eScience Lectures Notes : Lab 1

Slide 1 : 1/1: COMP1710 : Laboratory 1

COMP1710 : Laboratory 1

Use of the labs, MacOSX, email, and Xanga

1. Objectives

The purpose of this lab is to introduce you to the basic tools you will be using during this semester. There is nothing complex here, and some of you may already know most of the procedures. The goal of this lab is that by the end, everybody should be able to attend other labs and use the tools, and email.

You will make sure that you have a working computer account and that you are able to use some of the basic utilities of the ANU Student Computing Environment. Specifically, you will

You should bring along the Student Computing Environment: User Guide (http://students.anu.edu.au/StudentITGuide/). In general, the lab exercises give only brief indications of how you should carry out the various tasks. The main emphasis of a laboratory session is that you work out how to do the task, either by yourself using the online help system or in collaboration with your tutor/demonstrator or your fellow students. When you find out how to do something, you could annotate your copy of the Student Computing Environment: User Guide for future reference, or put it into your Xanga site (more on this below).

At the end of this lab, you will send an email both to tom@cs.anu.edu.au AND to yourself with a file attached. That first submission will be rewarded by your first mark for this course.

2. Tasks

Note : you should reserve at least half an hour to check the task 2.2 (configuring your mail tool and sending an attachment), especially if you are not sure about that task. You will always be able to get back to the other tasks once you have checked that you are able to send a message to yourself and to receive it.

2.1 Your computer account

See Chapters 2 and 3 of the Student Computing Environment: User Guide. A computer account is generated for you in the ANU Student Computing Environment from enrolment information. The account has an associated username and password. If, for example, your student number is 0491919 then your username is u0491919. Your password is initially set to your Personal Access Code (pac) issued with your student card. If you wish to change your password, go to InfoPlace (located on the 3rd level of the Chifley Library) for help.

A laboratory machine that is available for use will present you with a login screen. Type in your username, followed by the Enter key, then your password, again followed by the Enter key. When you are finished in the lab you must terminate your session by logging-out (see Section 2.6). This closes down your session so that the next user cannot access your account, and leaves the laboratory machine in the appropriate state for the next user.On the login Screen enter your university ID (starting with a u) and your password (provided to you during your enrolment)

2.2 Computing Environment

If your login process succeeds you are presented with a graphical user interface called the Aqua user interface under MacOSX. It utilizes a mouse to point, via a cursor, to windows and icons. You may be familiar with the analogous interfaces such as Windows 98/NT/XP , Linux or previous versions of MacOS (for Apple computers).

2.2.1 Log-out / Log-in

The first thing you should do is to log out (close your session) and log in again. It is important for you to remember to always log out of  your account when you leave the lab (or any other public access space). Your account identifies you in E-mails for instance. Clue : look at the Apple menu.

2.2.2 Familiarize yourself with the interface

Look at the different menus (they are always at the top of the screen for any Mac application). You have already explored the Apple menu.
The main applications are directly accessible from the dock (usually at the bottom of the screen). There are other applications accessible from any Finder window, by clicking on the 'Application' directory, on the left side of the window (the 'sidebar'). To get back to the finder at any time, either :

Note that the MacOS GUI is built to be used with a one button mouse or with any number of buttons on a mouse. Use the right button of the mouse or (Ctrl-Click if you have only a one button mouse) to work with contextual menus (menus that contain a tool list that varies according to where you are clicking).

Look for 'Help' : Press the help menu, not the tutor!

Open a web browser. You have a choice between Safari, Netscape, Explorer (please avoid this last one for once).

Have a look at the apple web site that describes MacOSX : http://www.apple.com/macosx/

Have a look at the ANU Student IT Guide about ANU specific MacOSX related information : http://students.anu.edu.au/StudentITGuide/6mac.asp

Have a look at the InfoCommon Web site for more on the student public labs : http://infocommons.anu.edu.au/pages/Home

Apple + L is the usual way to access the web page address (URL) field in most Mac browsers

Have a look at the COMP1710 web site : normally, entering escience/nm into the address field should be enough within the ANU, otherwise try http://escience.anu.edu.au/nm shortcut and find out the complete URL of the course.

2.2 Organisation of your data

2.3 Use of a mail tool

Use a webmail interface (https://anumail.anu.edu.au), or Mail or Eudora

Make sure that, when you send an email, there is some sort of ID in the From: or Reply: field that will identify you with both your name surname and uID. If you use anumail, you have nothing to do. If you decided to forward your ANU mail towards another service (See Online Account Management System (OLAMS) for more about configuring your ANU mail), there is a way somewhere on that service to say what email recipients will see from you when you are sending them a mail.

Send a mail to yourself to check that everything is working well.

2.4 Xanga

Please read and follow the instructions in Tom's page about Xanga. During the course (if you agree) we will make regular copies of your public Xanga page to be backups, with the copy made Sunday being your normal submission.

Send another mail to yourself, with the just created file attached to it. Receive it. Save the attached file (not in the same directory where you put it before). Open the file in a browser and check that the content of the newly created file is the same as the original.

3. Summary: 1 mark for this lab session

4. Conclusion

To manage your digital experience the way you want, you can look at some software that you can use on other platforms, as well as on the Mac.

5. Work ahead

If you have reached this point and you want to keep going productively, my suggestion is to look closely at the code in the profile page you just sent me.

In future labs, we will use techniques from the lectures, such as web links, CSS, forms etc. So you could modify the xanga skin to a different look temporarily and save a copy of that, and compare the contents of the profile pages, and try to understand how some of the differences affect the look of the page.

You could also: