Blog Posts

MacOSX vs. Ubuntu

I’ve been toying around with Ubuntu linux, seeing if I could make the move over to that side of things full time. It’s gotten so much better over the last couple of years, that it’s finally a viable fulltime desktop environment. The Ubuntu distro has an almost perfect balance of ease-of-use and hardcore-geek-utility. apt-get is great (but hardly user friendly).

Brian’s been working on making the switch from MacOSX to Ubuntu (or UbuntuStudio), so I’ve been thinking about it again.

Read More

My iDVD is borked

I’ve got a fully updated copy of iDVD on my MacBook Pro that refuses to cooperate. I can create a project, save it, and burn it to DVD. But, if I decide I want to quit iDVD, it borks the next time I launch it. It gets past “loading themes” and then just hangs. I can nuke my prefs, and get the “new project” dialog, but if I create a project, I get the same thing if I quit. Which makes editing an iDVD project a bit, well, problematic. I currently have to recreate the project from scratch every time I want to make a modification. Which makes the process a bit more tedious than it needs to be.

Read More

365 photos - halfway point

I just passed the halfway point for my 2007 “365 photos” challenge, where I try to take at least one photo every day for the entire year 2007. I’ve actually been successful in taking a photo per day. Most days, I take many, so the hardest part is picking the “best” photo to represent the day. Other days, I don’t feel like taking a photo, or nothing interesting happens. Those are the hard days. I’ve still managed to take photos on those days, but it’s definitely a challenge.

Read More

apple.ca/iphone

There are 2 companies in Canada that might have something to say about iPhone availability this side of the border. And, so far, they’re managing to keep their stories straight:

apple.ca/iphone redirects to this

rogers.ca iphone

Read More

MySpace vs. Facebook: Who Cares?

Danah Boyd published an article comparing the demographics of MySpace and Facebook. The conclusion? Geeks, jocks, and preps head to Facebook. Stoners, goths, and bangers head to MySpace.

So… Essentially all cliques are steadily moving into personal and social publishing spaces. And they’re finding where they feel most comfortable.

facebookers vs myspacers

I’m not seeing the problem. Do we really expect the various groups of kids to all flock to the same communities online? It sure doesn’t happen offline.

Read More

Drupal Pet Peeve: Loose InputFormat Control

I screwed up in a big way on one of our higher profile Drupal sites. I had configured the default inputformat to include PHP execution, because there are a whole bunch of pages on the site that need to be able to execute PHP, and that was the easiest way to get it done. I was lazy, and didn’t follow best practices. And it resulted in a pretty open security hole, where anyone could create an account and then execute their own PHP (to do stuff like promote their account to Admin, delete the database, send emails, launch ICBMs…). Not cool.

Read More

Canadian eLearning 2007 Video Party: The Movie

Here’s the presentation, with the clips and selections Brian and I used during the welcoming reception for the Canadian eLearning 2007 conference on Tuesday. I wound up not recording audio during the presentation, so you’ll just have to imagine witty and entertaining banter and intros for each video. Brian was responsible for both the witty and entertaining portions of the presentation.

The video selections came to 48 minutes. We were given a 45 minute slot after the welcome reception supper meal. You do the math…

Read More

Drupal pet peeve: cron.php

I hate that I have to manually (or scriptedly) call cron.php for every Drupal site I run. Even for multiple Drupal sites on the same server in a multisite configuration. Yes, there are ways to automate it, but eventually they fail. I just manually called cron.php on one of our main sites, after realizing it had silently failed for the last 32 weeks. Hundreds of reminder emails are being sent out now, for events that were held months ago. Yes, there are modules to have cron.php called periodically (poor man’s cron…) but they’re flakey at best, and risky at worst (there is a chance of overlapping cron.php calls if the timing is just right).

Read More

Aperture Wishlist

I’ve been exclusively using Aperture for about 6 months now, and absolutely love it. The non-destructive edits are liberating. The RAW support is fantastic. The workflow stuff is great. Vaults? Great. Loupe on RAW images? Perfection.

But, of course, I’ve got some gripes.

  1. It’s hard to copy individual photos between computers. If I have Aperture on a desktop and a laptop, and I want to copy just a handful of photos and their metadata (stars, keywords, etc…) from the desktop to the laptop, I have 2 choices:

    Read More

Canadian eLearning 2007 Video Party Playlist

Here’s the playlist Brian and I used for our presentation during the Canadian eLearning 2007 conference welcome reception on Tuesday evening. I’ll try to compress a version of the presentation with our clip selections (we only showed short clips from many of the videos) but I won’t get a chance to do that until the weekend.

intro

  1. who the hell are we, and what the hell are we doing there?
  2. Brief riff on new abundance of online video and DIY creativity in era of YouTube
  3. Intro clip of Guy Caballero, followed by SCTV’s Hinterland Who’s Who, followed by the Crack Spider version.
  4. Overview of Online video awards

changing nature of education

  1. Ken Robinson - TED Talks 2004
  2. Spare Me My Life! Cultural values implicit in instruction

web 2.0

  1. Doug Engelbart- The Demo
  2. Apple’s Knowledge Navigator Video
  3. Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us
  4. 2014 EPIC, by Google
  5. Le Grand Content - information visualization

Hallucinatory Interlude:

  1. Safe tripping

creative commons and open content

  1. Creative Commons - Wanna Work Together?
  2. A Fair(y) Use Tale
  3. The Future is Open

mashups

  1. Rick Noblenski- Blasting Caps Expert and Wiki Advocate - an edu. reuse of old content
  2. Winnie the Pooh meets Apocalypse Now
  3. The Shining Recut
  4. Monty Trek
  5. Instructional Video: Mash-up made from instructional videos

Read More

Live, from Edmonton, it's Tuesday Night!

I had a total blast hanging out working with Brian for the Canadian eLearning 2007 conference welcome reception entertainment gig we got coerced invited to do. Here’s the clip we put together as the intro segment for our Online Video Party redux, based on being in the spiritual home of the most inspired group of video comedians ever assembled: SCTV!

[flv:https://darcynorman.net/video/LiveFromDeadmonton2_320x240.flv 320 240]

That was re-edited and audio dubbed in a cookie-cutter “pub” in “Bourbon Street” at West Edmonton Mall. We could tell we were in “Bourbon Street” because of the authentic Celine Dion and Bryan Adams soundtrack, and the always impressive New Orleans wide selection of only the finest alcohols - Coors, Coors Lite, Bud and Bud Lite.

Read More

Online Video Party @ Canadian eLearning 2007 Conference

I learned long ago, that when given the opportunity to do anything with Brian, I should jump on it. Doesn’t matter where, or what. Just do it. It’ll be interesting, or at least fun. Most likely, it’ll be both, in spades.

I was handed the chance to do something fun with Brian as part of the welcome reception for the Canadian eLearning 2007 Conference in Edmonton next week. It’s something new for the conference - entertainment as part of the welcome reception. What to do? People will be eating/drinking/talking, so a full-on presentation wouldn’t go over very well. What to do… What to do…
How about an Online Video Party?

Read More