CogBlogged from ‘May, 2005’

I’m a fan of Wired, sifting through the slick ads for the sometimes good writing… and I lifted the Wired. Tired. Expired. theme for a recent presentation. But however “cool” a magazine may pass itself off for, underneath it is a business and there are bean counters and bottom liners working to milk my money. I loathe the “urgent” reminders that start 5 months before my subscription expired and I deliberately ignore them until a month before. What do I get out of giving interest free loans (okay, I provide this service to the US Government). But this latest “personalized” note from “Jeffrey Stone, Office of the Publisher” makes me wonder if they are working under the P.T. Barnum School of Business:

I was happily iPodding my bicycle route home when my Shuffle went south, blinking amber lights. The battery drained, cutting the Clash off in mid song. Wow, after getting used to the audio track while biking, the lack of it was, well deafening. It turns out when I plugged it into my iBook at night, I was not getting any battery recharge since the computer went to sleep. I think that one did not make it into the user manual. So when I am seeking technical answers, do I reach for customer support, a “FAQ“, and official help file, or even a “Knowledgebase“? Do I rush out and buy a fancy charger? No way José.

Our Spring 2005 issue of the mcli Forum is printed on its way to all faculty and staff at Maricopa. We always put on the fast burn to create the web version in time to be announced before the paper hits the mailboxes. It’s a tedious formatting chore, but it is actually one of my favorite designs as it fairly well varies the print design in mostly CSS. The big news is finally being able to share the not really groundbreaking article on digital audio / podcasting, “Internet Audio: Can You Hear/Talk to Me Now? Good.”: In this article, you will find an overview of tools available now for two-way audio conversations via the internet as well as the audio publishing phenomena known as “podcasting.” To better understand how people are using these technologies and where they think the fit is for teaching and learning, I conducted mini digital audio [...]

I am not one to stand in line or rush out to get the first version of a new operating system, so I am going to let the nice other eager souls take the first cuts on OS X 10.4 (Tiger). Over the years, I have found it more prudent to wait for the X.X.1 release. Frankly, the appearance and functionality of a computer operating system of little interest- it works best when it is not a big deal, when it is transparent, and supports my work flow. Dropping everything to back up, clean up, install, re-install software, find lost pieces, play with new features… well it takes time. There is a cost (for me) in time. I recall the fun term for all the little add-on software some folks spend hours/days/?? twiddling with- “FritterWare” meaning that it was stuff you could fritter your time away making your menubars a [...]

More low growls– I love my iPod and I have tapped into some really good technical podcasts. I’ve ben able to absorb this while doing my bicycle commute. But with a technology rising up the charts like a bullet, it sometimes feels like the rush to do things ends up with a flurry of audio dumps that are, well, not so exciting. I downloaded one hour long educational podcast, started pedaling home, and was so bored at the lack of much beyond high brow pontificating. And I stuck with it for 30 minutes, hoping something worthy would slide in. Nada. Yes, I know I actually was not “trapped”- I can reach down and click to the next track, but with most devices there’s not function for “fast forwarding” through the cruft. You are stuck in a long track from beginning to end. I am thinking that there is a variation [...]

I have been habitually behind in getting our open Source Maricopa Learning eXchange (MLX) into shape for others to use. As some have chided me, there is not much up at SourceForge but a place holder. We have an open demo version that will fold in the new changes as they continue to develop; but you can create accounts, create packages, and use all the features from our first generation Maricopa Learning eXchange in the open demo site: http://zircon.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/mlx247/ It is fairly alpha if that right now. Last year, there was a lofty plan to have it ready for the June New Media Consortium, but I ended up waving my arms at the possibilities. I am rather intent in getting at least a beta available for this year’s NMC conference. I did have an internal project that has asked for an MLX site- The National Association of Community College Teacher [...]

While I am in love with my ipod and am not more intrigued by podcasts than my previous ramblings, I am not one who is taking the leap of assumption that the next great thing is going to be “video” iPods and “VideoCasts”. Nope, I am not convinced at all. I can easily be wrong, but follow my thoughts. It bears some consideration of the media, and how we access it. Audio content is something we are able to tune in to and listen while we do other tasks. That is one of the big reasons podcasting and publishing digital audi has a lot of potential– it gives people the flexibility and opportunity to access content (be it Cats Purring Sea Chanties or audio books, or shudder the thought, “lectures”) while they are doing other things- it makes use of time we are exercising, commuting, traveling, to access content. Audio [...]

flickr foto iLove myPodavailable on my flickr I am in love with my iPod Shuffle. Is that sick? I cannot say how cool the little Shuffle is, The experience of biking to work is like a brand new one, and I can even manage to get some joy out of running (which I hate doing). Now I sm sporting the Apple sports case, something I need as the heat inches to the 100s and the sweat pours off me in buckets. I thiunk after a week, the white lanyard was starting to reek. The case is nicely done and adds a layer of protection. My major challenge is the annoyance of the headphone cables getting tangled when I stuff it in my backback after the ride. Lately, I’ve just been busy digitizing my CDs, and loading them randomly into the Shuffle. Today’s commute included Caroline Aiken (awesome blues/acoustic guitarist we [...]

As part of the blog transition I took a spin at creating a new tool that would create a WordPress search bookmarklet, more or less a quick re-do of the one I originally created for MovableType. It is even easier to construct for WordPress, as all you need to know is the base URL for the WP blog- the WordPress search URL is very simple, merely the URL plus a value to pass for the key word search: http://www….WP-blog-url/index.php?s=blog making it really easy to create permanent bookmarks for blog searches, e.g., my spam roach collection: http://cogdogblog.com/index.php?s=spam+roach. Hmmm, this is a sneaky way to make new pseudo categories. Anyhow, another cheap WP hack is the new Make a WordPress Search Bookmarklet- it allows you to create a browser bar tool that can either do a search of a particular WP blog using any text highlighted in a page, or it will [...]

Previously I have documented the new Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV) diagnosis of SpamNymphomania, the sad, desperate attempt to stick Porn Pill Casino links into any web form that contains a textarea and a submit button. In extremely sad cases, they continue to do so when there is no payoff at all, they submit stuff to web forms that never publish content to any web site, so their URLs never see the light of day, But the Texas Hold-em mania is the most extreme, so they continue to try and stuff things in our web feedback forms and latest today, trying to stuff it into the form on the Feed2JS site that allows normal people to share new CSS designs. The solution is rather simple in my PHP scripts to issue die statements for sites where there are known keywords for valid input; in other cases, I [...]