The Blog of a Chronic Content Creator
Over the past year, I’ve maintained my weight within 10 pounds of my goal and introduced diverse exercise routines, including running and strength training with planks. I improved my 5K personal record by learning proper running techniques through Nike Run Club. Flexibility exercises and future outdoor activities like hiking and camping are part of my evolving fitness journey.
So I’ve recently taken up a new hobby: Messing with AI Chatbots who are super serious about their jobs. Let me explain: In the world of fantasy RPG, your characters depth is something highly valued. People spend years rolling the best character possible in terms of backstory, personality, and ability. Recently those same people have …
In Battling Pickle Podcast 53 I mention a handout on essay structure. Here it is!
Each year I try to put together a “About Me” page or post for my new students to help get to know me a bit better. This year I figured I’d ask an AI (Microsoft Copilot in this case) the following prompt: Imagine that you’re a new student at a University and you decide to …
Continue reading “An AI Interviews Your Professor, Dr. Westfall”
AI Analyzes my musical tastes.
It’s been over a year since my last Weight Loss / Fitness update (Click here for the whole story), and I figured I’d put down an update on where I’m at, and where I’ve been. When we last left off, I’d completed the “weight loss” part of my journey, going from 415.6 pounds to my …
Continue reading “Formerly Fat, Formerly Skinny, Now Just Jon 2.0”
Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about the power of a telephone call. I live in a region where many people still believe that the only way to get action on anything is to call someone, which leads to many, mostly in the younger generation, having extremely awkward phone etiquette. Both Karey & I often …
Continue reading “The Lie Destroying America: If It’s Important, They’ll Call”
Our learning management system asks us to write an “About your Instructor” page for our students. Here’s Fall 2023’s – I think I’ve reached peak “This is who I am”… I was born last century, the only offspring of artists who both never had the opportunity to complete a college degree. From an early age …
We’re at the end of the Summer II term, and I’m reading term papers. It has made me think about the biggest issues I see with student writing today. So here is my list, in no particular order, of my biggest pet peeves. If you are a student in one of my classes, this is …
Continue reading “Dr. Westfall’s Writing Pet Peeves (a.k.a. How to Write a Paper I Won’t Hate)”
I teach a variety of courses where I give comments to students that I sometimes like to re-use or modify for the next semester (Typically combining with a tool like TextExpander). Recently I created a course with about 25 different assignments, and I wanted to be able to download all of the submission comments. But …
Continue reading “Download All Canvas Submission Comments In Bulk!”