Categories
Uncategorized

Computing Like it’s 2002!

Since the iBook died (R.I.P. and if you are keeping track, that’s 2 Macs that have died so far in 2007) it was time to revive the old Powerbook G3 (Wallstreet) and get computing!

The last time I even mentioned it was 2004 when the power adapter needed repair. After that I had a G3 iBook from work to use, until I didn’t, then I just stuck the old Wallstreet in the office to be forgotten, except when I stole RAM from it last year.

Well, it’s back folks! I am now using a Powerbook G3 running Mac OS X 10.1.5, and I’m trying to get apps on it. So far I have Firefox 1.0.7, and jEdit 4.1something on it, and am trying to find a version of Adium or Fire that will run on it. I think I’m stuck with Terminal.app over iTerm too… Sheesh, talk about the dark ages! I don’t even want to think about Thunderbird.

Wifi? Well, sort of… thanks to wirelessdriver.sourceforge.net and an old wifi card I had laying around. One problem, the card does not work with WEP, so while I can use it in my own house (by turning off WEP and restricting to MAC addresses) using it out and about is pretty much impossible without an ethernet cable. I also tried a USB PC card and a USB wifi adapter, but that didn’t work. I’d actually consider getting a wifi card that would work with WEP (and Mac OS X 10.1.5) if I could find one for cheap enough.

Anyway, I am mobile again… if you consider “mobile” sitting on the couch browsing the web very slowly.



Categories
Uncategorized

BarCampMilwaukee2: In 1 Week

There’s just one week until we kick-off BarCampMilwaukee2. It has all the makings of a great event. As of right now there are 180+ people signed up to attend, there are a ton of great session ideas, and thanks to the generous donations of all of our sponsors, we can afford to provide free shirts to everyone who pre-registered (before Oct. 1st, 2007) and we should be able to provide food for all who come as well. (This should let people focus on the event and not worry about where to go for a meal.)

I’m really proud of, and thankful to, the people who stepped up to do all the little things involved in getting ready for this event. Even with the load being distributed, I still feel like I have a million things to do. Presentations? I’m not sure if I’ll have anything prepared ahead of time. That’s OK, I’ve gotten used to winging it. The next week is going to be insane for me, and then I’m out of town for a few days right after BarCamp. Don’t worry though, we’re already planning the next *Camp. (I’m personally aiming for DrupalCamp…)

So one more time, in case I haven’t overdone it: BarCampMilwaukee2 will take place Saturday October 13th, 2007 through Sunday October 14th, 2007 at the Schlitz Park Center, 1555 Rivercenter Dr. in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The event will run non-stop from Saturday morning at 10AM until Sunday afternoon at 4PM. (You are welcome to attend any time you are available.) Visit barcampmilwaukee.com for more info, and to sign-up.




Categories
Uncategorized

Hacked up our own gCalendar

iCal is good, but iCal sucks. It allows one computer/person to be the central point for a calendar’s control. So while Person A can create and edit a calendar, they can do so only from the original Mac they created it on, and no one else can make edits, they can only view it. This can be good if you want total control over something, but not so good if you want to collaborate on editing.

Google Calendar is good, but Google Calendar sucks. It’s dead easy for multiple people to manage one calendar. But, sometimes I just don’t like to rely on someone else to manage my data. Seeing messages like “Oops, we couldn’t load details for your calendar, please try again in a few minutes” does not instill confidence that all is well. (In the Google Calendar Help group you’ll see some posts about things going wrong that do not instill confidence.)

Maybe my expectations are high because I’ve been running my own server for years with my personal calendar data, that gets backed up regularly. I dunno..

Anyway, we needed a solution at the office for a handful of people to all edit the same calendar. iCal can’t do this (yet) and while it was easy to create Yet Another Google Account, I didn’t want people to have to constantly login/logout or even have to sign up for an account. So I created an account, and then built a custom WebRunner app (or a Site Specific Browser, as they are called.)

WebRunner / gCalendar

So now we have a bunch of people who can subscribe to the calendar in iCal (nothing new there) and a select few who can use our gCalendar app (or, just log into Google) and edit the thing. iCal has a great interface, but dammit, you can only edit a calendar on the machine it was created on, unless you look to third party apps to fix that.

WebRunner / gCalendar

It’s clunky, but it works. Of course a few days later I found gCal.app which is a WebKit equivalent. So, hey, at least there are choices.

Along the way I also tried Calendar Server which did not work (Python-foo failures) but looks promising for the future.

Despite the progress, I just feel like calendaring still has a long way to go.




Categories
Uncategorized

WebGrader

When I was a kid, you went to school, and the only time you had to worry about your parents knowing about your grades was when reports cards came, or when progress reports came (not good) or when there was a phone call made (really not good.)

But today there are things like WebGrader, which is an online system that schools and teachers use to let not just the students, but the parents know exactly what is going on. I mean exactly. (Hello Big Brother!)

WebGrader

So the parent in me who cares about my child’s grades and wants to keep tabs on things thinks this is a good thing. (Even more so as I don’t get to talk with my child each day about school.) On the other hand, the parent in me who wants to see my child be responsible for themself without me having to keep a close watch wonders what damage this close monitoring might do. (Honestly, I’m pretty lucky, as my child is quite responsible, in school and in life.)

The open-source, sharing, collaborating, and hacking parent in me wishes they provided an API or at least RSS feeds to make it easier to use. Like most apps in this genre, it suffers from poor usability issues. They do allow you to receive Inbox messages via email, so that’s a start, but honestly, I don’t know if they plan to innovate from there. (I did send them feedback about some UI issues, and they were very receptive, so that’s a plus.)

In the end, I think it’s a good thing, and here’s why: People make mistakes. My daughter is a good student, but she was a bit overwhelmed by middle school, so the first time I logged into WebGrader, I saw an F, and there was a note from a teacher about a missing assignment. I asked my daughter about it and she said she turned it in. I sent the teacher a message asking her to discuss it with my daughter, and it turns out it was turned in, but with no name on it. Simple mistake. The next week I saw another F and when questioned, my daughter said she handed it in, and got it back – with an A on it. A simple message to the teacher revealed that the grade was entered wrong, and was indeed an A. Again, a simple mistake, but one I am glad I could catch.

Categories
Uncategorized

XInsert for jEdit

Have I really been using jEdit for 5 years now? Time flies, eh?

In that time I sort of dropped out of the jEdit community a bit, but I still use it daily. Yes, it still has bugs, and little things that annoy me, but overall I really like it. One problem I’ve had is that somewhere in the last year or so the XInsert plugin stopped working for me. It was last “officially” updated November 12, 2005. Urgh… Another abandoned piece of open source software. So even though I had written a ton of files for XInsert to use, I couldn’t use them. I ended up moving many of my files to use the Templates plugin, but still wasn’t happy. So since it’s open source, I started looking for a solution…

I found this post on the jEdit Community site with a reply titled “Fixed!” which said: “I’ve just removed comments at the beginning of dockables.xml file in xinsert.jar.” Really? Is that all it takes? Yes… I unjar’d the jar file, made the change, and rejar’d it, and the damn thing works. Imagine that. I wish I had found that fix a year ago.

Thus illustrates the good/bad of open source software. You scratch your own itch, but unless other know you even had an itch, they don’t know where to start scratching. Ummm, what I mean is, solving your own problems can take precedent to solving someone else’s problems, which is good for you, bad for the other person. Maybe we need to work on that? I dunno… I’m just glad my problem is solved.

To make things easier, you can download the version of the XInsert plugin I fixed.