UofC – D’Arcy Norman dot net

UCalgary’s Bandwidth Restrictions (again)

I tried a couple of times this morning to join a webcast offered by Apple, on the topic of using Lectopia to capture and distribute lectures (and other material). Something that would be useful, say, at a large-ish university that spends a fair amount of time and effort on online and blended learning.

Instead of being able to attend the webcast, I got occasional snippets of audio, and about once every minute or so I get a partial screen refresh for the video feed of the webcast.

Thanks for the partial connectivity. Maybe we should just get everyone AOL dialups or something.

Instead of being able to attend the webcast, I got occasional snippets of audio, and about once every minute or so I get a partial screen refresh for the video feed of the webcast.

Thanks for the partial connectivity. Maybe we should just get everyone AOL dialups or something.

University of Calgary group on Flickr

I just realized that there was no “University of Calgary” group on Flickr, so I created one.

This should be an interesting way for students, faculty, staff and alumni to share photos about the U of C.

Please feel free to join the group and add any photos you’d like to share.

I just realized that there was no “University of Calgary” group on Flickr, so I created one.

This should be an interesting way for students, faculty, staff and alumni to share photos about the U of C.

Please feel free to join the group and add any photos you’d like to share.

Quick Photos from Around Campus

It started out as a simple photo collection mission. Shawn is in Hong Kong, and asked if I had any pictures of the “Goddess of Democracy” statue that was erected on campus in memory of the Tiananmen Square incident of 1989. I didn’t have any photos handy, but wanted to take a couple.

It’s weird how walking around campus with a camera in hand makes you see things slightly differently. I’ve been on campus since 1987 (with a short hiatus when I was working downtown), and never realized that much of the drabbery around here is really kind of interesting. It’s not a beautiful campus like UBC or Stanford or anything, but it’s interesting in its own pragmatic way.

So, here are a few shots taken around campus today, including a few of the Goddess herself.

I’m going to try to keep my camera handy more often, and to use it more than once a week. Not committing to the “A Photo a Day” thing, but more pics ain’t bad. And I realize now that my blog is likely to get yanked from Google China for mentioning the “T word”

So, here are a few shots taken around campus today, including a few of the Goddess herself.

Homeless in the Learning Commons

Our office space is being renovated/downsized to make room for a new bioinformatics lab. All of the construction/cleanup/setup on our side of the floor was supposed to be done over the weekend, but it wasn’t. And they’ve already started demolition of the area I was in last week. So… Until they finally get around to correctly setting up my area, I’m homeless at work. I’m poaching an ethernet line from a nearby cube today, with the iPod cranked waaay up to drown out the noise of movers and furniture-setter-uppers. If I didn’t have stuff that I promised would be done today, I’d just write off the day as “downtime” and head home. No chance of working from home with Evan home (and awake).

So, in the meantime, my phone is being forwarded to /dev/null, and I’m not sure where I’ll be working. My workshop tomorrow morning should be unaffected, but I need to put together an “Intro to Wiki” presentation for the first part of the workshop…

Workshops on weblogs, wikis, etc. @ The U of C

It looks like I’ll be doing a couple of campus-wide workshops on the whole weblogs/wikis/rss/etc… stuff here at the University of Calgary. I’m going to try to pace it a little better than previous rounds, so will be breaking it into separate sessions. The first session will be on weblogs and RSS, to give a tour of what this stuff is, and point people at a few places to get started – weblogs.ucalgary.ca and EduBlogs.org. I’ll follow up a couple of weeks later with a session on wikis – likely focussing on wiki.ucalgary.ca and the wikipedia.

They will both be fully hands-on sessions, with people hammering on the stuff right along with me – not just another boring PPT presentation. I’m planning on at least starting off using the Lamb Method (i.e., present using a wiki page as a guide, and branching as needed), then seeing where we wind up from there. I’ll be posting all resources for the sessions to wiki.ucalgary.ca.

This is officially part of the “Inquiry through blended learning” program, but we’re planning on making the workshops open to anyone – space allowing, of course.

Update: Here are the “blurbs” I submitted for the workshops (titles link to the registration forms for each workshop):

Personal Publishing with Weblogs and RSS

This hands-on workshop will provide an introduction to the wonderful world of weblogs – personal publishing software that can make it easier to form effective and dynamic online communities of practice. Weblogs require little (or no) technical knowledge, and take care of the “hard” parts of publishing content online. Also, an introduction to RSS – Really Simple Syndication – will show you how you can read 500 websites in 15 minutes, allowing you to be a part of a much larger and richer online community.
Link for the online resources: http://wiki.ucalgary.ca/page/IntroToWeblogs

Collaborative Publishing with Wiki

Wiki is more than a piece of software – it is a strange new way of thinking about content. What if every page on a website was freely editable by any visitor to that website? What if editors didn’t need to know FTP? HTML? Javascript? This hands-on workshop will give an overview of wiki software – and provide you with some sample applications of wiki for collaborative document editing and simple publishing.
Link for the online resources: http://wiki.ucalgary.ca/page/IntroToWikis

This is officially part of the “Inquiry through blended learning” program, but we’re planning on making the workshops open to anyone – space allowing, of course.

Update: Here are the “blurbs” I submitted for the workshops (titles link to the registration forms for each workshop):

Personal Publishing with Weblogs and RSS

This hands-on workshop will provide an introduction to the wonderful world of weblogs – personal publishing software that can make it easier to form effective and dynamic online communities of practice. Weblogs require little (or no) technical knowledge, and take care of the “hard” parts of publishing content online. Also, an introduction to RSS – Really Simple Syndication – will show you how you can read 500 websites in 15 minutes, allowing you to be a part of a much larger and richer online community.
Link for the online resources: http://wiki.ucalgary.ca/page/IntroToWeblogs

Collaborative Publishing with Wiki

Wiki is more than a piece of software – it is a strange new way of thinking about content. What if every page on a website was freely editable by any visitor to that website? What if editors didn’t need to know FTP? HTML? Javascript? This hands-on workshop will give an overview of wiki software – and provide you with some sample applications of wiki for collaborative document editing and simple publishing.
Link for the online resources: http://wiki.ucalgary.ca/page/IntroToWikis

U of C Network Killed by W32/IRCbot.worm

Looks like our on-campus networks are being hammered by W32/IRCbot.worm – the Learning Commons webserver, Pachyderm, APOLLO, as well as the main U of C website are all being affected by terabytes of virus traffic taking over the network.

Even though our servers aren’t running the Biggest Security Hole Known to Man, and are themselves quite safe, they don’t have any bandwidth available due to the predominance of lesser boxes on the network.

I’m wondering if we should have a separate isolated network on campus for risky and untrusted machines, and just move all Windows machines onto that. We could then disconnect the whole lot of them when they get infested again (not if, but when).

Solar Car Race – Texas to Calgary

The North American Solar Challenge finished today (official photos from entire race), with the finish line and reception area at the University of Calgary. The team from the U of C finished to cheers of hundreds (but I couldn’t see because I was stuck in a huge line for a free BBQ burger…)

Lots of cool (but scarily tiny) solar powered cars. A surprisingly huge turnout – crowd was huge! And some irony thrown in for good measure. They lit the Olympic torch for the duration, burning more fuel than was consumed by all cars for the entire duration of the 2000-mile race. And a local shopping centre showed up with their Hummer2, to, well, be cool n stuff. Bling. And use more fuel than the entire race consumed (if you don’t count the fleet of supporting vehicles…)

IT Nazis

I spent the morning off campus (well, at another non-university-of-calgary campus) working in a place that actually made me appreciate the openness of the U of C networks.

I was installing a web application on a new server for them – something that usually requires a network connection (both to download the bits to install, and to let people use the thing after it lights up). The server was behind a scary virtual lan setup, and couldn’t see anything outside of its own hub. No internet. No WAN. Nothing. And, nobody can see the server. You have to physically go to the server room, and plug into the same hub as the server in order to see it.

Apparently, if their IT notices a new machine on the LAN, they kill the switch. They block all IM traffic (I tried IMing Julian for some advice at one point, only to be blocked by the IT Nazis).

Frustrating as hell. I literally could not (would not?) work under such a restrictive network regime. Any place where you can’t google to find what’s going wrong, or to find a quick answer, is just plain unproductive. Any place that restricts communication (for whatever reason) is doing more damage than good. They may be saving money, though…

I firmly believe that putting the demands of IT ahead of the needs of the users is a dreadful thing to do. Without the users, there is no need for IT. IT is there to SUPPORT the people, not reign them in. It shows a pretty insane level of mistrust, and that is no way to run a post-secondary institution. It’s a pretty crappy message to send your people – we don’t trust you, and your needs are secondary to ours.

The U of C network folks, in spite of my complaining about them, are several orders of magnitude better than what these people have to settle for. I’m slowly learning to appreciate them a bit more 😉

I spent the morning off campus (well, at another non-university-of-calgary campus) working in a place that actually made me appreciate the openness of the U of C networks.

Apparently, if their IT notices a new machine on the LAN, they kill the switch. They block all IM traffic (I tried IMing Julian for some advice at one point, only to be blocked by the IT Nazis).

Pachyderm Server Down (temporarily, I hope)

The thoughtful and friendly folks at the U of C decided to upgrade the electrical infrastructure in the Learning Commons today. That meant that apollo.ucalgary.ca would be without power. “No problem, thanks for the notice,” I thought – assuming they’d be shutting down the server before yanking the plug.

They didn’t.

And now the server is struggling to get back up again. I’m kinda remote from the server right now, hunkered down at SSU with the rest of the Pachyderm developers. Trying to show stuff on the pachyderm instance on apollo.ucalgary.ca – can’t SSH in to reboot it from California. Can’t FTP in. Apache is up, but WebObjects is cranky. MySQL is down. Doh…

I’m really hoping someone reboots the server so we can do more work tomorrow…

So, until then, apollo.ucalgary.ca is down. And, since it’s hosting weblogs.ucalgary.ca and wiki.ucalgary.ca, they are down now, too. crap. Remind me why I left the office?

Update: It’s back! Something had gotten wedged on the reboot after the power cycle. Some services came up, but others simply refused. Kirk just gave the server a nudge, and all is happy again (thanks, Kirk!)

I’m really hoping the bipolar nature of this trip settles down Real Soon Now™.

They didn’t.

I’m really hoping someone reboots the server so we can do more work tomorrow…

So, until then, apollo.ucalgary.ca is down. And, since it’s hosting weblogs.ucalgary.ca and wiki.ucalgary.ca, they are down now, too. crap. Remind me why I left the office?

I’m really hoping the bipolar nature of this trip settles down Real Soon Now™.

Blocking Ping

I just found out (almost by accident) that the U of C has decided to block ping. I knew ping wasn’t working – hasn’t been for what feels like forever. I just heard today that it was a deliberate move to block the port used by ping – to prevent hacking of unsecured Windows boxes using those ports.

So, let me get this straight. You’ve got a bunch of renegade unpatched Windows boxes on campus. Possibly 0wned. And, instead of, you know, fixing the problem by patching and securing the boxes, you block frigging ping. Great. Because, of course, ping has no useful purpose aside from hacking lazily managed Windows boxes. It’s not handy at all for doing things like diagnosing network problems, or monitoring servers, or whatnot.

On a positive note, I discovered that the U of C has (at least temporarily) decided to allow access to the iTunes Music Store. I was able to connect today and download Tuesday’s Free Song.