Does innovation make us lazy? Thoughts about automation and effect on job enjoyment – Toastmasters

Geoff from geoffmobile.com shares his thoughts on how automation can sometimes make jobs more enjoyable by taking away the routine or less engaging part of the work.

Please subscribe :) youtube.com/geoffmobile

This was Geoff’s response to a Table Topics impromptu speaking question at Toastmasters. Recorded at Best Run Toastmasters in Vancouver BC on March 24th 2021.

For more information about Toastmasters please visit:
toastmasters.org

Thanks for watching!

Best regards,
Geoff
geoffmobile.com

A short excerpt from Imagine Picasso Vancouver exhibit (2021) in VR 180 – recorded by geoffmobile

This video is VR 180, best viewed in a VR headset such as the Oculus Quest 2.

It was recorded at Imagine Picasso, in Vancouver BC Canada.

For more information about the Imagine Picasso exhibit, please visit their website at:
www.imagine-picasso.com/

This video was recorded by Geoff from geoffmobile.com
The camera used is a Vuze XR and the video was edited in Shotcut.

Best regards,
Geoff
geoffmobile.com

Introduction to Web Page Coding, Publishing, and Hosting – Gavel Club guest speech by Geoff Peters

Geoff from geoffmobile.com gives a guest speech at the Wesbrook Mall Vancouver UBC Gavel Club (Public Speaking Club for Youth).

The speech is “How to Create, Code, and Maintain a Website” – a brief introduction to the world of website creation and self-publishing online.

For more information about Youth Toastmasters Gavel Clubs (Youth Leadership program) in Vancouver BC Canada please visit: tmclub59.com/Youth_leadership_program.html

This video is recorded in Stereoscopic VR 180 and is best watched in a Virtual Reality Headset such as the Oculus Quest 2. The camera used is a Vuze XR. Audio was recorded on-camera, and just a limiter was applied to increase the volume.

Speech Transcript (note that the transcript below is the original speech that I wrote but I changed it quite a bit in the actual delivery recorded on this video):

Dear Gavel Club:
My name is Geoff Peters and I am a senior software developer at SAP Canada.
I studied computer science at Simon Fraser University and I did a joint major with business.
I took quite a few business courses in addition to Computing science and math courses
I’d like to do a poll of the audience: is there anyone in the audience who is interested in computer science or maintaining websites?
When I was in university I learned the basics of how to create and maintain a website. I would like to share with you today an overview of how that works as well as some tips and how you can do it yourself.
Essentially the internet is based on what’s called a client server architecture. What this means is that whenever you have a computer such as your personal computer at home it’s essentially a client and it accesses web servers which are located throughout the world via the internet.
Web servers typically run software such as Apache which is an open source web server that delivers web pages across the internet when someone requests a website.
Another important topic is the concept of a domain name. A domain name is a name such as google.com or toastmasters.org, that you type into a web browser.
When you type that name, the internet uses something called domain name resolution or DNS to locate the web server that contains the contents for that domain name.
I’ll give a quick example. I have a website called geoffmobile.com and it is my personal video blog. Whenever I post a new video on YouTube I write a post on my website with a link to it on geoffmobile.com. geoffmobile.com is hosted on a web server in the USA using Godaddy. I pay about $500 a year to have my own web server that allows me to host web pages for all my friends and family on that web server.
If you would like to create your own website there are several ways to do it. One way is to use a free hosting service such as WordPress.com, which allows you to create a blog using the popular publishing software called WordPress.
In fact WordPress is one of the most popular ways to create an interactive website and it lets you get started on making a blog or website without having to know much about coding or web technologies. Essentially it provides an easy-to-use interface where you can log in and update your pages without having to know much about coding.
But if you are interested in coding there are a few technologies which are fundamental to making web pages work.
The first is called HTML or hypertext markup language. HTML is a standard of coding where you use codes called Tags which indicate different parts of the webpage and how they should display and interact with. For example you can use the <A> tag to define a hyperlink in an anchor.
You can use the image tag to define an image on your page.
You can also use DIV’s or tables to create the layout that you need.
Another technology that is used alongside HTML is something called CSS or cascading style sheets. CSS is the definition of how the web page should look like, such as things like borders, margins, font styles and their parameters, and styling other properties.
If you want to make your webpage interactive, an easy way to do that is by using some JavaScript code. Javascript is a fully functional programming language that runs in your web browser.
An example of a web browser is Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge or even Firefox.Your web browser knows how to run, interpret and display web pages that contain HTML CSS and JavaScript.
Where can you host your web pages? Typically you would pay money to a web host like GoDaddy to provide a place for your web page to live. Depending on your webpage size, you might pay two or three dollars a month to the web host and they will provide you with a server where you can upload your web pages and serve everything to your visitors.
if you want to do more advanced back end coding such as using a database which stores data, you can also use something called PHP or personal hypertext processor. This is a programming language that lets you access data from a database or store data in your database based on user actions.
Personally I have used PHP a lot in my own web pages because it is easy to get started and if you learned the basics of coding the syntax looks very similar to other languages such as Java or C++.
With regards to good website design and maintenance, if you have skills in graphic design or layout or illustration you can put these skills to use in web page creation. To make a web page that looks and feels easy-to-use and attractive is a really important part of web page design.
Also it is important that you have the proper keywords titles and content to make your webpage visible on search engines. This is called search engine optimization. The key point of search engine optimization is to make your web page easy to find and designed for both humans and for computers (search engines) to understand. There should be no syntax errors and you should be using lots of appropriate search terms and keywords within the contents of your webpage.
However it’s important not to stuff your page with too many keywords or try to boost your ranking using artificial means as that can lead to penalties.
The best way to increase your search ranking is to make a webpage full of contents that are helpful, useful, and original for your visitors to view.
If you are a webmaster typically you understand some basics of HTML coding, CSS coding, and possibly some programming. For more advanced websites you should also know how to use some Javascript and PHP programming and even how to connect to a database such as MySQL.
But that is if you are pretty technical. Otherwise you still have the ability to maintain your website by using an interface such as WordPress which provides an easy-to-use way to update your website pages and content without doing any coding at all.
I hope his speech was interesting to you. Now I’d like to open it up for questions. Would anyone like to learn more about anything I mentioned or have any questions about computer science in general?

Thanks for watching!
Cheers,
Geoff
geoffmobile.com

Christmas Jazz piano and vocal medley 2021 – by Geoff Peters – VR 180

Geoff Peters shares his live renditions of The Christmas Song (originally by Robert Wells and Mel Tormé) and Christmas Time is Here (originally by Vince Guaraldi and Lee Mendelson).

Please subscribe :) youtube.com/geoffmobile

Recorded on Vuze XR and edited in Shotcut.
Microphone: Sennheiser ME-2 connected to Zoom H1.
Audio “mastered” in Audacity.

Vuze XR VR 180 Video Editing tutorial with Shotcut:
How to Edit VR 180 3D videos in Shotcut, Free Video Editor, and adding titles in VR 180 properly

How to Edit VR 180 3D videos in Shotcut, Free Video Editor, and adding titles in VR 180 properly

Thanks for watching!
Cheers,
Geoff
geoffmobile.com

This video is VR 180 3D, best viewed in a VR headset such as the Oculus Quest 2.

In this video, Geoff from geoffmobile.com gives a live performance of The Christmas Song and Christmas Time Is Here by playing the piano and singing. This was recorded in 3D 180 VR using the Vuze XR – a 180 3D VR camera.

Here are my social links:
youtube.com/geoffmobile

facebook.com/geoff.peters

I am still learning my instrument (the voice) and consider myself to be pretty new to singing, as I only started singing in 2013 (8 years ago). Special thanks to my current vocal teacher, Spencer Welch Vocal Studio, and my previous vocal teacher, Mark Downey Vocal Studio.

I am much more advanced on piano than singing, as I started playing piano when I was 3 years old, and I’m 40 years old now! I am excited to be learning the voice and feel that it’s never too late to start learning an instrument. I just wish I had done choir in high school because it is so much easier to learn an instrument when you start when you are young. However I have no regrets and am grateful for my singing teachers for taking me step by step through learning the voice, and have a goal of keeping on track and gradually improving well into my senior years.

Technical notes:
Audio was recorded using a Sennheiser ME-2 lav microphone, “mastered” in Audacity using High Pass filter, M1 compressor, and W1 Limiter. VR 180 3D video was captured in Automatic mode using Vuze XR exported from Vuze XR Studio in 5.7k side-by-side H.264. Video edited in Shotcut.

This VR 180 3D video was filmed using a Vuze XR camera.
Please watch using the Youtube App on an Oculus Quest 2 VR (Virtual Reality) headset for the best 3D experience!

Thanks for watching!
Cheers,
Geoff
geoffmobile.com