Blog Posts

Podcasting @ weblogs.ucalgary.ca

The weblogs.ucalgary.ca service is now a full-on podcasting server. It’s so unbelievably easy to publish podcasts using the new Drupal 4.6 software!

Pachyderm 2.0 Beta

I just finished adding the last round of users to the Pachyderm account database. We’re up to 118 beta testers, spread all over North America (and a handful of European and Asian representatives as well).

I got to add each account manually, so I hope I didn’t mess anyone’s names up… Let the bug reports fly!

Updating Drupal

I just went through the first round of updating the Drupal installation on weblogs.ucalgary.ca - not as seamless as updating a Wordpress installation, but perhaps I’m a bit spoiled there…

If I hadn’t been using any non-stock modules or themes, it may have been a trivial update, but I had to tweak a whole bunch of MySQL tables used by modules (and re-install many of the modules themselves) in order to get things working.

My SubEthaEdit Wishlist

I’ve been using SubEthaEdit as my primary text editor for a while now, and have come up with a list of things that would be nice to have in SEE.

• multi-file searching. I just had to revert back to BBEdit to do this so I could modify a whole bunch of XML files. It would be cool if I could perform searches across entire directories (with the option of running recursively…)
• Highlight the current line a bit better. JEdit does this quite nicely, and it makes it very easy to track what I’m doing if I have say 4 open documents. Just have a subtle border, or slightly different background colour on the line containing the text insertion cursor.
• Reformat text. This would indent XML, stylize java, etc… Bonus points for having per-language options like inserting stub javadoc comments into java code, and fixing/flagging invalid XML/HTML

That’s really about it. I had some minor difficulties doing a funky regex-based search, but that speaks more to my (lack of) experience with regex, rather than SEE’s ability to handle proper regex…

Family stuff

If you’re looking for me today - I’ll be out of the office. I just got a call from Janice. Her father was just rushed to the hospital for some unknown (yet) reason, and is in critical condition in the Foothills Hospital. I’m heading home to watch The Boy so she can be at the hospital.

If you have any karma to spare, please send it his way.

Update: Looks like he’s not in critical condition any more. He’s parked in a hallway, so it may be less serious than they initially thought.

MacOSX Server 10.3.9 Issues

Well… I thought I was being careful…

First, I ran the 10.3.9 Client update on my laptop, and rebooted to make sure Java and WebObjects was happy (there were rumours that they may complain after the update). No complaints - everything worked as expected.

Then, I started updating servers. I tested the 10.3.9 Server update first on careo.ucalgary.ca - that went well, so I ran it on commons.ucalgary.ca. That also went fine, so I ran it on apollo.ucalgary.ca

Museums and the Web Pachyderm Wrapup

We just finished the “Introduction to Pachyderm” session at MW2005. I had to bail almost immediately afterward to catch a plane (I’m sitting at YVR now - mental note to self: leave more time after presentation next time. you left too many people hanging after the presentation). I was a bit nervous going into the presentation. I’d never presented to a Museum (note the capital m) crowd before. I’ve worked with folks from Museums, and I’m working on projects with these people. But I’d never seen a herd of these people together. I had no idea what their composition would be as a whole. Are they geeks? (some are, some aren’t. more geeky than not, but not coders by and large). Are they interested in the project, or has the hype for the last year started to wear people out? (holy. crap. are they interested! woah. Peter took a picture of the audience’s response to Larry’s question about interest levels. I’ll post that when I get it. Are they interested. hehe…) The presentation is now online in flash format and QuickTime format - some things look a wee bit funky in that form, but the content survives OK. Also, keep in mind that it was meant as a paced backdrop to a more conversational presentation, so much of the meaning which would have been in the narration is not included. Imagine people talking about the stuff on the screens, and whenever you think “huh?” - that was addressed by the presenter, and/or during Q&A. I took a bit of a risk when putting the technical overview presentation together - how do you present something meaningfully when you’re not sure the technical level of the audience? I used some humour to dispel the geek factor a bit. And the people were so into the presentation it was a bit scary. They were asking technical questions before the technical presentation - so much so that I basically took over from Larry ahead of schedule. Going through my part of the presentation (a series of non-bulletpoint Keynote slides, and a live demo of authoring a Pachyderm presentation), I kind of got so into it that it’s really kind of a blur (I was told afterward that the presentation went well - I really don’t remember too much of it). The Q&A session after the end, and the post-session feedback/informal discussions were amazing. People came up to me (line up!) with excellent questions, suggestions, offers to pitch in, etc… Wow. “Does it work with Sakai? Fedora? What is the API for people to build apps to?” - all excellent questions, and all planned for post-2.0 releases. Could you imagine how cool it would be if we had an API that let people write things like iPhoto plugins? Or a desktop application for authoring presentations (ala iDVD?). Rock on. That’s my dream for what Pachyderm evolves into - openly ripping off the cool stuff like Flickr and del.icio.us - and extending it further than any of us can imagine right now. Feedback suggested that we freaking killed in our presentation. The acoustics were so bad that much of the session sounded like Charlie Brown’s teacher - but the wah-wah-WAH-wahwah effect was thankfully not present when near the podium (note to self - you move around too much when presenting - makes it hard for a podium mic to keep levels consistent). After that, Brian, Tim and I moved down to the hotel lounge for a quick chill-out before I had to rudely bolt downstairs to grab a cab (had an awesome cab driver that got me to the airport 10 minutes faster than estimated).

Preparing for our Museums and the Web 2005 Session

The Pachyfolks have been spending much of the day gathering final touches for the Big Pachyderm-o-rama this afternoon at MW2005. We’ve got a pretty slick Keynote presentation (and the non-mac folks in the group now all want to get macs so they can use Keynote 2 :-) )

I sat in on the “Finding Stuff” session this morning. Some talk about search engine optimization (gag), but the stuff the SFMOMA demoed showing their new kiosk (and eventual web) interface to their interactive media was freaking awesome. They kept a pretty tight lid on it, since I talk to these people weekly, and had no idea they were building it :-)

Blackboard-Merlot Building Block

At the user’s conference, they appear to have announced a new Building Block for Bb that lets you search Merlot from within the Bb interface, to easily add resources to courses.

That’s exactly what I’ve been hoping to build for CAREO/APOLLO, but haven’t had any time to address. They’ll be releasing the source for this building block, so that might get me at least partially there…

Blackboard Blogging

The guys at Blackboard are running an experiment in corporate blogging. Greg Ritter and his cohorts were able to get a blog set up last night, before the 2005 Blackboard Users Conference. They will be posting stories, news, etc. from the conference.

Here’s hoping they keep blogging after the conference! And, ahem Greg? Your last post on your own blog was August 16, 2004 cough :-)

Keynote 2 rocks!

I’m working on my presentation for Museums and the Web, which runs this week in Vancouver (I’ll be in YVR for just over 24 hours, but am so overbooked I will count myself lucky if I get outside except for the cab ride to/from the airport).

I’m using Keynote 2 to author my part of the Pachyderm presentation - I get to present on the technical architecture of Pachyderm, to a non-technical audience. So, instead of bullet-point-filled screens full of acronym soup, I’m trying to use the build transitions to help construct a framework for me to speak to. Nice layers-of-software diagrams, with arrows and boxes and stuff, rather than just acronyms all over the place.

Open Letter to DeVry: STOP THE POPUPS!

I just got a couple of popup/popunders for DeVry Institute of Technology - despite the fact that I have a popup blocker installed and activated.

DeVry doesn’t provide contact information on their website (perhaps that’s a sign?), and this is really pissing me off. Do you people realize just what a shitty thing popunders are? They are almost as bad as Casino/Viagra/Texas-Holdem spam! You are diluting any reputation your institution may have had, and further negating the value your alumni may realize due to the crap you fling across the ’net in a desparate attempt to gather new students.