That’s one of my current projects at work. We were using a home-grown course management solution in the Computer Science department, because the faculty here (and elsewhere, I hear) aren’t fond of Blackboard, and they also know that there’s a good bit of in-house PHP knowledge, so we built our own at first. Unfortunately, they…
Author: bkjones
First LUG meeting I’ve been to in years
Well, the title isn’t 100% true: I went to a couple of LUG meetings for the University where I work, but you don’t get the same kind of diversity in applications that you do when you just walk into a public meeting at the local library. At the university, there’s diversity in terms of department:…
Just back from Cancun
I just returned from my honeymoon in Cancun, Quintana Roo, Mexico. Natasha and I got to practice our Spanish a lot, we swam with dolphins, rode horses, and did a whole lot of relaxing on beaches, at bars, and at pools all over the area. You can see pictures here. I remembered a lot more…
New Jersey: A Total Waste of My Money
I just found this article about how New Jersey is voting on new slogans. They accepted 7800 suggestions, and apparently had the Church Lady Brigade trim the suggestions down to five that we can now vote on. They all suck, but that’s not why I’m pissed. I’m pissed because, as it turns out, they paid…
Just received a copy of my book
Man, this is *cool*!!! I just received the “first printing” of the book, which is due out in bookstores in a week or two or something like that. I’m actually really happy because during the authoring/editing process I didn’t get a chance to read Bill von Hagen’s hacks in any great detail, and he wrote…
The big smoke-out day 4
Today is my fourth day without smoking. It’s not too bad, really. I had a busy weekend to keep my mind occupied, and work is busy, too. I’m definitely running on a slightly shorter fuse than usual, but I really don’t feel actual cravings to smoke. A couple of people have asked, so I’ll put…
Hello all, and news from yesterday
Just wanted to welcome my friends and family who are visiting this blog at its new location. I get my blog through a service, so I don’t have to write code to have a blog, which is nice. I discovered that they’ll let me publish it by ftp’ing to my main website (linuxlaboratory.org), so I…
Verizon Fios: You must be joking
About two hours ago, I signed up online for Verizon’s new Fiber Optic internet service. About 10 minutes ago, I canceled the order. As it turns out, FIOS is just a really cool shiny thing they hold in front of you so they can get your permission to pull out any trace of copper from…
Hacked :-(
It happens to the best of us, and it happened to me. I’ve run the Linuxlaboratory.org domain for about 5 years I guess or something like that. I’ve overhauled the site a number of times to improve the look, usability, and maintainability of the site. Over the course of the past few years, I’ve tried…
Woodworking Lessons 4: Use more than one source of information
This rule of thumb comes from just my experiences in the past couple of weeks. It applies to a number of things, actually, but the first things that come to mind are your wood measurements, and your step-by-step guides. I bought a book put out by the publishers of a popular woodworking magazine, in which…