For the Mavericks project, I get to transcode 9 DVD-ROMs worth of high resolution TIFF images into JPEG images for use during authoring by Pachyderm (I could use the TIFFs directly, but that would tax the system more than I’d like to during beta testing).
At first, I was wondering what to do about this. Back in the day, I’d use Debabelizer Pro, or a Photoshop action or something.
But, I just fired up Automator.app, and in less than 60 seconds had whipped up a Workflow that finds all TIFF images buried within a selected folder (or volume), copies them to a designated folder on my hard drive, then transcodes them to .jpg files. Exactly what I needed. In under a minute. It’s going to take a while to run (copying and transcoding roughly 40GB of images may take some time), but the process is now almost completely Automated. I couldn’t find the Finder action for automatically swapping DVDs unattended, or I’d just let this sucker run unattended all weekend…
In my books, this one task just paid for my Tiger upgrade.
Update: After it’s done processing the first DVD, I’ll see if I can tweak the Workflow to display status information. Right now, it’s slowly copying files from the DVD, and there’s no direct way to see how much is left to go (I can go into Terminal and ls -1 | wc -l to see how many files are in the target directory, and hit Activity Monitor’s “Disk Activity” tab, but a nice shiny thermometer progress bar would be nice…
For the Mavericks project, I get to transcode 9 DVD-ROMs worth of high resolution TIFF images into JPEG images for use during authoring by Pachyderm (I could use the TIFFs directly, but that would tax the system more than I’d like to during beta testing).
At first, I was wondering what to do about this. Back in the day, I’d use Debabelizer Pro, or a Photoshop action or something.
But, I just fired up Automator.app, and in less than 60 seconds had whipped up a Workflow that finds all TIFF images buried within a selected folder (or volume), copies them to a designated folder on my hard drive, then transcodes them to .jpg files. Exactly what I needed. In under a minute. It’s going to take a while to run (copying and transcoding roughly 40GB of images may take some time), but the process is now almost completely Automated. I couldn’t find the Finder action for automatically swapping DVDs unattended, or I’d just let this sucker run unattended all weekend…
In my books, this one task just paid for my Tiger upgrade.
Update: After it’s done processing the first DVD, I’ll see if I can tweak the Workflow to display status information. Right now, it’s slowly copying files from the DVD, and there’s no direct way to see how much is left to go (I can go into Terminal and ls -1 | wc -l to see how many files are in the target directory, and hit Activity Monitor’s “Disk Activity” tab, but a nice shiny thermometer progress bar would be nice…
On the way into the office this morning, I listened to a very interesting podcast produced by Matt Pasiewicz and released on the EDUCAUSE blog/podcasting network. The podcast was a recording of a presentation by Lisa Kosanovich from BYU, titled “Project Governance: Avoiding Administrivia” – I listened because I feel like I’m drowning in administrivia lately, and was pleasantly surprised by the presentation. She refers to several detailed slides in a powerpoint file, which is available on the resources page for the presentation.
It turns into an excellent overview of functional project management, and how to avoid the easy traps that pull projects into dysfunctional ordeals. She gets a bit off track when using the Air Traffic Control system on September 11, 2001 as a sample project, but the rest of the session is really good.
If you’re working on a project, please listen to the podcast. You don’t have to agree with everything in it, but it is certainly a good starting point.
On the way into the office this morning, I listened to a very interesting podcast produced by Matt Pasiewicz and released on the EDUCAUSE blog/podcasting network. The podcast was a recording of a presentation by Lisa Kosanovich from BYU, titled “Project Governance: Avoiding Administrivia” – I listened because I feel like I’m drowning in administrivia lately, and was pleasantly surprised by the presentation. She refers to several detailed slides in a powerpoint file, which is available on the resources page for the presentation.
It turns into an excellent overview of functional project management, and how to avoid the easy traps that pull projects into dysfunctional ordeals. She gets a bit off track when using the Air Traffic Control system on September 11, 2001 as a sample project, but the rest of the session is really good.
If you’re working on a project, please listen to the podcast. You don’t have to agree with everything in it, but it is certainly a good starting point.
There are a lot of things converging together at the moment, and I don’t think it would take a huge effort to give the pieces a little nudge to form the loosely-joined personal and professional publishing platform we’ve been bouncing ideas around about for the last couple of years.
These are some of the things I’m watching (or hoping to participate in) in the coming year. This is a rough list, with no relevance to order. I’ll be revising it at will. I’m also pretty sure I’m missing something important.
This list is just a thinking-out-loud wishlist kind of thing. Not a contract 😉 Some items may get dropped, modified, or moved to another year. Other items may get added. That’s the nature of the game. Flexibility…
This list may end up migrating to a wiki page, but for now…
- Personal Content Publishing
- Open Source Communities
There are a lot of things converging together at the moment, and I don’t think it would take a huge effort to give the pieces a little nudge to form the loosely-joined personal and professional publishing platform we’ve been bouncing ideas around about for the last couple of years.
These are some of the things I’m watching (or hoping to participate in) in the coming year. This is a rough list, with no relevance to order. I’ll be revising it at will. I’m also pretty sure I’m missing something important.
This list is just a thinking-out-loud wishlist kind of thing. Not a contract 😉 Some items may get dropped, modified, or moved to another year. Other items may get added. That’s the nature of the game. Flexibility…
This list may end up migrating to a wiki page, but for now…
- Personal Content Publishing
- Open Source Communities
We were talking today about how to be more strategic with our various inter-related projects (and specifically with the communication of status and plans), and the idea of some form of blended learning strategic advisory council was raised. The theory would be to have representatives from various organizations (University of Calgary, University of Alberta, Alberta Learning, BCCampus, and any other relevant organizations) working together to share strategic planning for projects related to blended learning.
The goal for us is to move our efforts into a more transparent setup, so communication with partners and interested organizations would become easier and more effective.
This would provide a clearinghouse for information related to the various projects (APOLLO, Pachyderm, BCCampus, SciQ, Mavericks, etc…) so balls don’t get dropped, and everyone is on the same page.
We’ll be putting together a proposal over the next few weeks, and I’ll post updates as they happen.
Anyone have any thoughts on this idea?
We were talking today about how to be more strategic with our various inter-related projects (and specifically with the communication of status and plans), and the idea of some form of blended learning strategic advisory council was raised. The theory would be to have representatives from various organizations (University of Calgary, University of Alberta, Alberta Learning, BCCampus, and any other relevant organizations) working together to share strategic planning for projects related to blended learning.
The goal for us is to move our efforts into a more transparent setup, so communication with partners and interested organizations would become easier and more effective.
This would provide a clearinghouse for information related to the various projects (APOLLO, Pachyderm, BCCampus, SciQ, Mavericks, etc…) so balls don’t get dropped, and everyone is on the same page.
We’ll be putting together a proposal over the next few weeks, and I’ll post updates as they happen.
Anyone have any thoughts on this idea?
I’ve been experimenting with directed server side aggregators to present the concept to a potential client. The basic goal is to provide something like EduRSS or the new EDUCAUSE blog aggregations for members of a department or faculty (or combinations thereof).
Feed on Feeds looks like a pretty lightweight and functional option. I’m running a test of it now, with a few of the Learning Commons weblogs (and those of the other Amigos so there’s something for the aggregator to chew on).
It’s set to update all feeds on the hour. I’ll look at customizing the look via css when I get a chance.
I’ve been experimenting with directed server side aggregators to present the concept to a potential client. The basic goal is to provide something like EduRSS or the new EDUCAUSE blog aggregations for members of a department or faculty (or combinations thereof).
Feed on Feeds looks like a pretty lightweight and functional option. I’m running a test of it now, with a few of the Learning Commons weblogs (and those of the other Amigos so there’s something for the aggregator to chew on).
It’s set to update all feeds on the hour. I’ll look at customizing the look via css when I get a chance.
I just realized something… Of the 3 weblogs we had set up for the “Small Pieces Loosely Joined” session at NMC2004, only the “Centralists” weblog is still alive… Hmmm…
I just realized something… Of the 3 weblogs we had set up for the “Small Pieces Loosely Joined” session at NMC2004, only the “Centralists” weblog is still alive… Hmmm…
We’re working on a whole bunch of related (and sometimes dependent) projects here at the Learning Commons, and it’s sometimes difficult to communicate how they all fit together.
Although we are coming at several related problems from several directions simultaneously, we see them all as One Big Project, with each component making up part of a larger puzzle. Here’s the extremely simplified model of how the projects fit together:
Perhaps the easiest way of thinking about these projects is with APOLLO acting as a kind of malleable glue that can hold distinct and separate technologies together. We see things like ties to Blackboard LMS happening somehow via APOLLO, which can serve as a bridge between any of the other project puzzle pieces.
One important thing we keep striving toward is interoperability. Interoperability amongst our own tools (ALOHA, APOLLO, CAREO, etc…), and interoperability amongst external tools (Blackboard, Pachyderm, Weblogs, etc..). They are both important kinds of interoperability, and we take it all quite seriously.
It’s also feeling like we’re in the process of hitting critical mass, where the project puzzle pieces are finally fitting together well enough, and covering enough of the whole puzzle, that we’ll be able to do some extremely cool and compelling things in the coming weeks and months. This is an excellent time to be playing around with this stuff.
Here’s a partial list of some of the related projects we’re working on at the Learning Commons:
There are several other smaller projects (and possibly some larger ones) I’ve left off, but you get the point. We’re trying out a bunch of stuff, and working to get it all playing nicely together.
We’re working on a whole bunch of related (and sometimes dependent) projects here at the Learning Commons, and it’s sometimes difficult to communicate how they all fit together.
Although we are coming at several related problems from several directions simultaneously, we see them all as One Big Project, with each component making up part of a larger puzzle. Here’s the extremely simplified model of how the projects fit together:
Perhaps the easiest way of thinking about these projects is with APOLLO acting as a kind of malleable glue that can hold distinct and separate technologies together. We see things like ties to Blackboard LMS happening somehow via APOLLO, which can serve as a bridge between any of the other project puzzle pieces.
One important thing we keep striving toward is interoperability. Interoperability amongst our own tools (ALOHA, APOLLO, CAREO, etc…), and interoperability amongst external tools (Blackboard, Pachyderm, Weblogs, etc..). They are both important kinds of interoperability, and we take it all quite seriously.
It’s also feeling like we’re in the process of hitting critical mass, where the project puzzle pieces are finally fitting together well enough, and covering enough of the whole puzzle, that we’ll be able to do some extremely cool and compelling things in the coming weeks and months. This is an excellent time to be playing around with this stuff.
Here’s a partial list of some of the related projects we’re working on at the Learning Commons:
There are several other smaller projects (and possibly some larger ones) I’ve left off, but you get the point. We’re trying out a bunch of stuff, and working to get it all playing nicely together.
