Edward Bilodeau's Weblog

Shutting down the site, moving back to MT

2005-10-19T21:08:00.000-04:00

This weblog has moved to http://www.coolweblog.com/bilodeau/. Here's the reason why. Please update your bookmarks and newsreaders. Sorry for the trouble.

(The fact that I can post this indicates that this morning's problems appear to have been fixed. Too late, Google.)

Embrace and extend

2005-10-19T10:33:00.000-04:00

Google Librarian Center: "Librarians and Google share a mission: to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. We support librarians like yourself who work each day to further that mission. This page is a first step toward improving and expanding that support." This gets a raised eyebrow from me.

Curtains

2005-10-18T23:21:00.000-04:00

In case you are wondering about the dearth of posts here, I'm on vacation this week. A study week vacation, but a vacation nonetheless. Not having a wireless network set up in the apartment means that I'm not online all day. I've been logging on at night to check messages and catch up on news and happenings, but that's about it.

The week and the studying have both been going well. I was worried I would have a hard time getting anything accomplished, but I've made good progress over the past two days. I'm feeling positive about how the rest of the week will go.

The best thing about having taken this study week off, though, is to be able to go for walks during the day in the lovely fall weather. Fall is probably my favorite season (winter a close second, spring, then summer).

BTW, just over two months until Christmas! :)

To turn over control of your life

2005-10-18T21:44:00.000-04:00

In a recent post, Merlin Mann refers to "the overloaded, always-on, interrupt-driven world in which most of us are living." I would have thought that this kind of behaviour would have been something to avoid and free one's self from, and not something to embrace, to excel at.

Rain

2005-10-17T23:46:00.000-04:00

The rain finally let up today. It was grey, cloudy, windy, and cold. But no rain. To tell you the truth, I don't mind either way.

mp3

2005-10-15T23:55:00.000-04:00

Diary entry

2005-10-15T22:27:00.000-04:00

Woke up late to a chilly, wet, and windy day. Tempting to stay buried under the blankets, but I eventually managed to pull myself out of bed and start the day.

With Nathalie heading off to work, I went with her parents to pick up a case of wine at the SAQ Depot just on the other side of the tunnel. I had never been before, but they assured me the wine was good and the prices better. Since I am not a fussy wine drinker (I have a binary palette: good/vinegar), I wasn't too worried about the quality of wine. Inexpensive I'm interested in.

Once we got there, I picked up a case of 12 empty bottle and 12 corks, and set about choosing my wine. You can only buy in multiples of 6, so I opted for 6 red and 6 white. I also picked up one of those bottle sealing thingamajigs so that we can enjoy a glass of wine with dinner without having to drink the whole bottle. Sealing the bottles was surprisingly easy. They have a manual machine in which is embedded all the knowledge of how to properly cork a bottle: place the bottle on the platform, put the cork in the hole, pull the lever, done. It was fun, and I saved about 40%-50% off what I would have paid retail.

This afternoon I puttered around the apartment. Laundry, dishes, surfing and slacking off. Had a wonderful supper with Nathalie. Folded some laundry. Watched our Saturday night shows (As Time Goes By, Rosemary and Thyme), did the last of the dishes. Make myself a cup of ovaltine (note to self: buy more milk) and settled in at the PC for a bit of before-bed surfing. Decided to write this note. Did so.

25 bookmarks

2005-10-15T21:53:00.000-04:00

Walking down after class

2005-10-14T23:45:00.000-04:00

I took the above picture while walking down from my class in Trottier last night. This morning I'm starting off my day by preparing and posting the slides, audio and links from the lecture.

It looks like my MuVo battery died near the end of the lecture. I checked before I started, and figured two bars (of three) meant I had enough to last for three hours of recording. Apparently not. Oh, well. I did warn my students that Murphy was likely to strike my audio recording. Such is life.

Heading home

2005-10-13T23:06:00.000-04:00

WebCT Vista content module

2005-10-13T16:05:00.000-04:00

Annotated screenshot on Flickr. Other users of WebCT Vista are welcome to add their own thoughts/opinions/experiences.

Tower

2005-10-12T23:51:00.000-04:00

And then there was one

2005-10-12T21:49:00.000-04:00

Blackboard and WebCT Announce Agreement to Merge. I doubt this will change the fact that I'm stuck using WebCT Vista for the next few years.

Wes Felter on iTunes 6

2005-10-12T21:38:00.000-04:00

"As usual, if you value your fair-use rights, don't install iTunes 6 until a corresponding version of JHymn comes out." (link)

Everything has a price

2005-10-12T15:11:00.000-04:00

Given that Apple is selling TV shows, how long until it starts charging for early access to movie trailers?

Update

2005-10-12T13:26:00.000-04:00

More or less done the first draft of tomorrow's lecture on gathering requirements. It just needs some tweaking and polishing, and it will be good to go. I think I'll put it aside for a few hours before making those changes.

What the...

2005-10-12T12:13:00.000-04:00

Ads on cbc.ca. After the strike, you would think they would be trying to build audience, not drive us away.

Blogging may be harmful to chances for tenure

2005-10-12T09:15:00.000-04:00

Too Much Information?: ""A blog raises your profile, but it raises your profile for something other than research," Carroll said. And even if you are extremely productive as a scholar, he said, some professors may view a blog as sign that you could be spending more time in the laboratory or library, engaged in traditional research."

It is interesting to note that as much as tenure is touted as being a mechanism for supporting academic freedom, my impression is that it is more often used as a control device to regulate the behaviour of academics seeking tenure.

Tenure also underpins the "crisis" in scholarly communication, creating an artificial dependence on expensive journals, and I think explaining why academics have not moved en mass to take advantage of the web as way of sharing knowledge.

Some institutions have begun to take a more enlightened path to tenure. Some even include teaching excellence as part of a candidates portfolio! But overall, I would say the concept has been twisted beyond recognition and no longer serves the university, academics, or society well. We need to move on.

Good morning!

2005-10-12T08:53:00.000-04:00

Coffee and a home-made scone in hand, I'm good to go! On today's agenda: prepare tomorrow night's lecture, go for a walk at lunch and maybe drop in on Karl, finish up a draft of a site architecture.

Outside the bus

2005-10-11T23:58:00.000-04:00

New MS Office Open XML format will not require Office 12 upgrade

2005-10-11T20:33:00.000-04:00

Details in this post by Brian Jones . Not that you won't need office. Free updates will be available for Office 2000, XP, and 2003 allowing those programs to read the new file formats as well.

Jones positions this as something which should ease the concerns of people thinking they would be forced to upgrade to Office 12, which is true. However, I think it is equally true that it will ease the concerns of those considering buying into Office 12, but worrying that they won't be able to share their files with anyone else (without down-saving).

WebCT Vista grief - Posts

2005-10-11T13:13:00.000-04:00

WebCT Vista does a poor job of handling the formatting for posts in the discussion groups:

If I type in a plain-text post:
> Preview shows [br]'s, although they don't show up in the actual post.
> URLs are not converted to links (as they were in CE)
> Clicking on "Use HTML" and adding the necessary HTML code results in the proper links, but the line breaks all disappear, crunching your text together.

If I use the HTML creator (i.e. the Java-based WYSI-sorta-WYG text editor), it works better, but (a) I have to wait for the Java applet to load, (b) I still have to manually create the URLs using the applet's mouse-only formatting tools.

Vista also does away with the "Quote" reply feature, meaning you have to scroll down, find the text you want to reply to, paste it into your reply, and format it so that it looks like a reply.

As far as post editing goes, Vista is a step backwards over waht CE offered. I guess they figure everyone will use the HTML Creator widget.

Findability

2005-10-11T09:37:00.000-04:00

ALA has published an article on findability. I'm glad to see to someone articulate what I would call "usability for information spaces".

Where the objective of a site is to provide users with access to a collection of information, the usability of the site is determined by the ability of users to (a) locate and (b) 'consume' the information they are seeking.

Findability focuses on the first part: the ability of users to locate what they are looking for. Effective labeling, organizaiton, and navigation methods contribute to this. The Polar Bear book talks about this at some length. I'm guessing Morville's new book will go into even more detail and perhaps provide a new perspective that will make it easier for practitioners to actually build information architectures that are usable.

Consumption, meanwhile, focuses on other things: the layout of the page, the organization of text, the clarity of the writing, choice of language, use of non-textual media types to enhance comprehension, etc. Information design more then information organization.

I think findability will become a useful concept, and I look forward to reading Morville's book.

Good morning!

2005-10-11T08:54:00.000-04:00

Having a few minutes before class starts, I decided to set myself up in the serials reading room and check email and do a bit of surfing. Not much to report. A truncated week ahead, due to yesterday's Thanksgiving holiday. A lecture to prepare. Site architectures to work on. A few meetings. Plenty to keep me busy.

First task: secure a cup of coffee before class. God willing, the wireless in the classroom will be functioning.

Giving thanks

2005-10-10T23:06:00.000-04:00

Sam!

2005-10-10T23:00:00.000-04:00

Last thursday, my brother Andre and his spouse Nicole welcomed little Samuel into this world. Everyone is back home now, resting, and doing fine.

Hello, Sam! We're hoping to get out to Halifax to meet you sometime soon. :)

CNN

2005-10-10T15:27:00.000-04:00

Fire destroys 'Wallace and Gromit' warehouse. Oh, no... Nick Park had this to say, "Even though it is a precious and nostalgic collection and valuable to the company, in light of other tragedies, today isn't a big deal." Still,...

25 bookmarks

2005-10-10T15:17:00.000-04:00

Podcasting how-to video

2005-10-08T18:07:00.000-04:00

Systm Episode 4 - Podcasting. 200MB+ bittorrent, but worth it.

Nathan Weinberg on Google Reader

2005-10-08T11:58:00.000-04:00

"[In] the last hour of tinkering with it, I have never been so frustrated with a product. Nothing works the way it is supposed to, whole features are broken, importing fails, and usability decisions boggle the mind." [full post]

Dave Winer on Google Reader

2005-10-08T11:45:00.000-04:00

"This is the second blog-related product they've come out with recently that appears not to have been touched by human beings before it was introduced to the world" [full post]

Google's idea factory

2005-10-08T11:43:00.000-04:00

Karl asks if its a good idea to trust Google with your communications.

Work

2005-10-07T23:59:00.000-04:00

Google Reader, Update

2005-10-07T21:27:00.000-04:00

OK, for the hell of it I decided to give Google Reader another try. The responsiveness seems to be much better now. Still not sold on it.

The main problem is how it lists the posts to read. It does at least seem to interfile them, but I can't figure out exactly what it is doing. When I use "sort by date", there are posts that I know should be at the top, but aren't. I pay around with it, and all of a sudden there are a few newer posts that appear. Scrolling through the list I see an item from September, then one from October, then another from September. What date are they sorting on? The plutonium calendar? I can't see exact timestamps on anything, so I have no way of verifying whether or not the feeds are up to date. Important functionality for a news reader to have, IMHO.

Then there is "sort by relevance". What does that mean? relevant to what? I'm guessing it is some sort of post ranking similar to what they use in search. The problem here is that I'm not searching, I'm browsing. Would I like some sort of relevance indicator displayed? Yes. Do I want posts to be hidden from me because the blogosphere hasn't bothered to link to them? No. Useless.

Beyond that, there is no functionality available. I guess you might say, "There's no functionality, but its all cool and AJAXy! So that's good! Please send me targeted advertizing!" Or you might say, "This is pretty lame."

Google Reader Falls Flat

2005-10-07T15:28:00.000-04:00

I tried to experiment with Google Reader by importing an OPML file of 20 or so feeds. It promptly choked on it, not crashing, but taking waaaaay to long to import it. That done, the UI was so kludgy and slow as to be unusable.

I wasn't even able to delete my feeds to see if it would work with just one feed. I was taking so long, and the AJAXy interface was really so bad, jumping around, slow, slow, slow.

From what I could tell, you still need to look at the posts from one feed at a time, and even then you have to click the title of each item to see the contents...

My recommendation: don't bother wasting your time with Google Reader.

WebCT Vista - Better, but not by much

2005-10-07T13:54:00.000-04:00

When I first started teaching at the Centre, I put my materials up on my own web site and gave students the URL in class. It wasn't secure, and there were no communication tools, but the overhead was almost zero and it did the job.

Once I started working at the Centre full time, I became the web guy, and so was asked to try to improve our department's use of WebCT. Since it would be hard for me to convince someone else to use the system if I myself wasn't on board, I decided to take the dive and use WebCT for my class web site.

In the semesters that followed, I learned how to use WebCT effectively, which meant in essence not using most of the functionality, and instead using it to host files and provide a discussion group. C'est tout.

With Vista, which I am using for the first time this semester, I decided to try to use as much of the functionality as possible, to see how much things have improved. Overall, I would have to say that while things are better, they are not good enough for me to use on an ongoing basis.

The biggest change for me was to use a learning module (aka a content module) to organize my course materials, but the new version is still just as cumbersome as before, if not more so. I actually have less control them before over how to display the content. I'll stick it out this semester, but come winter, it's gone. Same goes for the gradebook, which didn't even get out of my pre-semester planning.

I think if we were to look at what most faculty on campus need out of a LMS, WebCT is overkill. Not in the functionality, which does look good on paper. But the implementation of those ideas leave a lot to be desired. WebCT Vista breaks almost every measure of good web app design. Frames, disabling browser controls, popups, plugins, no URIs for content, jamming way too much into the UI.

But we're stuck with it. This semester I'm going to try to get more feedback from my students, and hopefully in the winter session come up with a better way of using WebCT.

WebCT Vista and software dependencies

2005-10-07T09:24:00.000-04:00

In class last night we were talking about understanding the technical constraints that you need to be aware of before you begin designing a web site. Things like target platforms, etc. The recent example of Gap, Inc.'s web sites blocking Safari users shows that this is still a real issue.

We got to the issues of plug-ins, and noted that the less plug-ins you use, the less software dependencies you build into your site, the less headaches you will have in the long run.

At this point, one of my students related their experience at work, where the tried to access the course WebCT Vista site (during his own time, of course), and was told by the system that he didn't have the correct version of Java installed, so he downloaded it and installed it. This caught the attention of the corporate IT staff, who followed up to see what he was up to.

This brought about a good class discussion of the fact that increasingly, PCs both at work and at home are locked down so that people cannot install software without a fair amount of work. In a year or two when Windows Vista ships with Least-privileged User Account functionality (finally!), few people will be surfing with admin priviledges to their machine. If your site requires plug-ins that are not already on their machines, you are going to have a hard time getting people to install them. At least it will be a lot harder then it is now.

In thinking about all this, it made me think about the number of software dependencies the WebCT Vista requires. Not just in terms of plug-ins, but in terms of software and system configurations that need to be made. They even have a feature, a web browser checker, which will tell you if you are set up to use WebCT Vista or not. Go ahead, give it a try! Post a comment letting me know how well you fare and what you think of the whole thing.

(BTW, for the amount of fuss the system throws up for not having the correct version of Java installed, you'd think it was critical to the functioning of the system. From what I can tell, it isn't. There are a few components that need it (i.e. WYSIWYG editor, chat, whiteboard), but none of these are by any means critical to the system. Bells and whistles.)

Two steps forward, one step back

2005-10-07T09:11:00.000-04:00

In a recent column, Can business and ethics coexist? Ephraim Schwartz takes companies to task for falling in lock-step with less-then-democratic countries. There's more to business then just making money, he says.

Unfortunately, Schwartz steps away from taking a proper and aggressive stance: "I'm not suggesting that companies refuse to do business with totalitarian regimes."

If I was someone living under such a totalitarian regime, I'm not sure I would appreciate the logic that allows Schwartz to draw a line at which point supporting and enabling the regime is no longer acceptable.

With for-profit companies, ethical issues are, by and large, contraints on their behaviour, and not an organizational goal. If they are not imposed on them, they won't bother. Whatever they can get away with, I guess. (Or rather, whatever we let them get away with.)

Downtown

2005-10-06T23:04:00.000-04:00

Selection readers

2005-10-06T15:34:00.000-04:00

Mentioned by Jensen Harris, one of the UI developers on Office in this post: "Selection readers are just what they sound like: people who select text in a document as they read it." I do this myself as well.

Unfortunately, the post doesn't talk about ways to address the need faced by selection readers: assistance keeping our place in the page. I guess its a bit like reading and using your finger to keep place, which we were always taught is bad, but which speed readers tell you is good.

The post does talk about a new UI feature called the Minibar, which, as described, leaves me with only one question: can I turn it off?

BitTorrent

2005-10-06T09:11:00.000-04:00

For the first time yesterday I actually got BitTorrent to work. Past attempts have always resulting in glacial download speeds, but yesterday I was able to download two 200MB+ video files within a few minutes.

From what I understand of how BitTorrent works, the performance of the system is dependant on the amount of activity the file is seeing. The more people who are downloading the file, ~~or who have it downloaded,~~ the better the overall download performance.

In any case, it was nice to see it working, since I think it has the potential of being a very important technology.

Watching

2005-10-05T23:11:00.000-04:00

Working late

2005-10-05T18:32:00.000-04:00

I'm staying late tonight to catch up on work. Hoping to make some good progress over the next two hours.

Brian Jones

2005-10-05T13:08:00.000-04:00

Native PDF support in Office "12". Great! No doubt that will take a sizable chunk out of Adobe's corporate sales of Acrobat. I would guess that most of those users only use the "Print to PDF" functionality, and not any of the fancier PDf features like annotation, etc, etc.

Good meeting

2005-10-05T11:56:00.000-04:00

Another one! :)

Karl

2005-10-05T09:00:00.000-04:00

Ta mere en maillot ~~de bain~~ Web 2.0. I would wade into the discussion and join Karl in his criticisms of a lot of the Web 2.0 blather that is going around, but we (the Centre, not Karl) are having our semi-regular management meeting this morning, and I need to keep my cynicism in the back of my mind for now.

25 bookmarks

2005-10-05T08:41:00.000-04:00

Day's end

2005-10-04T23:40:00.000-04:00

Good meeting

2005-10-04T15:05:00.000-04:00

It's important to keep track of these as well!

Yahoo clones delicious

2005-10-04T13:02:00.000-04:00

My Web 2.0 BETA. The problem with apps like delicious and a lot of the other bare-bones apps from the 37 signals school of keep-it-simple-and-easy web development is that it is trivial for anyone to duplicate the app and generally do a better job of marketing and supporting it. At best the original developers can hope to get bought out and given a job by the BigCo. But in the medium and long term, they aren't really viable.

Update: After writing this, I think to myself that its a good time to backup my delicious data. I click on the delicious bookmark... waiting... "delicious could not be found. Please check the name and try again" Ugh.

Update 2: A few minutes later, delicious is back.

Another call for Apple to open up

2005-10-04T10:39:00.000-04:00

I took a bit of flack from one of the faithful on this when I voiced a similar sentiment last month. I'm not surprised that others are noticing the same thing: When is Apple going to open up? The comments to Mr. Turnbull's post don't surprise me either.

I was going to wriet something longish and snarky abotu people who are more comfortable with the priest up on the stage, behind the curtain, mumbling in Latin... but I have work to get to.

GLIS607

2005-10-04T10:34:00.000-04:00

Review of corprate authors, uniform titles. I need to spend more time reading AACR2, along with Taylor and Chan. I think I'll pay a visit to the reserves desk.

Good news is that the first quiz isn't next week as I thought, but after the midterm break. Whew!

GSLIS

2005-10-03T23:03:00.000-04:00

The fight against blog spam

2005-10-03T22:15:00.000-04:00

I've enabled the word verification option in Blogger to try to reduce the amount of comment spam I've been getting recently. Sorry for the trouble.

CMIS 543 Update

2005-10-03T16:31:00.000-04:00

Cleaned up and posted the audio from Friday's lecture to WebCT. Also posted lecture slides and updated syllabus and handouts with new (extended) assignment due date.

While better then CE, WebCT Vista is still a pain to use. Too inflexible. Feedback from the students in my class has been luke-warm at best, with several coming to see me to make negative (and valid) comments. I'll probably have to re-evaluate how I use it at the end of the semester.

Picture

2005-10-03T16:28:00.000-04:00

Programmer-supplied error message

Purchased

2005-10-03T15:10:00.000-04:00

Matthew Good, In a Coma (Deluxe Edition). Ripped, but haven't listened to it yet. You know it will be great.

Email archive update

2005-10-03T14:57:00.000-04:00

I've managed to get my mail folder down to < 10 MB. I created a local .pst with two folders: sent, received. I then copied all messages from the Sept 10, 2004 to Sept 10, 2005 timeframe to the .pst (Sept 10 was my start date at McGill, so I use it to tick off the years).

I copied the .pst to a normal CD (i.e. not an archival quality one) in case I need to refer to anything over the next few years (after which point I expect the CD data to be toast). I also left a copy of the .pst on my local HD in case I need to access old mail. Its in the /temp folder, though, and isn't part of the regular mirroring to file server. The next time my HD gets hosed, I just restore from the CD.

Ad pointer

2005-10-03T14:28:00.000-04:00

"It descends from the heavens..."

Afternoon grief

2005-10-03T14:25:00.000-04:00

I had forgotten how long it takes to move a few thousand email messages from the Exchange Server to local pst file. 12 minutes! Then I've got to burn the mess to CD, which will probably take another 15 minutes. God, how much time do they think I have for this kind of stuff?

Morning grief

2005-10-03T11:12:00.000-04:00

Upon checking my email this morning, I discovered that (a) some spambot has found my blog, and (b) I've hit to 250 MB limit of the email box.

As for the spam, I may end up just turning off the comments entirely.

The email? Well, remember that 250MB is for all my mail folders, and not just my inbox (which typically contains < 10 items). When I get back to the office later today, I need to waste time dumping my mail into pst files that I can archive to CD. Hopefully it won't waste more then an hour.

Chilly morning

2005-09-30T21:30:00.000-04:00

Mighty Mouse?

2005-09-30T15:12:00.000-04:00

I've heard rumblings that Apple's Mighty Mouse is ~~crap~~ not very good. Has anyone heard otherwise?

McGill News

2005-09-30T14:15:00.000-04:00

Schulich School of Music: "McGill grad Seymour Schulich stepped forward and raised the bar for private giving in Canada by generously donating $20 million towards the Faculty of Music, which is now called the Schulich School of Music of McGill University in recognition of his extraordinary philanthropic gesture."

Here are a few of my pics of the new building from a while back.

Breathe

2005-09-30T11:26:00.000-04:00

Jut got back from call centre training... I need to go for a walk in the sun.

Tristan Yates

2005-09-30T11:25:00.000-04:00

How IBM Conned Our IT Execs Out Of Millions

Brrr

2005-09-30T09:30:00.000-04:00

Cold out this morning, the first time this fall that I can see my breath. I love it!

GSLIS floor

2005-09-29T23:00:00.000-04:00

jobpostings.ca

2005-09-29T16:46:00.000-04:00

What you need to know about IT. Good advice for people looking to understand the current and near-future state of the IT job market.

Environment:

2005-09-29T13:27:00.000-04:00

Arctic ice 'disappearing quickly'

Not clever

2005-09-29T10:59:00.000-04:00

A Hundred-Dollar Laptop for Hungry Minds. I suppose some editor through they were being clever, but I personally find this article title to be in poor taste.

Tips for iPod owners

2005-09-29T09:32:00.000-04:00

Restore your iPod nano to new condition with a $4 can of Brasso

New word for our lexicon

2005-09-29T09:17:00.000-04:00

Splog. Sites like these are all that I ran into last time I tried to use sites like Technorati. We need a better trust network mechanism that each of us can use to filter these kinds of sites out.

Nice

2005-09-29T09:10:00.000-04:00

Garret has some amazing photography over at photo-secession.org.

Morning bus stop

2005-09-28T23:00:00.000-04:00

Waiting an hour for five minutes

2005-09-28T13:32:00.000-04:00

I just got back from the last of my follow-up appointments after my hernia operation in August. Everything is ok, which I already knew (just like I knew I had a hernia and needed an operation before I went to the CLSC back in the early summer).

In any case, everything is ok. My swimsuit modelling career is over, but the calls had dried up of late anyway...

iPod Nano update

2005-09-28T10:00:00.000-04:00

Apple admits to iPod Nano faults, citing a bad batch where a high-rate of screen cracking has been discovered. However, according to a company spokesperson, "'the iPod Nano is made from the same high quality polycarbonate plastic as the very popular fourth generation iPod." In otherwords, having the thing really scrated up after owning it a few hours is normal and to be expected.

I know of at least one person who thinks the people complaining over the scratched Nanos are a bunch of weenie winers (I'm paraphrasing), and I guess he's right.

The problem is that the Nano looks like you could carry it everywhere, and people expect to be able to do so. Jobs carries his in his pocket (if the stained-glass imagery is to be taken as fact, and not just the artist's interpretation of reality); I want to carry it in my pocket, too!

People expect it to get scuffed up, but maybe not the same day they forked out a few hundred bucks for it.

The iPod Nano is not just an MP3 player, it is a symbol, a phylactery, a reminder of their belief and their committment, a connection to someting larger then themselves. And there is it, in the palm of their hand, once coveted, and now soon, too soon, scratched and maimed, imperfect. NO! The rapture of the purchase is still fresh in their minds, the possession still not taken for granted. Too soon! TOO SOON!

But the iPod Nano requires special care. Shelter it, protect it. It is small and powerful, but vulnerable, so vulnerable. You who have taken not heeded this warning have seen what unthinking action brings. The folly!

(The other day on the train ride home I saw a guy booting up his titantium Powerbook. He opened it and, before he began to type, removed the protective fabric that he had placed between the keyboard and the screen. This he folded in four and placed carefully in the Powerbook's carry case.)

Defiant

2005-09-27T17:00:00.000-04:00

Is It Time to Shut Down Engineering Colleges?

2005-09-27T10:35:00.000-04:00

The author of this recent article uses the disaster in New Orleans to leverage his position of curriculum change in engineering. Again, as is usually the case, learning opportunities are thought of strictly in terms of the formal curriculum: we need to cut the "bad" classes and put in the good ones that teach engineers how to behave ethically:

"How do we make room in the crowded undergraduate engineering curriculum for students to explore disciplines outside math and science --– literature and economics, history and music, philosophy and languages -- that are vital if we are to create a competitive new generation of engineering leaders? By scaling back the number of increasingly narrow, and quickly outmoded technical courses students are now required to take -- leaving only those that teach them to think like engineers and to gain knowledge to solve problems. Students need to have room to in their schedules for wide ranging elective study."

I don't think it is accurate to blame what happened in New Orleans on the engineers. Not only is it way too early to have the proper information to make such an assessment, but more importantly this line of reasoning assumes that the engineers are in a position of authority to make the final decision on how funds are allocated, what the priorities are, etc. They are not. Their clients, the politicians are. We have heard how the engineers for years have been saying that something needed to be done, but the politicians decided against it.

Having said that, adding courses on "ethics", etc, etc doesn't work, at least not in the way people seem to think it does. To "learn" ethics is to integrate it into your being, your identity as a professional and as a person. This kind of learning can only happen in a social context, grounded in practice. It will not happen in the classroom.

Currently, this kind of learning opportunity only presents itself in the workplace. Here, students learn from practitioners, their peers, how to behave: what is acceptable or unacceptable behaviour, what the values of the profession are, etc. The learning takes place in the real, high-pressure reality of the workplace, a context that is often so far divorced from the clean, idealized world of the classroom that students are unable to link what they learned in ethics class, for example, to the decisions they are faced with.

Universities have a responsibility, I believe, to look for ways to provide students with learning opportunities outside the classroom, social contexts that begin to introduce them to the practice of their profession, and to give them guidance on how to deal with the complexities of actual practice before they are immersed in it.

Misleading

2005-09-27T10:07:00.000-04:00

What the magazine ad says:

As a paid subscriber to Dr. Dobbs Journal, you now have unlimited online access to ALL ARCHIVED AND CURRENT CONTENT for FREE!

What the web site says:

Current paid subscribers to Dr. Dobb's Journal or C/C++ Users Journal or subscribers to Software Development magazine qualify for a 6 month FREE upgrade to the All Access membership!

Nowhere in the original ad does it say anything about the six-month limitation. This, my friends, is what we call the bait-and-switch, also known as false advertizing.

25 bookmarks

2005-09-27T09:29:00.000-04:00

Patrick Watson

2005-09-27T09:10:00.000-04:00

Let all Canadians redefine CBC. This long lock-out has had surprisingly little effect on my media consumption. I've found alternatives on radio, and never watched much of the TV anymore anyway. I agree with the essense of Watson's suggestion, that the CBC as-is be scrapped and reworked as a proper public broadcaster.

Strengthening communities

2005-09-27T08:52:00.000-04:00

Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR), via Garret.

First to fall

2005-09-26T13:43:00.000-04:00

Thinking about switching to Open Office

2005-09-26T11:15:00.000-04:00

After spending some time looking over the new interface in Office 12, and about Vista in general, I think there may be a change in the office application I use on a regular basis.

Right now, I'm an Office 2003 user. I've tried Open Office 1.x, but found it to be lacking polish, and more importantly, not truly compatible with MS Office. For me (at least at the time) the biggest problem was the lack of compatibility with Word's annotation features. I don't use collaboration often, but as it happens, this year I've been making extensive use of it for a program proposal I am working on.

I also felt that Open Office was creating its own silo, that my documents created in Open Office would be similarly inaccessible unless I had open office installed. I know they are in XML, but they might as well be binary for all I'm concerned.

Now, that was probably too harsh an assessment, but at the time, combined with the other problems, I felt it was better for me to go back to MS Office, and so I did.

What does this have to do with Office 12 and Vista? In my mind, Vista and Office 12 are both a break with the software that I am using now. Vista will require a new computer, both at work and eventually at home. Although the technology looks interesting, I'm still not confident that someone in MS product marketing is going to screw it up and try to position Vista as opportunity to sell me X service subscriptions for software, etc, etc. Or they are going to sell me a platform for enterprise software. I'm worried they are going to try to sell me an OS that is a platform for other people to sell me stuff. In addition, they are going to sell me something that is locked down, limiting the software and content that I can use. They are going to make me pay for it up front (and a lot) and to continue to pay on a regular basis to keep my system up to date, clean of viruses, etc, etc. Maybe that's just the future, or a future, but I don't have to like it.

Up to now, I've rationalized my choice of software based on using the same software as we use at work. However, I have to think: how often to I really exchange office documents with others? Looking back over the email I've sent since November 2004, I get the following stats:

Of 1663 messages sent: 44 .doc, 9 .ppt, 9 .xls
Of 3875 messages received: 303 .doc, 16 .ppt, 9 .xls

While not complete, I think this gives a good idea of how much office document interop I need, which is to say, not much. Consider also that all the documents that sent could be sent either as plain text, HTML, or PDFs. Similarly, everything I received from elsewhere could prob be opened in Open Office. Now, my collaboration document would still be a problem, I'm guessing, but that situation isn't really representative of how I use documents.

Having said that, I'm not planning on switching to Open Office at the moment (even though version 2.0 looks promising). MS Office 2003 is working fine for me right now. But I'm thinking about it for the future. Next year? The year after? Not sure.

What pressures will be on me? The choices made by the folks at work will be a factor. Will we go to Office 12 "blindly", or will they, like many organizations take the opportunity to revisit their decision. Choosing Office 12 will mean licensing and training costs, as well as continued lock-in to the MS Universe (unless Office 12 will be spitting out Open Document Format documents by default, which I doubt). If more governments begin to standardize on Open Document Formats, the university may feel pressure to do the same (if only in the name of interoperability). Maybe the university archives would also put pressure on the administration as well, to ensure access of university documents into the future (note to self: talk someone about this)?

The point is that the choice isn't forgone conclusion. The move to ODF is changing the requirements of office software, ones that MS Office doesn't meet. The availability of real alternatives with no licensing costs makes the selection process something more then a rubber stamp. Maybe in the future you could get fired for choosing MS Office.

Personally, I need to decide where I want to be in the change-wave. Do I want to be (a) an early adopter, and deal with all that means, but with the benefit of being ready when the mainstream arrives, or (b) part of the mainstream, and wait for the memo from the powers that be that we are making the change.

Where are you going to be?

McGill Bookfair

2005-09-26T09:45:00.000-04:00

October 19th and 20th. Mark your calendars!

LazyWeb request: RDF viewer

2005-09-26T08:51:00.000-04:00

can anyone recommend a good (i.e. simple and free) RDF and/or XML viewer so that I can look at things like this?

XML-Deviant closing shop

2005-09-26T08:49:00.000-04:00

I was browsing though some old bookmarks, came across XML-Deviant, and remembered that I had wanted to add that to my liost of regular reads. Of course, it ceased publication last week. :(

Me

2005-09-25T21:33:00.000-04:00

Public library use in Montreal on the rise

2005-09-25T21:18:00.000-04:00

Apparently, there has been a small up-tick in lending at Montreal's public libraries since the Grand Library (i.e. la Grande Bibliotheque) opened its doors last spring.

New Rush DVD in November, new album in 2006

2005-09-24T15:41:00.000-04:00

News via Hardradio.com. Great!

iPod Nano scratches too easily?

2005-09-24T15:32:00.000-04:00

Apple is going to have to do something about the scratching

Watching Google

2005-09-23T16:49:00.000-04:00

Karl has been keeping track of recent Google(evil!)hirings over on Boris' blog, specifically in the comments of a post on "Trust".

Karl also sent me a few related items of Google(evil!)news:
Is Google Building Alternative Internet?
Google Eating Fiber for Optimal Growth

Sigh.

I think at some point, I'll be moving to the country to a house on a hill (to avoid the rising waters) to farm turnips, which I will nurture and watch over, and sell to people I know, at a small stand in the market on Tuesday mornings.

Windows Update breaks AD/Novell signon

2005-09-23T16:04:00.000-04:00

I wrote awhile back about how our IT folks came around and spent an hour fiddling with my computer to set it up so that when I logged in, I would be logging into both Active Directory (exchange login) and Novell (file and print services, for now until they get migrated to AD) at the same time. A recent Windows Update appears to have broken that setup, since I now have to manually log-in to Novell.

Aside from the hassle, it means that my automatic mirroring of documents to the file server won't happen unless I remember to login to Novell.

I can only hope the full migration to AD happens sooner rather then later.

Camp Jackson Dodds

2005-09-23T16:01:00.000-04:00

Status: Closed. And just recently, too. There is a dearth of information on this on the web, other then a few mentions of the closing. I worked there for three great summers, and regret now having never gone back to visit while it was still a scout camp. Anyone with information or feedback on the camp closing is welcome to post information as a comment.

Note: The link above is to a Google(evil!)cached page on a site called Scoutdocs, which appears to be down. I'll try to update this post with more relevant links if I find any.

Nobody is happy with us these days

2005-09-23T14:10:00.000-04:00

Shopping notes

2005-09-23T14:02:00.000-04:00

Indigo's downtown has moleskine's and 2600 magazine.

There's a paper store in PVM that also carries moleskines.

At the Eaton center, top floor, there is a new Games Workshop store that looks pretty cool.

Zombies!!!

2005-09-23T10:05:00.000-04:00

Globe and Mail

2005-09-23T09:39:00.000-04:00

Student quits McGill over hazing

Not everyone is satisfied with their switch to a Mac

2005-09-23T09:27:00.000-04:00

Russell Beattie: Why I Might Switch Back: