nd I want to go ahead and knock out a small exam on chapters 1-3 next Thursday. I'll get you a study guide asap.