Happy Halloween

I did this Photoshop job of my friend for Halloween last year, and then used Photoshop to animate the process. It starts with a photo from what I think was an office Halloween party, complete with scary contact lenses, and then I took it from there. Enjoy.

Don's Halloween costume from David Toccafondi on Vimeo.

Dreamweaver Training from Lynda

Lynda.com has some good Dreamweaver CS4 training now available. It's called, "Creating a First Web Site with Dreamweaver CS4" and it's great for the beginning Dreamweaver user or web designer. I'm a little rusty on my webdesign skills, myself, so I'm going to use it re-learn dreamweaver (I think the last version I used was MX!) and make myself a new website.

Take a look at the contents here:

http://www.lynda.com/home/DisplayCourseN.aspx?lpk2=52770

and if you're interested, just let the lab consultant on duty know you'd like to watch it, and we'll log you in on one of our workstations and you can watch 'til your heart's content.

Apple's new Magic Mouse

Is anybody else as eager as I am to get their hands on Apple's new "Magic Mouse?" They actually do have one on display over at the computer connection at one of the new iMacs they have on display (the 24", I think), but none on the shelves for folks like you and me yet. I called yesterday, and they said they expect them to ship out in about a week. A WEEK?! I have to wait a WEEK? (One of the lab consultants says it's a matter of Apple coming up with an OS update to take advantage of all the new features in the magic mouse) Anyhoo, the new mouse is very sleek, and they feel good in the hand (although they're a little thin), so go over to the CCX and give them a try. I promise I'll buy 2 or 3 of them as soon as they hit the shelves so you can come by and try them soon.

Educause Presentations at the Library

Penn has registered for EDUCAUSE 2009 Online, which will enable interested staff to view EDUCAUSE 2009 general, featured, and point/counterpoint sessions as well as a selection of track sessions streamed. Penn’s Educause 2009 Online event will be held next Wednesday through Friday (Nov. 4-6) in the Class of ’55 Room in the Van Pelt Library from 10:00 AM – 6:45 PM.

The full list of Educause 2009 sessions that will be streamed to Class of ‘55 can be read at http://www.upenn.edu/computing/isc/training/educause2009online.html

New Equipment Lending System

We've gone live with our new equipment lending system, WebCheckOut! You can get help and find more info at http://wic.library.upenn.edu/wicfacilities/lending.html

The web form you used to use to reserve equipment is gond, and it's been replaced with a snazzy new interface at http://checkout.sas.upenn.edu

We're eager to hear your feedback, so please let us know if you have any suggestions on how we can improve the system further.

(Oh, and we've lowered our late fines to $25 per day!)

Drawing the Line

Cartoonists Lynda Barry, Eric Drooker, and John Jennings will be joining cultural critics Jared Gardner, Jeet Heer, and Sharon Mizota and members of the Haverford College community for Drawing the Line: Comics and the Art of Social Transformation, a symposium focusing on comics as a medium for social commentary as well as means of political intervention.

Drawing the Line brings together groundbreaking artists who draw their influences from sources as varied as Frans Masereel's woodcut novels to Bil Keane's Family Circus with scholars and critics who are exploring how models of subjectivity and modes of political agency are created in relation to visual and textual forms of representation.

Members of the public are invited to take part in the workshops, master classes, lectures, and panel presentations on the role of comics in movements for social change that will be taking place on Haverford's campus from October 21-25, 2009.

http://www.haverford.edu/drawingtheline/

What's New in Final Cut Studio?

Apple Systems Engineer Mike Wolk is coming to Weigle Information Commons this Friday with his colleague from Apple to show new features of Final Cut Studio from noon to 1 pm. We hope you can join us - please register at
http://wic.library.upenn.edu/wicshops/#TechnicallySpeakingSeries:FinalCutStudioOverview

Equipment Availability Calendar

We're switching soon (sometime next week if the stars are properly aligned) to a new equipment lending system. Please be patient with us, as these transitions rarely go without a few bumps. :)

One such bump is the loss of our public equipment availability calendar. Although the new system will let you know in real-time whether equipment is available on a given day and time, we will lose the single-view, easy-to-read calendar we've been using up until now. Sorry for any inconvenience!

Color Printer blues

Our color laser printer in the lab is experiencing...difficulties. While it's being fixed, you can still print your documents from the lab, and then go outside into the Information Commons and release your print job from the color printer out there. (btw, did u get that pun in the post title? color printer "blues". ha! i slay me.)

Closed this Friday 1-3

Hi all. The lab will be closed this Friday, September 25, from 1pm-3pm for a symposium that will be using much of the Information Commons. Sorry for any inconvenience.

Wireless Set-up Fair, September 16

Is your laptop having difficulty connecting to wireless Internet on campus? SAS Computing will hold a wireless setup fair in the alcoves at WIC from 5 to 6:30 pm. This is a walk-in event.

iPhone OS 3.1 update

From ISC on iPhone OS 3.1:

As many of you are already aware, Apple has released OS 3.1 for the iPhone and the iPod Touch. This release has a few new features and bug fixes, but most relevant here at Penn is that OS 3.1 addresses the problem where 3.0 devices would constantly disassociate from AirPennNet.

Information Systems and Computing has tested this release thoroughly and generally found it to be a stable release, well-worth the download. However, please keep in mind that if previous releases are any indicator, the download servers will be swamped and activations may take a while. For users who are not in desperate need of the AirPennNet fix, it may be best to wait a couple of days before upgrading to 3.1

Good-Bye Posters

Just a quick FYI. Lots of people have printed posters here in the lab and then never picked them up. We'll be throwing out any and all posters left in the lab on September 3. If you have a poster here, please pick it up ASAP.

We're Hiring!

Looking for a cool job in a cool digital media lab working with (and for) cool people? Well, we're looking for a few good lab consultants for the Fall 2009 semester. Details along with a full job description are here:

https://www.sfs.upenn.edu/seo/sems/live.php?mod=search.details&job=9561

Let one of us know if you have any questions about the job!

There Oughta Be a Law!

This video contest asks participants to create a video, 3 minutes or less, describing a new law that should exist or a current law that should be amended. The grand prize is $1000!

It's part of an initiative by the Montgomery Bar Association Community Outreach Committee to promote awareness of the law and to remind citizens of the importance of the law in our society. The contest is for residents of Pennsylvania, and entries are due on October 8, 2009.

Download the info at
http://www.montgomerybar.org/mba/news/May09/documents/OughttobeaLawEdPacket.pdf

Let us know if you enter and we'll post your video on our blog for all to see.

No Wireless Today/Tomorrow

Van Pelt Library is upgrading its wireless access points today, so no wireless service will be available during that time. Sorry for any inconvenience this may cause.

New 2GB filesize limit in YouTube

You may have noticed over the last month that YouTube upped their filesize limit from 1GB to 2GB. Unfortunately, they did not also increase the 10 minute video length limit, but at least this is good news for people uploading high-def video. More info at http://tinyurl.com/kvebav

Three Days

Just a quick reminder about our file storage/deletion policy. Although we would love to be able to store all of everyone's files forever and ever, we just don't have the storage space to be able to handle it all. So we have a policy that we will store your files on our networked hard drive for up to 3 days. And if you come back during that time and work on them some more, we'll keep them for an additional 3 days. And so on. And so forth. Etc. Etc. And you should never store your files on the desktop for longer than the duration of your work session that day. Anyone who sits down at a computer can delete things from the desktop. Just ask for help saving your files to our networked storage drive.

So if you're working on a project in the lab, be sure to come back every 2 or 3 days to work on it to avoid risking deletion. And please consider buying an external hard drive to store your project on. This gives you total control over your files, and you never need to fear that we'll delete them when you need them most.

The Disposable Film Festival

The Disposable Film Festival was created in 2007 to celebrate the artistic potential of disposable video: short films made on non-professional devices such as one-time use video cameras, cell phones, point and shoot cameras, webcams, computer screen capture software, and other readily available video capture devices.

Disposable Film Fest '09 Promo from Disposable Film Festival on Vimeo.

The submission fee is only $.99 and you have until August 31, 2009 to submit your entries!

Get started now! Find our more about the DFF at http://www.disposablefilmfest.com/

"Ask Not" Filmmaker Contest

WHYY and ITVS invite you to share your views in a short film on the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy in the first ever WHYY Filmmaker Contest. The winner will receive a 20" iMac computer. Film submissions must be less than 10:00 minutes.

Short films may be of any genre (music video, interviews, etc) as long as they show a relevancy to an aspect of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy.

See the full details at http://www.whyy.org/community/asknotcontest.html