I received notification today that our Big Session of Pachyderm Fun is a go for Museums and the Web 2005 (Vancouver, April 13-16, 2005). Josh, Michelle, Tom and myself will be presenting a session called Architecting the Elephant: Software Architecture and User Interface Design for Pachyderm 2.0.
This will be the first public showing of the new Pachyderm 2.0 authoring tool, which is now pretty tightly integrated with the APOLLO frameworks.
The session is on Thursday, April 14, 2004, from 3:30-5:00pm. We share the slot with some other Pachyderm-related presentations as part of the “Introducing Pachyderm” session, so it should be interesting to anyone who has been following Pachyderm, APOLLO, or learning object authoring in general.
Another comment spammer just attempted to crap on my blog. WordPress and the plugins I use stopped him/her cold, and their subnet is now banned (I know that’s heavy handed, but screw ‘em).
I checked the stats from Site Meter, and it looks like this clown found my blog by searching Google for the term “wiki” – and slogged through 29 pages of results to get to me. 29 pages of results. Do these people really value their time so poorly? I know they don’t value mine, but I simply can’t imagine slogging through 29 pages of search results in the hopes of finding a blog or wiki to crap on. Knowing full well that the crap will be removed within minutes, if it’s even allowed through in the first place.
This says something to me about the economics of this whole thing. To someone, it’s actually worth it to waste hours (and over 30 minutes on my blog alone) trying to game Google’s PageRank system in the hopes of their offshore casino bubbling up a couple of spots in a Google search result page. Although, I guess for someone who’s willing to go through 29 freaking pages of results, that may be a worthwhile venture, if it gets their spam sites up to the first page or two for whatever keyword interest them.
It also p*sses me off to no end that I’m actually off work, sick, today, and I still have to expend time and energy dealing with these f*cking wastes of oxygen who insist on attempting to defile anything they come near – even when they have to actively search for stuff to defile. Yeesh. </rant>
This sounds interesting… A new dead-trees and online Interdisciplinary Journal of Knowledge and Learning Objects. They’ve put out the call for papers… Not sure if this will fare better than Pitch did/does, but maybe a dead-trees journal carries more cred with the higher ed. folks?
I’d have tossed this to del.icio.us instead of blogging it, but the Del is acting up today…
Rosemary Sanchez is the resident Flash Girl in The Learning Commons. She’s working on some really cool stuff, creating learning objects in Flash, and working on some stuff for the Pachyderm project.
She recently started blogging! I’ve already subscribed, and am looking forward to her quirky style and sense of humour. Now, if only we can get some more of the Learning Commons folks blogging…
Just booked airfare and conference registration for NorthernVoice – the Canadian webloggers’ conference (Saturday, Feb. 19, 2005 at UBC in Vancouver). Kinda like a Great White North BloggerCon.
I’ll be getting up rather early (have to be at the Calgary airport at 5am) – and am leaving Vancouver on a 7pm flight. That’s going to be interesting. But at least I’ll be there for the whole conference. I’m really looking forward to seeing what the Canadian weblog geek scene is up to!
Thanks to a little support from Gerry Paille and friends, I’m able to attend. Thanks, Gerry! (and friends!)
UPDATE: And, I just found out that I won a Northern Voice T-Shirt too! Cool…
Since I’m totally addicted to my iPod, iTunes and the iTMS, I might as well participate in The Great Playlist Meme of '04. It goes like this:
- Open up the music player on your computer.
- Set it to play your entire music collection.
- Hit the “shuffle” command.
- Tell us the title of the next ten songs that show up (with their musicians), no matter how embarrassing. That’s right, no skipping that Carpenters tune that will totally destroy your hip credibility. It’s time for total musical honesty. Write it up in your blog or journal and link back to at least a couple of the other sites where you saw this.
- If you get the same artist twice, you may skip the second (or third, or etc.) occurances. You don’t have to, but since randomness could mean you end up with a list of ten song with five artists, you can if you’d like.
Here’s my list: (a couple embarrassing tracks included)
- the pillow (ft. john holt) – UB 40 – Presents the fathers of reggae
- Red House – Jimi Hendrix – Smash Hits
- With a Little Help from My Friends – The Beatles – 1967-1970 (1 of 2)
- Insomnia And The Hole In The Universe – Live – Secret Samadhi
- Road Trip – Michael Giacchino – The Incredibles Soundtrack
- Back To Back – Frank Penn – Tropical Classics
- Foolish Games (Single) – Jewel
- Caminando Por la Calle – Gipsy Kings – I Volare!: The Very Best of the Gipsy Kings
- Lovers & Losers – 54-40 – Dear Dear
- Just Like You – Keb' Mo' – Just Like You
In iTunes, I just went to the Party Playlist, told it to grab from my whole collection, and copied the first 10 tracks. I’m just glad I didn’t have to give the first 11 tracks 
I just got an email from Brian Lamb to let me know that 2 of the amigos are going mano a mano in the 2004 Weblog Awards: Best Canadian Blog category.
Not sure why I got nominated over the many many (many) other excellent Canadian weblogs. But I’m flattered. I’m getting my ass kicked in the poll, but I’m flattered
Anyway, vote early, vote often. Now, if only they had the Diebold Vote Multiplier 3000 installed for this…
December 2, 2004 · 1 comment
in Uncategorized
I’ve been waiting for this for quite some time now. I activated my account, provided my visa number, and eagerly entered the store.
And, was completely paralyzed by the selection. Which album to buy? Which track? Where to go first? Completely paralyzed. I eventually bought U2 – How to dismantle an atomic bomb – comes complete with liner notes in PDF. Bandwidth is surprisingly slow, but that’s not really an issue, and I’m guessing they’re getting hammered pretty heavily right now.
I’m hoping the paralysis wears off – but perhaps it’s a blessing in disguise – my mortgage wouldn’t survive an all-out addiction to iTMSCanada…
UPDATE: OK. I’m hooked. "What’s just one more track… OK, and this one. Oh, and this one…" Trying very hard to resist this – 64 tracks of Nirvana…
My purchases to date include:
So, um, in case any family members are reading this… Here’s a good idea for Christmas
