Day 109: Metadata will be the death of me

They said at Access last weekend that "A URL is your contract with the world". By putting something up online, you're agreeing that it will always be at that URL, and if it moves, you'll leave breadcrumbs to lead the user back to the material.

Similarly, I've always understood that a syllabus is a professor's contract with their students. "This is the class, this is how it will be taught and this is how you will be evaluated". It can only be changed in exceptional circumstances and for very good reason.

Lesson 109: Good form or no, some people will break contracts no matter what.

We've been informed of yet another change to our course (or is it a change? no one seems sure).

We now have a take-home essay portion to our mid-term, due immediately before our in-class portion. And we'll have about 24 hrs to do it. Work? Class? Irrelevant. 24 hours. Make it work.

So basically, the majority of us are being told that we are required to pull an all-nighter to write the take-home portion before going into class to do the in-class portion.

Everyone seems pretty resigned to their fate at this point... *sigh*

Summer Lessons: The Cardinal Sins of Internet Browsers

I'm feeling especially grouchy today. Maybe it's because a fire alarm was going off in the hospital I work in and it gave me a headache. But regardless, it's inspired me to be rather snarky. I apologize in advance...

Watching people use computers, and watching people teaching me things on computers has brought to the forefront of my mind some things which should really never be done when it comes to browsers. I'm going to start the compilation of a list here, and I may add to it as I see fit.

1: Thou shalt not open, and especially not go out of your way to open, Netscape or Internet Explorer when Chrome or Firefox are offered to you.

It just gives me the chills that I've even seen this happen... perfectly good browsers waiting on the desktop to be used, but you're going to go into the program menu just to open IE? I shudder to think.

2: Thou shalt not enter the address "www.google.com" in the address bar of Chrome in order to go google something. It's GOOGLE Chrome. 

Really? Congratulations, you just divided by zero.

3: Thou shalt not type "http://" before a web address. Even typing out "www." may be taking it too far, but for that you can be forgiven.

Your browser knows these things. Unless you're worried about secure browsing and you're afraid you won't automatically be redirected the "https://" (the s stands for secure!) it's just nails on a chalkboard unnecessary.