(Logo) PPS - Check-list for Week 2


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We've had a good deal of feedback during the first week, which has been very helpful. People have been starting to get to grips with the various technical procedures and modes of communication involved in the course.

Introductory e-mail to Week 2

Try out Iddo Friedberg's Self-assessment exercise on the Internet and the BioMOO

Dont panic...

We appreciate that some of you are relatively new to the different aspects of the Internet. Don't worry if you have been experiencing some problems with e-mail (to discussion lists, tutors, consultants, co-ordinators, other group members); with so many people involved, its inevitable that a number of these difficulties will occur. One of the purposes of this initial settling-in fortnight is to allow the sorting-out of just this type of problem.

If you are having extreme difficulty in e-mailing anyone, particularly us, now might be a good idea to fax or phone us.

Further information on Technical Difficulties

Make Sure You Can Do the Following:

Hypertree

Ensure you are familiar with the course "hypertree", which consists of the WWW documents relevant to the course, including the one you are reading now (which is in the Assignments section); in particular the Noticeboard, Discussion Lists and Technology sections. You may want to add certain pages to your list of "Bookmarks" (Netscape) or the "Hotlist" (Mosaic). The top of the Hypertree should definitely be added to your Bookmarks if its not there already.

E-mail

As this is the most usual method of communication in the course, its essential that you are familiar with its basic operation.

Make sure you can

  1. Send the same email message to 2 people at once, and a copy to a third person.
  2. Forward an email you have received to a third person or persons.
  3. Create an address list (address book entry) containing a number of email addresses and use it to send one email to these people.
  4. Print an email message.
  5. Save (extract/export) an email message you have received.
  6. Edit the saved file to remove the email header material and email the file to another person.

  7. Also make sure you understand how the course discussion lists operate: i.e. how to send mail, unsubscribe and resubscribe following a change in your e-mail address, etc. More information here.
    Appreciate the difference between replying to the sender of a message, and replying to the whole list. In most cases it will be appropriate to reply to the list, but in some instances a personal reply to the sender might be in order.

Obtaining files from ftp, gopher and WWW sites

There is a large amount of useful software and data files of all kinds that can be downloaded from sites around the Internet. If you are not sure how to download such files, you can try practising with some examples.

The WWW

  1. Make sure you know how to add the URLs of useful pages to your list of "Bookmarks" (Netscape) or "Hotlist" (Mosaic).
  2. Its possible to save local copies of the files you view. Make sure you know how to do this, and that you understand the difference between accessing a local file and a URL ("Uniform Resource Locator").
  3. You may also like to configure your WWW Browser so that you are able to use it to mail addresses included in links like this one: pps2@mail.cryst.bbk.ac.uk
  4. It is also very useful to know how to prevent in-line images from being loaded into your browser if you wish- of benefit when your connection is currently slow.

BioMOO

If you have not already done so, you may wish to try visiting BioMOO as a guest, or registering with your own ID if you don't already have one.

RasMol and Mage

The next section of the course introduces RasMol, but if you want to try installing it now, refer to the relevant course page.

If you already have Rasmol up and running, you could look into installing Mage.


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Last updated 23rd Jan '96