I went to my first class at Humber today and I haven’t been inside a classroom in 5 years so I was very nervous. There were only 8 other students in the class and the teacher, Paul Minstrell, was funny and laid-back.

An interesting quote he cited:
From “As We May Think” by Vannevar Bush in The Atlantic Monthly: July 1945

Consider a future device for individual use, which is a sort of mechanized private file and library. It needs a name, and, to coin one at random, “memex” will do. A memex is a device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility. It is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory.

He discussed several of the different programs available, like Quark Xpress, Adobe Acrobat, Adobe Illustrator, Macromedia Freehand, Adobe Photoshop, Macromedia Dreamweaver, Macromedia Fireworks, Macromedia Flash, Adobe Premiere, Adobe After Effects, Macromedia Director, Powerpoint, Apple Quicktime, Sonic Foundry Sound Forge, Sonic Foundry Acid Pro, Discreet 3ds Max, Alias Wavefront Maya, Corel Bryce. I noticed a distict lack of Frontpage, which I used to make the church bulletins and newsletters 3 years ago, and the GIMP, which I’ve used for the last 9 months.

He also commented, jokingly I think, that southern americans tend to think canadians live in igloos and have very little technology. I almost blurted out, “I do?” since I currently live in Virginia. I’m pretty sure he was joking, but it is a rather funny mental picture of all of Toronto covered in snow with little huts everywhere. Makes me giggle every time

Then we discussed some of the file formats, and XCF (gimp layers format) and PNG (transparency) didn’t make the list either. Though he did give PNG an hono(U)rable mention.

Last thing I wanted to comment on was that while I was taking notes, copying from the flash presentation I caught myself writing “colour” quite a few times.. It just felt wierd!