We just updated the website for Maranatha College’s online classroom to Moodle 1.5 Beta. It’s using the default skin, so it’s nothing special to look at, but the upgrade went very smooth, everything working perfectly.
Moodle is an open source online college/classroom software package; it’s based on PHP and MySQL (although I believe one could use other databases, if so inclined) and is really quite impressive in features and reliability. We’ve upgraded it several times since first installing it over a year ago, and each time has gone flawlessly.
Like I said, because of the upgrade we had to go back to a default template for now, so our isn’t much visually; but on their site you may be able to find other schools who are using it; they have over 50,000 registered users, so there is quite a bustling community behind it. If you have any sort of school or class that could use an online component, you should definitely check Moodle out before sinking thousands of dollars into Blackboard or WebCT.
Continue reading ‘Moodle 1.5 Beta’
If you were trying to get visit during the last hour or so, chances are the site was down.
It turns out that there was a problem with cpanel, which runs the backend for the sites on this server. It thought that all the MySQL databases had gone missing. Now, missing databases will put a crimp into a dynamic site.
All, however, is well.
Continue reading ‘Downtime’
CoolTechZone has this story, stating the common wisdom of how nice it would be if a major vendor shipped with Linux on the desktop. Well, this still isn’t happening in a big way, but it’s getting closer.
It seems that HP will be shipping select laptops with FreeDOS loaded (thus avoiding the Windows License tax), and offering Linux support for Ubuntu Linux on said laptops.
So, you’d need to install it yourself (but Ubuntu is among the easiest Linux installs, period; it’s pretty slick), but you would have official support.
A step in the right direction. But… is anyone going to buy it?
Continue reading ‘HP to support Ubuntu on Select Laptops’
From the article Perfecting the Human from this month’s Fortune:
DARPA invests 90% of its $3-billion-a-year official budget outside the government, mainly funding universities and industry researchers who work at the forefront of the barely possible. By the time a technology is far enough along to attract venture capitalists, DARPA is usually long gone. Its program managers—it has about 140, mostly MDs and Ph.D.s—seek problems they call "DARPA-esque" or "DARPA-hard." Those are challenges verging on the impossible. "We try not to violate any of the laws of physics," says Steve Wax, a DARPA official. "Or at least not knowingly," adds Michael Goldblatt, his ex-boss, "or at least not more than one per program."
Continue reading ‘DARPA and the Barely Possible’
It’s a headline that really wants to belong to an Onion article, but it doesn’t:
Now that’s how you write a title.
Continue reading ‘Headline of the Month’
Jack Welch was on C-SPAN the other night, it seems, and though I didn’t see it, Todd S. at 800-CEO-Read blogged a bit about it. I thought this was interesting:
The other thing he mentioned was that everyone should be reading business media. Jack said everyone should have subscriptions to Fortune, Forbes, and BusinessWeek and be reading the Wall Street Journal every day. He said you should have opinions on what is going on in the world of business and be asking yourself what you would do in the reported stories.
Wow. Sounds like a tall order. I subscribe to Fortune, because it’s the most interesting of the business magazines, in general, and I sometimes have trouble finding time just to read all of that. Then again, business is not my whole life. Interesting advice, though, especially the admonition to "have opinions" and "ask yourself what you would do" — those are thoughts to get the brain churning.
What do you read? (Other than blogs, I mean :-) )
Continue reading ‘Jack Welch on What to Read’
On observing that I used the word "gargantuan" in the last post, I can’t resist mentioning (because it’s interesting) that this word comes from the giant Gargantua in Rabelais’ novel Gargantua and Pantagruel.
Now don’t say you never learned anything here.
Continue reading ‘Gargantuan?’
I have begun carrying index cards with me everywhere and making prodigious notes one them. I am not sure why; probably it is because I am a nerd.
I go to Borders several times a week (for those who don’t live in the shadow of this particular franchise, it’s a chain of Gargantuan Bookstores), and I inevitably sit down with a stack of books and leaf through them. Well, for the past couple weeks, I’ve also been jotting down the author, title, and other citation information on an index card, and then if I see any quote that I think is cool, I write it down on another index card with a little notation at the top to remind me which book it was from, and the page number. Then I take it home and file it (yes, file it) in a box separated by index-card size dividers, one for each letter of the alphabet.
I’ve also started writing down ideas, for essays, posts, other things. Sounds a little pretentious to say that one is writing down ideas on index cards; it implies that ones ideas are worth remembering. Fortunately, I think that everyone probably has a lot of ideas worth remembering.
Anyways, like I said, I’m a bit of a nerd. We’ll see how long the habit lasts.
Continue reading ‘Index cards’
You may or may not remember the movie Being John Malkovitch, starring John Cusack, Cameron Diaz, and Malkovitch himself, among others. There’s a point late in the movie where Malkovitch enters the portal himself, and all the people he sees look like himself, and every word they say is "Malkovitch." Probably one of the weirdest scenes (and movies, for that matter) in the last decade or so.
Well, there’s a site (the Malkovitch Mediator) which has an online utility (for lack of a better word) to achieve the same effect… like this, for example.
You can also substitute a word of your own, and any website you like. For example to some, my site may look like this… while others might see it like this.
Not sure why, but I thought this was worth sharing.
Continue reading ‘Malkovitch Mediator Zaniness’
KARE 11 reports that Al Franken has bought a Townhouse in Minneapolis, apparently in case he decides to run for Senator in 2008. I can’t help but think that this campaign would be doomed to spectacular failure, but I’ve been surprised and dismayed before.
I think I’m going to have to join Coleman’s grassroots team. I don’t think I could deal with having Franken represent Minnesota if I didn’t know I had done everything possible to prevent it.
Continue reading ‘Al Franken… Senator?’
