Part of the functionality of the Pachyderm authoring application is the dynamic and on-the-fly resizing of images to whatever dimensions are required by the flash templates that are used to display a screen in a presentation.

I wrote the first version of the image resizing code using Java Advanced Imaging (JAI), and it worked quite well. But, during the authoring of the Mavericks prototype, it became apparent that the quality of the resized images wasn’t quite up to snuff. I tried setting JAI to use bicubic interpolation (InterpolationBicubic and InterpolationBicubic2) instead of the default nearest-neighbour (InterpolationNearest) method. Still produced inconsistent results.

I just received word that our proposed session for NMC 2005 was accepted! The official title is: "Creative Action at a Distance: Practical Tools for Effective Online Collaboration", and we're planning on describing and demonstrating the techniques that we used to develop the Pachyderm software with people scattered across North America.

Fun stuff like pair programming with VNC, iChatAV, wikis, weblogs, Breeze Live, SubEthaEdit, etc...

My co-conspirators in this are Joshua Archer and King Chung Huang. If you're going to be at NMC2005, I look forward to seeing you at the session!

weblogs.ucalgary.ca has been running for almost 2 weeks now, and I've been receiving many requests from users for features and/or refinements. Some of these may require modifications to Drupal, some may just involve configuring the existing software.

Here's the laundry list of desired features:

• Ability for users to make their blog look like their own. This includes the page for each blog post as well. The sections.module will let an admin set up a theme to use for any section of the Drupal site (including a blog), but it gets downright funky (or impossible) to have all blog posts made by a user use that same theme. Also, an ordinary user can't select the theme to use for their own blog - only admin users can do it. Ideally, on a "My Blogs" section, there would be a widget to let them pick (bonus points for edit as well) a theme to be used for their blog as well as all of their individual blog posts.
• Multiple blogs per user? Instead of all blog posts going into a single blog for a user, there may be a need to set up multiple blogs (perhaps each with their own theme, as well)
• Multiple authors per blog. I can use something like Organic Groups to approximate this, but it's less explicit. Also, the ability for a user to specify the theme that will be used to display the group blog.
• When viewing a user's blog, the "Recent Comments" and "Recent Blog Posts" blocks should only show the comments and posts from that blog - it's confusing to users to see a global list of comments and posts on a user's indivudual blog.
• How to export content in a usable format? Users are concerned that if they spend a bunch of time and effort contributing content to the Drupal site, that they are then locked in. They can't export to an interchange format and then bring the content in, say, to MovableType or WordPress, or whatever. Lock-in is bad.

If these things are already possible, and I've just overlooked a module or setting, then that's even better. If they aren't possible now, I'd like to start figuring out what it would take to implement them. The "My Blogs" and related theme selection stuff is quite important for adoption on campus.

UPDATE: I was wrong about who was behind the project. I made some assumptions. You know what happens when you do that... It's a collaboratiive effort, started (apparently) by Charlie Lowe (et al).

Boris and Will have been busy... They're working on a distribution of Drupal that is tweaked for use in education: DrupalED.

I'm not sure how much of this distro is just pre-selecting modules, and how much is hacking on the core, but it's cool nonetheless. It's still pretty young, but it would be trivial to switch weblogs.ucalgary.ca to a different distro of Drupal.

The XPlanaZine article by Susan Smith Nash appears to have kindled some thoughtful commentary on the blogosphere (on a Saturday, no less). I agree completely with her reservations (as well as those of Darren Cannell). Reusability is pretty much a fallacy, especially when attempted with highly complex "learning objects" like websites, powerpoints, etc...

Real reusability becomes more difficult (and less useful) as a resource becomes tailored for any specific context (by adding complexity via structure and content). This is David Wiley's "reusability paradox", and there's no easy way to get around it.

Susan Smith Nash raises some very good points about learning objects - what are they? why would anyone care? how would someone reuse them?

CAREO is mentioned specifically, and the concerns with it are entirely valid. It should be noted that CAREO and its ilk are from the first generation of learning object repositories - a necessary step in the evolution of the concept - and we've got some stuff that begins to address many of these concerns (Pachyderm, APOLLO, etc...).

I just got word that my proposed session for Faculty Technology Days has been accepted/approved/whatever.

Thanks to Josh's post, I gave the quiz a spin.

Take the quiz at dicepool.com

The sad part? I have the exact same dice set in my basement somewhere... Anyone need some DM guides, circa 1977?

Um... ouch?

Paul is reading the Medici Effect, and has come across some quotes in the book that help explain the rationale behind weblogs and blogging.

Innovation through blogging.

I've been using Telus DSL for my home internet connection for a few months, after being a Shaw cable internet subscriber since 1997. I'm growing increasingly frustrated by the unbelievably non-broadband performance of Telus DSL. I have run multiple bandwidth tests on various services, and typical throughput ranges from 11K/sec to a whopping 18K/sec. On a service that promises 1500 kilobits per second. I would get almost the same performance with a 56K modem!

I just recorded a quick podcast to show the nice folks at TKO what it is, and how it works.

Tune in

Update: Well, that was fun. Took just over an hour to record enough stuff to fill a 2 minute segment. I will air as part of season 3 of TKO, which will apparently start airing in a couple of months. I'll get a copy of the segment for personal viewing - they didn't like it when I asked to be able to stream it online... :-)

Oh, please let this be true... I'd cut off my... well... I'd really really like one of these...

O'Grady's PowerPage - Apple Developing New Palmtop Mac?