Course News
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Quick-Fire Challenge
2/21/2012: In 20 minutes, pitch a humanized redesign of some technology (computer, device, physical/virtual interface, etc.) that has made your life difficult or annoying in the last week. You'll then have 3 minutes (Stolley will set a timer) to present to the class:
- your name (so we know who everyone is)
- the problem technology
- your idea for the redesign (could include a sketch or other mock)
- three areas of interest that this problem/solution points to
After the presentations are complete, there'll be time to organize into teams.
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Oh-my-zsh
1/10/12. We will be setting up some unusual technologies tonight. They’ll all be better explained in the coming weeks, but tonight you’ll just have to take a leap of faith.
One of the technologies that we’ll set up is oh-my-zsh, a set of scripts that will enhance the Z shell (
zsh
) command-line shell that we’ll be using in this course.- Open the Terminal program (aka the command line); it’s under Applications > Accessories.
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You’ll be greeted with a screen full of dire sounding text that begins with
You are seeing this message because you have no zsh startup files (the files .zshenv, .zprofile, .zshrc, .zlogin in the directory ~).
. Hit the letter q and you’ll be dropped out on the command line. -
At the prompt (represented here as a dollar-sign,
$
, which you should NOT type/copy-and-paste), type or copy and paste the following (without the dollar sign):$ git clone git://github.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh.git ~/.oh-my-zsh
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Once that command is finished running and you have your prompt again, you’ll need to make a start-up file (
.zshrc
) that we’ll do more things with as the semester goes on. For now, type or copy and paste this line (without the dollar sign):$ cp ~/.oh-my-zsh/templates/zshrc.zsh-template ~/.zshrc
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The command line can be used to launch graphical programs; that’s what we’ll do here, bringing up your new
.zshrc
file in the gedit text editor:$ gedit .zshrc &
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To start, we’ll uncomment out this line in the
.zshrc
file by deleting the#
(hash) in front of it:# DISABLE_AUTO_UPDATE="true"
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Next, we’ll set the visual theme to
gallois
(just so it looks like your instructor’s):ZSH_THEME="gallois"
- Save the file and close the gedit editor. Then close your Terminal program and reopen it.
The Course.
- COM380/COM580: Humanizing Technology
- Instructor: Dr. Karl Stolley; @karlstolley on Twitter
- Office Hours: Tuesdays 3:00 to 5:00 and by appointment in SH208
- Class Meetings: Tuesday nights from 6:25 to 9:05