To educate, inform, inspire

My first year in retirement

July 1, 2018 - General , Travel , Who knew? - by Mark - 1 Comment

Those who know, realize that I retired as a tenured full professor from an Illinois community college effective June 30, 2017. Since it has now been a full year, I thought it might be helpful to provide a bit of a recap on some of my activities. I am just […]

Super Bowl 51 Commercials

February 8, 2017 - General , Huh? , Mobile Apps , Technology , Web , Who knew? - by Mark - No Comments

As I did last year, I paid attention to the commercials on the first Sunday night in February. Others may be aware of this tradition as well. Lots of new commercials frequently interrupted by a football game. Ok, it was fun to watch the game as well. This year had […]

I didn’t know you could do that with Google

January 25, 2017 - Web , Who knew? - by Mark - No Comments

As we start the Spring, 2017, semester, I thought it might be helpful to review some of the things one can do with Google. Yes, I know there are other search engines. I do find some of the items below most interesting. If you can do the same in other […]

Productivity tips – Google Calendar

August 10, 2016 - General , Technology , Who knew? - by Mark - No Comments

As we start another semester, I thought it might be appropriate to include another of my “productivity tips.” For reference purposes, I have already addressed the following topics: Productivity tips (general) Hygeia (and Hazel) Auto Hot Key (AHK) This is my continuing attempt to help readers “work smarter, not harder.” […]

Critical Error – Start Menu Not Working

April 13, 2016 - Technology , Who knew? , Windows - by Mark - 5 Comments

For the past month (March 8 to April 6, 2016), my sole Windows 10 laptop has been experiencing a strange problem. Every time I clicked on the Windows logo “new start menu,” I received the following error message. Of course, you can’t close this message. Clicking “Sign out now” is […]

Super Bowl 50 commercials

February 8, 2016 - General , Huh? , Mobile Apps , Technology , Web , Who knew? - by Mark - 1 Comment

Yes, I watched Super Bowl 50 last night. No, I didn’t pay that much attention to the football. I think one of the teams won. I confess I really like the commercials. Rather than just watch the commercials, I thought I would do a bit of analysis. As we all […]

Tornado – 1 year later

November 19, 2014 - Huh? , Learning , Who knew? , WOW - by Mark - No Comments

I find it very hard to believe it has been on year since the EF 5 tornado passed through Washington, Illinois. I put together some notes using the Luca Project. I find this a most interesting tool. The link above points to my original post on this project. I hope […]

New Beginnings

April 23, 2014 - Who knew? , WOW - by Mark - 2 Comments

As many readers know, my son and his family lost everything in the Washington, Illinois tornado of Nov. 17, 2013. We recently helped them move into a new home. I wanted to thank everyone who has been so generous with their time, money, and other assistance. This short video is […]

Many thanks for helping my son’s family

December 4, 2013 - Learning , Who knew? - by Mark - 1 Comment

It is hard to believe it was only a few weeks ago that my son and his family lost everything to the EF4 tornado which passed through Washington, IL. While I am still amazed at the devastating power of that storm, I am more amazed by the help and generosity […]

Eat a bug?

October 16, 2013 - Huh? , Insects , Who knew? - by Mark - 1 Comment

Just prior to the start of the Adobe Education Leader Summer Institute, a group of us gathered at a local (San Jose) Mexican restaurant. As you can see, this event was well attended. I suggested this place because several of us had eaten there the prior year and I knew […]

Unicode characters

April 17, 2013 - Technology , Who knew? - by Mark - No Comments

Have you ever seen Twitter updates/ tweets with unusual characters included in them? Perhaps you have received an email message with an airplane in the subject line? Have you wondered how thus was done? Yes, these capabilities have been around for some time. However, I have been asked recently by […]

Visual QR Codes

April 10, 2013 - Technology , Who knew? - by Mark - 5 Comments

I never cease to be amazed at how fast technology changes. I suspect this is mostly old news for most, but you can do some pretty impressive things including images in QR codes. Yes, you can generate default values within tools like Adobe Acrobat (I covered that in a previous […]

Unintended Consequences

December 8, 2012 - Huh? , ICC , Who knew? - by Mark - 2 Comments

It seems that each life experience brings something new to learn about and understand. Many of my students know that I recently had another round of eye surgery. I am hoping this time I will be able to regain some vision (fingers are crossed). That being said, this happened during […]

Lorem ipsum

July 30, 2012 - Huh? , Technology , Who knew? - by Mark - No Comments

We are all familiar with the filler text used on various mock-ups (web sites and more). It typically begins with “Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur…” and continues for a number of paragraphs. I accidentally discovered a few alternatives today. Which got me to tweeting and after a number of […]

QR-UPC codes and Adobe PDF

August 2, 2011 - Who knew? - by Mark - 12 Comments

It was recently brought to my attention (via a tweet) that Adobe Acrobat can be used to generate QR (Quick Response) codes. So I did a little digging and discovered it was pretty easy to accomplish – who knew? Background – QR codes were initially used for tracking parts, but […]