#What the hell is Moodle

[darker-than-darkstorm]

I was job-hunting and came across this one. Add it to the list!

compilation of this type of post

[lilniina]

this whole time I've had to download a moodle app to see the weekly lecture readings what the hell is a moodle don't piss me off

[khodorkovskaya]

life as an econ major: first impression

17.09.23

so here's the thing, the school year starts tomorrow but i still don't have my exam results... so am i actually gonna start my masters this year? who knows. i guess we'll find out tomorrow.

but the info session for this program took place on friday so i went despite the fact that i still don't have my results. and here's how it went.

so first we had a big info session for all the masters programs at the economics and management faculty. and there are like 5 different programs, we were about 50-60 people id say. the session was quite boring bc it was mostly for people who are new to the university overall. so they just like explained all the administrative stuff like how to sign up for courses, what moodle is, etc. so i didn't learn anything new. and i looked around to see what kind of people study economics and management. and i really felt out of place. idk, maybe it's my "not like other girls" syndrome or idk what. but i really felt like i didn't belong. contrary to what id imagined, it was mostly women. mostly my age and older. a couple of people in their 30s-40s too. but mostly like yeah, girlies in their mid to late twenties. dressed in skinny jeans. and michael kors bags. all with straight or straightened hair. the vibe was very much french, no offense... and the few guys who were there were also very french. like skinny jeans and hair that's like shaved on the sides. it was giving tiktok fuckboys circa 2020.

then we were split up into our different master programs. and our group only had 11 people. 3 guys, 8 girls. mostly foreign and like half poc. so there was me, a girl who just moved from spain who worked for this like eu organisation in paris, an indian girl who did econometrics and maths, a hijabi girl and a moroccan (?) girl who both did their bachelors here, a guy who just moved from lebanon, an asian girl who did international relations here, a girl who's doing a second masters, and a guy i went to hs with who studied in exeter. and that was quite awkward cos he came up to me like "heyyy you went to [school name], right?" and i was like ummmm who are you. and he was like "yeahh we had german and maths together". and i had no idea who he was. and then he said his name and that also didn't ring a bell at all. i was like bro i am so sorry.

so yeah, the head professor explained how the program works, like how many credits you need, what classes to take, etc. he was very cool and i started to get more enthusiastic about doing this actually.

and then we all had drinks in the main hall and i talked to the spanish girl, the 2nd masters girl and the high school guy.

and yesterday i looked at my schedule and registered for each of the courses on moodle. and... had a mental breakdown...

because it sounds like my worst nightmare.

first of all, im gonna have to write essays. i haven't written an essay since high school. i don't know how to cite. i don't know how to read either tbh. like how do i read a paper about economics?? i don't know what any of it means.

i looked at the syllabus for every course. and none of it makes sense. i don't even believe in inflation. like isn't inflation a deviantart fetish? and wtf is gdp. like.

secondly, 60% of the grade for these courses is group projects. again, i haven't done a group project since high school. it terrifies me. like. the responsibility of working with people. is terrifying. and you have to make a powerpoint presentation and write a paper. in a group! like.... how???? i don't know how to do either of these things.

and for the elective courses i was like okay im gonna pick the maths ones bc there's no way in hell that im gonna choose to write even more essays. but! the maths electives that i have are all programming! i don't know how to code! you need to know python! and like how to do like time projections and shit. ive only done matrix multiplication on matlab in like the first semester of my bachelors. i fucking hate computers and matlab was hell, i didnt undertand any of it, it was my worst grade. so how am i gonna do python?

another thing that sounds like absolute hell is coursework. in maths it was easy. you go to class (or don't, up to you!) and you have an exam at the end of the year and that's your grade. but here you have papers to hand in every week. and graded homework. and presentations. my lazy ass is actually gonna have to work throughout the year. i thought about it yesterday and cried.

anyway, studying economics sounds like a neurodivergent nightmare.

and okay i thought id stop there but!!! the topics that im gonna have to write papers on... y'alll.... i don't give a shit about the economic impact of russian sanctions like

how do i give a shit ????

and i looked at the first problem set and at first i was like oooo maths! looks familiar! but the thing is, i can't read. like whenever i see a word problem my brain just makes the internet dial up noise. wtf does this mean???

i showed it to my stepdad and he was like "huh that's easy, that's just cross multiplication". and guys. you don't understand. but i don't know how to do percentages. i don't know how to solve first degree diff equations. i can't do basic maths. i can only prove theorems on abstract topics and that's it. 2+2 i don't know her. what the fuck is a growth rate. like. i can't read.

fuck. i am so stressed.

[miloucomehome]

Final stretch and now I'm getting hit with a sense of stress and don't like it.

I've been in a state of catching up since February because of my typography class— there's no proper syllabus, multiple labour intensive assignments due the same day, Moodle poorly organized that small assignments are buried, multiple cases where we are blindsided by deadlines not mentioned in class or emailed out as reminders (for purely done-at-home homework). It's been hell for me to stay organized so I've been disorganized since early on and it's cascaded over to all my other classes. I absolutely hate this situation. And we haven't had course evaluations for her class which I find suspicious. She's not a full time faculty so we should've gotten something last week — I desperately want to highlight this as an issue because I'm not the only student who has been set back and constantly in a state of catching up. She also has it set up so it locks students out from submitting assignments late so you have to email it to her and usually she forgets to check, claiming it's a lot to keep track of (she could let Moodle remain open and sort out what she receives late by ...clicking a button dedicated to sorting out by submission times or by name. It even highlights it for you. That way her inbox isn't overwhelmed).

I'll probably be venting here at all hours and pulling some late nights at home and early mornings but I need to get everything done as best I can. Usually when it's like this I try to keep things inside and not react outwardly or show my stress vocally for fear of upsetting people or being told that I should've organizey better. It...of course doesn't help, haha. So the baby steps here are to do this I think so I can be focused.

The 4th yr class I have (culture and IMG) is turning into a slight nightmare. I haven't submitted the process book yet for the 2nd project but I want to submit a new version of what I made given the comments she gave me were negative (to me) during crit. Basically have a paragraph stating "Based on feedback I received during crit, I decided it would be best if I remade the book. The following is a mock-up of the new iteration of the book/the following is the new printed version of the book". I'm hoping during the weekend to also submit the belated assignments for her class so I can work on the final project for her class too.

[funky-sea-cryptid]

now that my first semester of college is done, time to list things i'd like to tell myself in august

if you think you can fit two loads of laundry into one drier that is the devil talking, your clothes will all be warm and wet which is objectively the worst sensation known to man

take out the trash weekly. if you think you can go another week, you are wrong. the trash only increases

do not drink the foggy water. filter that shit

have a specific place to work and a specific place to play

play, it helps

you can buy whatever you want and it does not mean that you should. this is why i own an entire box of mints. i do not need an entire box of mints

no, kissing is still not an appealing sensation. sorry.

do weed

embrace the clutter. it'll happen no matter what

DO NOT DO YOUR ESSAYS AT 3 AM

AND DO NOT SUBMIT THEM TITLED SHIT LIKE "ENGLISH ESSAY AND CHILL" (im so sorry toby)

you can skip a class, it's okay

write bad poetry for english class. it's good to someone

tell your friends you love them as much as possible

contribute to the group playlist. you'll find music you have no idea you loved

get a job on campus

invest in earplugs, these bitches horny horny

charge your speaker so you can play obnoxious music to make your neighbors stop having sex

check the goddamn moodle

don't be afraid to tell the people in the hallway to fuck off. they're out there late as hell.

KNOCK ON THE SHOWER BEFORE YOU OPEN THE CURTAIN

PLEASE.

buy the cosplay shit, it's fun

take up [redacted]'s offer, it fucks

friend group drama is inevitable. choose the friends you want to keep and act accordingly

go to baked potato night

go trick or treating

you'll be alright. i promise. you'll get through the semester.

[juliainfinland]

So now, at the tender age of very-nearly-51, I'm a student again. Well, auditor.

A really nice friend (hi Doris *waves*) who's audited university classes for some years now and has had a lot of fun in the process decided to pay my auditor's tuition fee for this semester because she figured I'd have a lot of fun too (and she also figured that I wouldn't come up with the idea myself because where I live now the nearest university is a bit... not so easy to reach, and even if it were nearby I'd still be too broke).

So now I've signed up for four classes and one of them started today.

Turns out the professor (German guy in Germany) actually knows where my little Finnish town is located and he's even been here before! That was a nice surprise.

This class is a lecture series about the history of the Latin language and I still have to wrap my head around the fact that classical philologists have internet now. I'm ancient; in "my day" (early 1990s) only the computer scientists and us computational linguists and some of the engineering departments had internet access. (Well, there wasn't that much you could do on the internet back then anyway, at least compared to nowadays. But near-instantaneous communication with colleagues overseas through text-based forms of communication (e-mail or chat) and the possibility to upload your own research and download others' using protocols like FTP or Gopher would have certainly been of use to people from other departments than ours too! – Yes, I'm that old. I was on the 'net before HTML even existed outside CERN. But I digress.)

I'm attending this class through Teams; two of the others will be through Teams too, and the fourth one will apparently take place entirely through Moodle.

(If someone had told me back then (early 1990s) that this sort of thing would at all be possible... at a time when "amazing bandwidth" meant whatever you could squeeze out of copper wiring... I have hazy memories of kilobytes per second. In any case, not nearly enough for video conferencing and barely enough for downloading (or uploading) static images of what we'd call "decent size and resolution" today. Audio conferencing was possible, of course (said copper wires were telephone wires, after all). It was called a "conference call" and you had to submit an application for a conference circuit, stating your desired date and time, to the phone company in advance. (Not "your" phone company. There was only the one.) But video? Nope. But I digress again.)

(Gods, I feel old.)

And now I can video chat with classical philologists in Germany and the mind boggles.

Of course, right at the beginning of the lecture there was the usual linguistic fun that you always get when you have first- or second-year students of Latin in a linguistics (as opposed to philology) class. (Well, fun for people like me, who are slightly more advanced than first- or second-year students and also approach the whole thing from a general-linguistics perspective, meaning that I know fancy terms such as "split ergativity" or "in pausa". Neither of which have much application when discussing Latin, but still.)

(OK, on second thought, it wouldn't surprise me if pausa did come up at some point. *ponders*)

Prof: As we all know, Latin morphology is a lot more complicated than German morphology. Everyone: *groans* Me: ??? Me: *giggles* Prof: ... yeah, you speak Finnish, your nouns have 15 cases. Me: Have you ever looked at the Georgian language? Prof: *groans* Me: Yeah, me too.

🤣

(For non-linguists: Georgian morphology is notoriously complex. The nouns are pretty straightforward, but the verbs are... words fail me. Also, all those Consonant Clusters From Hell.)

Of course, he's in historical linguistics, and this is a class on historical linguistics, so he told us that when we look at all those inflectional irregularities in Latin from a historical perspective (all the way back to Proto-Indo-European if we must) they suddenly become a lot less irregular. I'm looking forward to that. (I already know that lots of irregularities suddenly become regular if you look back far enough, but my memories of PIE and of the historical phonology and morphology of the Italic languages is quite shaky (I can barely say "Manios med fhefhaked Numasioi") and I'm really looking forward to looking at the details again.)

Two of the other classes start next week. The fourth one is a summer class.

*fidgets*

[azurite-writes]

Problem One: The Screen(s) and Digital Workspace

Part one of my multi-part doc about what I learned from doing online college at a non-online institution. This chapter: my Desktop as a Desk

     Highlighted points: learning styles, work type/function in relation to the computer 

       My biggest problem with being pushed online after being at an in-person institution was, and still is, my forced reliance on the computer. I have to sit in front of it for hours: attending classes on Zoom; checking email every three hours; accessing Moodle pages for class and out-of-class work (Moodle is what my institution uses, other web management/e-learning software platforms include PowerLearning, Blackboard, and OU Campus, among others). And the work itself can be watching documentaries, watching seminars, accessing ebook/PDF documents, annotating documents in online portals… it's a lot. People have talked at length about "zoom fatigue," as well as the eyestrain headaches that can come with staring at said screens for hours at a time. I'll talk about my own lessons learned about that later.

       The assumption among the administrators and (some) people of older generations than those currently in school seems to be that working online with computers and smartphones is more efficient. That isn't necessarily true; it all depends on the type of task and the person being expected to complete it. In my case, I cannot, for the life of me, focus on dense sections of text presented on a backlit screen. Thus, reading and answering emails is okay, but downloading scanned textbook pages to be read on a laptop screen (along with trying to highlight and annotate them) is hell on earth.

       Why is this? Different reasons for different people, but in my case it's because reading/"writing" on a screen interferes with my learning style(s), which are visual/spatial, audio, and kinetic. Audio doesn't come into play for reading on a screen, but seeing words physically in a certain location relative to other words on a page is very important to my memory of the material. Computer screens can display pretty much anything at any given time; book pages can only display whatever was permanently printed onto them. That is, the content of a book page in physical space will always be the same unless you, the reader, manipulate it; a computer screen can have any type of content displayed as long as its pixels can light up and process the information. And for me, that's a problem because I don't have any physical space to relate the information to, plus I don't get a sense of how long the document is. Recalling a passage in a printout, for me, goes like this: "I remember it was on the top-left of a page towards the beginning, the shape of the paragraph was funny too… ah, there it is." Recalling a passage on a digital scan of the same document is much harder for me by contrast: literally any of the paragraphs could have made its way to the top-left of my computer screen, if I moved the window around or zoomed in to better read the text; documents are an endless scroll upward or downwards, with (maybe) a sidebar to tell me what page I've landed on. All of my "landmarks" are functions of the program I am using to access the document. They're static and contained to a window... that can show up anywhere on my computer screen. Not conducive to the way I learn at all.

       My kinetic learning style comes into play with the computer, too. Annotating a document? In the physical world, a pen on the document itself does the trick; going through the physical movement of circling a word or making a note are things that solidify the information in my mind. Annotating a PDF document? First of all, it's difficult to do with a mouse (and God help you if you have a trackpad), and it's highly dependent on the program that the user selects to open the PDF. I could connect a drawing tablet, if I have one, but they're very expensive and their use is, again, dependent on the compatibility with whatever reader program the user selects. All this to say: annotating on the computer doesn't work for me, either. My kinetic and visual learning styles come together with note-taking. My memory is highly dependent on seeing words as they are formed by my own hand, processing them, and connecting meaning to them as they sit in a specific place on the page (am I over-explaining this? Basically, writing notes by hand and seeing where those notes are on a piece of paper help me remember them). Typing notes isn't a replacement for hand-writing notes for me; while I'm busy fixing my typos (on words I would never misspell on paper, usually, since my fingers are just moving weirdly over the keys), the professor moves on, and I'm not listening well enough to catch the fact that I've missed new information.

       The takeaway here is figure out your individual types of work relate to being on the computer. As I said, the computer hinders many aspects of my learning when it comes to memory and efficiency. As a creative tool, however, it has almost the opposite effect; writing assignments for fiction, poetry, and screenwriting classes are much more efficient on the computer. From creative thought to keystroke, I have less time to second-guess or forget my ideas, and both the immediacy and changeability of word processing programs actually works in my favor for those sorts of things.

       What I did differently from first online semester to second:

       1) I figured out which materials helped me remember my notes the best. Honestly, I wasn't even doing this when I was at in-person college, and to my detriment, but I couldn't get away with it at all once I went fully remote. Think back to when you were in lower levels of school: were there certain types of materials you gravitated towards in the classroom? Did you like basic composition notebooks with faint blue lines? Wide-ruled or college-ruled paper? Did you discover that graph paper just worked really nicely with all notes besides math, or that blank pages were less busy for your eyes? When you used pens, did you prefer blue or black ink, or did colored ink help certain things stick? If you can control what materials you use to take notes with, consider using ones akin to those from a class you either a) remembered the most fondly or b) remembered the most information from. Scour your memories of class experiences for anything, no matter how small, that may have made your life easier. Equally, take note of what tasks actually worked well digitally. Adjust accordingly.

(Personally, I found my magic formula was a 1-subject memorandum notebook — marginless, with very narrow line rulings; while I hesitate to direct you to Amazon, they are hard to find at a decent price otherwise, and you can get a 12 pack for just over $40 from them — with black ink from a 0.38-size gel pen (I used a basic Pilot G2 pen until it ran out, then bought ink refills in the smaller size). To "highlight" my notes, I circled or underlined information with a blue gel pen of the same variety. Keep in mind again that I'm learning to be a translator; this is just what works for me.)

       2) If I needed to print something out, I printed it out. Environmental guilt is something I struggled with a lot, and there was always something about staying on the computer that convinced me I was being "less wasteful" by staying digital. But with how much time and energy I ultimately saved reading a printed document that can be recycled vs the electricity I ate up spinning my wheels in front of the ebook… to me, it was worth it. If you find that helps you, too, don't be ashamed to print certain things out.

(If conserving ink and paper is a concern to you, it is possible in some viewing/editing apps to remove or cover images, either with white squares or by taking the images out completely. I have an old MacBook Pro and on current versions of Preview, one can draw shapes and fill them in white to cover parts of the scan that would eat up ink, such as blurred black borders and scanned images. For documents in a word processing program like Microsoft Word or Pages, it may also be possible to print the documents out at a smaller size, allowing more text or even multiple pages to show up on a single sheet of paper.)

| In the coming days/weeks I hope to be posting more content about how I tried to adapt to fully remote learning and the things I’ve learned along the way! Follow for updates ♥︎ |

[fishmongeringstudies]

nine: the tender machine kindness of daily routines and actions whose net worth comes not from their immediately visible impacts but the way your hands learn to steady themselves in the warm flickering light of morning, years after the candles and the ouija board have been put away

being a college student means having to face up to big, harrowing decisions every day such as should i drop this shirt on the floor after i take it off or walk the extra two and a half meters to my laundry hamper? most of the time i opt for the former, although the peculiar thing about leaving stuff on the floor is that the ratio of stuff to floor gradually inverts itself like a body turned inside-out to reveal the soft, fleshy inside until there is no more floor and altogether too much stuff. at that point, there are no more decisions to make. either you pick up all those shirts or make the walk to breakfast in the nude. given that the dining hall is known to be unenthusiastic about the smallest of transgressions like bare feet and people without skin, i doubt they would let me in. unless i seduced them. but it is hard to seduce a building.

the dining hall in this college is named after yet another rich alumnus who, fearing that they would be forgotten when they died and fade away into obscurity, therefore experiencing a second, more significant death, decided to assert dominance over one of the key facilities for survival at their alma mater. the building is short, squat, and emits a faint glow like a convenience store glimpsed from afar at four o'clock in the morning. upon entering the first set of swinging doors, one finds oneself greeted with two more sets of doors and a choice of one or the other. the left door will take you past an office. the right will take you past two more doors. one of them leads to the bathroom. the other leads to hell.

the dining hall appears to have been built on some kind of slope, because once you get past the first door and the second and pass through the gates of reckoning, the path splits again into two rather grand staircases of significant width and height, which lead you some two storeys down to a square-shaped room with a big fireplace perched at one end. it dawns on you then that this, this place hidden under the great yawning jaw of heaven, is the real dining hall. you squint at your surroundings in mild disbelief while awkwardly fingering your phone in your pocket so that the other person waiting in line doesn't strike up a conversation. the path outside looks flat as fuck and yet the stairs seemed to go on forever. the only conclusion: this building is cursed.

other things that are cursed: unripe bananas, misplaced sympathies, birds with teeth. liberal arts colleges. sad novels. people who end all their text messages with a full stop. the last one is a lie.

wow liberal arts colleges are really cursed though. i know what you're thinking. not this again, you moan in an extremely non-sexual way, dragging the heel of your palm down your face. not him again. i am tired of him, you complain. excellent. this makes two of us. but one cannot put something away until you are sure of all its contents. and even now, days and weeks and months later, i'll be brushing my teeth and admiring my reflection in the mirror when i'll find myself abruptly subjected to the blunt force trauma that is delayed realization. memories are like mille feuilles. a lot of effort to make and a lot of effort to get rid of. and if you take the lazy way out, slicing your knife perpendicular to this delicate, thousand-layered monstrosity, you are bound to miss something crucial.

question: have you missed anything this semester? what have you overlooked; what have you let slip you by? look over your shoulder. do it right now. perhaps you will discover the ghost of your deceased great-grandmother, trying to whisper to you her beloved recipe for tang yuan. take everything she says down. you will need it one day. i promise.

these days i'm not scared of anything in my head anymore. that's the nice thing about having fear manifest itself as a thing with skin and some internal organs (at least i assume he has them. to be honest you could tell me he has half a kidney in there and nothing else and i'd be like yes that makes sense, of course you're right) that moves and walks and talks like a person but otherwise has the cognitive capabilities of a chair. it's like playing an rpg horror survival game. only the antagonist isn't hot.

i am though. and so is summer, sweet sticky-skin summer, though i woke up today and it felt like february all over again. it was eight degrees celcius in the morning; eleven in the afternoon. now it is nine. so this is how it is when one is thousands of miles from the equator. one step forward, two steps back. take ten steps in a rough circle and then four steps to the left. tango with me. chase cars with me. we can chase cars all day. i'll wear your shirt and you'll eat mine.

this semester the salsa club held its weekly meetings on friday at 8:45 in the lounge attached to the dorm i lived in. on one such friday i was playing pool in the adjacent room with someone i don't talk to anymore and another i wish i still did but never seemed to find in the same room as myself. it was my first time playing pool. the stick reminded me of sun wu kong, the monkey king and his magical monkey king staff. or was it a stick? the details escape me. the evening escapes me, too. i know at one point one of them left to join the salsa club. i know at some point i cleared the table.

it must have been the third or fourth week of the semester when they convinced me to play pool, because i said yes without thinking the way i never had before that and never will again. back then i was still scared and lonely and to be fair, i was scared and lonely for half of april and most of may, but these are fundamentally different sentiments. back then i was scared of everything. these days i am acquainted with a more academic, nuanced fear; persistent laughter, 500-word moodle short responses sent over text, fists.

the first time i did laundry in the spring i googled "[my college name] laundry machines" because i had to be sure that the laundry machines in this specific basement in this specific college weren't super fucked-up for some reason and i was terrified that they would be and that i'd fuck up even the laundry, dear god, if i couldn't do the laundry then what was the point of trying to do friendship? i threw everything in the washing machine at five o'clock in the morning and dragged it across the white-tiled floor to the dryer at five-thirty. at five-fifty i texted good evening to a friend. at six-twenty-seven i washed my chopsticks.

at six thirty-five i stood in front of my dresser in my room with a freshly-laundered shirt pressed against my face and a spill of sunlight sliding down the left side of my body. i breathed in. the fabric smelled like flowers. like it'd emerged from the cycle of reincarnation, pure and dumb as a baby. i breathed in again. my hands and cheeks were warm. the birds outside my window were screaming in french. in that moment i found that i believed, for the first time since i'd gotten here, in the transient nature of all things. even sadness. even the sneaking feeling that i would never settle into this room with its shitty ceiling light, which turned out to be true, which was paranoia later justified by truth. even you.

then i folded it up carefully, and put it away.

05.29.21

[jbuenrostro00]

Week 10 Blog Post

1. Do people who troll actually know what kind of toll they can take on people across the internet or communities on the internet?

Honestly, I feel that trolls are just people who kind of have nothing better to do in their spare time than to just ‘troll.’ Since it’s the internet, a lot of people have the mindset that “well it’s on the internet so it really can’t hurt anyone physically.” A lot of people just troll to get reactions out of the person they are targeting or fans of that creator they are targeting. Many people do not even realize what they’re doing, “To my - and in fact to their - fascination, few could recall how they described their behaviors before the subcultural definition of trolling took hold. They have since come to use the term retroactively, but at the time did not think of themselves as trolls.” Although they did not understand what they were doing, ‘trolls’ should be told why their actions are wrong and why their actions can inflict harm to others. 

2. Is removing hate comments/censoring what people post wrong?

This is a complicated question to answer because there are different variations of this situation. On one hand, innocent people such as Leslie Jones can be attacked viciously for simply taking part in a role for a movie that was not that good. Although she was apart of a movie that was not well liked among the general public, for her to receive such malicious comments to the point for her to say, “I feel like I’m in a personal hell. I didn’t do anything to deserve this. It’s just too much. It shouldn’t be like this. So hurt right now.” Followed by a later tweet, “I leave Twitter tonight with tears and a very sad heart. All cause I did a movie. You can hate the movie but the shit I got today... wrong.” In these instances, comments should be taken down because she had no reason to be attacked so much over a role she had in a film. As for other hate comments that are directed to those who inflict hate or have racist views, (cyberbullies, white supremacists, racists) I think for me and for many others, the comments should remain up. This creates a “well how come they can spew hate but I can’t?” situation which can become difficult. I feel that that removing hate comments targeted at people, or just hate comments in general, should be looked at on a case by case basis. There are certain kinds of hate comments that are deemed socially acceptable and others that are not. 

3. Is Reddit a good website for individuals and communities?  (page 2, page 3, 

Personally, I have never used Reddit before but from the article I read it seems to be a pretty ‘true-to-self’ website. “Within the Reddit community, there is nothing in particular that compels a user to be truthful and open about their off-line identity, yet many users seem willing disclose details about their lives away from the Internet.” The website seems kind of the opposite of an app like Instagram - which is where a lot of people try to come off as having perfect lives. Reddit seems more relaxed and less serious than other platforms in which you have to provide information, “The ease that one can create a Reddit account has given rise to the phenomenon of what are known among Redditors as ‘novelty accounts’... Yet as we will soon see, there is still and expectation of truthfulness amongst some community members.” The website also seems to maintain control of hate comments that are spread on the platform by having it to where “If enough users downvote a particular comment it is collapsed and hidden from view; users must click to view the collapsed comment (and its resulting thread). I honestly feel that is a very good feature to have because it gives the power of the users to decide what is right and wrong to post rather than the website creators. It also sounds like the comment is still kept up but just hidden from view which doesn’t really take away a user’s right to comment what they please. 

4. Is trolling/having a fake internet persona dangerous today?

Yes, trolling online and also having a fake persona online can lead to drastic outcomes. A prime example of ‘trolling gone wrong’ is none other than rapper 6ix9ine. He started off as a rapper who had more of an underground/yelling style of music. His career took off with his track, Gummo, which he portrayed himself as a cold blooded gangster who had a lot gang affiliates. He eventually became so wrapped up in this persona that he actually felt he was who he pretended to be, a gangster. He eventually got into several altercations with the law including several RICO charges which could’ve put him behind bars for almost the rest of his life. He eventually fessed up and took down his accomplices and confessed that he was only doing a persona for ‘clout.’ As for his trolling, he is notorious for his shenanigans online by consistently calling out other famous artists. He has called out: Chief Keef, Lil Reese, Tory Lanez, 50 Cent, Trippie Redd, etc. His constant outbursts and callouts of other artists has resulted him in becoming one the most, if not the most, hated artist in the music industry. 6ix9ine has shown that even though the internet isn’t real life, being irresponsible and playing with fire will eventually get you burned. 

Bergstrom, K. (2011). “Don’t feed the troll”: Shutting down debate about community expectations on Reddit.com. First Monday, 16(8). https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v16i8.3498

Duggan, M. (2014). Online Harassment. Retrieved from https://moodle-2020-2021.fullerton.edu/pluginfile.php/2715046/mod_resource/content/0/httpswww.pewresearch.orginternet20141022online-harassment.pdf

Phillips, W. (2015). Defining terms: The origins and evolution of subculture trolling. 55-87.

Silma, A. (2016, August 24). A timeline of Leslie Jones’s horrific online abuse. The Cut. https://www.thecut.com/2016/08/a-timeline-of-leslie-joness-horrific-online-abuse.html

[linneastarron]

Petula for the ask thingy >:)

of course you’d ask for petula you nerd bdfhsfjk but heck yeah!!! kitty kat girl >:3c

~~~

favorite thing about them

I love her sass!!! She’s not a mean girl but she absolutely tries to seem super cool in canon.

least favorite thing about them

The fish on her head might not be in the safest spot. Safety hazard.

favorite line

"It's called impulse buying, you should try it sometime."It’s a callout. I impulse buy a lot.

brOTP

Ignoring Petula & Spot (my OC who is Petula’s cousin), I’d have to say Petula & all of the Cool Kids (Eddie, Bear, Maxime). I stan Petula being able to befriend them so hard.

OTP

When I was younger it was Petchen (Petula x Gretchen) but now that I headcanon them both with ages and the gap is just too big for it to be okay I think my OTP for now is either Petula x Eddie or Petula x Maxime (cool kids.........trademark symbol)

nOTP

Petula x Pester. I saw that take somewhere and it was not something I vibed with. Also I can’t forget Petula x That One Foot Fetish Guy from the Petula Askblog.

random headcanon

Petula has an industrial piercing on her right ear. Her parents do not know about this and she intends on keeping it that way. (She was able to get it thanks to the help of her cousin who snuck her somewhere to pierce her ear.)

unpopular opinion

IDK how unpopular this is but Petula absolutely pretends she’s exclusively a hard rock fan but secretly listens to people like Slayyyter or LIZY2K (modern artists with 2000s vibes) or any 2000s pop artist.

song i associate with them

"What the Hell” by Avril Lavigne. Maybe also “Sk8er Boi” by Avril Lavigne but I gotta thank Moodle for that because of her skater Petula headcanons.

favorite picture of them

[This one] by my good buddy Moodle [aka YOUdle!!! hi thanks for the ask] (there aren’t a lot of canon images so I went for fanart)!

[642stories]

Story #43, CELTA weeks 7-8

I believe I owe you some more insights about Celta!

Week 7 was so hard that I dreamed about sending it all to hell so I could indulge in sleeping 🛌 . Which I did the moment the second session was over. Literally. I was in bed 10 minutes after the tutor bid us goodbye 😅

On Monday I had my lesson 3 - listening - and it was relatively easy.

On Thursday I had a language focus lesson - Vocabulary. Usually, you are supposed to expose students to 10-12 new lexical items at once. In my lesson I had 23😱 I couldn’t choose the materials at that point and had to navigate my way through what I was given. So I decided to do TTT over PPP. I’ll share a post in a couple of days with some details about that particular lesson.

The trickiest thing about it was the language analysis sheet I was supposed to compete along with my lesson plan. 23 words and collocations. Definitions. CCQs for all of them. What to draw students’ attention to in terms of form? Pronunciation? Where will I need to cover an appropriacy aspect? That sheet was total shit. Took me about three hours.

On top of that, there was another live class, three more modules on the Moodle platform, a stage report one, then a personal tutorial and a stage report 2. Along the way I also conducted an interview with a student for assignment 1 I have to submit at the end of the month.

Phew. Shoot me now 🔫

Week 8 started and we were given a new group of learners - Uppers. They are cool, have been together for a while, come from different backgrounds, curious, ask dozens of questions and have established nice rapport.

Since for the first lesson with the new group we only had to cover a short “getting to know you” activity and observe our new tutor, it felt like having a breather.

Lesson 5 was Grammar - it’s time, I’d rather, I’d better.

I also completed two modules on the platform, and had gotten a “pass” for assignment 2.

Lesson 6 tomorrow! So far so good, but I’m definitely not gonna miss it when it ends!

🥱

[literatureandwit]

It’s Finally Fall Book Tag

Shoutout to @thelibraryofbabel​ for tagging me -- happy to have this excuse to avoid my reading for a solid 20 minutes.

1. In fall, the air is crisp and clear: Name a book with a vivid setting!

Hm. Honestly any book set in the Scottish Highlands always feels super visceral to me. Outlander, I suppose?

2. Nature is beautiful… but also dying: Name a book that is beautifully written, but also deals with a heavy topic like loss or grief.

I’ve actually been thinking about this whole literature about dying thing a lot lately. A small story: I went to my school’s annual Comparative Literature Symposium as a requirement for my CLT class and the one speaker said something that really stuck in my brain. It was along the lines of, but more eloquent than “All literature is coming to terms with dying, but that’s hard for an undergrad to see/feel/know” and it kind of stunned me. Anyway. Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go is good one that wrecks me every time. 

3. Fall is back to school season: share a non-fiction book that taught you something new.

I love nonfiction -- in fact, I considered myself primarily a nonfiction reading kinda gal up until I realized I was just an all-around reading kinda gal. I’ve been reading Sara Ahmed’s Living a Feminist Life since the summer and it’s still rocking my world. She puts highly complex and even theoretical issues into such accessible language!! Her analogies are so helpful in visualizing the problems at the heart of institutions!! Also, her “feminist killjoy” concept is possibly my favorite way of thinking about feminism and myself. 

4. In order to keep warm, it’s good to spend some time with the people we love: name a fictional family/household/friend-group that you’d like to be a part of.

I...don’t know...This is bad. I’m always like “I could totally be a part of [insert fictional family here]!!” but now that I’m trying to think of one, my mind has gone completely blank. It’s early. Whatever. I’ll tell y’all later when I have a burst of remembrance. 

5. The colourful leaves are piling up on the ground: show us a pile of fall-colored spines!

This is the most recent book related photo I’ve taken so that’s what you get. *Insert shrug emoji here*

6. Fall is the perfect time for some storytelling by the fireside: share a book wherein somebody is telling a story.

I just had to read Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians for my theory class, which is told from the POV of the narrator. So that works. The whole book is his story. An interesting read, by the way. I can't say I “enjoyed” it but it was definitely intellectually intriguing. 

7. The nights are getting darker: share a dark, creepy read.

Frankenstein!! Yup. That’s all I got. 

8. The days are getting colder: name a short, heartwarming read that could warm up somebody’s cold and rainy day.

I don't really read heartwarming things, haha. Pride and Prejudice is always a good option for some “happily ever after” type stuff. Even just the 1995 BBC adaptation works in a pinch. 

9. Fall (luckily, it’s my favourite season) returns every year: name an old favourite that you’d like to return to soon.

Every Woolf ever. I’m tired of this “reading only for school” hell that I’m currently in. Soon, my friends, soon. The semester’s end looms near. 

10. Fall is the perfect time for cozy reading nights: share your favourite cozy reading “accessories”!

I feel like blankets, coffee, and an oversized sweater are all necessary for a good night of “cozy” reading. Also some intense choral music. 

11. Spread the autumn appreciation and tag some people!

I really have to get my act together and write a Moodle post, so I’ll tag people at a later date (if I remember...). But really anyone who sees this should take 30 minutes to reflect!! It’s nice! Healthy! Okay bye. 

[joe-kerrs]

tagged by @clown-king-of-crime​

Rules: Answer these 85 statements and tag 20 people

Tagging: oh boy everyones already been tagged but @melamungous @dracze @batsylovesjoky @sombrero-de-copa @j-not-joker-not-jack-just-j @aneodic @batjokesfuckina @jack-nyahpier @paduya @joker-ka @khenq @clowncrime @fanboii17 @jokersby @batjokes-hell whatever i tried fuk me up i’m late to the party

THE LAST

1. Drink: water

2.- Phone Call: some client at work?

3.- Text Message: to my GF: “just call me daddy” oh god

4.- Song you listened to:  Like liquid - Flatsound

5.- Time you cried: idk i don’t cry

6.- Dated someone twice: nope

7.- Kissed someone and regretted it: nope

8.- Been cheated on: nope

9.- Lost someone special: nope

10.- Been depressed: always hell yea

11.- Gotten drunk and thrown up:  Like 2 years ago, two shots of shcnaps and I threw up over my friends balcony onto his drive way, he just pat me on the back and said “yeah it happens”

3 FAVORITE COLORS

12.-  Blue

13.- Black

14.- Red

IN THE LAST YEAR HAVE YOU

15.- Made new friends: Yeha

16.- Fallen out of love: Yep

17.- Laughed until you cried: nah

18.- Found out someone was talking about you: idk, no?

19.- Met someone who changed you: mmm nah?

20.- Found out who your friends are: nope

21.- Kissed someone on your Facebook list: my gf?

GENERAL

22.- How many of your Facebook friends do you know in real life: idk my dude that sounds hard to figure out

23.- Do you have any pets: My moodle! and my dads two golden retrievers and kitty

24.- Do you want to change your name: nah

25.- What did you do for your last birthday:  Nothing, I think I went out to dinner at some stage.

26.-What time did you wake up: 5:45am

27.- What were you doing at midnight last night: sleeping

28.- When was the last time you saw your mom: 30 minutes ago

29.- Name something you can’t wait for: My trip to japan in january

30.- What are you listening to right now:  the trees outside my window

31.- Have you ever talked to a person named Tom: yeah, my mum dated a tom

32.- Something that is getting on your nerves: my own procrastination when I have a v large essay to write

33.- Most visited Website: Tumblr and YouTube

34.- Hair color: Brown

35.- Long or short hair: Short. Pixie cut with a v long fringe

36.- Do you have a crush on someone:  yea mah gf

37.- What do you like about yourself: eye colour

38.- Want any piercings: nah

39.- Blood Type: O something

40.- Nicknames: none

41.- Relationship Status: how many times do I need to mention my gf?

42.- Zodiac: Virgo

43.- Pronouns: She/her

44.- Favorite TV show: Gotham (i know i;m trash)

45.- Tattoos: nah, I’d get sick of them after like 6 months

46.- Right or left handed: Right

47.- Surgery: None i’m so interesting and fun aren’t I?!

48.- Piercing: Eye ears have closed up, and my helix never heals right :/

49.- Sport: haha funny

50.- Vacation: japaaaan

51.- Pair of trainers: i havn’t had anything you could call trainers since grade 9

MORE GENERAL

52.- Eating: nothing, kinda hungry

53.- Drinking: Water

54.- I’m about to: Shower

55.- Waiting for: Essay to write itself

56.- Want: My essay to write itself

57.- Get married: yeah i guess

58.- Career: lawyer bitches

WHICH IS BETTER

59.- Hugs or Kisses:  Hugs, i kinda hate kissing???

60.- Lips or Eyes: Eyes

61.- Shorter or Taller: Taller

62.- Older or Younger: Older

63.- Nice arms or nice stomach: either

64.- Hook up or relationship: relationship

65.- Troublemaker or Hesitant: hesitant VERY HESITANT

HAVE YOU EVER

66.- Kissed a Stranger: yeah. it was bad

67.- Drank hard liquor:  hell yeah

68.- Lost glasses/ contact lenses: yup

69.- Turned someone down: yup

70.- Sex on the first date: nope

71.- Broken someone’s heart: idk, probs nah

72.- Had your heart broken: nah

73.- Been arrested: nope

74.- Cried when someone died: Yep

75.- Fallen for a friend: yUPP

DO YOU BELIEVE IN

76.- Yourself: sure

77.- Miracles: no

78.- Love at first sight: nah

79.- Santa Claus: nah son

80.- Kiss on the first date: heck yeah

82.- Angels: nope

OTHER

83. Current best friend’s name: Sasha

84.- Eye color: blue

85.- Favorite movie:  Requiem for a Dream

[raspberrystethoscope]

What to expect from ELM2

So buckle up because this post is going to be pure unadulterated nerdiness that I won’t even attempt to mask behind memes (much).

This post is about wtf ELM2 is all about, which to be honest is half the battle of actually passing ELM2. It’s long, it’s boring, and it’s all stuff I wish I’d had a better handle on before I got started.

The general vibe

You’ve just finished at least a year (maybe three years or more) of studying several papers a semester. You’ve had terms tests, and maybe lab reports and assignments, with an exam at the end. In medicine, there’s one paper every year, which lasts the full year, and nothing counts towards your final grade until October.

Until now you’ve had to maintain grades in the 80s and 90s at all times, and spent hours and hours awake worrying that you’ll miss out on that A+ you need to keep your GPA high enough to be competitive. Now the scale you’re marked against goes from 1 (clear fail) to 5 (potential distinction), and 3 is a (bare) pass. “Threes get MB ChBs” is your new “Cs get degrees”.

That said, I found the year pretty hard academically. It’s not that the content is that much more difficult than health sci, but there’s a lot of it. Whereas in health sci it’s usually pretty obvious what you need to know (literally everything), in med it can be more challenging to know what is expected and how you should organise your notes and your time.

Just when you’ve gotten used to (and oh so fond of) Blackboard, you’ll be thrust into the Moodle learning environment. Moodle is actually wonderful but it takes a while to find your way around.

Modules

Block modules are essentially body systems. When you are working through a particular system, most content you learn will relate to that system (sometimes indirectly). In ELM2 you do:

* Psychological medicine - lecture objectives and note summaries done by the lecturers are helpful

* Musculoskeletal (MSK) - mostly anatomy (including weekly labs and four dissection sessions), with a smattering of physiology. Use the weekly lab tests as incentive to keep on top of it.

* Cardiovascular (CVS) - my favourite block module because hearts are rad. A bit of anatomy with a lot of physiology (which is made fun by Matt Bevin aka Matty B). A big module for Pathology.

* Respiratory - fair bit of anatomy, heaps of physiology. Microbiology is important in this module as it touches cystic fibrosis, tuberculosis and asthma among other things.

* Gastrointestinal (GI) - reasonably straightforward module to round off the year. The anatomy is more complicated than I expected because you get a lot more detail than in HUBS.

Vertical modules are courses that carry over between all years of your degree. By far the most substantial in terms of content and time spent are:

* Pathology - weekly tutorials for a large part of the year

* Infection and Immunity - lectures supplemented by occasional labs

* Pharmacology - lectures and very, very occasionally supplemented with tutorials and labs (but really you’re on your own).

* Blood and Genetics are both very content heavy courses too, and you get a late start to Cancer but it gets pretty important towards the end of the year.

* Evidence Based Practice (epidemiology, basically) and Public Health are both pretty important but aren’t too content heavy (more skills-based).

Programmes

You also have three programmes for which you’ll do two hour tutorials most weeks of the year. They are Clinical Skills, Cases and Early Professional Experience (EPE).

Clinical Skills is assessed in your OSCE (worth ~ half of your final grade) while Cases and EPE type questions form part of your written examinations. EPE also has a clinical placement in a rest home.

Formative assessment

You’ll have a file in your ELM2 Home page called ELM2 Programme and Assessment Dates or something like that. Down the bottom it gives you a list of terms requirements and dates - take a note of these in your diary.

There are a few formative tests and assignments that come up during the year. Everyone freaks out about them way more than is necessary and you probably will too. The major ones are:

* ResearchSmart - online modules teaching you to do research, pretty quick to complete so get them out of the way when they open.

* Retained Knowledge Test - two of these per year for the duration of med school, to see how much you know and remember. It doesn’t form part of your assessment for your med papers so don’t stress about it, just get it done.

* Integrated Cases Formative SAQ tests - two of these, one each semester. Like a terms test but doesn’t count towards your final grade. Use them to get used to the way medicine examinations are structured, and as an incentive to stay up to date on your block modules, pathology material and Cases IDL tasks.

* Formative OSPE - OSPE (observed, structured practical exam) is a special hell that examines your grasp of Anatomy, Pathology and Histology by making you walk around a lab answering questions about specimens while weeping copiously (just me?). The formative exam is pretty much all musculoskeletal. Lab objectives and study checklists in your MSK lab book are very helpful.

* Formative OSCE - a practice consultation and your first experience of the Clinical Examination environment. You will probably run out of time. Practice lots of timed interviews in the lead up, 7 minutes doesn’t feel like a long time (that’s what she said).

* Genetics essay - a short, structured assignment outlining the relevant genetics of a monogenic disorder and reviewing a recent research paper into the disease. The structure of the assignment is pretty much handed to you so the only work is to look into the disease and find a paper you can write about. Don’t spend too much time on it, just do enough to put together a reasonable quality essay. I did it in an evening and did fine.

* EPE reflective essay - an essay about your rest home placement experiences and your journey in medicine. This is a cakewalk (and genuinely fun) for anybody who is reasonably self-reflective and can string a sentence together. If that’s not you, make a friend who can write well and will take a look at your work before you submit.

Final exams

Med exams are pretty daunting but my class all worried way more than was probably warranted in the end. (Still bitter about that Alzheimer’s question though). 

People talk about focusing on “A and three Ps” when studying (Anatomy, Physiology, Pharmacology and Pathology) but I think Microbiology (Infection & Immunity) is also super important, including the lab procedures.

Basic structure is:

* OSCE (4 x 7 minute stations, 2 are clinical interviews, 2 physical exams. If you clearly pass at this point you’re done, but if not they’ll call you back to do 4 more stations a few days later)

* OSPE (50 x 1 minute stations, 2 questions per station, mix of anatomy, histology and path)

* Writtens x3 (3 hours each, can cover any and all content taught during the year but if you look at past papers you can get a feel for what tends to come up)

If you don’t manage to pass your final exams you can be offered specials so it won’t be the end of the world! But you probably will pass, because you’re smart and motivated and got into med to begin with :)

Got a burning question that hasn’t been answered here? OUMSA will likely run “what I wish I knew in ELM2” talks with some third years a week or two into semester. Your education officer could also be a big help if you have specific curriculum questions. Or you can slide into my DMs/Facebook me/Tweet me/etc if you so choose.

This post is part in a series on surviving second year medicine. The list of posts (updated as new content is put up) is available here.

[webdesignersolutions]

hello, first time posting in here

I need some info from people that has used more hosting providers than me, I’m facing a problem with most of them, in which they don’t clearly state how much can a SINGLE MYSQL DATABASE grown, I have a moodle website that just tipped 1024mb (1gb) and has been put on hold, I’ve been able to make it work again by optimizing the tables and so on, but it still is dangerously close to that limit THAT WASNT CLEARLY STATED ANYWHERE, I’ve checked with other hosting that I have, and they have the same limit (again, nowhere to be found on the specifications beforehand) so.. they tell you you have 30, 50 or even unlimited mysql space, but then they screw you with that limitation..

So my question is if you know if other SHARED HOSTING packages are better in this respect.. I was talking with a hostgator representative.. but the replies he gives me makes me question if they just want to sell me the package and then surprise me with further limitations.

For example he was telling me the size with them WAS UNLIMITED, so I told them that was crazy, if this even applied in the smallest plan, then he came and told me that no.. in the terms of use it specifies the limit is 5gb (more than enough for my needs, I don’t think this database will grow over 3gb tops) but still.. there was a conflicting reply with what he said first.. then I asked if I could do remote mysql and he said no.. (no problem if I can transfer the whole website.. it will just take me more time) but then I asked how many concurrent i/o processes can their hosting run and he told me an outlandish number like.. 250000, hell.. I had problems finding someone who would allow me to do over 30 on a budget… so yeah.. it seems a little fishy to me.. more so that they just say everything is limited, then tell you on the TOS it says something else.

SO tl:dr

NEED SHARED HOSTING (or cheap dedicated hosting) which will allow me: 1.-a single mysql database to grow more than 1024mb (1gb) don’t think I will use more than 3gb (and that are clear about this, most hosting companies don’t put this on their public specifications) 2.-it allows me to either -access the database remotely (via remote mysql on cpanel or something or -allows over 30 or 40 concurrent i/o transactions.

I’m on a budget mind you..

​

THANKS IN ADVANCE!

Submitted May 15, 2020 at 02:50PM by Ryoga2k https://www.reddit.com/r/webhosting/comments/gkibcw/mysql_database_quota/?utm_source=ifttt

from Blogger http://webdesignersolutions1.blogspot.com/2020/05/mysql-database-quota.html via IFTTT

[bersi013]

Day 19: 2/3/2018

Today I was not able to go to work because of a bad stomach ache. Which was great because I just took next weekend off for my boyfriend to come up meaning I'm missing a  far too much pay in this paycheck.  Most if not all of my consumption due to this stomach ache was gone laying on the couch on my laptop. I spent the day switching between homework and YouTube for hours. Not wanting to get up and not really eating so my stomach wasn't in hell.

 I also worked on some homework on Moodle as well as in Illustrator, but not as much as I should have. Seeing as I had the whole day to work and I wasted it. I think the longest YouTube video I watched today was an hour and a half long. It was a list of the top 35 movies from 2015, from a YouTube channel called Your Movie Sucks (YMS for short). He makes it a goal to see as many notable movies as possible from a year, including foreign films, limited release films, mini-series, short films, and a lot of other things before making his review. Because of this the video actually came out today.

 I always watch movie reviews but I never watch movies. I like movies and I like seeing the way the cinematography is done or what the story is. But beyond that, I have little interest in actually spending the time to watch them all the way through. The last film I saw was The Last Jedi because I love Star Wars, but for that movie, the majority of what I could focus on was how amazing some of the shots were and try to figure out what made them that way. I don’t know if it's the curse of being in school to be a designer or what. The same thing has started to happen with what I watch on YouTube. Now I've drifted away from stuff that purely makes me laugh and moved more into content that is in a style I respect. If I'm watching a vlog I'm looking at the lighting, the editing tricks used, and the camera angles rather than the content of the person's day. This is a very pointed example because I only watch 2 "follow me around" vlog channels, and they're both done by the same person. The channels are Julien Solomita, his personal channel, and Waffsicle.

 Waffsicle is made by Julien Solomita and Colin Duddy, their main show is Last Minute Trips. They literally throw a dart at a map of the United States and then go to that specific town. They're actually in Minneapolis right now filming for the super bowl and DirectTV which is kinda weird since I've been following the channel since it started in 2015. But the film style and the documentary dialogue the two have over the video make it a really personal travel vlog about two idiots in a car desperately trying to find things to film. It's a hard to quantify mix of documenting the town they are in and documenting themselves as they go on these journeys.