the ADMIN pages

The latest news out of Mountain View is the Google Highly Open Participation Contest, or GHOP for short. (Am I the only one who thinks of IHOP whenever I hear GHOP?) This program is an extension of Google's regular Summer of Code, in which college students are given the opportunity to work on open-source software projects. This is an incredible method to gain exposure for open-source software, as well as give those computer science majors a nice resume bullet. There were over 130 projects this past summer, and participants worked hand-in-hand with the software developers to create code, documentation, and do quality-assurance, all while being recognized and compensated by Google.

The Google Highly Open Participation is just like Summer of Code, except it's open to high school students. There are only 10 projects participating in this inaugural year of the contest, which was kind of a letdown considering the high number of projects in the regular program. I was, however, very pleased to see big names like the Apache Software Foundation, Python, GNOME, and Drupal. Also on the docket: Moodle, a free, open-source learning management system (LMS). Being the edu-techie that I am, I'll be focusing my time on Moodle.

There are only 41 tasks for Moodle as of this writing, most of which are claimed, but the contest runs until the end of January, so I'm hoping the Moodle community at large submits some more. I chose for my first task (participants can only claim one task at a time) to create a screencast on exporting grades in Moodle. I had absolutely zero Moodle experience prior to this project, but I easily set up an installation on my web server, and got down to learning.

And, here it is: how to export grades in Moodle v1.9. Again, I'm completely new to Moodle, so let me know if I missed anything.

Video after the jump.
Continue reading ‘Google Pancakes’ »

This is just plain awesome.

via Linux and Open Source Blog

I don't ever use Internet Explorer, but I generally like to keep my blog semi-IE-friendly. Problem is, every time the viewport (visible part of the screen) has some kind of Flash animation, like a YouTube video or my Flickr badge, and a link is rolled over, the screen "flashes" to gray. I managed to snap a screenshot (took me several tries, it happens very quickly):

The problem lies with the background color when for the a:hover property. It's disabled for now, but I gotta start digging into some CSS hacks. More as this develops.

Update: (July 29, 2006 @ 12:09 pm) I give up. IE sucks too much. Hit Ctrl+F5 in IE if you're still having problems.
Update 2: (July 29, 2006 @ 1:06 pm) This damn thing was still bugging me. Now IE will get a watered-down stylesheet (without a:hover), but Firefox and other browsers get the old way (with a:hover).

I just built a new PC, so I've been moving my podcast subscriptions in iTunes onto it. I noticed a featured item on the Podcast directory page: Museum Tours. Not sure if this is new, but I've never noticed it before. This is very cool: another example of traditional mediums (museums) embracing 21st-century technology (podcasting). Next time I've planning a big vacation and sight-seeing, I'll be sure to check this page to see if they have any self-guided tours available for download.

This link appears to bring you to the proper page: http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPlayListsPage?fcId=168577492&pageType=playlists&id=33

Continue reading ‘Museum Tours Available on iTunes’ »

I've read recently on Apple's unwillingness to allow users to re-download music after a PC move or failure. One person had luck and was able to retrieve their whole library, but Apple was clear that this is only allowed once.

I've never seen this before, but today after snagging my free New Music Tuesday tracks I got a quick pop-up reminding me to back up my DRM-protected iTunes tracks (which I do anyway).

No other death could make me happier.

In a Microsoft KB article outlining the new web design tools coming soon from Microsoft, there's a small footnote at the end that has made my day.

After nine years of being an award-winning Web authoring tool, FrontPage will be discontinued in late 2006.

I've had my fair share of FrontPage experiences over the years. Every web dev has. A LONG time ago, I used it as a basic "wiki" of sorts to drop tech articles from sites I visited into a collection of web pages for my perusal. Basically it was my Furl, before there was Furl. Then I had a hell of a time getting the FP server extensions to work on a VPS I was leasing at the time. After that, I was forced once again upon FrontPage by my school, since that was what I had to use in order to work on the school web site. Now I am proud to hear that Microsoft has given in and gotten rid of FrontPage. Hopefully their new development tools will be more standards-compliant than good old FP.

I wonder what DGS will do without their beloved FrontPage?