CogBlogged from ‘July, 2004’

Thanks to our 4 day summer work week, I had today free to volunteer for Scottsdale’s Mighty Mud Mania, a 21-year old event that draws more than 10,000 kids to romp through obstacle courses full of gooey mud. It began in the 1970s as some promotion for a cleaning product, but has grown to be a mammoth event every July. It is a kids dream- to have permission and encouragement to get filthy. I spent siz hours helping the 6 and under kids slither through the mini obstacle course, and am still picking flecks of mud from…. well forget about it. Rest assured, it was a fun day for not only the kids, but their parents, and just about every other volunteer covered with mud and smiles. In looking it up, saw a nice way to spread news stories via a Google News Link: http://news.google.com/news?q=mighty+mud+mania — by tomorrow, the news [...]

In regards to the yesterday’s bike accomplishment, make that two in a row. Today was uneventful, the only encounters were with a covey of quail along the Arizona Canal. When we bicycle, we are all Lance, careening down the cobblestone roads at 50 mph, accelerating our way up the French Alps, arms raised in yellow jacket victory… all in our minds.

A faculty member I am nudging into blogging shared this beautiful essay about blogging, Show Me Your Context, Baby: My Love Affair with Blogs by Kate Baggott. I would try to summarize, but this award winning essay says it all: Show me your context, baby. I already know the world you live in; tell me only how you see it. I am among the most demanding readers of blogs, or web logs, or on-line journals, or whatever you choose to call the daily missives individuals post on the web. I want the whole story: the profane, the sacred and the essential facts. These are the demands we make of great literature too, but that comparison is too limiting. To call blogs literature would be to turn them into an elitist, edited, and vetted art, one which is contrary to their very nature. The complexity of what blogs and their reactionary, [...]

Completely unrelated to technology… Today, after two months of excuses and ignoring the messages from Mirror Mirror on the Wall, I got back on the bicycle for my 11 mile commute to work. And today’s weather was so… optimal? Here in Phoenix we are expecting a record high of 112 F, and once you add in the summer moisture lurking in the air, plus the car fumes it feels something like 192 degrees. Actually the morning was quite comfortable, at 6 AM it was only 87 and believe it or not, that felt cool while the sun was still hiding on the horizon. This morning I was only cut off twice by large SUVs, drivers completely oblivious to anyone in their wake, about an average rate. And a bonus- I had an opportunity to deal with a driver who was convinced the world was his ash tray– waiting at a [...]

At least someone out there is reading my drivel. Todd Slater responded to the call for CSS Bonsai Gardens and quickly shared a new style available for anyone, “ZanestatefeedsYahoo”. I added some tweaks that allow me to share a demo of what this new feed looks like. Check it out! Thanks Todd, first out of the gate!

A frequent question we get from our Writing HTML tutorial is: “what code can I use to prevent people from viewing/stealing the source code of my web pages?” and the answer is very similar to what i say to people when they want to protect their images on web pages from being stolen- if you do not want someone out there to “steal” your web images– keep them off the internet. All of the techniques out there, JavaScript disabling of right mouse clicks is baby stuff to circumvent. But rather than respond with my own tirade, I typically gently suggest that it is more trouble than it is worth, and seed them with a good google link for reference resources, for the above question: http://www.google.com/search?q=hide+web+page+source+code Top of that is a great site from Vortex Designs, How to prevent theft of your source code!, that starts with this bit of humor: [...]

Just stumbled into LiteraryMoose, who minces no words about The Misery of Open-Source Software or Why I don’t Use WordPress This document collects some thoughts on WordPress 1.2, supposedly the greatest invention since sliced ice cubes. What they claim on their front page, is argued point by point, based on my personal experiences and the hell I encountered trying to convert CSS Destroy to Wordpress-powered management. Those with short attention span can stop reading here. The above paragraph is all you can take in one go. You can form your opinion now; no need to read the remainder of the document. I like! This is blogging with bite! Don’t yell at me, I am only quoting, but WordPress fans are likely foaming at the mouth. I am always wary of people who are married to their tools, whether blogs, Macs vs PCs, Flash vs Director, Blackboard vs WebCT, PowerPoint vs…. [...]

I have just twiddled some new tools to help users of Feed2JS to create their customized styles for output created by this service/script. In a total and polite rip off of the css Zen Garden site, I am hoping some designers out there might mess around with the new style tools and submit some new ones to add to our collection. This was initiated by a number of emails from people asking basic questions like “I love what this does, but how do I get rid of the bullets on the listed items?” and “I cannot get any formatting to show up”. There are major gaps in understanding where to put the style declarations, no surprise, since very few people end up coding style sheets- most are created form them by various web authoring applications. IN this case, you need a wee bit more knowledge, not much, just to know [...]

It’s been our belief that it would take time for our Maricopa Learning eXchange (MLX) to reach that magical tipping point, critical mass- when it contained enough content, resources, objects, ideas that our users could easily find something useful for themselves that they would be self-compelled to add their own stuff. I had MERLOT-ian aspirations. Are we there? How would you know? As our fall semester approaches, we are nearing the 1000 package milestone. Some of the late increases are a result of using our online reporting of our office’s Learning Grants that automatically file the results of these grants into the ML. This is the first year also that faculty recipients of professional growth summer projects will use an online report form, again that will feed the MLX. Our 6 month Great Package Races bring in flurries of items too. But less encouraging is some data analysis I was [...]

Thanks to six of you who took up my offer to complete a silly survey inside my eportfolio. Well, there is one ringer in there, at least. And someone else got very serious about answering the open ended questions, but helped us clear up a bug. So not only can you create a survey to exisit inside an eP, you can publish the results– I just whipped them up from the tool, and cleaned it up as HTML, and loaded it as a Templated document type- here are the Big ePort Survey Results certainly nothing to hang a PhD on. But think again what we have here- this ePort is a container for all kinds of items.