Computer Science 110
The Art & Science of Computer Graphics

Mount Holyoke College
Spring 2010


Studio/Lab 1: Setting Up Your Wiki Page
Due: 11:59 PM, Wednesday, February 3, 2010


Our objective this week is to get acquainted with the lab computers and to set up space for your work on the class wiki.


Logging In

When you arrive in lab, we will work on getting you logged in and getting your accounts set up. Your username and password are specific to the computers in Kendade 307. They are independent of your campus-wide computer accounts.

Once logged in, you will be presented with your Macintosh desktop for your Computer Science lab account. The files in your account are stored on a department server, so it does not matter which computer in the lab you use.

The Mac environment may be a bit unfamiliar for those who are primarily Windows users, but it is quite intuitive and you should be able to get around fairly quickly. Please do not hesitate to ask me, the teaching assistants, or your classmates for help if you are not sure how to proceed or if you have trouble with anything as you work on this lab.


Setting Up Your Wiki Page

Using the Firefox web browser, which you can launch using the round blue and orange icon in the "Dock" at the bottom of your desktop, follow these steps to set up your wiki page.

  1. Navigate to http://mhcwiki.teresco.org/in your browser. This should bring you to the main page of the class wiki. You will be asked for a username and password. The username and password can be found on the hard copy of this document.
  2. In the upper right hand corner of the wiki page, you will see a link labeled "log in/create account". Follow this link and create an account for yourself. This can be anything, but please use a name that clearly identifies you, such as your real name or the username you used to log into the systems in the first place.
  3. Next, create a page with your (real) name. To do this, type your name in the search box on the left (I'd type in "Jim Teresco"). This will bring up a page that gives you the option to create your page.
  4. To create your page, add the text you wish to display to the edit box. Adding plain text will work, but you will want to format it nicely, add sections, images, and so on. To do this, the text you type should be "marked up" to indicate your desired formatting, using the markup language described at the end of this document.

    Your page should include:

  5. Add yourself to the "Artists" category and the "Spring 2010 Artists" category. Feel free to create and add yourself to other categories, such as your class year, your major, your favorite baseball team, or whatever else you'd like.
  6. When you have completed all of this and your wiki page is complete, send me an e-mail at jteresco AT mtholyoke.edu stating that it is ready for me to look at, so you can get credit.


Wiki Editors' Quick Reference

This section is a quick reference for our wiki and the wiki markup language you will use to develop your wiki pages. You might want to keep this sheet handy until you get used to the wiki markup language.

Our wiki uses the same software (called MediaWiki) that is used by Wikipedia, so your experience with this will help prepare you to be a contributor to Wikipedia and other similar projects.

> General
To visit our wiki Go to http://mhcwiki.teresco.org/
To create a new page Enter the page name in the search box
Section Paragraphs
==Section Title== Blank line starts a paragraph
===Subsection Title=== Space at beginning of a line boxes code
====Subsubsection Title==== : Colon indents paragraph
--- (four dashes insert line) :: More colons increase indenting
(four tildes add username and date) ; phrase : definition
Formatting
' 'Two single quotes make text italic ' ' ' ' 'Three single quotes make text bold ' ' '
Lists
* bulleted list item # numbered list item
** bulleted sublist item ## numbered sublist item
*** bulleted subsublist item ### numbered subsublist item
Links (Help:Editing on the wiki)
Internal: [[Page Title]] e.g., See [[Jim Teresco]] for details.
Internal: [[Page Title|alt text]] e.g., See [[Jim Teresco|me]] for details.
External: [URL] e.g., Visit space at [http://www.nasa.gov/].
External: [URL alt text] e.g., Visit space at [http://www.nasa.gov NASA].
Images (Help:Images_and_media on the wiki)
Two steps: upload image to server, link into document.
Use PNG format when you can. Prefix images with your name.
Inline image: [[Image:file]] e.g., [[Image:Taos.png]]
Frame/Caption: [[Image:file|frame|caption]] e.g., [[Image:Taos.png|frame|Great skiing!]]
Thumbnail: [[Image:file|thumb|caption]] e.g., [[Image:Taos.png|thumb|The Back Side.]]
Add "left", "center", "right" as hints e.g., [[Image:Taos.png|right|thumb]]
Categories (Help:Category on the Mead wiki)
A category page lists all similar pages on the wiki.
Add page to category X: [[Category:X]] e.g., [[Category:Artist]]
Link to category X page: [[:Category:X]] e.g., Find artists at [[:Category:Artist]]