Blog Posts

Resources for getting into MacOSX

I was just asked for some online resources for a Windows admin getting into MacOSX. Here’s what I came up with:

On a MacOSX Box:

just hit Command+? (or go to the help menu)

On the web:

I’ll add any others that I come across.

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Way to go, Apple!

iLife, with new iApps, new TiBooks, new Airport. Woohoo.

I REALLY have to replace this TiBook400… A 17 inch, gigahertz, 60-gig, GeForce4-sporting, superdrive-packing beast. wow. And only $5200 CDN.

iPhoto2 looks freaking amazing… Looking forward to trying out the one-click image enhancement (although PixelNhance is a nice app, too).

I don’t do enough presentations to really dig Keynote, but it would be nice to ditch more MS stuff if I ever need to do some presentations…

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Battle of the 3-year-old Games

I’ve been playing Quake3Arena for the past few months, and it runs pretty well on my creaky TiBook400. I’m pretty hooked on the Urban Terror mod, since it’s a wee bit (i.e., WAAAAY) more fun than plain vanilla Q3A.

I was planning on picking up Medal of Honor: Allied Assault over the Christmas break, but a couple of things held me back:

how well would it run on a TiBook400?
$75 CDN FOR A FREAKING GAME???!!!???
After that, I was thinking of picking up Ghost Recon, which does run quite well on the TiBook, but there’s still the cost. I just can’t justify $75 for a game, no matter how amazing it is.

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The good old hockey game

Saw the Flames vs Wild game last night, in great seats. Wow. That was just plain fun.

Fast game, good play on both sides, and we won. Undefeated with the new coach. Woohoo… Took some pics (might upload them somewhere…)

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IMS Specifications

Back in ‘98, when we started implementing AICC interoperability into our LMS at DiscoverWare, the specifications were rather incomplete, and the documentation was rough.

They’ve been working on them pretty intensely, and they’ve expanded to cover a lot of new ground.

It’s gone much farther than just metadata and content packaging. I’ve been reading through the Learning Design specification, and it’s kinda like a glue that holds all of the other specifications together. It seems like it’s quite an intelligent approach, pulling in various specifications wherever appropriate.

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Tuscany Schools - Herald Photographer

So, we desparately need schools in Tuscany. Multiple schools, not just one. We figure 4 elementary schools could be filled. Easily.

The only problem is that there isn’t any provincial cash to build them. We currently bus about 1000 kids out of the community, which costs a fortune in time and money, but
there’s no capital budget to slap some bricks together.

We’ve been trying to raise awareness of the issue, and have been able to get a lot of community interest and support. The Community Association is pushing hard to get schools
built, and the Resident’s Association is providing whatever support it can.

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Theme Management Interface

I’m just working on building an interface to allow admins to edit and manage the html fragments that make up a theme in the repository. Ideally, it will be a web-based solution similar to MovableType or PMachine, where you can edit fragments of HTML directly in the repository.

That does expose a risk, though. What if an admin is editing the theme managment page template, and breaks it? Doh…

I’m thinking that a separate Admin WO app (that isn’t themed itself, but knows about theming and can access the database store for the HTML fragments) would be a better idea. If an admin is happy with their theme, they can kill the WO app that manages them…

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Tired. So very tired.

Tired. So very tired.
Projects and baby are finally catching up with me. Feel like a zombie, going through the paces.

Time for a vacation, but that’s just not going to happen for a while.

And to top it off, Socrates is pushing for some more time. Don’t have any more to give, though. Maybe my 2 weeks off at Christmas? Forget the family, man! Build some courses! Woohoo. whatever.

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PMachineFree: MySQL/PHP Blog Server

I’ve been trying out a bunch of weblog software packages, because they seem to handle themed interfaces pretty well. I’m trying to get a better grasp on what I can do with the theming engine for CAREO.

Anyway, I came across PMachineFree. It has a whole article in the dead-trees version of MacAddict. My dad thought I’d be interested, so he kept it for me. The article walks through installation and configuration, and it was rather painless. Can’t see a total newbie doing it, but they probably wouldn’t be doing a blog (by the way, Blosxom CAN be installed/configured out of the box by total newbies).

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Customizing Blosxom

I’ve been playing around with some of the community’s contributions to Blosxom, and it looks like they’re going to fill in the “missing bits”

I’ve added the active category list on the right side, thanks to Michael McCracken, who posted instructions.

I’ve been trying to get searching and comments, but neither appear to be working correctly. Searching just plain pukes when activated according to instructions, and comments appears to be a one-way street: you can add them, but can’t view them…

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Ask and ye shall receive

Just poking around on the Blosxom website, and came across a link to Blapp which is a standalone blog manager for Blosxom.

It seems like it’s rather complete, but a wee bit rough - good enough, though. It also appears as though it will support exporting of the Blog to static HTML, so I can publish on .Mac.

Very cool.

update:

Blap WILL publish a Blosxom site to any server, but it still requires Blosxom to be installed on that server. It doesn’t generate static HTML, but manages transfer of modified files to the remote blog location.

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