Mark Penny :: Blog Archives
http://spajde.targeteil.org/?q=node/44 Just set up a fully loaded drupal site for my employer, TLI Kaohsiung Center. Mainly just copied SPAJDE. But can't seem to hide the search form in the header. No difficulty with this in SPAJDE or SPAJAL. Can't remember how I hid it in those sites. Sigh.
Can't get emailpage to display its link properly, either. I get two if emailpage is installed and enabled, one if it's disabled, and on if it's deleted. The first link, when there are two, doesn't work.
Came up with a division of Target EIL called stickglyphs for web hosting, design, development and maintenance. May have to rethink the structure of my corporate empire, though, make Target EIL a division of something bigger like Mardis Inc. Oops. Mardis is taken.
http://spajde.targeteil.org/?q=node/45 That's cool. The technorati tags module seems to grab tags from the on-site tag bar. Saves typing. Why didn't I notice that before? Did it happen before?
http://spajde.targeteil.org/?q=node/46 In my ongoing, lonesome campaign to change the way the world blogs, I'm inaugurating yet another Drupal installation, this one called Primitive SSwID.
Primitive SSwID will serve as a webposition from which I and my guests (you could be one of them) will publish (post, in Elggspeak) to any number of webpoints in any number and variety of networks. Per Point Posting (PPP) will be achieved via organic groups (communities, in Elggspeak). All we have to do is set up the "catchments" in Primitive SSwID and other networks, insert the "straws" (feeds) between Primitive SSwID and the other networks (via the catchments), and post. It's a seven part process I'll illuminate later.
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http://spajde.targeteil.org/?q=node/47 Ha-ha! All it took was a poke around in the Drupal support forums and, presto, slogans appear and search boxes disappear.
By the way, the default access option when you've installed all your organic group modules is logged-in users, so remember to check "public" if you want your post to be seen by the world in the source site.
http://spajde.targeteil.org/?q=node/48 Ouch.
Here I was going on about how great Drupal was--and it stabbed me in the back.
I still love Drupal. Don't get me wrong. And I forgive the betrayal, but, youch! That hurts!
Unlike Elgg--which I also love, but for different reasons, Drupal does not currently appear to allow RSS to be fed to communities (organic groups in Drupalspeak). Drupal is highly compartmental, a characteristic which makes it wonderful to work with behind the interface, but which foils the Permanent Webpoint Relay experiment for now. You see, feeds go in categories. They are handled separately from nodes such as blogs and forums. They have their own pages. I may find a way to use this to my own ends, but for the moment it looks very much like an impediment.
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http://spajde.targeteil.org/?q=node/50  Here's a diagram that illustrates the basic principles of SSwID (Single Storage with Infinite Display).
- Location: Content is stored in one location only but viewable from many locations. Relative to an item of content, a location receives one of two classifications:
- Webposition: (network internal) point of storage.
- Webpoint: (network external) point of access
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http://spajde.targeteil.org/?q=node/51 
The Project
Here's a diagram of the Permanent Webpoint Relay I'd hoped to build.
It consists of
- A webposition, Primitive SSwid (Drupal), from which I would have done all my blogging (distributed blogging )
- Seven webpoints:
- Four of my own specialty networks (Drupal): SPAJDE (distance education), SPAJAL (applied linguistics), O-WIRe (online literature and art), and H2H (family)
- Three specialty networks belonging to other people (Elgg): Elgg , EducationBridges and Me2U (social software and education)
- Various communities (Elgg) or organic groups (Drupal) which serve as catchments in the source network/webposition (Primitive SSwID) and display areas in the target networks/webpoints (all others)
- Feeds between webposition and webpoints
The webposition contains four communities (distance education, applied linguistics, online literature and family matters) supplied by a content generator. The content generator is simply the user's blog. In Drupal, posts can be targeted to any number and configuration of existing organic groups. Each group has its own XML page, which can supply an RSS feed to any other web location capable of finding and reading XML.
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http://spajde.targeteil.org/?q=node/52 Imagine my surprise when I found that the diggthis icon at the head of one of my posts had turned from a little blue thumbs up to a big straw-coloured square with the number 4 in the middle. Sure enough, when I clicked the icon, I learned that three other diggers had dugg the post. I only posted it this morning. Wow!
You can bet I'll be investigating the possibilities of diggthis and other aggregators.
http://spajde.targeteil.org/?q=node/53
In keeping with the principles outlined in my post Some Things I Want to Do When I Grow Up ,my post Permanent Webpoint Relay (PWR) just got dugg by Robert Douglass , author of a book on building dynamic websites and a developer with Drupal. This doesn't make me rich, famous or even particularly influential, but it does demonstrate that via the Internet, interaction (albeit impersonal) between makers and doers can be quick and easy.
http://spajde.targeteil.org/?q=node/55 Under entertainment, fiction. Under technology, social software. Others will occur to me, I'm sure.
This is not by way of criticism. It's a great service and the makers are perfectly entitled to shape it as they see fit. However, one of the priniciples behind it is democratic judgment, so I'm speaking up about a need I perceive.
http://spajde.targeteil.org/?q=node/57 I've been trying to set up cron jobs for my many blog networks. I find the instructions in Drupal and Wikipedia downright baffling. Here's my current configuration for this network. Anybody know if it will work? If it won't, what's wrong with it?
60 * * * * * http://spajde.targeteil.org/cron.php
http://spajde.targeteil.org/?q=node/58 Well, I've got the cron jobs working. The code looks like this.
GET http://spajde.targeteil.org/cron.php > /dev/null
In cPanel, you take care of the schedule in the schedule boxes, not the command box.
That's the happy part. The sad part is, my catchment feed, Web, from O-WIRe is not working in the Elgg sites. I had it set up, but it wasn't grabbing anything. Then I tried setting it up again and now I'm told the xml doesn't work at all and Elgg won't subscribe. Go figure. Same address. Same tenant.
http://spajde.targeteil.org/?q=node/63 Sigh. It appears to be an idea whose time has not quite come yet.
Elgg does not accept any of the organic group (community) feeds from my Drupal sites. It has no problem with site and blog xml, but og xml gets this error (now).
Feed subscription failed: feed appears to be invalid. Please check your link or try later.
I did at one time a few days ago have an og feed set up for each of three Elgg sites, but nothing came through. When I attempted to set up new feeds, they were all rejected.
Elgg does support community xml, so a relay could be set up starting from an Elgg site.
Drupal allows feeds from ogs. My Primitive SSwID to SPAJDE feed works great. My O-WIRe to SPAJDE og feeds are all "broken", but that appears to be an O-WIRe issue. I can feed ogs from SPAJDE to Primitive SSwiD, but my O-WIRe to Primitive SSwID og feed gets the same error as above. I guess I'm going to have to rebuild O-WIRe.
Unfortunately, as I've pointed out before, Drupal handles all feeds as news feeds. Feeds cannot be posted anywhere but in the aggregator. They are also communal. One great advantage of Elgg over Drupal at this point is that Elgg allows users full control of their feeds: where they come from, where they're displayed and who gets to see them.
Come on and catch up, Drupal!
http://spajde.targeteil.org/?q=node/64 Since June I've been on a constantly accelerating roller-coaster ride called the Web. I've staked out web space and filled it with four wikis (MediaWiki), eight content management sites (two Elgg, one WordPress, five Drupal) and two learning management sites (Moodle). I've tweaked a bit of CSS and a load of PHP. I've negotiated server updates, updated applications, influenced the thinking and actions of the odd developer or two (Elgg-Moodle integration: authenticating title in block, NWiki: name change, possible forum tab) and come up with my own designs for both the Web in general and a universal application in particular. In short, my life has changed dramatically and it's time I slowed down to take stock and consolidate. The changes have coincided with the onset of presbyopia and the concommitant menace of middle age and a midlife crisis (not to mention an increasing burden of flab and fat courtesy of an increasingly sedentary lifestyle--thanks largely, in turn, to an increasing amount of time on the Net). Admitting that my eyes weren't working like they used to was difficult for me. I have always taken great pride in my 20/20 vision. However, the day finally came when the frequency and intensity of headaches due to eye strain could not be attributed to anything else--and when the frequency and instensity of bad moods could clearly be seen to stem from the headaches. Visiting an optician and getting glasses was an important compound first step in accepting my current stage of life. I'm still struggling, though. Dissatisfaction with my career is the biggest worry at the moment. I teach English (for now). Some jobs may allow you to come in with less enthusiasm than you used to have and still shine, so long as you get the work done and do it well. Not teaching English. If you're blue or blecky, people see it and they soon grow tired of seeing it. If you don't snap out of it, they look for someone younger and perkier. Coupled with the long overdue decision to take Saturdays off, this has meant a drastic drop in income at a time when, living in Taiwan, my wife and I need to be saving for our three sons' basic edcuation. I also feel it is important to pursue my own education, currently in the form of an MDE through Athabasca University . There again, fiscal flakiness presents a challenge. The irony of it is that I still have loads to offer. At a time when most people, as I understand, are gearing down or putting the car in cruise, I'm just getting revved. I have several novels and short stories on the boil (novel writing has always been my first career choice, though one I have yet to realize or even give proper attention to--see my blog in O-WIRe and my wikis Bli-fi and The School of Life and Wonder for examples of my narrative prose), I'm building a hybrid English school (Target EIL) and I'm laying plans to develop software that will revolutionize (albeit quietly and in dark corners, perhaps) the way people work on the Web via a little company I call glyphsticks. In short, I am full of ambition and drive, but I need a little time in the pit to fuel the engine and change the tires. This was the subject of a conversation yesterday evening with my good friend Michael, an expat Brit, avid hiker and devoted Christian. He advized me to reduce my commitments (i.e., the number of projects I was tackling) and take some time for myself. And he meant myself. One of the challenges of married and family life is the guilt you often feel whenever you even consider doing anything that doesn't involve another member of the family, especially when you have three children between the ages of one and four. You may desperately need a long hike in the hills or a week in the wilderness, but your spouse and children need you. Balancing their needs as collaborators and dependants with your needs as a collaborator and provider, needs which include rest (which in turn includes a little restful solitude), is itself a stressful undertaking. But if I don't do something soon, an undertaker is what I'll need, at least for my career and the associated income. One thing I can do--and I plan to do it a little later here--is take advantage of Drupal's single installation/multisite feature. As I understand it, I can set up site folders in the root of one installation, add other folders in the site folder, and have each site run as desired. The advantage for me is that I won't have to update or upgrade five different sites. I plan to run all of them in pretty much the same way with the same features and organisation. That will save time--a great deal of it. Another thing I can do occurred to me yesterday. A couple of months ago our old PC went on the proverbial fritz. It spent a week in the repair shop, one of the best weeks in the history of our little family. I had been spending far too much time blogging and admining, and my wife was getting nearly as bad with her instant messaging and audio chats. We were both leary of taking the computer back. Why not, I thought yesterday, declare computer-free weeks now and then, say once a month or so? Curb the addiction. Give the family and ourselves some focused attention and reduce the craving at the same time. In a day or two I'll discuss it with my wife. And so life goes on, ah-la-la-la.
http://spajde.targeteil.org/?q=node/65 I've been away from my blogs for almost a week now and it's been great.
Not that I despise blogging or wish to root it out of my life altogether, but I was going way overboard with it. It had become as vicious and insidious in its way as drink or drugs, albeit superficially more productive.
The feeling I had, once I let go of the keyboard for a few days, was of surfacing, of drawing a deep, clean breath and of looking around in wonder at the world around the lake.
Just yesterday afternoon, I was looking at my four-year-old son, the oldest of three, and realizing that he didn't look so little anymore. He was turning into a young man (a very young young man, but a very self-aware, self-guided young man all the same, an interesting idividual who needed his Dad). Time was passing in the world and I had spent too much of it staring into computer screens.
The long and short of this meditative rant is that I'm going to cut my blogging down to once a week. Or less sometimes. I have, I think, a lot to say, but I have far more to do. There a stories to write, students to teach and children to raise, a wife to love and pets to take care of. It's great that we can reach out through cyberspace and touch distant lives, but it's a pity if we do that at the cost of ignoring or neglecting the lives right next to ours.
And books! There are so many wonderful books to read, so much knowledge to acquire. I was never so happy blogging as I was reading about statistics and biology in a handful of secondhand books while sitting next to my wife on a bus on the way to Taipei and the temple on Saturday.
http://spajde.targeteil.org/?q=node/66 I was never really happy with the acronym SAIF. It sounds like "safe" and "safe" doesn't reflect the purpose of the product. I was mulling over this during a restless attempt to fall asleep and came up with SAIM (Single Application Infinite Modularity), which I like better. It works because the purpose of the product is to replace a plethora of modules with a single module, that is, the functions of many modules will be covered by one and the "same" module.
http://spajde.targeteil.org/?q=node/67 I got into the MDE programme at Athabasca University , because I wanted to learn how to build an online language school. Once I got going, I became interested in the questions of online language instruction, small providers (vs. institutions) and the electronic (vs. industrial) model of distance education and thought I might do a poject/thesis (à la Alaa Sadik 's doctoral dissertation The Design, Implementation and Evaluation of a Web-Based Learning Environment for Distance Education, [Summary & Chapter One]) based on my 601 final paper Target EIL: A Versatile Model for a Flexible, Phased Online Learning Enterprise. Now, however, after building several sites using Elgg, Drupal, MediaWiki and Moodle, I find myself drawn to the questions of logue (monologue, dialogue, multilogue), modularity and internetwork access.
So I'm thinking now in terms of a master's project/thesis around SAIM (Single Application Infinite Modularity) and a doctoral project/dissertation around SSwID (Single Storage with Infinite Display). The idea is to create software that fills an academically identifiable niche or two. Of course, before I can create the software, I have to learn some programming.
http://spajde.targeteil.org/?q=node/70 It looks like there's hope for the Permanent Webpoint Relay after all. Drupal has a pair of modules called Publish and Subscribe which, together, sound like they work something like Elgg's RSS feeds. If I could only get the database tables to set up.
http://spajde.targeteil.org:80/?q=node/70 It looks like there's hope for the Permanent Webpoint Relay after all. Drupal has a pair of modules called Publish and Subscribe which, together, sound like they work something like Elgg's RSS feeds. If I could only get the database tables to set up.
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