The last 24 hours has run the gamut. I had the Lab Class from hell yesterday. The students were great, but the teacher didn’t test the lab on the teaching computer. The sad discovery was that MS Excel on the PC functions differently than it does on the Mac. A painful time followed as, jarred, I stumbled through the rest of the lesson. All-in-all, everything is fine. But, I did add an important “scar” to my back and learned a lesson that I won’t soon forget.

Today’s Principles of Printing course ran much more smoothly (excepting the fact that I was up until 1.00am this morning working on the lecture). I gave my first quiz, and, considering the fact that most were done in under 10 minutes, I’m optimistic about the results.

So, I’ve made it through the first week. I’m now much more prepared for what is to follow.

This first week of school is going amazingly fast. Wednesdays are definitely going to be bears for the next ten weeks ??? two classes, adding up to about three and a half hours of lecture. That said, I???m feeling like I???m getting a bit ahead of things. Just a bit.

Revamping the syllabi was the right thing to do. That said, trying to do it in half a quarter was really pushing things. Especially since I had yet to really experience the classroom environment. Now, with three classes under my belt ??? and my first lab later this afternoon ??? I???m starting to get into the flow of things.

The key rule seems to be ~30 PowerPoint slides for every hour of class. This is similar to the general rule that you can recite (uninterrupted) 9 double-spaced pages of 12 point type in roughly 15 minutes.

In the meantime, the theme of my life is ???write, write, write???.??? I have to finish prepping for today???s lab, write my quiz for tomorrow, and polish the related lecture. Probably that???s why my desk has looked like this all week:

Today, from 4.00pm to ~5.15pm, in room 1400, in building 7a, I taught my first class. I won’t discuss the specifics of any class, especially since it is most likely an issue of when, not if, my students find this blog.

However, I will say that I wasn’t ready. It went fine. I didn’t run out of material. We covered everything I wanted to cover. Still, I wasn’t ready. And I knew I wouldn’t be ready, nor could I ever have been completely ready. But knowing it and living it are always two different things.

I expect that one day I’ll look back on today with a smile. Its the first step into a brave new world. But for right now, all I want to do is rework everything that I have planned and reread everything I will be teaching. I’m hoping this feeling goes away soon.

Either way, I’m done with lectures until Wednesday.

In a little less than three hours I go infront of the firing squad… I mean my Database Publishing Class. I do find it a little hard to believe that I’ll be teaching in just a short time. The eerie calm that had settled over me this week has been replaced by a state of abject terror — albiet a calm one.

I’m still changing and tweaking course material. I would write more but I need to finish my lecture notes.

My response to Bleecker’s article is taking longer than I expected. Once again a sobering reminder of why you promise a date only when you have something more or less written.

In the meantime, with the rapid approach of the first day of class on Monday, the panic has finally set in. And there’s probably no better sign of the impending deadline than my decision to change everything. Seriously, since I was rather young, I’ve been making last minute decisions to completely start things over at the 11th hour. To this day, my mother has yet to let me forget a decision I made to completely rearrange my bedroom at 9.00pm on a school night while I was in Jr High. Needless to say that didn’t go over well.

This case is a little less drastic. After getting wise council from other Faculty members on Friday, I decided to switch up the books that I’ll be using for my Principles of Printing class. Instead of Adam’s Printing Technology, I’ve opted for the time honored favorite Pocket Pal (it’s a little embarrassing that I didn’t think about Pocket Pal in the first place). Overall, its an improvement on multiple counts for the students. Pocket Pal is easier to read, far more tactical, and most importantly about one quarter the cost.

The only problem: all of my books were already in. So I had to go to the Bookstore and nicely ask them to send the existing books back and reorder. I got a bit of the stink-eye when I announced my intentions to the clerks. After that initial reluctance, she was quite helpful and the switch was made. During the process, while making small talk, we had the following exchange:

Matt: Sorry to be a pain about this.
Clerk: This isn’t too bad, what really bugs us are the profs who decide to switch their books at the end of the second week.

Well, at least I know I’m not the only one at RIT who goes in for last minute changes.

My critique of A Manifesto for Networked Objects ??? Cohabiting with Pigeons, Arphids and Aibos in the Internet of Things is going to be slightly delayed. I didn’t realize how much this thing is circulating. As such I don???t want to do this half assed. So it???s going to take a little longer than I expected.

In the meantime you can see the rather over-the-top praise the essay is getting here.

I thought the following was too funny to not be blogged about — while visiting the RIT library to pick up a couple XML books for the previously mentioned XML project, I came across the following:

OK folks, Sesame Street time. Hum along with me — “Which one of these things is not like the other….” I didn’t know that Jamie Oliver, the famed Naked Chef, was an XML expert and that Happy Days with the Naked Chef was a seminal work in the field. What makes the entire thing more funny is that the somewhat blurry, lower picture demonstrates, this book wasn’t misfiled. According to its ID information, it’s in exactly the right spot.

I leave it up to you, gentle reader, to decide what this might say about the RIT Library’s filing system.

After careful consideration, and the fact I was able to find a discounted model, I opted for the Olympus VN-480PC. For the moment, my iPod envy will continue unabated. Actually my iPod desires have been superceeded by Microsoft’s Origami. If it delivers it may well be the tablet PC solution I’ve been looking for.

As for the Olympus, so far so good — I’ve figured out how to record and erase. One thing that does bug me is how flimsy it feels. From the pictures I assumed it would have a metal bodycasing. It’s just gray plastic. Oh well. Tomorrow I’ll attempt to record a test podcast to see how it goes. After that there will be no stopping me.

In other news, it’s less than a week till classes begin. RIT is quiet as this is an “off” week for them. It’s still odd to walk these halls. A very uncanny feeling, in the Freudian sense — the unfamiliar familiar.

Tomorrow’s entry should be interesting. I’m planning on critiquing an essay on Blogjects — objects that blog. While the concept put forward raises interesting questions, the essay itself is poorly conceived and is on really shaky social theoretical ground. So tune in tomorrow for a Chicago style beatdown. For those really interested, here’s a copy of the essay:

• Why Things Matter - Julian Bleecker

I’m in the market for a digital voice recorder. Not only is it helpful for the interviewing I’ll be doing in the near future, but I’m also considering podcasting my classes ??? or at least allowing for an archive. In part I want to be able to listen to certain ones later on.

So my dilemma is what technology to use. Or as important, how much do I want to spend. The Olympus model that I???m considering would run about $50 and would do everything I need it to do.

The only kink: the iPod. For 3x the amount I could get a 1GB Nano. And then pay the additional cost for the microphone. And I???d be using a square peg (not to suggest that the iPod is in any way square??? it???s more rectangular if anything???) for a round hole ??? the iPod really isn???t designed for recording and archiving. All of that said, it???s so damn cool. And ever since the ill fated MC3, I???ve been a sucker for convergence devices (all the while knowing full well that something that does everything doesn???t necessarily do everything well).

Today I took my first steps towards cross-media publishing. During my last years at kodak.com, I was constantly discussing XML and how it could be used to facilitate the production of websites. But I never actually worked with the nitty gritty: tagging content and creating XLS files. Now however, I’m taking my tentative first steps towards the intimidating and immensely powerful world of XML.

Part of my interest is the cross-media (and by media I mean distribution media) possibilities that XML holds. Done properly you can generate printed collateral, web content, cell phone content, PSP content, etc. — all from the same core file. It holds a lot of interesting possibilities that have some terrific applications for extending the written word.

Anyway, today I sat down with Adobe InDesign and tagged up a school of printing publication. The next step will be to build the conversion files (XLS and DTD) for it and see if it can be churned into HTML. Once that???s set then it???s a matter of cranking out the right CSS and pulling the entire thing together. (Hmmm??? I know that last paragraph just lost about half of my readers??? sorry mom).

Suggestions on good XML resources are always welcome! And now it’s back to researching material for my classes and perhaps getting a little writing on GooglePrint done.