Comp 106
    The Universal Machine

    • Course Policies
    • Tentative Course Syllabus
    • Class lists for the Monday and Wednesday labs
    • Homework Assignments
    • Instructions for downloading Stella from the campus network

    • A few multimedia archives
      • Looney Tunes
      • Sunsite has alot of sounds in the au format, and their mirror of the Web Museum is well worth checking out.
      • Clixsounds has quite a few Macintosh sounds, although it can be difficult to get through to their ftp server to download them.
      • Or, there's always the Yahoo Multimedia Sound Archives and Yahoo Multimedia Video Collections
      • The Wolf's Lair also has a bunch of QuickTime videos.

    • HTML Resources: As we get farther into web design, I'll add more links here.
      • In Class Demos are only available locally at Wheaton.
      • I'd strongly encourage you to put your pages on gossamer, the student server here at Wheaton. There are instructions there about how to get access to gossamer (You'll need to email Adam Lipson '99 or Ben Cote '00, the system administrators).
      • A Beginner's Guide to HTML at NCSA.
      • Netscape's Creating Net Sites is a good jumping off point for html resources.
      • The Web Developer's Virtual Library is a great reference for everything related to html.
      • Yahoo's list of backgrounds
      • For a bunch of borders that you can use on the left side of your pages, take a look at Bordertown
      • PageSpinner is a very nice shareware html editor for the Mac.
      • BrowserWatch Plug-In Plaza! has a fairly comprehensive list of available plug-ins for all platforms.
      • The Kinder, Gentler HTML Validator will compare your page with accepted HTML standards.

    As the semester goes along, I will add more information about the specific assignments and projects for the course.

    Note: I've moved my Wednesday office hours to 2:00-3:00 because our weekly Department Meeting has been rescheduled. You can see my daily schedule here.

    HyperCard Virus Alert!!

    The infamous Merry Christmas virus has made it's way onto campus, and has infected the Home stacks on some of the machines (including mine). Here's the fix:

    I've put a copy of a new Home stack in the Comp 106 Course Material folder. I've installed a script in this Home stack, called the MerryChristmas Watcher (which I found on the web), that will detect and remove the virus from your stack whenever your stack is closed.

    Here's what you should do:

    1. Whenever you start to work on a machine, find the Home stack on the hard disk, move this stack to the trash can and empty the trash.
    2. Go to the Course Materials Folder (under ACC/Resnet - ACC Server) and copy the new and improved Home stack into the HCard 2.3.5 folder on the hard disk.
    3. Now double click on the new Home stack in your HCard 2.3.5 folder, then open your stack. Next close your stack (or quit HyperCard if your stack is the only one open).

      If your stack closes fine, then you don't have the virus. If you get a warning that the virus is present, then you'll be asked if it can delete the virus. You should allow MerryChristmas Watcher to do this.

    This should clear the virus from your stack and will keep the machine you are working on from ever becoming infected.

    Course Overview

    We will explore four different software tools/topics:

    • We will begin the course by spending about three weeks studying Stella 4.0, which allows modeling of sophisticated systems by use of an intuitive point-and-click interface.
    • We will spend the next six weeks learning about HyperCard, which is a system for creating hypertext documents on the Macintosh.
    • We'll study applications and features of spreadsheets in ClarisWorks for about two weeks.
    • We will end the term by studying some of the features of html, or HyperText Markup Language, the language used to author documents for the World Wide Web.

    This is not a programming course (although we will do some basic programming while looking at HyperCard). Instead, the emphasis is on providing you with in-depth experience in a variety of easy-to-use but powerful computing tools. After having been exposed to these tools, you will have a much better understanding of the vast potential, and limitations, of computer software.

    These tools will give you valuable experience that will make it easier for you to master other software applications. In addition, you may discover unexpected, and powerful, applications of these tools in your other courses.

    Layout by Tommy Ratliff, tratliff@wheatonma.edu
    Wheaton College, Norton, Massachusetts

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