From Morningside College: One friendly neighborhood Systems Administrator writes about technology, sciences, and other interests
Crikey, I loath PHP. I almost hated it due to an oversight in modifying this site’s scripts.
return “$root/$blog_id”;
The above does, in fact, work. It was getting butchered elsewhere.
Every thumbnailed image in WordPress assumed that I was the only user and knew nothing of the dynamic paths. I’ve since re-written the thumbnail script (cropper.php) to convert /path/ to blog_ids for proper operation and should polish off the results and put them back upstream (if possible).
Thanksgiving break means things should be quiet enough for a few upgrades. Chiefly AIMS/AIX UNIX machine as I’ve already done my VMWare upgrades… Luckily, the cloud is still anchored firmly to the ground.
Projectors are popular on campus for good reason. People are visual creatures and nothing is more visual than a 6×6 foot screen of visual goodness from your laptop to the wall via projector.
The “Next Best Thing”(tm)? Network Projectors. As a Network Administrator I can accurately say that if anything is good then it is better networked.
You install a piece of software on your laptop, connect it to the network, indicate your desired projector and voila! You’re projecting.
Drawbacks? Well, all your students have notebooks. And are on the network. You probably don’t want them readily projecting during class. Nevermind that, we’ll just put passwords on it and you can log on to your projector!
Ease of use? Regular, VGA-based, projecting is easy. If you have trouble with this, I apologize. But it is. There are special buttons on your keyboard dedicated to this function and a fair support base of around it since it is a pretty standard method of piping video from one place to another.
Networking is hard. If we have trouble with regular VGA projecting, how much harder have we just made things on ourselves by adding a layer of networking to that process? But wait, some are still non-networked. This means everytime you call saying “I can’t get the projector to work” we first have to work out what sort of projector you’re using. Over the phone. It’s not your job to know the makes, models and capabilities of a given projector. You’re supposed to teach. “Does it have a network cable coming out of it?” “A what?”… I digress.
Everything really is better with networking.
I did a little social networking the other day and mention to our favorite Technical Librarian (Jennifer Nelson) that, oh, by the way, we have this new thing called WordPress… Why not try it and see what you think?
I now have an email in my inbox asking if the library can have a blog with a group of writers.
Yes it can
It’s good having people using things to the limits you expected them to, I can’t wait to see what people try with this software I haven’t even dreamt of.
A personal, consumer-grade box-fan began its death cries a little over two weeks ago alerting everyone to the fact that their Library server was aging and cooled only by a small fan with boards zip-tied to the ceiling tile. The machine wasn’t much newer.
As a result, something that had been postponed indefinitely is suddenly a priority and I am digitizing “Sirsi2”. It will no longer fear electronic death as its soul has been saved. Ones and Zeros. It now runs in an imaginary computer with an imaginary processor, imaginary memory, imaginary hard-disks, imaginary everything on top of one of the most complex and inventive infrastructures possible- VMware ESX.
Wild.
