CogBlogged from ‘May, 2008’

This week I tried the free ServerMojo service which provides reports of uptime for your web servers (or databases) or pings you when they are down. The cool thing is you can get alerts the old fashioned grandma way (email) or as direct messages via twitter (which can then be pushed your phone). So ServerMojo periodically pings your servers and reports and whether the ping comes back. I had 2 twitter DMs today noting a 3 hours when CogDogBlog went belly up, one message when it went down and another when it returned: Maybe I am better off not knowing? Oh well. I have two servers set- one is CogDogBlog and the other is the NMC web site – I plan to do another for the NMC MySQL service because it did get overloaded twice in the last few months. You also get some basic uptime charts: So far its [...]

Most people who have reached the high vistas of the Twitter Life Cycle curve have at least one, if not many small stories where they got information, a contact, a resource from twitter that they would not have gotten anywhere else. Or in such a timely fashion. So here is one more, how I long shoot tweet in the air got me technical info I needed. The NMC web site runs in drupal (no snark today). We use the TinyMCE module to give our users, and our office staff who create a lot of the content, a visual text editor. But I have had this nibbling problem which will likely seem nothing to a drupal-ista. I have our CSS styles include classes for hyperlinks, so that adding something like class=”pdf” to an href tag will insert a small file type icon: It is as simple as (See the <a href="/pdf/virtual-learning-prize-PR.pdf" [...]

My second presentation yesterday for the Maricopa Teaching & Learning with Technology Conference was my favorite gig these days, the 50 Web 2.0 Ways to Tell a Story — which, as the audience learned, is actually hovering at ter Magic Heinz Number of 57 (well technically today 56, as toufee, one of the video editing sites, went from being a free site to a paid site, bye bye). Look at the happy people (well they were chatting away madly as the opening slide show was running with Paul Simon singing in the background): I do this one sans presentation files, all from pre-loaded Firefox tabs, which sort of works well for jumping around, but I think I overly tax it when I load the 14 or so demos, a few borked in demo mode, but oh well, it happens, right? I have this one audio recorded as well 50 Web [...]

Wow, what a great day it was yesterday to be back at my old stomping grounds but this time as an invited speaker for the Maricopa Teaching & Learning with Technology Conference which has become a great regional event, as they had attendees from Arizona State University, Coconino Community College, I heard even people came from Texas (?). Mike Wesch was an amazing speaker, and beyond his YouTube fame are some amazing projects he is doing with students generating learning content (check out the world culture sim) in all the good Web 2.0 ways (love his use of netvibes). We got interviewed by Veronica Diaz for a podcast that should appear somewhere on the maricopa conference site. Mike’s morning keynote was a great leadoff for my Being There presentation, the first of two I did yesterday.

Usually when I get emails about offers to advertise on my blog (which is a rather off thing to ask for), I just delete them. But for fun, when I got this recent one: Hello, We have a client in the e-learning sector who is interested in advertising on your blog. We find it relevant to our client and your blog to be of high quality. We are interested in buying links site-wide, homepage links, link within articles, or having you write about our client and linking to them. If you are open to doing so, we can also provide the content Please write back to me with your advertising rates and how much it will cost to sponsor a blog post on your site. Also, if you run other blogs, please send those to me too. We will be able to Paypal you immediately for these link placements. … [...]

So I finally have my magic card to get out of the Alltel Jail of Poor Service and Unrelenting Contracts Last week I was down in Phoenix using the new UM150 USB modem they sent me. It worked fine for the first stop. Then, I had 5 disconnects in less than 2 hours, from 2 different locations. I left a message for Rick, the Executive Customer Relation Specialist who was following through – it was brief, “Hi Rick, this is Alan Levine, the guy with the new wireless modem. It worked for 2 hours and now I hve 5 disconnects in 2 hours. I want out of my contract”. In the meantime I looked at my network settings and saw a bunch of unused connection types for the card. So I deleted them. And the thing worked for 2 hours. So right on cue, Monday morning, Rick called, and said [...]

I have an interesting/weird presentation opportunity tomorrow, traveling all the way to Mesa, Arizona to do two sessions at the Maricopa Community Colleges Teaching & Learning with Technology Conference. It’s “weird” because I worked 14 years at Maricopa, nine of those years running the conference that was the predecessor, though I must say I never got more than 250 people registered for this one. Nope, this one is all different from that oid tired cactus thingie. And I am looking forward to seeing former colleagues, many of whom are sure I moved to Austin, or some who did not know I was gone ;-) Anyhow, I am doing an early warning here because I am going to see if I can stretch the audience to do live broadcasts of my presentations via ustream.tv- of course, this is all hinging on the local network (I requested wired connection but am not [...]

I know a number of bloggers who regularly write about their family, or have gotten family members into blogging. That’s neat by me, but largely, in my case, its been pretty much a case of avoiding Where Worlds Collide, not for any really good reason; they just seem pretty separate spheres of my own life. Maybe deep down in the CogDogSoul, I know this “blogging stuff” is all fluff. So tangentially, it reminds my of my colleague Klaus from graduate school, who would relay that his working class Dad would occasionally ask him when he was going to “get some honest work.” What could be more honest than Klaus, a grad student, chasing adventures on Mexican volcanoes? But this is a positive story about my “little” sister, Harriet. That is in quotes because she is 6 years older than me, but she is shorter, yet has enough goods on me [...]

You’re hooked on twitter. At first you thought it was the dumbest thing anyone can do, but next thing you know, you have 8000 updates. You have signed the Twitter Life Cycle summit log. And them, out of the blue something goes “technically wrong”. Or as more often happens, you are paging through your tweets and the Older button at the bottom disappears. WTF? In this short, highly low production, “just hit record before I finished coffee” screencast I show you how to seize control back from twitter when it takes your button – Take Control of Your Twitter (7 Mb Quicktime).

Will This Redeem Alltel? by cogdogblog posted 7 May ’08, 10.13pm MDT PST on flickr My battle to escape jail of my wireless internet provider seems in vain, but they did send me, for free, a newer USB mode, that actually has software for the Mac and promises to be a stronger connection (time shall tell). Still it tooka call to tech support as they had not updated my account. But the thing works so far, am getting about 800 kbps download and am actually able to tun Second Life. So I call this a partial victory. My new device seems to be providing good connectivity (in 2 locations so far in Arizona), and since it has the software now running on my Mac (and is a device that clearly is compatible with OS X), I guess I am in business. I got the new device, a UM150 USB wireless [...]