Internet basket weaving, not peanut butter

[twilight33]

You will probably not hear a peep of whining about my summer class. It's very easy for me to forget in the 12+ years I've been traipsing around the net that everyone can surf but many don't have a clue about the mechanics of it. Last night we were taught how to hammer out HTML in Notepad & FTP it. I tried going at the prof's pace, but finally I couldn't stand it anymore and half listened as I went my own way. Everyone else uploaded blank white pages with one or two lines of blank text for their starter pages. Mine was purple with an alt-tagged and centered Jedi picture of Kieran from his birthday, some bullets about me with hyperlinks, and my scrambled email (the AT and DOT stuff). I refuse to do a clickable link since I have enough email volume at work and the spam filter for the university misses a fair chunk of crap already.

I helped out a few students sitting near me, and was slightly amused when the prof began losing a bit of patience with those who truly still didn't get it after over two hours. Those nearby me looked at my purple Kieran page and thought I was some internet goddess. I humbly replied that I've just been online and around geeks for a dozen years and can do basic stuff by osmosis. I deliberately have no web page to my name now, and am a borderline Neo-Luddite. In fact, I'm considering doing my research project this quarter regarding the lovely paradox of disseminating information about Neo-Luddism on... the internet. It's just too funny to pass up.

The one thing about class last night that grated on me worse than fingernails on archaic chalkboards which are a rare sight on campus now?

The prof kept calling gifs 'jifs'. Is there a J in the word gif? NO! It's GIFS, like gifts without the T! AGGGGH!

Calm blue ocean. Fulfill residency requirements & complete your Communication major, admire how far COMS has come with the internet since you left it in California, float on ok.

Comments

[northwardbound.livejournal.com]

All the talk about 'jifs' would have had me jonesing bad for a good ol PB&J heh!

[sunneyone.livejournal.com]

heh, jifs... like the peanut butter? lol

oddly enough...it is jifs

[jakeaidan.livejournal.com]

Ok, so technically both are accepted. However, Steve Wilhite, who was team lead on the development of the GIF pronounced it Jif. Compuserv (the owner of the Compuserv GIF format) claims it to be pronounced jif.
It may make bad phonetic sense, but then, it always bugged me that the pop singer Sade wanted to be called Sha Day....when her name clearly spells sayd.

zhif!

[twilight33]

Damnit.
Although it never occurred to me that anyone would think Geocities was g-os-ities until I went there.

[nlguy.livejournal.com]

That's OK; prior to April of this year, I hadn't had a personal website for about, oh, 7 or 8 years. And I consider myself fairly internet-savvy (having taken several online classes, participating in lots of online activities, etc.).

I hate to say it, but I learned last semester myself that both "gif" and "jif" were acceptable pronunciations. FWIW, I prefer "gif".

The comment about Sade reminds me of a temp we had a couple of months ago. Her last name looked like it should be pronounced "Maloney" but, noooooo, it was "Moll-on-NAY". Oh well; I've had a few people try to turn me into Nora "Ghee" (the French pronunciation of the name "Guy"). :)