I’m almost done. About a month to oral defence. But, here are the tools I used to gather data, process it, whip up visualizations, and write the thesis:
Papers (for storing the 598 papers I worked through during the process).12
Dropbox (for having the files available on any computer I’m using, storing revisions, and making me not freak out about backups)3
Noteshelf - best notebook iPad app I’ve used. Did CoI coding data in it. Tracked progress in it. Sketched visualization ideas in it. Etc…
SurveyMonkey (for the online survey. wish I hadn’t used it, though, because I didn’t spring for a paid license and my data was trapped)
a custom HTML page and CGI processor hosted by UCalgary for gathering ethics consent from participants
Chrome (save web page… provided the online discussion archives)
So it looks like Pearson sent a DMCA takedown notice to edublogs and their hosting provider. And edublogs’ hosting provider crumbled and took down 1.4 million websites in response.
To be clear, Pearson didn’t take anything down. I’m guessing a legal intern or bot followed an algorithm (search for known strings, run a Whois, send email…). And the hosting provider, who should have told the legal intern to frack off and take their silly misguided takedown requests with them, decided to turn off websites rather than having to risk paying their own lawyers to fight the request.
John sent this around. It’s too awesome not to post.
yeah. my commute isn’t quite like that…
but, with all of the awesome trick riding in the video, I was most stunned by the application of WD-40 at the end of the video. I mean, WHO DOES THAT? It’s a solvent. No est bueno!
I just tried out the new PrivacyFix extension, which checks your privacy settings and also estimates how much Facebook and Google make off me each year.
Turns out, my privacy settings are pretty decent already. And, it looks like Google makes less than a dollar per year off me. Facebook makes nothing. The guy that wrote the article on Ars Technica clocks in at $700 per year going to Google, through advertising etc… Wow.
Comparing the scope of the copying rights under fair dealing and the Access Copyright licence provides a good sense of why the licence now provides little value. Note that before considering either fair dealing or the Access Copyright licence, educational institutions will first rely on hundreds of site licenses that grant access to millions of articles and other materials or on the millions of open access works that are freely available online. Moreover, in the case of K-12 schools, an Access Copyright backed study found that 88% of books and other printed materials are copied with permission and without the need for a fair dealing analysis or an Access Copyright licence.
After some ranting on Twitter about the latest mindless inanity from my illustrious Member of Parliament, Matt Henderson mentioned that he ran for MP in the last election, with his high school class running his campaign.
The Hippie Hosting Co-op server has been humming along for several months now. We’ve had our share of growing pains, and recently we’d been seeing memory usage on the server spiking pretty severely.
For the non-Hippies: the Co-op is run on a Mediatemple (dv) dedicated virtual server, and we have 197 domains for 84 members running on the box. Most are pretty low demand, simple blogs with low traffic. Some are higher demand. But, on average, we should be well within the limits of what the server can do.
I just spent 2 hours watching Jack White play at the iTunes Festival (recorded earlier this month in London). What a show. If you have a copy of iTunes, fire it up. Better yet, if you have a fancy AppleTV thingamabox, check out the dedicated app/channel for the Festival and watch it on the big screen.
I tried playing along for a couple of songs. But, there’s just no fracking way. The dude is absolutely insane. Wow. He reminds me of someone, though…
Fantastic short film by David Aldrich. Four friends go for a bike ride. It’s just like this, except, you know, with jobs, and families, and about 20 years of old-man-ness on these kids. But, yeah…
