Updating Training Room - UNIV-3-084

Howdy---

Per the request of Lesley Staff, I am updating Microsoft SilverLight in the Computer Lab on the 3rd Floor of University Hall -- UNIV-3-084 between 12:00pm and 4:0pm on Friday, December 2, 2011..
During this time, the room will be off-limits. :(

Current version: Silverlight 4 (4.0.60831.0)

Summer Computer Lab Fixes

We have had numerous reports of issues that need to be resolved in our computer labs.
Some of the known issues that we have encountered:

• Microsoft Office 2010 Activation Notifications
• Action Center Notifications
• IE9 Configuration
• Print Systems desynchronized

We are going to be doing a massive sweep of these fixes in the next couple of weeks.

• WOLF-204- 07/15/11
• WOLF-203- 07/18/11
• DOBL-309- 07/14/11
• DOBL-413+DOBL-415- 07/19/11 
• Training Room (UNIV-3-084) - 07/20/11
• Doble Information Commons - 07/21/11
• Mollye Lichter Block Computer Lab - 07/22/11
• Reading Room (UNIV-3-069) - 07/23/11

As we make these improvements, please seek alternative computing spaces.
Thanks for working with us!

SUMMER MAINTENANCE! -- Part 1

 

Well, folks... we are well underway with our 

Summer 2011 Maintenance!

In a previous post, we keyed you-in on some big changes that were happening, the biggest was catered around the pay-for-print system and its upgrades.  On 05/23, we began the server upgrade process which basically involved 10-steps from upgrading the existing server, installing a new server, then migrating all printer and user data across the different machines.... to upgrading and re-installing printers and servers to all of the schools across Lesley.  We finished Sherrill on the evening of 05/23 and AIB Library/AIB Computer Labs on 05/24--- then Kresge Media Center on 05/25.---  As of 05/26, we had begun the redeployment of all of the Cambridge Computer Labs starting with University Hall Reading Room (UNIV-3-069), Training Room (UNIV-3-084), and Doble Building Room#- 413 & 415.

As of yesterday, Tuesday, May 31, we had started another roll-out for the Mollye Lichter 24-hour Computer Lab, the Doble Information Commons, and the Doble Building Room# 309.

Later today and tomorrow (06/01 & 06/02), we will be rolling-out Wolfard 203 and Wolfard 204 which will complete the summer computer image deployment.

So what to expect?

Well, the latest computer images include a Dual-Boot OS set-up which allows users to choose between MacOSX 10.6.x and Windows 7 Professional SP1.

I know what you're thinking...

"but we are already used to having a dual-boot computer lab"

... as this is true, we were able to provide a few quality of life changes in the form of software upgrades.

Software Changes

Our basic software set includes (Mac/Win):

• Firefox 4.x
• DropBox
• Skype
• VLC Media Player
• RealPlayer
• Google Earth
• Microsoft Office 2007/2008
• Microsoft Office 2010/2011
• Adobe Creative Suite 3
• Acrobat Professional
• Bridge
• Dreamweaver
• Flash
• Illustrator
• InDesign
• Photoshop
• Adobe Reader X
• OpenSource Multimedia Software
• Audacity
• Blender
• Gimp
• InkScape
• Kompozer
• Processing
• Filezilla
• Flickr Uploadr
• iLife
• GarageBand
• iWeb
• iPhoto
• Inspiration
• InspireData
• Google Sketchup
• +*We've also added a few entertainment packages for you.

That's it.... very slim and trim.

The boot-times for Windows 7 are under a minute and shut-down times are just as efficient ~15-20 seconds.  *I know, this was a MAJOR problem we had in our last image set.

Overall, everything is clean and efficient... no added weight and a genuinely clean experience.

PaperCut & Lesley Printing

Papercut (Lesley Pay-for-Print) is extremely fast and efficient now.

We have upgraded to the latest client (11.2) which comes with improvements for page-counts, a cleaner interface, and faster printing.  Faster printing can also be attributed to our enhanced servers which are located in various locations (Doble Campus, Sherrill Campus, and AIB-Library)---

As far as the WebUI, we have kept it as close to stock as possible, but added some features like relevant links to help articles, LesleyCard, and secure password change.  We fixed cross-browser compatibility issues *which i know that must have been bothering a LOT of you.

...and???

Overall, it is our most sincere wish that everyone have a digital classroom/public computer terminal that is fast, friendly, and efficient.  Please know that we in the Labs & Classrooms Division of University Technology work hard to make things work well for you... with Students and Teachers in mind.  

Please feel free to let us know what you think!  And if there are ANY improvements, modifications, or suggestions otherwise you would like to offer, please feel free to contact us via facebook.

Stay tuned for more updates as the Summer Maintenance continues!

PRINTER SERVER UPGRADES--- PRINTING IS DISABLED

PRINT SERVICES OFFLINE

UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE

Howdy, folks---

In case you haven't been following our Twitter, all print services are currently disabled for our classrooms.
We are slowly bringing them back online.

Please stay tuned!

In the meantime, you can check your print balances by visiting our new user interface:
http://lesley.edu/ut/payforprint
*which is accessible by on-campus only!

Thanks for your patience!


-- LesleyLabs

NEW COLOR LASER PRINTER IN INFOCOMMONS!

ATTENTION--- We have installed a new Color Printer in the Information Commons…

To use it---

FROM WINDOWS:

Select File, then Print

In the Printer Name Drop-down box, select \\printsrv-main\DOBLE-INFO-COLOR

FROM MacOS:

Select File, then Print

In the Printer Name Drop-down box, select DOBLE-INFO-COLOR

That’s it! 

If you've ever printed on-campus, the rest is exactly the same.  Just enter your username and password;  Check your balance by visiting:  http://lesley.edu/ut/payforprint. (MUST BE ONCAMPUS)

The cost is $0.50/page
*but there’s no 2-sided printing, so beware!

Labs & Classrooms Q2 Update!

Howdy, folks--

Hope you all are doing well.
The semester is coming to an end... Seems to pass by so fast!
We here in the Labs & Classrooms division have been working hard to put things together for the upcoming season change.

A couple of things you might find different for the upcoming weeks:

• WITHIN THE NEXT MONTH
• We are adding a new Color Laser printer in the Doble InfoCommons
  Our printing records indicate that the INFO COMMONS received the highest volume of printing in the last year (~90,000 pages/1900 jobs).  To help balance the load, we are putting an HP Laserjet cp3525x printer which will allow students to print 300dpi on 8.5x11" color prints
  
• We have added 4 new boom-microphone stands to the equipment check-out list.
  
• WITHIN THE NEXT 3 MONTHS
• We are moving one of the HP Laserjet P4015's out of the MollyeLichter 24-hour computer lab and putting it into University Hall Training Room (3rd Floor Lab--- UNIV-3-084)
  There are currently two Black and White printers in the 24-hour lab and only one in the training room.  Normally, this wouldn't be a big deal, but Statistically speaking---
  the Mollye Lichter 24-hour lab's combined printing for the last year is approximately- - 30,000 pages/7000 jobs.   The Reading Room (~160,000 pages/31000 jobs) and UHALL Training Room (~120,000 pages/22000 jobs) represent a significantly larger print load which can be divided a little more evenly.
  
• We are building a new image set for the labs & classrooms computers which will include a Dual-Boot Schematic featuring MacOSX 10.6.x and Windows7 Professional NEW!.
  The list of proposed software will include:
• MS Office 2007/2008
• MS Office 2010/2011 --NEW!
• ArcGIS 9.3 (windows only)
• Kurzweil 3000 (windows only)
• Inspiration 8;  InspireData
• Open Source Graphics Package which includes:  GIMP Graphics Editor, InkScape Vector Graphics, Blender 3D, Kompozer  NEW!
• Cloud Storage Packages:  Dropbox, Flickr Uploader, Picasa  NEW!
• Google Packages:  Earth 3D, Sketchup
• Multimedia:  Real Player, QuickTime, iTunes, VLC Media Player, Audacity, Windows Media Player
• Web Plugins:  Flash 10.x, Silverlight
• Internet Apps:  Digsby, Pidgin, Skype, FileZilla
• Web Browsers:  Firefox 4.0 NEW!, Internet Explorer 9 NEW!, Safari 5
  
  Our goal was to merely.... KEEP IT SIMPLE-- SLIM, SEXY, EFFICIENT.
  
• We are also updating PaperCut PrintCharging to 11.x soon.  This will give us a whole range of new interface tweaks and usage upgrades.  Your charge accounts will still exist as they do, but the WebUI will have more features and a fresh look!
  
• WITHIN THE NEXT 6 MONTHS
• We may be looking to acquire additional components for check-out... including, but not limited to:  document cameras, microphones/microphone stands.
  

Thanks everyone for keeping up with the happenings in the labs & classrooms.

For more information on our operations, please visit our website:

http://lesley.edu/ut/academic

and please feel free to send us a message:  labs@lesley.edu

Take care!

--- Richard Phung

Labs & Classrooms Coordinator

Lesley University

Bolting these bad-boys down!

Howdy, folks---

I had to take a little more action in preventing the movement of computer workstations from the front of the classrooms in Doble and Wolfard...

People just kept moving them and disconnecting everything.

Now, maybe they will stay put.

SPRING 2011

Welcome back everyone! Over the break, several of the desktops in the labs have been cleaned up and upgraded to include more of the applications you may need. Wolfard 203 and 204, Doble 413 and 415 are now equipped with the SP2011 image which includes Adobe Creative Suite 3 Design Premium.

Users are now able to utilize Bridge, Photoshop, Flash, Dreamweaver, InDesign, Illustrator, and Acrobat Pro in any of these rooms.

If you want to see something in the next image, let us know and we'll see what we can do.

Enjoy your semester,

Sean E. Parrott-Wolfe
Senior Technician, University Technology
Lesley University

Lab Machines Ready for Testing!

Students, Faculty, Staff---

TEST YOUR PRESENTATIONS ASAP---

We have recently re-imaged computers in Wolfard and Doble.
As we understand the software configuration is stable and functioning, it is not unreasonable to expect technical difficulties with opening or viewing files and media on these machines.  These are often due to discrepancies with the version of software used to create the media, the format of the media, and codecs/plugins required to view the media.

*Even though we try to cover MOST bases with our installation, we cannot always guarantee that your media will work on our computers like they do your own computers.---- a common misconception.

To serve the community, we have provided sample machines from each of the computer areas on campus here in our office.
ALL members of the Lesley Community are welcome to come-down and test our computer configurations to see if they will work for your files or presentations.
If there needs to be any updates, we will be here to take requests in-person.

The longer you wait, the less likely we will be able to fix ANYTHING before your presentation or class meeting.

EVERYONE who uses ANY of our computers for any WORK should make an appearance in our office.

We are located on the Lower Level of University Hall (LL-010) and these machines will be here until March 4, 2011

---

In a letter to the faculty:

Hello, Faculty--

I hope you all had a splendid holiday.

You are receiving this email because our records indicate that you have been assigned one (or more) of the following classrooms as your designated teaching-space for the Spring 2011.

DOBL-309; DOBL-413; DOBL-415

WOLF-203; WOLF-204; WOLF-201

As many of you know, these are rooms that contain computer systems.

To update you on what’s going on, we are in the middle of re-configuring all of the computers, a process that is anticipated to take up the majority of the month of January. 

In an attempt to alleviate any software/hardware problems that may arise with your classroom materials, we have set-aside sample computers in our office (located at the HelpDesk Suite on the Lower Level of University Hall, LL-010) so that you may test your course materials and media PRIOR to the start of the semester.

We invite you to bring your course materials, multimedia, and a list of web-resources and give the computers a rigorous testing.  Any issues that come-up now will be documented and resolved before you start your class.

Here is a list of software that will be present on the computers:

*please keep in mind that without physically testing your media on our machines, there is NO guarantee that your media will function as expected regardless of whether it was made using the same software version or operating system.

On Mac

Adobe CS3 Design Premium -- Acrobat Professional, Bridge, Dreamweaver, Flash, Illustrator, InDesign, Photoshop, Reader 9

Ilife 09 -- Garage Band, iMovie 09, iMovie HD, iPhoto, iDVD, iWeb, iTunes

MS Office 2004 – Excel, Powerpoint, Word

MS Office 2008 -- Excel, Powerpoint, Word

Safari 5, Firefox 3.6 +SilverLight

Google Earth, Google Sketchup, Picasa, Epson Scan Utility

FileZilla, QuickTime 10 +Windows Media Components, VLC, Audacity

Inspiration 8, InspireData, Tech4Learning (KidPix, WebBlender, TimeLiner, Geometer’s Sketchpad, Twist, ImageBlender, Frames, Pixie), Skype

On Windows

Adobe CS3 Design Premium — Acrobat, Dreamweaver, Flash, Illustrator, Photoshop, Reader X

MS Office 2007 — Access, Excel, PowerPoint, Publisher, Word

Internet Explorer 8, Firefox 3.6 +SilverLight, iTunes

Google Earth, Google Sketchup, Picasa, ArcGIS, Kurzweil 3000, Epson Scan Utility

FileZilla, VLC, Audacity, BurnIMG

Inspiration 8, InspireData, Tech4Learning (KidPix, WebBlender, TimeLiner, Geometer’s Sketchpad, Twist, ImageBlender, Frames, Pixie), Skype

These machines will be available for you to test up until January 23rd, by which time we cross our fingers that everything is copacetic.  

Any questions, feel free to contact me directly.

Thank you, and have a great rest of the winter break

P.S.  If you, or anyone else you know, uses the laptop cart for any part of your instruction, a sample laptop cart configuration will also be available to test.

-- 

Richard Phung

Labs & Classrooms Coordinator

University Technology

Lesley University

Ph:  617.349.8819

Fax:  617.349.8989

Photos from July 2010---

Here's some highlights from July maintenance & upgrades...

 

 

 

 

 

Digital Print Lab REIMAGED

Warning: The content on this post was written while Richard Phung, the Labs & Classrooms Coordinator, held the title of Computer Lab Technician at the Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University.... the content expressed here is out of date, at best.

we loaded a new image onto the digital print lab computers:
image from July 29, 2009

for whole lab, the image process took about 11 minutes
we created 2 partitions: Digital Printing (30GB) and Temporary Storage (~120GB)
*with the exception of #2, Temporary Storage (45GB)

Post Installation:
Renamed Computers
System Preference > Sharing

Changed Permissions to Ignore Ownership on Temporary Storage

Installed Deep Freeze via Remote Desktop

Image Processes:

Warning: The content on this post was written while Richard Phung, the Labs & Classrooms Coordinator, held the title of Computer Lab Technician at the Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University.... the content expressed here is out of date, at best.

Created images: (07/27-29/09)
Master Image
Media
Digital Printing
Mobile (G4)
Mobile (Intel)

Cloned:

Macbook 14
Macbook 06
Macbook 13

Powerbook 10
Powerbook 09

Room 316 *hopefully

Major Image Backup

Warning: The content on this post was written while Richard Phung, the Labs & Classrooms Coordinator, held the title of Computer Lab Technician at the Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University.... the content expressed here is out of date, at best.

Updating:
Digital Printing Image
Backing up + Updating - Universal Image (Spring 2009)
Backing up + Updating - Mobile Image - Universal (Spring 2009)

Creating Boot Environment

Warning: The content on this post was written while Richard Phung, the Labs & Classrooms Coordinator, held the title of Computer Lab Technician at the Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University.... the content expressed here is out of date, at best.

I'm moving the video image sets over to the aibanimation server.
We should be able to multicast deploy from the other location as autonomously as we have in this building.

Last image is:
Digital_Video_09.06.23-localadminonly.ppc.hfs.dmg

others:
VideoMaster-BETA1-061909.ppc.hfs.dmg
media-presentations.dmg

~45GB or so.
these will be the seeds for subsequent images.
good stuff!

Digital Printing Updates

Warning: The content on this post was written while Richard Phung, the Labs & Classrooms Coordinator, held the title of Computer Lab Technician at the Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University.... the content expressed here is out of date, at best.

Fixed file associations with *.psd
Updated Adobe DNG converter to 5.4.x

Moving Images around...

Warning: The content on this post was written while Richard Phung, the Labs & Classrooms Coordinator, held the title of Computer Lab Technician at the Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University.... the content expressed here is out of date, at best.

the 062309 version of VideoMaster has been backed-up with local admin account ONLY.. i will need to be customized as soon as we determine how to handle logins/user accounts.

In the meantime, I installed Maya2009 which is ONLY supported under Intel Architectures... So I am restoring the VideoMaster image onto a macbook for a beta-test of features and authentication to the flexlm server.

ALSO, starting to work on the AnimationDownshootMaster image....