Blog Posts

Searching PDF with ht://Dig

I’ve just enabled indexing and searching of .pdf documents on the Learning Commons website.

We’re using ht:/Dig as our search engine, and it’s quite flexible. It can take external parsers to teach it to read non-text-only file formats. There are libraries available that can teach it to read .rtf, .pdf, .ps, .doc, .swf, .xls, and even .ppt files.

For now, I’ve only added the .pdf parser, using the Xpdf library. There was no binary available for MacOSX, so I had to compile from source. Here’s a link to the compiled binaries for MacOSX (compiled without support for the X11 windowing system - these are just the command line utilities). Just drop them in /usr/local/bin and enjoy!

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Using SubEthaEdit for shared notes in Pachyderm Training

I’ve opened up a SubEthaEdit document to serve as a shared workspace for the Pachyderm training session today. Not sure if anyone’s going to use it, but it might be a cool way to get a rough draft of documentation, on the fly (especially since most Pachydermers are in San Francisco, and there are a few stragglers - myself included - scattered around the continent).

The direct link to the shared document is here, and the SubEthaTrack listing is here.

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ImageMagick Script to Generate Pachyderm Images

I’ve written a simple ImageMagick shell script to batch convert a bunch of images into the various sizes required by Pachyderm. Man, ImageMagick is pretty sweet. Installed in a few minutes using Fink, the I was off and running. I call this script to generate the images, which can then be fed to Generator to create the .swf files used by Pachyderm:

#!/bin/sh

for img in `ls *.jpg`
do
    convert -sample 46x36  ../11/
    convert -sample 56x56  ../12/
    convert -sample 72x72  ../13/
    convert -sample 160x160  ../14/
    convert -sample 280x200  ../15/
    convert -sample 300x260  ../16/
    convert -sample 480x380  ../17/
    convert -sample 790x540  ../18/
    convert -sample 1280x1024  ../19/
    convert -sample 72x72  ../23/
done

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WODev: WebObjects Wiki Engine

I just got an email from someone asking about the wiki engine I used for the CAREO wiki stuff. He was wondering if there were any WebObjects wiki engines out there. I thought I’d seen one, a long time ago, so I did a quick Google for it.

After filtering the usual noise (some from my own blog. doh.) I found a page by Pierre Bernard, with a link to WODev.

WODev is a wiki on WebObjects, implemented in WebObjects. And, it’s Open Source, so code is available etc…

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Collaboration at a Distance

Michelle made a good point in an email. I’d overlooked the value of collaboration at a distance, because I really take it for granted now. I’ve been working with folks over the ’net for years, but much more intensely over the past year.

The Learning Object Syndication with RSS presentation(s) (here and here) wouldn’t have been possible without iChatAV, wikis, and weblogs.

And the Pachyderm install would have cost a few orders of magnitude more without these tools (well, we really only used iChatAV/Trillian). The cost of travel between Calgary and California would have been waaaay too high, since it would have meant a few trips to get it running.

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The Pachyderm Has a Pulse!

Josh and I have been poking at the Pachyderm for the last few days, and have finally convinced it to do something other than stare blankly at us.

Josh wrote some PHP script mojo to suck the Filemaker database (used to manage assets) into the SQL Server DB (used to author presentations). Works like a charm, once you know where the hidden landmines are. Like, say a field name has the wrong case. Or, say, records in one (and only one) table aren’t actually saved when the rest of the database is (so they have to be manually re-entered every time the database is opened. No hassle there…)

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Pachyderm progress

Josh and I have been slogging through the Pachyderm installation/configuration process. It’s been a whole lot of one-step-forward, two-steps-back, but sometimes things just kinda work.

The commons thread we’ve come across is basically a version of “never, EVER use Windows on a server. Or, on a desktop, if it can be avoided.”

Anyway, we’ve got it mostly working, thanks mostly to Josh’s fancy PHP scripts to import data from the Pachyderm Filemaker database into the SQL Server database. That part works like a charm.

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Client side flex/MXML?

Just came across this link from John Dowdell. I’m adding it here so I remember to check it out. Looks like someone has experimented with rendering MXML into a UI on the client side, emulating Flex, without the server. Sounds like something that could be useful for Pachyderm…

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Problems migrating MovableType from BerkeleyDB to MySQL

I’ve been wanting to migrate my MovableType installation from the default BerkeleyDB to MySQL, in order to better facilitate backup/restore and data editing, as well as allowing the MT plugin to automatically close comments on posts after X many days.

I’ve been trying this in fits and starts for a couple of weeks, and keep getting bitten by what appears to be corrupt data in the BerkeleyDB database. The import process (mt-db2sql.cgi) barfs on the Comments, Entry, and Theme tables. The import is rather useless without these three types of data…

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Experimental Wiki Integration With CAREO

I’ve just added some potentially cool functionality to CAREO. Every object in the repository now has a link to its own Wiki page, where a freeform discussion or whatever can take place.

I’m not sure if people would actually use it. I think it’s different enough from a traditional threaded discussion to warrant inclusion of both solutions.

In my head, I’m picturing the Wiki pages becoming more teaching-oriented than a threaded discussion could. Something more like the Wikipedia.

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