at first, this appears to be a task that’s harder than it’s worth, but it’s not
after several passes through the installed packages that come with knoppix list, I believe I’ve trimmed out everything we don’t need to provide a mobile lab environment
July 11th, 2006
customizing live cds
June 29th, 2006
a brief note about vmware
apparently, you cannot use XFS as your file system when installing Linux inside of VMware - the installer will get really close to finishing then die
a word to the wise from the VOE
Posted by wmyers as work at 4:06 PM EDT
June 20th, 2006
receiving lines
Ah the joys of Shodor in the summer: capers and odaa.
Unlike home when I was growing up, Shodor doesn’t out and out call the random extraneous chores they have interns (and to a lesser extent apprentices) do chores, per se. Nope, here they’re capers. Shodor capers are (often rudimentary) tasks that need to be done to keep the whole operation running smoothly (take care of recycling, answer the phones, check kids in, watch kids at lunch and break, etc.
Today I got pegged to handle the reception desk. Answering the phone, receiving packages, making sure kids get checked-in and -out correctly, ordering pizza for a workshop lunch - it was fun. Unfortunately, since I’m only in the office on a once-a-week basis, I don’t get to do this again all summer.
Being on reception desk duty also makes for no odaa calls, or ‘other duties as assigned’. Really, the capers are odaa, but it’s planned ahead of time, rather than a ‘I need help moving these shelves and boxes from the lobby to the office, emptying the boxes, and then schlepping the cardboard to the recyle area’ type of last-minute request.
Posted by wmyers as work at 8:20 PM EDT
June 3rd, 2006
summer has begun
Or at least it has approximately begun. Shodor’s summer season starts the first week in June and runs through the end of August. I will be in Tuesdays, and some other random times throughout the summer.
And to kick everything off will be Shodor’s orientation week for interns and apprentices running from 5-9 June. Looks like a good summer.
Posted by wmyers as work at 10:51 AM EDT
December 4th, 2004
UN SEG
Today is the second of three days of meeting with the United Nations Scientific Experts Group on Climate Change, discussing both mitigation and adaptation possibilities with the expectation of creating a succinct report to the UN in a few months.
The first day of the meeting went well yesterday, though my presentation on Rice’s Connexions tool was pushed to today. I began the day by giving a short tutorial to the two student assistants and the writer for the group on how to use Connexions, and they all love it. After lunch, I gave my intro presentation to the full group of scientists (around 16), and then tried to launch into about the same brief tutorial that I gave this morning, but it didn’t go as well. Unfortunately, at least for now, the group as a whole didn’t see some of the benefits of the tool, as they are used to using Word’s ‘track changes’ feature.
There seemed was some resistance to learning the new environment, and so, for now at least, most of them will not be utilizing the tool. Rather, they will be shipping us their documents, having us post them to our site and to Connexions, and making remote comments via email. Oh, well. Hopefully, as time goes on, they’ll come to get used to the idea of Rice’s tool, and begin to use it on their own.
In the mean time, I am still working on the Computational Science Education Spotlight newsletter. Dave Joiner will be the first spotlit individual in the newsletter. I’ll post here again as soon as it is ready for viewing online.
Posted by wmyers as work at 7:59 PM EST
October 12th, 2004
new schedule
I have switched to a TWR schedule, which is nice. I love driving, but cutting out 67 miles rt from home to work is a nice bonus. I have been working on building a bridge site at Sigma Xi where former, current, and future NCSI workshoppers and presenters can exchange ideas, techniques that work well, workshops they would like to have in the future, etc. I am also testing the teacher/volunteer database to make sure everything is in working order for its official roll-out in a couple weeks.
The last 1.5 hours of this afternoon, I finished my first article (module) for Connexions. It is being proofread right now, but I was able to get a good handle on the markup requirements, and the feel of online editing. The folks at Rice have done a fantastic job with the tool, and I look forward to using it more as time goes on. When proofreading is done, I’ll post a link to its location here.
I had a meeting with Jay and Dr Grimley at school yesterday, and have a much better idea as to what PLU wants their website to accomplish. The database I had been envisioning was quite different from what they want, so I am redesigning it. I expect to have that done in the next couple days, at least on paper, and then to build the first draft on the server in a week or two, after they have had a chance to verify what it is that I am trying to do.
A few days ago I received a letter from the school indicating I am once again an Elon student, as of spring semester 2005. One interesting bonus of not having used any of the available loan for this fall, is that I get to use all of it for the spring. That combined with the institutional grant they have authorized means I should be a full-time student, for the first time since the 00-01 school year, when I graduated HVCC. I’m looking forward to a bunch of gen ed classes, and one in my major. Yippee.
Preregistration begins the first week in Nov, so I have a couple weeks to wait before I can set up my schedule, but I do look forward to getting back into the student swing of things.
Posted by wmyers as work at 7:57 PM EDT
October 4th, 2004
first day
Not a bad way to start off a new job. Last Friday was the Sigma Xi staff picnic, so I worked for a few hours, then went downstairs for food and meeting some of the other people who work there.
Today I spent more time going through the CNXML language specs and turorial available at the Connexions website. I am now in love with XML. After having gone through several tutorials on XML, CNXML, MathML, and QML, I have come up with a bunch of places I could use XML for my own apps. It’s kind of exciting.
I’m also working on the back-end database for the professional chemistry society Phi Lambda Upsilon. Another student at Elon, Jay Loden, has been working on building most of their brand new website, but hasn’t done database design and implementation, so I’m doing that for the site.
Posted by wmyers as work at 7:56 PM EDT
September 1st, 2004
new projects
I am working on a couple different projects right now. Yesterday I went through the ISE materials, making sure links work. The old main page, though, had lots of code problems. If you do a view source on the page, you will see that it was generated from a Word document. Yuck. To fix that, I stripped the actual text out of the page, created a new html file, and copied the text into it. Then I built a css file to handle the look and feel for the site (actually 2, one for the main page, one for subpages), and reduced the size of the file from about 20 down to 2 Kbytes.
The other project I’m working on is to set up a simple database from scratch and hook it into a php front-end. Garrett indicated that he’d like me to teach him how to do database design, but with our (mostly) conflicting schedules, he just wants me to build this one and hook it all together by myself. So that’s what I’m doing.
In other news, I had to withdraw from Elon for the semester. In switching from full-time to part-time enrollment, they decided to reevaluate my financial aid (which they did not do last year), so I was unable to attend this fall semester. However, I have had a couple projects come up to work on outside of here which I would not have had much time for if I were in class during the week. And I will be reenrolled for the spring semester, so this is just a bit of a break for me.
Posted by wmyers as work at 7:53 PM EDT
August 27th, 2004
rewrites
This week I have been trying to rewrite the Mentor Center reflections page, where summer interns submit their thoughts about what they accomplished during the past week, and their ideas/goals for the upcoming week. Since it is not used during the ‘off’ season, now is a good time to make minor updates to the page.
There were a couple of poor UI design choices made when the page was first built, so I am trying to change them. So far I have gotten the code of the page actually readable, and now I am working on getting the core functionality to how I want it to work.
School starts up for me next week, and I should be taking the CSC classes Computer Organization and Senior Seminar. I expect to utilizing my time here for Elon’s ELR requirement, which equates 40 hours of internship during the semester as 1 college credit.
Posted by wmyers as work at 7:52 PM EDT
August 12th, 2004
I still hate Java
But with yesterday’s problems solved, it was time to plug ahead on the WEAVE applet today. Garrett and I spoke briefly about how to map given epsilon values onto the curve, and to generate their associated sigmas. There is a minor bug in the mapping feature, but it is drawing lines on the screen, more or less like it’s supposed to.
And now I get to take a couple days off and go enjoy the Great New England Airshow at Westover Air Reserve Base in Massachusetts. You can find out more (info here) about the airshow.
Posted by wmyers as work at 7:51 PM EDT