During our latest Pachyderm development sessions, that pesky EOModeler-deletes-the-.svn-directory issue reared it’s ugly head. I was using the workaround (rename the “good” eomodel file, checkout a new one, move the .svn from the new copy to the “good” copy, nuke the new one, rename the “good” one back to the proper filename), and I accidentally deleted the “good” model file - blowing away a couple hours of carefully saved work. Doh.
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I just put together an updated installer for APOLLO’s supporting frameworks and resources. PackageMaker on MacOSX makes it so brain-dead simple to create really powerful installers. Gotta love that. And, it’s free (included with the Developer tools).
This version of the installer includes the Pachyderm PXFoundation and PXPublisher frameworks. (Less than subtle hint about project relationships in there somewhere… ;-) )
Read MoreI just got out of a meeting where we were preparing for another meeting (ick) which will involve discussing various web sites (design, structure, content…). Initially, Gord was using a Thinkpad with IE (ick again), which was barfing on pages, and being a general PITA to present from.
So, I grabbed my VGA adapter, plugged in the TiBook, and created a new workspace in OmniWeb 5. I added all of the URLs we were talking about as tabs (complete with handy thumbnail previews), and then we just cycled through the tabs. It was the slickest website review session I’ve seen. Just create a new OmniWeb Workspace for the client, set it to save automatically, and BOOM, you’ve got a handy dandy “live website presentation tool”. Very cool.
Read MoreWhen I implemented an experimental Wiki integration with CAREO, I imagined it would be simplest to just tie a Wiki page to each URL, on demand. By extension, that model could have provided a Wiki page for every URL on the internet.
Wikalong does this for all pages in Firefox - promising to become a public, shared margin for the internet.
Read MoreI’ve left (early) from the Pachyderm development session. King and Josh kept going, and we’re going to be unbelievably close to a working Pachyderm Presentation Authoring application. The work is shifting to the user interface, so changes will become visible.
We took some photos today, to document the ad-hoc Extreme Programming setup we adopted, and some of the results.
First, we have the “before” picture. The original Pachyderm 1.0 database schema we inherited:
Read MoreJoshua Archer has been in the Learning Commons this week (up from the CSU Center for Distributed Learning at Sonoma State University. We’re working on the code that will drive Pachyderm 2.0, and it’s been a pretty intense week so far.
I’m feeling a bit out of my league, with King and Josh running with this stuff, and me panting about half a lap behind, struggling to keep up. Just like junior high school gym class all over again ;-)
Read MoreDistributed Categories sounds something like a cross between the “bag of keywords” approach I’ve mentioned, and the Shibboleth method of associating distributed content via a shared magic keyword (as used by Stephen Downes’ EduRSS Merlot feed aggregator).
Michael Feldstein has collected a list of folks talking about this stuff.
Read MoreJust a note to myself to buy Practical WebObjects (found out about the book here. From the book’s page:
Written by two expert WebObjects developers, Charles Hill and Sacha Mallais, this book features working, world-tested solutions for difficult problems. Endorsed by Global Village, Practical WebObjects includes many topics not covered anywhere else, including localization, validation, and optimization.
It also goes into Unit testing, Kerberos authentication and a bunch of other intermediate/advanced topics. It’s about time there was a book that was more than a tour of WebObjects Builder…
Read MoreI didn’t change weblog software again - just tweaked the layout of the site. I’m using Michael Heilemann’s Kubrick v1.2.5 template for Wordpress.
I’ve modified it a bit to pull header, footer, and sidebar into separate files to be included, and tweaked a couple of things, but it’s basically a stock Kubrick 1.2.5 template. You may need to force a reload for all of the new bits to show up in your browser (but really, who uses a browser to read weblogs anymore? ;-) )
Read MoreDavid Davies just posted an entry on learning objects that has a reasonable description of what a learning object is (to him). He’s also got a nice, clear diagram showing the reusability paradox, and how assets, learning objects, and content packages fit along the spectra of organization and reusability.
Read MoreI listened to Stephen Downes’ ITI keynote (and here in AAC AudioBook format) on the commute (first half last night, second half this morning, thanks to the wonders of AudioBook ;-) )
It was quite a good presentation. Some of it might be considered common knowledge (open is good), but this particular audience may not have heard the message before (or, they may have needed the extra “open in elearning is good” ).
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