Virtual
Humanities Lab

What is the Virtual Humanities Lab?

The Virtual Humanities Lab is a way for students to use lab resources from the Humanities Learning Resource Center (HLRC) or the general Humanities computer labs after the labs themselves have closed. Accessing the Virtual Humanities Lab will open up a remote connection between a lab computer and your home computer (or even a computer in another lab), so you can work as if you were physically in one of the Humanities Labs. You will have complete access to most of the software applications that are in our labs.

Currently, the Virtual Humanities Lab only provides access to the Windows lab image.

What are the requirements for the Virtual Humanities Lab?

• The Virtual Humanities Lab currently only supports those connecting from a Windows machine (XP or Vista). You must have rights to install a small piece of software on this machine (see below).
• You must have a high-speed connection to provide the greatest level of performance. If you are on-campus (in the dorms or in another lab), your experience in the Virtual Lab will be close to that of being in the lab physically. If you are off-campus but have a wired high-speed connection (Cable or DSL modem), you should receive adequate performance, although you may notice some lagging on intensive processes such as running video. If you are on a wireless connection, chances are you won't be able to access programs that have video, although audio and text will work just fine. Connecting to a VHL machine over a dial-up connection is not recommended unless you merely wish to do language-based word processing.

How do I connect to the Virtual Humanities Lab?

Once all the requirements are in place, you can access the lab with our VHL Connector program. This small, downloadable application contains all the necessary information to authenticate your netID, find an open machine, and launch the connection (see requirements above). The application will do the following:

• Authenticate your credentials (using the username: afterhours and the password: vhl)
• Find an open machine and create a connection between it and your home computer
• Create a record (home computer IP address and time of login) of each login attempt

Download the connection launcher here:

• Windows Version
To install the application on Windows, double-click the setup file (see below for more details). If you are installing it on your home machine, the defaults should be fine. If you are on a lab machine that meets all of the hardware requirements above, you should be able to install it to a flash drive and run it from there.r).

Are there any known bugs in the Virtual Humanities Lab?

This is a "beta" version of the Virtual Humanities Lab, which means that we are still testing and gathering feedback in order to make it work as well as possible for students throughout the University. Currently, these are the limitations we are aware of:

• There is currently no way to allow microphone input from your home computer to travel to the virtual computer; therefore, programs which require speaking input will not be able to use such a feature.

The Virtual Humanities Lab, at long last, is now up and running once again! Well, for Windows users, at least (we are working on Macintosh connectivity).

Below are detailed instructions for connecting to the Virtual Humanities Lab from a Windows machine (note that connecting from a macintosh machine is not currently possible).

• Download the "connection broker" from this URL: http://www.leostream.com/resources/downloads/lsc/LeostreamConnectSetup2-2-28-0.exe
  (NOTE: This is a Windows executable that may be scanned by your computer's anti-virus program during download)
• Once downloaded, find it and double-click it to launch it
• If you get a "publisher could not be verified" notification, click the "Run" button
• Proceed through the installation of the connection broker, leaving everything set just as it is by default (unless you wish to change the folder it installs to, such as installing it to a flash drive).
• When finished, UNCHECK the box that says "start Leostream connect," then click "Finish
• There should be an icon on the desktop now that you can click on. If not, open the connection broker by going to "start"->All programs->Leostream Connect->Leostream Connect (if you are on Vista, you will have to, on the desktop icon or on that second Leostream Connect icon, click with your RIGHT mouse button and choose "launch as administrator" to get it to run properly)
• In the bottom right hand corner of your screen (the "system tray") you should now see a little yellow circle with a blue square in it. RIGHT-click on it, and choose "options"
• In the new box, UNCHECK the box that says "Obtain connection broker address automatically." Then, in the field below that, type "128.187.33.13" (this is the IP address of our VHL server). If you have installed the connection broker to your own machine or own flash drive, this should be saved as a preference, and in future attempts you will merely need to launch Leostream Connect without doing this step
• The connection broker should now bring up a credentials dialog. Enter the username "afterhours" and the password "vhl" (no quotation-marks needed).
• If you get a message about no available machines or applications, this means that our virtual lab is full and you should try again later. If the lab isn't full, you may get a security message asking you to approve the remote connection, after which your virtual session will begin.

If you have difficulty installing the connection broker or if your connections aren't being created properly, please contact Jarom McDonald at jarom_mcdonald@byu.edu.