CogBlogged from ‘April, 2007’

My Twitter IM Buddy just keeled over again: Popularity has a high price.

MediaWiki – love the app, hate the documentation, a term used loosely. Here is a normal set of steps it took to find the answer. What I was looking for was that special MediaWiki URl you need to use to edit the sidebar links of your site. Go to the bookmark I had for MediaWiki Handbook Type in the search box navigation links I get some results but there’s a big red border box warning at the top: Important note: the instructions on this page may be out of date, incorrect, or unnecessary; for most requirements, the FAQ contains the necessary instructions. This page, however, explains some tasks not covered in the FAQ! Follow the link above for FAQ which looks like I am close, a heading of How do I change the contents of the navigation toolbar? But no, there is a fork in the docs, one for MediaWiki [...]

It’s our last night of a weekend in Strawberry, and we’ve already burned through our rented DVDs. Reaching into the archives here, we’re watching All The Presidents Men on VHS. Beyond the fluffy 1970s hairstyles, I was struck by some comparisons waiting for the tape to get to the movie, especially as our viewing of DVDs to VHS is about 98% to 2%. As the tape rolled in linear motion, there were movie promos, then a 5-10 minute documentary on the making of the movie (typically under the DVD Extras), then 3 different movie trailers (typically under the DVD Extras), then finally the movie. And there are no captions to turn on/off. Actually we finished our dinner by the time the movie rolled. I’ve gotten to be a junkie for watching the DVD Extras. It’s so disappointing when the DVD menu only has choices of “Play”, “Setup”, “Scenes”, and “Trailers”! [...]

I’ve heard raves and howls about Dreamhost for web hosting, but my experience so far as been stellar. I really like the one-click install / updates for WordPress; previously, the announcement of a new 0.01 update I might delay a few days, weeks to get around to backing up the database, de-activating plugins, backing up the web directory, downloading new source code, uploading…. while with one click that is all I really have to do. It Just Works (so far). Just did it for the WP 2.1.3 update.

I’ve made us here (and there and there) of Clustrmaps, the free web tool that can pin your web site visitors to a map by reverse geolocation mapping of their IP address. It’s very cool, and has the great attribute of what I am attracted to in Web 2.0 land- it’s free, easy to set up, gives useful features and services, and once set up, you can forget about managing it. But I just came across one I thought I had seen in an earlier incarnation, that does something similar, then again, very different- Frappr allows you to create a map for your site, but it is a Google type map, and your site visitors can add their own “pin” to geolocate themselves, add a photo, and a short caption (or shoutout). So in some sense it is a web site guest book, but mashed up with a map. I [...]

Whew, finally got around to cleaning out my Google Reader. Not to say that I actually “read” them all, but sifted through, and Shift-A’d through some feeds with 100+ unread items lurking. Of course, this screenshot may imply that I don’t subscribe to anything. By the time I publish this post, the sidebar will start puffing out. But there is some satisfaction in fooling myself that I have absorbed all this information from the 50 or 60 sites I subscribe to. And actually the last thing I did read (and Shared) was Will’s pointing to a stunning example of what can be done with the new features of Google’s MyMaps — the Route 66 history tour. I’ve not even sniffed out the shiny new Goog-tool, but my gut says that maps as an authoring tool are going to be very powerful for educators (or anyone trying to create a map [...]

I like Shorpy, “the 100 year-old photo blog”: Shorpy.com is a photo blog about what life a hundred years ago was like: How people looked and what they did for a living, back when not having a job usually meant not eating. We’re starting with a collection of photographs taken in the early 1900s by Lewis Wickes Hine as part of a decade-long field survey for the National Child Labor Committee It’s a creative way to present historical content, doing so in a way the mimics an old newspaper. The old photos are effective at bringing back the feel of time that looks more than 100 years ago: Our Gang: 1910: Jefferson Street Gang of newsboys at 10 P.M. over campfire in corner lot behind bill-board. Jefferson Street near Olive, St. Louis. May 7, 1910 And the site is pretty much a blog driven site– guessing at the URL structure [...]

Will trying to track down some info on Apache and virtual hosts on a technical discussion forum, I found this explanation from one writer who was trying to explain the delay in responding: Yep, I started describing the steps to enable split access logs, and decided to run out and paint the doors. Yep. Sounds like a tweet. And… that’s very close to the one about canine consumption of homework, something my four legged lawyers will argue is an urban myth. Irrelevant blog posts are raging back.

A quick shout-out to Andy Rush for sharing his work on theming and connecting together the UMW New Media Center site using a common theme deployed in WordPress and MediaWiki. It’s very elegant design, and as you navigate back and forth, perhaps the distinction of “this is a wiki” and “this is a blog” blur as one focuses more on the content. I’m anxious to watch and see how this plays out, but a tip of the dog paw to Andy for some great work. Speaking of MediaWiki, we’ve had a slight increase in the incidents of wiki vandalism on some of the NMC wikis I created. On all of them,w e do not allow anonymous edits; one must create accounts to do so, But there is no oversight on account creation, so any wiki vandal can do that and start mucking up content. In some cases it was the [...]

Here’s a toast to the last reader of this blog, after most others likely have chucked it from their RSS boxes and scooted it off the blog rolls. Heck, and my list of unread feed items stretches down to Ecuador. So hello to the last lonely reader of this dog tired blog…… It’s coming up soon on the 4 year CDB anniversary and somewhat fitting since Brian, D’Arcy, Jim Groom, and I are planning a small online event to banter about web tools and such. We started reflecting on the state of the EduWeb when three of us did the Small Pieces/Technologies Loosely Joined back in June 2004. Wow, how long ago that seems! Then it was blogs, wikis, and RSS and today…. well there is just so many many more small pieces. So as much as I hate to, I likely have a bot of back blogging to do, [...]