Blog Posts

procrastination

I just found a (new?) project listed in our TLC timesheets system. I think I have a new favourite project…

on private "classblogs" vs. the wild, wide open

This post has been percolating for a while, but was finally pulled out by a post from Stephen Downes, linking to a post from Lisa Nielsen.

Most of the blogs set up on UCalgaryBlogs aren’t fully public - many allow anyone to see the content, but block search engines. But, many others are restricted to only allowing members of that site to access the content.

Initially, this bothered me. People weren’t seeing the Power of Being Open. I tried arguing the whole “information wants to be free” and “going public with network effects” etc… yaddayadda.

ubuntu!

I’ve been playing around in Ubuntu Server for the last couple of days, setting up a test sandbox of WordPress 3 to safely try upgrading UCalgaryBlogs. I’ve used Ubuntu before, but it’s really feeling like a solid system, and the LAMP stack is fast. I’m only running it in a VM under VirtualBox on my desktop, but if I had to deploy a fresh server, I’d definitely be picking Ubuntu to run it. As a virtualized sandbox, it’s a pretty great platform. And the ease of updating/configuring is pretty slick. Certainly more nimble than RHEL5…

fun with compiling PHP

I’m toying around with building a fresh copy of PHP so I can run a relatively recent version (5.3.2) vs. the antique version bundled with RHEL5 (5.1.6). Having lots of fun, so far…

Sometimes, it’s worth running your own server, so you can do things like update packages without having to resort to compiling from source…

please quit

I launched MS Word to read a file. I almost never launch Word. AutoUpdate launched, and decided I needed to download and install a 450MB update so I could read this file. In the process, the updater complained about the updater that was running, preventing the update from continuing. It’s stuff like this that makes me wonder why people use an OS designed by these clowns…

The Ed Techie: Projects, innovation & the small price of a coffee

Martin Weller, on how to go underground while maintaining the appearance of legitimate “official” projectdom:

>You’ll see the dilemma here - in economically straitened times, the instinct is to control everything tightly through a project structure, but this project structure is not well suited to the type of innovation you need to engage in to perform well. The institutional instincts may be contrary to the overall well being of the institution as a whole, rather like a wounded animal fighting off a vet.

the logical consequence of global scale food production

Reading Anthony Bourdain’s Medium Raw and was struck by this passage. I’d heard it before (possibly from the same place Anthony did), but reading the way “hamburger” patties are produced by global meatco Cargill makes my intestine crawl. iBooks doesn’t like copy/paste, so here’s a screengrab:

>!iBooks Medium Raw Uruguian Coliform Trailings Screengrab

The fact that it’s economically viable to ship coliform bacteria laden meat trimmings from Uruguay, to be treated with chemicals to kill the fecally introduced bugs, before going into an übergrinder to be mixed with trailings trucked from plants around the rest of the continent? disturbing. That we’d buy this crap (literally, crap) to save a few cents on a beef-like hockey puck? even more disturbing. I haven’t bought prefab patties in maybe a decade, but still… I wonder what other parts of the supermarket are infested with this type of practice.

Zuckerman on Xenophilia and bridging

Ethan Zuckerman spoke at TED Global. Stephen Downes wrote about it earlier, and the BBC just posted an article about it.

Here’s the video from TED:

Ethan posted the text of his talk. Here are some choice quotes:

>It’s data like this that’s leading me to conclude that the internet isn’t flattening the world the way Nicholas Negroponte thought it would. Instead, my fear is that it’s making us “imaginary cosmopolitans”. We think we’re getting a broad view of the world because it’s possible that our television, newspapers and internet could be giving us a vastly wider picture than was available for our parents or grandparents.
>
>When we look at what’s actually happening, our worldview might actually be narrowing.

Strange corporate imagery

I don’t understand what Telus is trying to say with this image. Do they have mad tongue skillz? Giggidy.

Fully supported hosted Eduglu is coming! | Eduglu — Drupal Social Learning Platform

I haven’t had a chance to check it out since the initial announcement, but it looks like it’s progressing nicely. A social network application built entirely using Drupal and a set of modules.

Eduglu Alpha 2 is available now. I’ll have to grab a copy when I’m back in the office next week…

Now, how to reconcile this with my disdain for the concept of the PLN? Because Eduglu isn’t claiming to be the whole widget. It’s a way to connect various sources of content, published by various people, distributed across the internet, and then use that in the context of a class. Where the magic really happens.

Jim Groom on individual control of data

The Reverend is back from another trip slaying the Montauk Monster. And he’s back in fine form.

>Point is, the open web is not a convenience we need to evolve, it is a public good we need to preserve and foster. You cannot do that when it’s all been accounted for and the gig is up— if “open and free is an ideology” then isn’t “closed and expensive” just as ideological as well—and shouldn’t the two be in deep struggle on a larger stage? Rather, what’s happening, is the one is trying to subsume the other under cloud of night and terminological uncertainty. The LIS standard that’s been announced makes systemwide integration easier perhaps, but does it give people control over their identities and data? Does it promote a sense of one’s space and value on the web in real time? Does it deliver on the idea of a Personal Learning Network on the open web undergirded by syndication and community? These things are integral to teaching and learning on the web right now, and they have little, if anything, to do with an LMS, or so it seems to me.

new minimalist theme

I just switched my blog’s theme to Vigilance (after using Thesis for awhile). I’ve hacked Vigilance a bit, to make the content area wider, and nuke the sidebar (well, really the sidebar just displays underneath the content div) and a few other things (like telling it not to show the author - I’m the only person that posts here - and turning off some of the comment-specific logic and display.

Doesn’t get much more minimal than this. No banner images. No sidebars. Wide content. No fuss. Exactly what I want.