I’ve been trying to get BuddyPress working on my WPMU installation that uses MultiDB for database partitioning. It’s been cranky, but I just realized I’m a complete idiot because I was overlooking the obvious (and drop dead simple) fix.
BuddyPress was acting up because it was creating tables in each blog’s database tableset. But MultiDB makes it easy to declare tables as belonging to a shared global database, so they don’t get recreated for each blog and are common across the entire service.
One of the interesting new things in iPod/iPhone OS 3.0 is the new “find my iPod” feature. It’s probably most useful for an iPhone, which could be easily left on a bus or something, and has an always-on 3G connection, but it works just fine for iPods over WIFI as well.
It’s close - I’m just on the edge of the blue circle as I’m typing this - but it’s good enough to tell me that I haven’t left it at home. The map updates in nearly realtime, so you could, in theory, track the device as it walks away.
One of the things I do when working with students and faculty, is to show them how to find great free resources shared online via the Creative Commons license, and to provide proper attribution. It’s really easy. It can be as simple as “Photograph by “, and maybe a link to the photo page.
The Tekzilla podcast (and TV show?) used a photo of mine in a recent episode (Episode 93: “Netbook Buyer’s Guide”, June 18 2009). I’m fine with that - I release every photo I publish under a simple Creative Commons attribution license to make that kind of thing easy to do.
I’ve been farting around with a Manfrotto Super Clamp to attach a camera to my bike to experiment with techniques to document the Ride to Conquer Cancer. I’ve got a bunch of stuff to try, but I’m getting closer to something that I’m happy with.
Here’s the first half of my ride home from UCalgary campus through the streets of NW Calgary - sped up about 3x. I was averaging between 30-40km/h for this portion of the ride.
I was asked to give a presentation for the From Courses to Dis/Course online conference last week, and chose the topic of identity as it relates to openness. My session, Identity in the Open Classroom, was a fun (for me, anyway) exploration of the issues, and I think served the purpose of framing discussion.
Here’s the video of the recording from the session:
I’ve been running a copy of WordPress MultiUser for over a year now. Comment spam hasn’t been much of a problem, thanks to Akismet, but if I leave site registration open (so students and faculty can create new accounts and blogs), the evil spammers find it and start sending their bots en masse.
I guessed at the starting point before, and was wrong. Looks like the Alberta ride starts at the Deerfoot Casino, then must head down Deerfoot to 22X then west to 22 before shooting south.
Here’s the route, complete with the elevation profile:
Inspired by this commute video I saw this morning, I was curious what it would look like if I recorded my full commute. I’ve tried it before with a helmet cam, but hadn’t tried it with a fixed quasi-steady camera.
I took my cheap little Flip Ultra video camera, stuck it on the rear rack of my bike, and fastened it in place with a pair of bungee cords. It wasn’t ideal, but should have been good enough, as long as I didn’t wipe out or hit anything big.
Thanks to a tip from David Esrati (who I’m not going to link to from this post because I’m taunting spammers and don’t want to inflict collateral damage on him), I’m testing out WP-SpamFree which is a really interesting antispam plugin for WordPress. I’ve used Akismet and Mollom before, and I’ve always been uncomfortable with externally hosted antispam systems. For some reason, I’m just not completely comfortable with relying on another server for this. I’d used Spam Karma 2 with great success, but since that went defunct I abandoned it as well.
They just (vaguely) announced the route for this year’s Ride to Conquer Cancer event. Looks like we’ll be leaving from the south end of Calgary (I’m guessing the parking lot at Spruce Meadows, but I could be wrong), heading briefly west then south along the Cowboy Trail on highway 22. The overnight camp is at Bar U Ranch near Longview. On day 2, we go another 100km (or so) south - finishing the ride at the Sierra West Ranch near Pincher Creek.
I just spent a few minutes updating my podcast subscriptions - I haven’t really listened to podcasts for several months, and want to get back into more curated audio presentations, as opposed to the relentless randomness of Shuffle Mode music playlists.
I decided my previous set of subscriptions were essentially a self constructed echo chamber. I had subscribed to several edu-podcasts, all talking about various interpretations of the same issues. I need to break out of the echo chamber, so I unsubscribed from most of them (sorry - nothing personal). I added several music related podcasts, and a couple talk radio shows.
I’ve been trying to get BuddyPress working on my WPMU installation that uses MultiDB for database partitioning. It’s been cranky, but I just realized I’m a complete idiot because I was overlooking the obvious (and drop dead simple) fix.
I just spent a few minutes updating my podcast subscriptions - I haven’t really listened to podcasts for several months, and want to get back into more curated audio presentations, as opposed to the relentless randomness of Shuffle Mode music playlists.