Peter, at least he left us some great books. I had better get to work on mine, I don't think my blogs are enough to ensure relative immortality.
https://heinleinsociety.org/thsnexus/ |
|
| Sorely missed https://heinleinsociety.org/thsnexus/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=1218 |
Page 1 of 1 |
| Author: | PeterScott [ Wed Apr 18, 2012 9:48 am ] |
| Post subject: | Sorely missed |
| Author: | ChuckA [ Wed Apr 18, 2012 10:47 am ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Sorely missed |
A friend of mine was an expert on rocket engine testing and served on a NASA committee to review engine development for the space shuttle. He was one of those who recommended against the use of solid fuel rockets on manned vehicle. His comment was how do you test fire a solid rocket before flight. |
|
| Author: | RobertPearson [ Wed Apr 18, 2012 10:57 am ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Sorely missed |
Peter, at least he left us some great books. I had better get to work on mine, I don't think my blogs are enough to ensure relative immortality.
|
|
| Author: | JamesGifford [ Wed Apr 18, 2012 4:01 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Sorely missed |
Having just spent a day battling with PowerPoint, which I am now in all seriousness nominating as the single worst program in common usage (limiting the category to widespread payware from major makers), and by a wide, wide margin... I was highly amused to read a Cracked article blaming the loss of the Columbia on... PowerPoint. http://www.cracked.com/article_19776_6- ... faces.html |
|
| Author: | DanHenderson [ Wed Apr 18, 2012 4:15 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Sorely missed |
| Author: | PeterScott [ Wed Apr 18, 2012 7:34 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Sorely missed |
Yes, I have experienced the PowerPoint trap also. Recently a major (I mean multimillion dollar strategic change of direction, ramifications for a decade) task was laid down from management and we engineers worked up a preliminary presentation on architecture and technical risk, occupying over 40 slides. It had to be reduced to six slides of nontechnical terminology and all the items that spelled out risk of any form removed before being deemed suitable for the management review that would cast final judgement on the effort. No, I am not kidding. This is routine, happens every time. The Columbia report was the same report as the Challenger report and the same as the Apollo I report. Every time, management overruled engineers on matters of human safety. I'd have jailed them. And it'll happen again, assuming NASA continues to put people into space, because their managers haven't learned a damn thing. |
|
| Author: | JamesGifford [ Thu Apr 19, 2012 6:15 am ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Sorely missed |
Well, the dismal and jumbled content of most PP presentations is completely secondary. I am, pity me, having to prepare two wildly different presentations that because of end-presenter demands absolutely MUST be in PukePoint. I intend to write this up at length, perhaps in the form of a piece for Cracked ("Ten Reasons Why PowerPoint is the Worst Software on Earth") - but in very short, it is a tool that is SO designed to be by morons, for morons, to make things to show to morons, that at core it cannot do the job it purports to do. Many people hate Word; in fifteen minutes of reconfiguration I can make it a slick, mean, powerful wordage engine. The functions are there, just buried under crap and marketing dross. Not PowerPoint. The entire program is cotton candy, with no core or bones underneath. Its primary job - creating a series of more or less identically formatted pages for presentation - is almost impossible to accomplish. (There is no hyperbole in that last sentence: PP's job number one is almost impossible to accomplish using the interface, tools and helpful AI the program has.) They even stripped out macros in the last version, something an advanced user could use to work around the lack of form, control and a usable UI. The fact that PP is usually used to create vapid space-fillers from information no one wants and has no need for, or filled with info that is a pallid, beaten shadow of what it should be, is totally secondary. You can write both War and Peace and illiterate mash notes with Word, too. But at least you can write them there. PP is garbage to produce garbage that is likely filled with garbage. I have to finish the second one today, which at least I created from scratch knowing the limitations. Yesterday's, a long dense presentation created by someone else, dam' near killed me. |
|
| Author: | PeterScott [ Thu Apr 19, 2012 6:03 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Sorely missed |
Can you be specific? I've been pee-peeing a lot recently and the 2007 Windows version at least isn't giving me any real grief. I'm not intuiting what you're running into. I think the real issue with PP is what people create with it, not the tool itself. |
|
| Author: | JamesGifford [ Sun Apr 22, 2012 11:14 am ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Sorely missed |
| Author: | PeterScott [ Sun Apr 22, 2012 12:27 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Sorely missed |
IMSHO any presentation should be so light on text and bullet points as to be completely out of ammo. This is a favorite hobby horse (I have given presentations on it). The ideal slide is a chart with a few elements, or one or two images, or up to about ten words. Anything more complex belongs in a handout or reference material, not on a slide. Any audience not equipped with opera glasses can't even read text below 30pt, for heaven's sake. You don't use this for communicating a lot of textual information, but many people don't realize that. Instead they turn into PowerPoint parrots, there solely to provide a soundtrack for the slides, a human echo. My starting point is a blank black slide. If I have nothing that's more important for my audience to pay attention to than me, it stays blank. Otherwise I usually find myself dragging an image to it or typing a couple of words. That's about it. c.f. "Takahashi style." |
|
| Author: | JamesGifford [ Sun Apr 22, 2012 12:58 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Sorely missed |
I have a number of working theories and about three decades of experience about how to present information to various audiences... and while the minimal-content school is a valid one, it's not a universal. Certainly there is a tendency to cram way too much material (text and otherwise) into slide presentations, but sometimes a certain density of visual material is needed. You're not talking about PowerPoint or presentations here as much as you're talking about how to communicate... and no number of "Word for Dummies" books will make the user a successful novelist. Just as no "mastery" (in quotes because you can't master a pile of steaming horsesh*t) of PP will make you a skilled communicator. My very favorite (strain that through gritted teeth) type of PP presentation is where the speaker... slowly... reads... every... word... on... the... screen... (next slide, please)... with absolutely no other content. My last client in Sacramento was completely addicted to equipment vendor presentations of this type and got furious when I so much as sat through the recorded version instead of the first live time. (Had there been ANY audience participation, I could see the issue, but... well, they became one of the very few clients I dusted my hands of.) Absolutely no argument that PP and screen presentations are badly used 90% of the time and probably unnecessary some higher percentage... but that's another layer of the discussion. The tool itself is simply so wretched, on every level, that MS should be embarrassed to be selling it. |
|
| Author: | holmesiv [ Sun Apr 22, 2012 6:59 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Sorely missed |
| Author: | RobWright [ Sat Apr 28, 2012 3:23 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Sorely missed |
I use Apple's Keynote instead of powerpoint. What I do is have the slides provide a focal point for discussion and I do not read every little thing on the slide. Minimalism is great as far as interface and integration go. I do like having media integrated which does help with some of my students. I'm working with my Public Speaking students on developing powerpoint presentations, there have been some very interesting examples presented so far.Rob |
|
| Author: | PeterScott [ Sat Mar 16, 2013 8:41 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Sorely missed |
I am now checking out Prezi.com. It looks like a very easy way to create pretty presentations, with sophisticated organic animation. |
|
| Author: | RobWright [ Sun Mar 17, 2013 9:13 am ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Sorely missed |
Oooooo, looks promising. Thanks Peter. Rob |
|
| Page 1 of 1 | All times are UTC - 8 hours |
| Powered by phpBB © 2000, 2002, 2005, 2007 phpBB Group http://www.phpbb.com/ |
|