CogBlogged from ‘July, 2004’

It’s been more than a while since our return from visiting 2 weeks in Canada, so before all the brain cells rot, here is an attempt to summarize a glorious trip. I managed to snap more than 600 photos (tossed about half), and still they really do not capture the experience. It is a generalized summary, but I must say the Canadians we met, in city and tiny towns, in the mountains and on the coast, were all gracious, friendly, and genuine– in fact, beside one woman who cut in front of us for a line on a train, we did not meet one rude Canadian. They must have hid them all away when they heard we were coming. The start was a June 15 flight form Phoenix to Vancouver…

Brian Alger has been doing some nice reflecting on the concepts of our NMC 2004 “Small Piecess Loosely Joined” idea- recently writing about “Weblogs: Which Pieces and How Should They Joined? (NMC 2004)”… I would have written, but Brian’s blog lacks a comment function (I find that a gaping large piece, but understand that people have to take drastic steps about blog spam roaches– as a side bar and likely a self jinx but since our last battle we have been actually spam free. I am guessing, hoping that changing the default comments script name, removing embedded references to the comment posting full URL has done the trick.. but the war is never won). I thinking I should try to focus on improving my writing so that the entries that comprise what it is I am trying to say take on the character of big pieces tightly joined. It seems [...]

Audree has been busy…. she is the developer of the ePortfolio tool built first at Chandler-Gilbert Community College and also running in our office as “Maricopa eP” for the rest of our system. Over the last few weeks, she has added new tools and features, based on faculty and student input, especially since at her college, the use of it has grown wider into a personal publishing system as well. The first new thing is the ability to create an item type that is a survey or quiz. At first I scratched my head trying to figure out why such a thing would be embedded into an eP, but one could use it as a way of collecting feedback from peers or teachers, or it could be used as a course tool by faculty, or …. So I quickly added a 3 item survey on “What is an ePortfolio?” to [...]

Once again serendipity on stumbling intoquickSub – a little piece of CSS and JavaScript code to perhaps add some more usability to the RSS links? I agree mostly with others contentions on the problems with posting an or icon on a web page where the human followed link is a mess of inhuman XML. It rightfully confuses the un-initiated. QuickSub provides a rollover function that provides a comprehensive list of news aggregators that the user can select and then have the RSS added where they wanted. It provides a steady link to an explanation page. Try it on the the link at the top of the CDB main dog and let me know if it works or not. This is just an experiment the cost of inclusion looks like 1.5 k for the CSS and about 8 k for the JavaScript. I made a few adjustments from the distributed versions. [...]

Just for fun, I added a rather small feature to the Feed2JS script/service; Curt Whittaker had emailed requesting: It would be nice if the script could have alternate text if there are no items in the current feed. For example, we are looking to use this for our Calendar of Events – see http://test.sou.edu. Some days there are no events, and I want to say so rather than have just a blank box. It is actually quite easy thing to toss in the mix (just spit out “no items for this feed” if the Magpie parser returns a zero count item array), so it is now there- you can verify by tossing in the URL for the an empty item feed I made. Also, since we do get a handful of “how do I make it do X?” type requests that are too specialized to make it into the final, [...]

Monday night we drove home to Phoenix skirting the edge of the active Willow wildfire and was awed/dismayed at how the smoke completely obscured the Mazatzal range– the front in the photos below was only 1/2 mile from the Beeline Highway (AZ87) and the radio was reporting that the Beeline was to close the next day so fire fighters could build defense lines to keep it from crossing over. Check out this image of a plane dumping retardant on the fire. This is a big deal, not like in a metro area where a detour would be perhaps a detour to a surface street 1.2 mile away- closing the highway means for people traveling between Phoenix and Payson, a route that would add maybe another 80-120 miles to a trip (this was cancelled, but sounds like it could happen any day this week). Anyhow, I snapped a few pics from [...]

A month a go I barked rather severely about the disappearance of XPlana’s blog — I thought there was a comment but maybe it was a private email from someone there (?? my brain is mush, I cannot recall who it was) that fessed up that links to the new site were absent, and also that they had not gone corporate greed as I insinuated. Let me first to slap myself for being off-base. It happens. So FYI, XPlana’s blog is now alive and living at http://www.xplanazine.com/ feeds and all. Good stuff there as well. Bad dog becomes good dog, eh?

Beware of long scrolling web sites that start with: Attention: If you would like to get your Web pages to the top of search results (with very little effort), this letter is for you… “Discover An Amazing ‘Technology’ That Will Give You An Unfair Advantage Over Your Competitors And Increase Your Rankings… GUARANTEED!” with more of the same for at least 5 pages worth. Yes, with all the fan fare of the old SNL Crazy Eddie faux commercials, sites like RSS Equalizer offer promises of great wealth acquired in vague means… at a cost of $97 per sucker. There’s ONE major factor that will not only alleviate each of those problems listed above, it will practically “guarantee” top search engine page rank. And what exactly is this miraculous little jewel? Three simple words… Really Simple Syndication. Or, as we in the “business” commonly refer to it… RSS. And in case [...]

I am enjoying the last leg of a nice long vacation at our cabin in the pine forests near Strawberry, Arizona. Not unique in the west or elsewhere in the world, we are in the ninth year of a drought, and the forests are bone dry. Just 10 miles to the south, the Willow Wild Fire is raging, and the skies here daily are filled with thick smoke, it has rained ash, and we have seen some spooky red haze sunsets and moon rises. What is truly amazing to consider is that while I am here worried about our little piece of heaven, there are more than 1000 men and women wearing heavy protective gear, working 12 hours a day, in 90+ degree heat, fighting the fire in roadless desert wilderness area. The folks doing this are true heros (see the photos). Do you want to know how hot and [...]

There are interesting threads to read on peeling the layers of RecentChanges in wikis. While reflecting on the Small Technologies Loosely Joined NMC 2004 session we did last month ion Vancouver, I noticed that someone had taken the effort to paste a bunch of porn URLs on the front page, and shortly there after, someone else thankfully removed them (was that you, Brian? You are supposed to be on vacation!). The wiki software records each edit, and its changes from the version before, which allows the community self policing that ought to occur in this environment. And a story to reveal in following the revisions. So the kind soul that posted crap from host84-205.pool80205.interbusiness.it (Cane Difettoso! your ISP has been notified) at July 2, 2004 9:09 am, there was someone watching over your spam shoulder in under an hour at July 2, 2004 9:51 am. This is part of the [...]