PhD Blog (dot) Net

I learnt computing on a Mac and my first computer was a Mac. Back then, as a technical illustrator, I did all my training on Macs, but it’s ten years since I last had one. Since then, software, financial, and file compatibility (no longer a big deal) issues and just plain laziness have stopped me switching back… until now. So a few weeks after getting my second-hand iMac, here’s some thoughts on my rehabilitation:

Name
OK, first and most important. All my past PCs have had girl’s names. My iMac is called Mac – I don’t think you should call a Mac anything else.

Screen
I’ve never had anything anywhere near as big as the 24″ screen and it’s fantastic. It’s like computing at the cinema. It’s not taken me long to appreciate the value of viewing multiple programmes side-by-side but this new, unanchored ‘floating world’ seems strange after minimising and maximising on a laptop. I seem to be moving and resizing application windows all the time. Maybe some sort of automatic desktop tiling tool would be useful.

Input Devices
I don’t use the Mac mouse. It’s too big, I don’t like the tiny wheel on it and I can’t figure out the buttons. I’m sticking with my little Saitek laptop mouse with its right click and chunky scroll wheel. It struggled a bit to navigate the 24″ screen. so I upped the curser speed a tad and swapped my cheap mouse mat with a Razer aluminum gaming pad. It’s the first time I’ve ever used one of these and its great. Its industrial looks matches the iMac and keyboard and small rubber pads hold it firm on the desk. It has a slightly textured surface on one side but I prefer the ultra smooth one. The Mac mouse runs (and sounds) horrible on it but the Saitek glides brilliantly on its tiny feet. Now I’m whizzing across my screen in no time.

Browser
Having used Firefox for several years I’ve been impressed so far with Safari (it was all Netscape when I last had a Mac) and will continue using it. I’ve downloaded Firefox all the same, primarily because I need to continue using Zotero which is essential to my studies (i’ve pretty much given up using EndNote).

RSS
Safari’s RSS reader is OK but I like using a dedicated desktop aggregator. After trying a few Mac compatibles I’ve settled with Vienna, probably because it most resembles Feedreader which I use on PC. It’s less fussy than others with just the basic features I need, and I like its built-in Safari-like browser.

The Dock
I prefer having this on the right of the screen and I’m still deciding what goes in there.  After several weeks. I still get excited by the roll-over effect.

Office
I’d like to use OpenOffice but I got Microsoft Office for Mac because I am so spineless…

Text Editor
It might seem a bit weird to make a big deal over this but I like using basic text editors (e.g. Notepad) a lot. I like the clean simplicity and the ‘unformattedness’ of them – a throwback to my HTML editing days. In fact I have (in addition to the Dock) only 3 things on my desktop – The HD folder icon (which I don’t think you can get rid of), a folder alias to ALL my files, and a blank TextEdit file which I use as a notepad  – to type in, fill up, copy to other sources (journal, blog, e-mail, Word etc.) and empty on a daily basis. I like the formatting options of TextEdit over Notepad – sometimes the flexibility of RTF (basic formatting and spellchecking) over TXT is useful.

I’ve always been reluctant to adopt the whole ‘Mac is cool / Microsoft is evil’ attitude of some Mac users (and ex-users). I think it cuts both ways – I’m not too happy with the ‘iTuneification’ of all my MP3 files for one thing. There are some things that Windows (even Vista) does pretty well and my old Dell desktop (if not some others) was a pretty reliable workhorse. But it’s great I made the switch. I still have a decent enough PC at University and my laptop is just about hanging on in there…she’s called Emily.

Pingdom provides a load test on any Web page. Here’s the stats for this page.

The Netvibes site which Jill Walker Rettberg at the University of Bergen is using to support her course on digital art and electronic literature is well worth keeping an eye on as it develops. The current semester on remix culture is just underway and is exploring “the ways in which artists, writers and creators of all kinds of cultural artifacts today borrow, appropriate and remix content created by other people.” In an overview of the semester, Rettberg explains:

“We’ll be interpreting works where this happens, we’ll read about at cultural and legal implications of remixing, study historical examples of earlier cultural appropriation (we are far from the first remixers) and think about the theoretical and practical implications of a culture where the original genius is no longer the dominant cultural myth.”

Being such a cheapskate my long-awaited iMac purchase ended up being a second hand 2.4GHz OS X Tiger model. But it’s got a 24’ screen and stripped down it runs like a dream. However, if like me, you ever need to change the admin password, this hack is all over the Web and it really does work:

Turn on

Hold down apple + s after you hear the chime until you get a text prompt.

Enter the following terminal commands:

mountspace-uwspace/return
rmspace/var/db/.AppleSetupDonereturn
shutdownspace-hspacenowreturn

Let the command run and reboot

Go through the Apple setup process to create another admin user and delete the original… Simples!

The whole Second Life thing (and its educational potential) has rather passed me by since a rudimentary introduction with a dodgy server and even dodgier avatar creation left me emotionally scarred. A new JISC Guide; Getting started with Second Life offers fresh hope.

Stephen Downes and George Siemens have just announced the launch of their Connectivism and Connective Knowledge course on September 14. Having missed out on registering last year, I look forward to getting involved this time round.

It’s been a busy month. I have just submitted my Confirmation of Status paper to the School of Education as part of my internal review process for my first year PhD. You can view and download the paper on my new PhD wiki. My viva follows presently.

My thanks to Odessa, my colleague at the VLL, for sending me The Edgeless University; a new report by University of Nottingham alumnus Peter Bradwell for Demos.

He argues increasingly diverse student demographics and socio-economic changes brought about by Web technologies, social media and open content require more learner-directed, modular and technologically facilitated approaches to Higher Education:

“At its most radical, edgelessness can lead to institutions exploring new ways of accrediting learning, of providing recognition of research and learning and of offering affiliation. Those in informal learning can be offered help in finding routes to formal qualification, connecting with alternative providers or alternative open learning resources and of finding new forms of course provision” (p.10).

Universities retain (many would say appropriately) a near-monopoly on formal accreditation, which Weller and Dalziel (2007) identify as one of their key functions – and reasons for continued survival. The others are:

• the provision of formal or structured learning frameworks (i.e. curricula)
• the convenience to students in providing access to resources and educators
• the sociability of the student cohort – learning the same things at the same time in the same place

Social media and open access are increasingly demonstrating the potential to accommodate each of these, yet the significance of the last function to the physicality of Universities is frequently overlooked.

No matter how effectively structured and sociable learning networks outside institutional frameworks may become, the deeply embedded socio-cultural practice (in the West anyway) of going to university – which most middle class, and increasingly lower class, students see as a rite of passage – cannot be ignored.

References

Bradwell, P. (2009). The Edgeless University: Why Higher Education must embrace technology. London: Demos.

Weller, M. J. & Dalziel, J. (2007). On-line Teaching: Suggestions for Instructors. In L. Cameron & J. Dalziel (Eds.), 2nd International LAMS Conference 2007: Practical Benefits of Learning Design, 26 November. Sydney: LAMS Foundation (76-82).

After testing a few open source and Web app. alternatives, I have opted for Google Sites to develop a PhD wiki. I hope this will prove to be a useful prersonal resource – particularly for developing sophisticated cross referencing between entries – whilst also enabling the dissemination of a wide range of formal and informal texts. I’ve added a handy link at the top of the sidebar.

Manuel Castells, the pre-eminent social theorist on the Internet, will be discussing his new book Communication Power at the LSE on Thursday 9 July. Having secured a £2 Megatrain return fair from Nottingham, I hope to get down to this one.