I finally sat down yesterday to erase and re-install OS X on my old 12” PowerBook G4. However, I was having problems getting the install disk to run so that I could erase the drive and install the OS. I kept getting errors like “this software cannot be installed”, and “this disk cannot be used as an install disk”.

Thinking that wiping the drive would fix it (doesn’t it always? ), I connected the old machine to my new machine via firewire, and booted the old one in target mode. Then I used Disk Utility to write zeros to the drive.

So then I had what amounted to an expensive firewire drive, since it still seemed that none of the install disks we have lying around the lab (including 10.2,10.3) were working. The Panther disk was giving me a circle with a slash through it, so I went looking for an explanation for that, and found a thread that suggested wiping the “PR Ram”, by holding down Apple/Command-P-R at boot. While this didn’t fix the circle-slash issue with the panther disk, I decided to give the 10.4 disk another shot, and voilà - it worked! The rest of the install process went smoothly.

I hadn’t been back to see the Landscape Change Program in a little while. Turns out they’ve made some really cool interface improvements. Now you can zoom in on images, see where an image was taken on google maps, discuss images, and create your own photo albums, among other things. See if you can spot the bicyclist in this early 20th century photograph taken at Shelburne farms.

Pretty neat, huh? If you’re looking for more images from Vermont’s past (and even present), you might start at the search page, where you can see a randomly selected image, drill down to your town using the interactive map, or - and this is my favorite - try to identify a mystery image.

The other day I came across an entry regarding the use of meebo as a communication platform for Librarians and their patrons. That reminded that I’d been meaning to try Twitter, since most reports I’d seen of it suggested that trying it was the best way to figure out what it really was. The fact that it came from the same folks that brought us Odeo piqued my interest even more. Well, I’ve tried it, and I kind of like it. If you’ve got a moment, give it a shot.

We used to have a service available to chat with a reference Librarian on call (and even push/share screenshots, etc. I believe), but I can’t seem to find it now. Perhaps it was just a pilot program?

Zoomify is a pretty slick application that allows you to serve “fast, high-res images in flash”. These images can be zoomed in upon, and if you have the “Enterprise” version as we do, the images can be “annotated” with circles, arrows, labels, and more.

Recently I noticed that Wes, in a fantastic example of synergy in action, got Python upgraded on zoo so that it’s now possible to convert images into the necessary format from within a UNIX environment. This opens up some options that we hadn’t had before, such as being able to process images uploaded via a web interface, and provide web initiated batch processing of images.

Today we’ll look at how to get images converted to the “Zoomify” format, using a free, open source Python script. In short, we’ll be covering:

• Installing the ZoomifyImage package
• Using a PHP “wrapper” with ZoomifyImage to convert a directory of images

• Using a PHP script to easily inspect the processed images

  (more…)

The Problem: Podcasting is not as easy as it could be in MovableType. Unlike some other publishing systems, MT does not automatically create enclosures from material in posts. There may be a good reason for this, but it means that we can’t just use our MT blog as a podcasting platform out of the box.

Some time ago, we installed a plugin for MovableType that would allow us to create podcasts from MT blogs. The plugin gave us a Template Tag, and use required a few steps, including editing the xml index templates. It’s a good plugin, but the process is rather cumbersome, as most folks aren’t even comfortable editing html, not to mention navigating an xml file full of template tags. As more people become interested in using this medium to distrubute their content, we need a more straight forward method for setting this up.

The Solution: “Burn” the feed with FeedBurner. All you need to know is the url for your blog. Here it is in a few easy steps:

1. Go to your blog home page, and copy the URL out of the address bar (i.e. your.blog.uvm.edu/).
   
2. Go to feedburner.com, and paste in the link below where it says “Type Your Blog or Feed Address Here to Get Started“
   
3. Check the box next to “I am a podcaster!“, and click the “Next>>” button.
   
4. On the next screen, you don’t need to change anything, so click on the “Next>>” button.
   
5. Edit the feed information as you’d like it to appear when you send it to people, and fill out the account information to create a new account. When you’ve filled out all of the fields, click the “Activate Feed>>” button.

That’s it! The link you are provided with is the one you can send to people, and subscribe to in your favorite feed reader, or audio program.

Lately I think I’ve been dealing pretty well with my del.icio.us addiction. It started out just perusing the main page, and /popular. Besides being a great place to find cool new tools/toys, it fed within me a fascination with what people take the time to bookmark. I think the term “social bookmarking” might not actually do this phenomenon justice. In a way, it takes “surfing” to another level - one could liken skimming the cream off the top of the internet. Remember that these are lists of what people want to make sure they don’t forget - that is searcheable and browseable to Average Joe. Oh, the Places you’ll go!

But I digress. What I meant to say was, I had thought I had been dealing with this unhealthy obsession pretty well, until murch got me back into it (the other night I got lost in a wonderful blog called coolosxapps, that I saw on his his delicious feed). A few weeks ago I added my feed to the side of this blog. You can add yours or anyones (even a combination of delicious feeds) to your website too, using the tools they give you on the site - it’s as simple as copy and paste.

I’m looking forward to flock maturing - it’ll be nice to have this sort of stuff really built into the browser, as opposed to a collection of bookmarklets and browser extensions.

I wanted to note ADOdb - an excellent php libary, which I stumbled on a while ago. A taste:

The PHP version currently supports an amazing number of databases, thanks to the wonderful ADOdb community: MySQL, PostgreSQL, Interbase, Firebird, Informix, Oracle, MS SQL, Foxpro, Access, ADO, Sybase, FrontBase, DB2, SAP DB, SQLite, Netezza, LDAP, and generic ODBC, ODBTP

Catch that? Looks like it even has drivers for LDAP - neato! What else could you want? Well, an OAI driver would be pretty darn cool. Sounds like a fun project.

I’ve been playing around with more javascript and DHTML toys lately, and incorporating some into my projects to enhance useability. Here are a few I’ve come across recently:

script.aculo.us: from fading, sliding, and flickering elements, to drag and drop elements. Don’t let the flickering box of text on the home page fool you - there’s good stuff in there!

Cross-Browser.com: I came for the X Table Toys, and stayed for the rest of the X Library.

I also recently came upon this article, and related site about using the W3C DOM as opposed to DHTML.

Finally, just for fun, there’s this nifty DHTML spreadsheet app called Num Sum. Weee!

I’ve been meaning to post this one for a while - even so, I’ll try to be quick. I stumbled onto synergy a while back, and just got a chance to install it last week. Pretty sweet stuff - I’m using it to go back and forth between my powerbook and my desktop PC’s at home and in the office. (more…)

Paul Martin put me onto GTD TiddlyWiki the other day. It’s a modified version of TiddlyWiki, built with a mind towards David Allen’s Getting Things Done model for personal productivity.

What’s a TiddlyWiki you say?

“A TiddlyWiki is like a blog because it’s divided up into neat little chunks, but it encourages you to read it by hyperlinking rather than sequentially: if you like, a non-linear blog analogue that binds the individual microcontent items into a cohesive whole. … It’s written in HTML, CSS and JavaScript to run on any modern browser without needing any ServerSide logic.”