Syllabi and CPUs -Jocelyn
I have returned, after an eventful week.
I presented my “If I Were in Charge” syllabus for Old English to Dan, and he was intrigued, especially by the idea of reorganizing the first few classes. We’re now thinking of starting with practice sentences (as usual) so students can focus on Old English spelling and sounds. In Mitchell and Robinson’s book, there are three practice paragraphs, but if we need more, we can always create some fake Old English ourselves. Next, students will learn how to use a glossary with a simple text. The main contender for the fall course is the Peterborough Chronicle Preface: Pre-Roman Britain. It’s a very simple paragraph, and if we use a handout from Jonathan Evans’s Old English book, there’s a customized glossary just for that passage, so students would not be overwhelmed by a full multi-page glossary. Then again, maybe it would be good to throw them into the deep end of glossary work on a simple text.
After the glossary introduction, we’ll cover English grammar, which—according to various articles on teaching classical languages—is the most useful part of learning an ancient language. Students will strengthen their foundation in Modern English grammar and then expand outward to Old English grammar, which is not that different. By this week, we should have the texts finalized and be ready to start pulling examples for the textbook. There are just a few pieces we might want to swap or add, such as Wonders of the East and the Preface to Pastoral Care. It also looks like Judith is the top contender for the poetry section since we are trying to leave all potential pieces for an advanced class in the spring out of the introductory class. If this is the case, it could be fun to do some excerpts from Beowulf with Judith, just because Beowulf is the most well known and the advance class wouldn’t be able to study it. Also, the students can be cultured, if we do some excerpts.
The Visionary Cross Project also had some interesting developments. After a meeting with Roberto, it was tentatively decided that we should have the basic humanities content filled out in the edition and maybe run a workshop in November to complete the rest. As a poor undergraduate student, I’m not entirely sure what this entails, but that’s the plan for now.
The 3D model data is being sent over from ISTI-CNR Pisa, thanks to Marco. But where, you may wonder, will this data be stored? Certainly not on my laptop. The plan was to store it on the fancy lab computer, the Dell T7910, known for its “outstanding productivity.” It used to be the lab’s pride and the host for all project’s data until it broke down many moons ago. It was never fixed by IT because we feared they might wipe the memory. But after three years, we finally needed to fix it.
So, on Thursday, Dan and I spent four hours troubleshooting the computer, and here’s what happened:
1. It didn’t turn on, so we started making a Linux boot key. This was a process because we had to find a USB stick that had enough space to download Linux. Unfortunately, we were impatient.
2. While the fresh Linux key was downloading, we used Dan’s 2022 Linux key (which he carries on his keychain) to break into the computer. The only problem was that the computer was criminally slow.
3. When Dan left the room, I opened up all the computers and started sending pictures to ChatGPT, asking things like, “This computer is slow. What’s wrong with it?” and “This computer is good. What’s the difference?”
All of this led to our big discovery: the precious fancy lab computer which is known for its high quality GPU and fast processing is missing half of its CPUs. As a non-computer scientist, English major, linguistic enthusiast, I did not know what a CPU was. Now I know that the CPU is the brain of the computer and responsible for the processing (hence the name central processing unit). You might be wondering what happened to the beloved CPU of the lab, there are strong theories, but we might never know for certain…
Anyway, what now? We can’t really use the computer: even with the Linux key, it’s painfully slow. Replacing the CPUs would cost somewhere between $600–$1000 on eBay. So, our plan is to steal the hard drive and put it in the working (though less fancy) desktop. We consulted GPT and it affirmed that this is a great idea and it will hit in the other computer and we just need a screwdriver.
So, that’s where we got to with the computer drama. Although we were not able to retrieve any lost data or prepare the computer for incoming data from ISTI, it was a productive lesson for me. I got to see the joys of Linux in action, and now that we have a working USB key for Linux, it is a goal of mine to start converting some of the lab desktops with nothing on them into Linux computers for fun. Worst case scenario, they lose nothing, and I give them to IT and keep trying.
