STA Blog

STA Presentation!

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Presenting at the STA Presentations for the first time!

April 11th were the 2025 STA presentations and I can fully say I had an amazing time presenting, meeting other STA’s, and seeing all the work that goes on at LAITS. Everyone is so talented and it was a wonderful experience.

I was very nervous presenting for that first time, I was given the benefit of presenting with my fellow STA, Shanda! There was definitely a cushion with the pressure be up there with someone else and overall I think people enjoyed our work. We presented our work on the IPE Illustration and Animation Project which was a project I’ve posted about before that has taken up a lot of time but none the less it’s definitely one of my favorite projects I’ve worked on.

Here are some of my slides from the presentation!

The STA presentation was such an amazing experience that I am so grateful to have been a part of. The community at LAITS is so supportive and welcoming and it’s also very encouraging to see all the different levels of talent in this department. I only hope to meet and connect with more talent here and in the future!

March and April Progress

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Whats going on with IPE now?

I am so so so happy to report that as of last week, all the IPE case study animations are now complete!!

This project has been a crazy journey for me. I’ve had such a wonderful time working on it and everyone I’ve worked with for it was super kind and helpful and it’s so satisfying to see the project come together. Because the deadline was approaching, De’sha took on making 2 animations for the project. Here are the ones that I worked on.

I would like to reflect more on how these animations came together as it was a process I was very new to.

Shanda did an amazing job on the Illustrations for this project and was super wonderful to work with. When animating, I realized that there would be a lot of modifications as we were working with old audio that had to be updated. Usually you need official audio before animating but we were able to work with what he had.

Sometimes, animations would take longer than usual solely due to having to illustrate animation segments that made sense visually. There were medical terms I would have to look up in order to accurately display them. Once the first 2 animations were made, I started to get into a groover of getting them out faster as I had an established workflow. There were many times deadlines had to be moved for this project hence why it was my sole priority for this semester. Sometimes I was scared I would miss a deadline, but with the help of the team, everything turned out.

Overall I’m super grateful I got to work on this project and was able to be given a position to communicate with other teams and employees. I feel this project not only made me grow as an animator, but also as a worker and a leader.

STA Presentation!!

I was chosen to present at the 2025 STA presentation!! I’m suer honored that I was chosen and can talk about my work. I was assigned to talk about the IPE project, but with a little twist. Shanda and I will actually be presenting this project together, which I’m pretty sure hasn’t been done since 2020! As of this post, I will be presenting the project in 2 hours and I’m nervous, excited, and looking forward to it. I’ll update how it went in the next post.

CHIP PARTY

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CHIP-CHIP HOORAY STA PARTY!

 

HEY-O! I worked on poster design for the STA Fall Mixer for new hires and old hires to meet and greet. At first we had a Lo-Fi kind of them going on and then it evolved into a different style completely. The images from top to bottom are oldest to newest. The last image ended up having different animals for each department of STAs. It was lots of fun and work coming up with these and everyone seemed to find the design kind of funny. Hope to do more of these in the future!

 

STA Coding Reference

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General Reference & Tools
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http://www.smashingmagazine.com/

Homepage

http://960.gs/

Oh Yeeaahh!

http://www.dontfeartheinternet.com/

http://learn.shayhowe.com/html-css/

http://www.w3schools.com/html/default.asp

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/

http://cssdeck.com/

http://csslayoutgenerator.com/ (Helps with creating your site shell)

http://www.smushit.com/ysmush.it/ (An alternative to PS when saving images to the web)

http://www.phpform.org/ (Form generator)

http://0to255.com/ (Find different shades of color)

http://leftlogic.com/projects/entity-lookup/ (Find special characters)

http://css.maxdesign.com.au/floatutorial/

http://getfirebug.com/ (Safari users: https://getfirebug.com/firebuglite)

 

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CSS Organization
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http://mirificampress.com/permalink/beautiful_css_organizing_your_stylesheets

http://erraticwisdom.com/2006/01/18/5-tips-for-organizing-your-css

http://www.barelyfitz.com/projects/csscolor/

http://twtitw.firebus.com/node/28

http://www.dirtymarkup.com/

 

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Typography
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http://www.threestyles.com/tutorials/css-tips-for-better-typography/

http://webtypography.net/ (Incredible Resource! This might be the only source you’ll need when styling typography)

http://www.google.com/webfonts (free hosted typefaces)

On Web Typography

http://www.typetester.org/

http://fortawesome.github.io/Font-Awesome/ (Great vector icon package, free for commercial use.)

 

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Inspiration
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http://www.awwwards.com/

http://www.webcreme.com/

Scanning

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Standards for Processing Scanned Images

So you’re hanging out in the office, getting some work done, when suddenly a professor shows up that wants some scanning done. What do you do? If you are not quite sure what to do, then fear not! What follows is a comprehensive document detailing the scanning process (including Flatbed and Slide Scans).

1. Flatbed Scanning

STA WikiWikiWiki image

  • a. Turn scanner on (find that power button and push it) and open the scan program: EPSON Scan. Lift the top of the scanner and place item to be scanned face down on the glass (check out the arrow in the top right corner). Close the top of the scanner (please remove hand/face/hiney before closing).
  • b. There are a few different Mode options. For flatbed scanning, Office Mode seems to be the best.
  • c. Depending on what is being scanned, you may want to choose b/n Image Types. Most will be done as Color. However, if you are scanning something like a newspaper clipping, Grayscale might be a better choice. For a page of text from a book or simple pen and ink drawings, Black & White might be preferable. You can always change the mode after previewing the image and it will show you the difference.
  • d. Check to make sure the size, orientation, and resolution are set appropriately:For images largerthan postcard size, scan at 300 dpi.For images that are postcard size or smaller, scan at 600dpi.For many small images on a large page, scan the whole page in at 600 dpi.
  • e. Press the Preview button and wait for the window to appear with a preview of the scanned image. The scanner may need a moment or two to get warmed up. Please wait…
  • f. Now you will need to draw a marquee around the image you want scanned. You can either click and drag the marquee manually (and adjust borders as needed), or you can click the bottom left Marquee button (look for the little green square), which will attempt to automatically locate and select the image (you can adjust borders as needed).

STA WikiWikiWiki image

  • g. Next you need to set up a folder, where the images will be saved. Create a folder on the desktop (call it “scans” or use the professor or project name or something).
  • h.Now return to the original scan window and find the Scan button towards the bottom. Don’t press it yet!There is a smaller button (File Save Settings) to the right of the Scan button. Press that one first. When the File Save Settings window opens you are going to specify the Location of where you want the images to be saved. Hit the Choose… button and find the folder you made for the project.
  • i. Next you will want to specify how the files will be named. Choose some prefix (maybe the professor’s name) and set the start number to 001. The system will automatically increase the number each time you scan something new. So if you are continuing a scanning project (rather than starting a whole new one), simply check the file save settings to make sure nobody has changed the destination or file names. See below for tips on file Naming Conventions.

STA WikiWikiWiki image

  • j. Return to the original Scan Window. You may now press that Scan button. Sit back and relax for a few seconds while it does its thing. When completed, the folder you created will open and you can see the image file has been scanned and saved.
  • k. Congratulations, you did it! Give yourself a nice pat on the back. Now…ready to do it all again?
  • l. Lather, Rinse, Repeat (as needed).

2. Slide Scanning

STA WikiWikiWiki image

  • a. Turn scanner and scanning program (EPSON Scan) on.
  • b. Remove white foam insert located on the lid facing the scanner glass.
  • c. Locate the 12-Slide Tray. Load 12-Slide Tray with slides facing down (follow diagrams on tray). Note that the scanner scans slides from top right to left, then down to the next row from right to left, and so on.Keeping this in mind, make sure to load the slides appropriately. Place tray face down (slide fronts facing glass) on the scanner bed, with tray pegs on the right within appropriate holes (follow the arrows). Close top of scanner.Some professors may request manual slide cleaning before scanning. To clean slides, use the Anti-Stat Slide Cleaner on a cotton square and gently clean the surface of both sides of the slide. Be careful not to scratch the slide.
  • d. In the EPSON Scan window, change Mode to Professional Mode. Set Document Type to Film (with Film Holder) and Film Type to Positive Film. Image Type should be set to 48-bit Color. The Resolution for slide scanning should be set to 1350 dpi. Check Color Restoration then click the Preview button.
  • e. Once the Preview window opens, switch from Thumbnail view to Normal view. Now you will need to draw a marquee box around each image to be scanned. Click and drag boxes manually. Once they all have boxes around them, click the All button. The images are now ready to be scanned.

STA WikiWikiWiki image

  • f.Now return to the original scan window and find the Scan button towards the bottom. Don’t press it yet!There is a smaller button (File Save Settings) to the right of the Scan button. Press that one first. When the File Save Settings window opens you are going to specify the Location of where you want the images to be saved. Hit the Choose… button and find the folder you made for the project.
  • j. Next you will want to specify how the files will be named. Choose some prefix (maybe the professor’s name) and set the start number to 001. The system will automatically increase the number each time you scan something new. So if you are continuing a scanning project (rather than starting a whole new one), simply check the file save settings to make sure nobody has changed the destination or file names. See below for tips on file Naming Conventions.
  • k. Return to the original Scan Window. You may now press that Scan button. Sit back and relax for a few seconds while it does its thing. When completed, the folder you created will open and you can see the image files have been scanned and saved.
  • l. And that, as they say, is that. After scanning, make sure to return the slides back to their original place (within the carousel, or binder, or container) from whence they came.
  • m. Lather, Rinse, Repeat (as needed).

3. Saving Images, Naming Conventions, Backing Work Up

  • a. There is no definitive rule of how to name saved image files. Sometimes professors have very specific directions as to how they would like the images saved. Other times the professor will have no opinion either way. Thus your naming conventions between different scanning projects may vary. Make sure your naming conventions for each image in a set are consistent, though. This will keep the images well organized.
  • i.e. flower_001.tif, flower_002.tif, flower_003.tif, flower_004.tif, etc.
  • b. RAW images should be saved at their scanned resolution as TIFFS, using NO image compression. We usually save them for MAC.
  • c. For Powerpoint, save images as JPEGS at 72 dpi, with the height being no greater than 600 pixels and the width being no greater than 800. These will be placed on a 1024 by 768 background.
  • d. Please make a backup cd OF ALL IMAGES and Pwrpt presentations for our departmental archive.
  • e. At the end of your shift, after scanning images, before shutting down and clocking out, make sure to move your scans folder from the desktop to your folder in the STA Server. That way, if anybody comes around to clean the desktop, your progress will not be lost (which can be extremely frustrating).
  • f. After scanning all of the images for any project, you will then open the image files in photoshop, crop and color-correct them (if the professor requests color-corrections) and burn them to a CD or DVD.
  • g. After burning all scanned images to a CD or DVD, email the professor and let them know that you are done and their stuff is ready to be picked up in the lab.

 

Notes:

Nikon scanners can scan about 20 slides an hour due to one at a time loading and frequent software crashes.

EPSON scanner takes about 18 minutes to scan 12 slides. During this time, no user attention is needed. After scanning, user must manually set the scan region of each of the next 12 slides and then load a new batch. Caution: EPSON Scanner does not scan slides in order you must manually label the files as you take the slide out of the holder.

Many slides have a very blue shade due to the old slides. When using the Nikon scanner, you can usually auto color correct and manual crop a scanned image while the next image is being scanned. With the EPSON scanner, multitasking is definitely possible during the 18 minute scanning (of 12 slides). For more detailed color correcting and image touch up, each image’s post scanning work can take between 5 to 45 minutes depending on how bad the colors are and how dirty the image is. DUST off the image before scanning!!!!

 

STA Quick Reference

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work e-mail best practices

Students, make a habit of hitting the points below in your work e-mail correspondence.

Add to this list if you have suggestions.

Ask Suloni or Andre your questions if you have any when composing your client mail.
– your e-mail “Subject” line
Make it relative, explanatory, and identifiable.
ex:
Subject: [project] short description
Subject: [cascade] History Dept. link check progress
– your opening greeting
Use the formal title of the client, unless you have established first name bases with your client.
introduce yourself if you have not met.
ex:
Hello Dr. / Professor Raffa, i’m_______STA assigned to help out on this project.
 
– your e-mail content
Should be succinct,easy to read,& outlines what you have done.
 
– include visualization aid
Attach a link, path, or graphic, screen shot etc.so that everyone involved can see exactly what your are referring to.
People on the project can observe the work quickly and efficiently.
– CC your STA supervisor & project managers
cc Suloni and Andre concerning cascade related work.
cc Suloni and any other project manager on other projects
– include our client in CC chain
Politely request our client to cc your supervisor and project manager in their responses.
You can put us all in the CC field as well.
– use your formal closing STA signature
2 examples:
Thank you very much and please let us know if we can help further,
Kathy Chung
Student Technology Assistant
Liberal Arts Instructional Technology Services
University of Texas at Austin
kathychung88@gmail.com
(512) 522-5284
Thank you, I am available to meet you in MEZ 2.116 on at these dates and times_______________ during my shift.
dustin Butler
STA: Liberal Arts ITS

 

Helpful Links

To Connect to Server:

1. Go to Finder and at the top click “go

STA WikiWikiWiki image

 

2. Type in the following address:

STA WikiWikiWiki image

3. Click connect!

Need Help?

Email:

  • Suloni
  • LAITS Server Support (only with permissions or server troubles. no general support)
  • Ask for help!

Please ReviewSTA guidelines:

Clocking-in is essential before you start on work or shifts

– Clock in for work, Dev. lab & Media Lab shifts and for meetings

– Clock-in for meetings held outside the Dev. lab.

– Clock out for lunch or breaks & clock back in for work

– All work done for LAITS should be done in the Dev. lab, not at home or other locations.

time sheet calculator:http://www.elapsedtimecalculator.com/Elapsed-Time-Calculator.aspx/http://www.miraclesalad.com/webtools/timesheet.php

Work Hours

Summer STA training = 6 hrs a week

Suloni can authorize more or less hours, only if necessary.

Always check-in with Suloni if you need to spend more time on a project,

or if you have an emergency and cannot fulfill your hours.

Time sheet & time card turn in

On time sheet turn-in day Alexis sends a notification through sta-list e-mail.

Give Suloni your time sheet & card to check and sign

Alexis will pick-up time sheets paper clipped to your time cards that are left in the slot by the time-clock onlyat 4:30pm

*STAs must go to the office and leave time sheets and cards directly with Alexis if they areready any later than 4:30 pm.

Alexis is in the office until 5pm.

*If you cannot get your time-card and time sheet to Alexis by the due date/time, you must e-mail your time sheet pdf directly to Alexis:

alexisrueda@austin.utexas.edu

(Acct# 19-1652-0020)

Summer dev. lab rules

– During the Summer keep the door locked at all times. Do not leave the door unlocked.

FALL & SPRING:

– During the school year, leave the Dev. Lab locked and alarmed if you are the last person in it.

– If you work after 4:45 in the Dev. Lab, work in a locked room.

– On week-ends and after 4:45, if you lock yourself out of the Dev. Lab and you need to get back in, you can try to call another STA and get help, call list will be in basecamp.

Keys

– Do not plan on working between 12midnight and 6am. The building is locked between 12midnight and 6am.

– You can work M-F, Sat. & Sun.

– You are provided with a code for the keypad.You choose your pic#

– Do not loose or share your key, key pad code, or pic #

– If alarm is set off: call UT police immediately 471- 4441 and give them the pic#.

– Never label your key with rm#’s or any personal information.

– If you loose your key, let Suloni know ASAP.

Lab Users

– Do not have friends or family in the Dev. lab.

– The Dev. Lab is for use by STAs and authorized staff only.

– If students wander to the lab, let them know that the general use computer lab is down the hall way for them to use.

– When COLA faculty come into the lab, please greet them and ask them how you can help them.

If they need help on a request that cannot be completed during your shift hour, take down their name and e-mail and project description and e-mail this information to me.

– We help College of Liberal Arts Faculty exclusively in the Dev. Lab.

Equipment rules of use

– Dev. Lab computers cannot be used to do commercial work.

– If you have outside projects, please do not use the Dev. lab or your work hours on non-LAITS projects.

Meetings & shifts are required not optional, failure to fulfill these requirements can result in termination.

– Attendance is required at weekly STA meetings to share progress with other STAs

– Three absences are tolerated per semester for Media lab shifts Dev. lab shifts and STA weekly meetings.

– If there is an emergency, STAs must get specific permission from Suloni. This must be done in a timely fashion. As always, there are exceptions when one is sick, but even so, notifying Suloni as soon as possible is important.

sta-list@utlists.utexas.edu

– e-mailthe sta-listto communicate absences & to request help from fellow STAs to fill shifts for the Media Lab and Dev. Lab.

– Respond to the list if you are available to help with such requests.

Assignments

– Do not trade or share assignments unless you are authorized by Suloni

Saving work

– Save all of your work to the STA volume regularly.

– Store un-merged versions of your psd files & raw uncompressed image files to the STA volume in your STA folder.

– Do not leave your work saved only on the desktop, STAs have lost large amounts of works in progress by neglecting to save back to the volume.

Collaboration

– Ask Suloni for feedback on your work in e-mail & post the path to the folder you are working in.

Basecamp for project communication

–https://liberalartsits.basecamphq.com/clients

Use basecamp regularly to communicate about projects with clients, project managers, & web development staff if your project group members use basecamp predominantly.

Testing code

–WWW>laits.utexas.edu>sta

Use the sta folder in the WWW volume for css html on projects before they go live.

Problem support

– If you are locked out of a folder e-mailsupport@mail.laits.utexas.edufor help.

Use your full name and eid

describe your problem in clear detail

always cc Suloni

– e-mailjoemess@mail.utexas.eduif you encounter a problem with hardware, software, scanners, or the printer

– Contact Tim Facklerfackler@mail.utexas.eduif you need to discuss a work matter that you do not feel comfortable talking to Suloni about.

– Contact UT ombudsman for issues that you feel cannot be resolved with our help.

The ombudsman is a “neutral third party providing assistance to students who have University-related complaints of a nonlegal nature”

http://www.utexas.edu/student/registrar/catalogs/gi01-02/ch5/ch5g.html