I'm a geek working as a distance learning specialist for a large corporation.
My "radio station"
(Unfortunately, only works in IE.)
Loading ...This time I followed the directions to delete (almost) all the WordPress files on the server before uploading the new versions. That seems to work much better than overwriting them.
So far I haven’t seen any errors (though the database upgrade page was filled with errors, it also said it was successful at the end). Here’s to nothing cropping up moving forward.
And it even looks like I might be able to keep my theme. Still haven’t messed with the sidebars yet. That’s next.
Argh.
Well, I finally upgraded WordPress to 2.3.3. I’d been putting it off because I was afraid it would break things. It ended up being worse than I thought.
I’m still finding errors in the upgrade itself! I had to pull old versions of files just to get it complete the upgrade procedure. Who knows what I’m going to find when I finally get through all this.
Most of the plugins I use actually work fine. That’s nice. The one exception is the polls, which I just have to upgrade, but holy cow, that one’s a pain in the neck to upgrade. From the instructions, it looks harder than upgrading WP itself.
And the biggest disappointment…. my theme, Tiga, died. It was already having problems with the previous upgrade but I was able to get past that issue. This time, it’s too much for me to figure out. Seems to be a sidebar widget problem, mostly, but that’s beyond me. It’s a shame, ’cause I really like this theme. Guess I gotta go out on a search. If anyone has suggestions for a nice 3 column theme, I’m all ears. (If I get the polls working, maybe I’ll put up a poll on it… ).
Anyway… lots of transition around here for the foreseeable future. Don’t be surprised if things break, get fixed, go away, come back, and just look plain different.
[Update: HA! At least three hours invested in this so far, and I finally got to the point where I had to restore my previous version. Too much was broken. I couldn't even edit posts. Cut my losses and run. Maybe I'll try again tomorrow night.]
[UPDATE: as you can see below, I'm having some problems with CoolPlayer - like it doesn't work anymore. I've switched to the Anarchy player.]
As you can see from the previous post, I’m trying out a new plugin to embed video in WordPress (the software running this blog). There are some good players out there, but I’ve found that CoolPlayer does the job nicely for me, with a total minimum of effort - and that’s what I’m really after.
I’ve had trouble using the YouTube provided “embed” code previously, because WordPress mangles the OBJECT code it uses. This simple plugin lets me avoid that issue. It also handles more than just video - it plays audio, too - and it allows me to use both on-site and off-site files. Multiple file formats are supported. It’s really a nice little app.
Here are some examples of using it:
Off-site video (YouTube):
[coolplayer width="480" height="380" autoplay="0" loop="0" charset="utf-8" download="1" mediatype=""]
Google Docs in Plain English
[/coolplayer]
On-site audio (mp3) - the little blue arrows aren’t part of the player, they’re from another player technology I have installed here:
[coolplayer width="100" height="100" autoplay="0" loop="0" charset="utf-8" download="1" mediatype=""]
Pop-pop not talking
[/coolplayer]
Honestly, I don’t think I like it as much for audio, but it works.
Technorati Tags: WordPress plugins, video, audio, coolplayer
Nothing new going on here. I created the map for a project at work, and I wanted to test out the embedding plugin bubbl.us has for WordPress.
So, for what it’s worth, here is a draft of my talking points for presenting some Learning Technology ideas to my team (click on the map and drag to move it, or zoom in using the wheel on your mouse or the controls in the upper-left of the map):
Hmm… I’m not sure I like that I have to pick a static size for the view. It’s not terrible, though. For those of you with smaller screens… sorry about this. Lemme know if it’s really out of hand.
As for the content, the goal of this particular effort is to show how a bunch of different learning technologies can support different modes of training/learning. It’s by no means complete… just a discussion starter. But if you have any insights on technology categories I should use or selling points for each of them, please share. I’ve still got over a week before I have to present this, and I could use the help.
Technorati Tags: bubbl.us, mind mapping, learning technology, learning 2.0, web 2.0, collaboration software
Argh. I mentioned before that my site theme settings suddenly changed. Today I tried to fix it by upgrading to the latest version of WordPress. I was pretty sure that wasn’t the problem, but figured it might help if there was hacking involved. It didn’t. In fact, you may notice that my Blogroll is now broken. On the admin side, I’m also seeing weird things with my “Categories” (Blogroll categories and Posting categories are mixing up).
On the plus side, there seem to be a few cool features in this new version that I’ll have to check out later.
For now, I’m too tired to keep investigating either the good or the bad. All I can do now is repeat myself….. Argh.
I find a lot of stuff that I want to share, but that doesn’t make it into a blog post of its own, for whatever reason (usually a lack of time and/or energy).
If I’m subscribed to the feeds, those interesting posts generally make it into my Google Reader Shared Posts page (currently in the right sidebar here, though I’m going to move it to it’s own page once I figure out how to get the Javascript to work in WordPress). For the other posts I run across, I’m going to start periodically creating a “link list” post like this one. At the moment, I’m thinking I’ll try to categorize the links, but I’m still figuring out what will work best so that may change.
So, that’s enough with the extended preamble. On to the links!
Which Operating System would your favorite Sci-Fi characters choose?
» Spock loves Linux, Vader is a Mac Daddy | Geekend | TechRepublic.com
The History of Sci-Fi, written by the fans
BBC - My Science Fiction Life
Thoughts and memories about all the sci-fi we grew up with, from the 1930’s to today, across all “platforms” - books, movies, TV, radio, comics, etc. - chosen and examined by users.
Justice League Of America - The Movie?
Slice of Scifi - Science Fiction TV & Movie News, Interviews & more » JLA Finally Coming to Theaters? Keep Your Fingers Crossed!
In theory this is really cool. In practice, I don’t think they’ll pull it off. In addition to the casting issues the post mentions, there’s the problem of trying to fit all those characters into a 2 hour movie. It’s hard enough to get a single fully fleshed out superhero character in a film, let alone seven. The closest movie to pull that off was X-Men, and they really only focused on Logan (Wolverine) and Rogue in that one.
Video, Music, Podcasts, Audio, and Multimedia WordPress Plugins « Lorelle on WordPress
This is a great annotated list of plug-ins for WordPress users trying to add video or audio of any sort to their blog. I wish she would have put this list out months ago - it would have saved me quite a bit of time and effort.
Now I have to go through all those options and see how I can best use them.
Thanks, Lorelle, for the compilation (and the link to my previous post on the subject)!
Technorati Tags: WordPress Plugins, multimedia, audio plugins, video plugins, blogs
[update: I've since started using the Anarchy plugin, which also makes standard hyperlinks playable, and though I'm on the fence about which technology I like better for audio (I got Anarchy for the video component), I lean toward the method described below because it's less visually intrusive. Unfortunately, I can't figure out how to disable the Anarchy audio player segment without disabling the whole thing, so all the example links below (and throughout this site for now) show Anarchy's "audio mp3" indicator beside the simple blue arrow used by the del.icio.us player described below. The blue arrow is the only thing installed by the instructions below (visually) so keep that in mind as you continue reading.]
I’ve been looking for something like this for months. Who knew I’d find it without even trying on one of the most popular websites in the world?
A while back, I was working on some podcasting ideas for work and testing some things out here on Caddickisms. I spent a long time just trying to get an audio player to work correctly in WordPress (the software that runs this blog). The problem is that everything I found used the HTML <object> tag, which WordPress kept re-writing (and breaking) behind the scenes. I thought I had it fixed when I ran across the Gmail audio player, which uses the <iframe> tag, but apparently something gets screwed up there too, because while it works in Firefox, it’s broken in Internet Explorer (at least in version 6).
So… I gave up. I’m still working on Podcasting related stuff at work, but it’s not posted in a blog, so there was no reason to try to fix something I wasn’t going to be doing very often, if at all. But it kept gnawing at me…
Today, I finally found something that works and it’s easier than any other method I’ve found.
Here’s what you need to know:
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://images.del.icio.us/static/js/playtagger.js" ></script>That’s it.
On a blog, you might think you’d have to put the HTML into a template page. You could do that, but with WordPress’ Sidebar Widgets, you don’t have to! Just use one of your existing Text Widgets and put the code in there. I put mine in the “About Me” widget. Works great! Now anytime I want to link to an MP3 file, visitors can play it directly from my page!
Here are some examples:
Grey Eye Glances: Close Your Eyes
(for more of this type of music, try out the Grey Eye Glances site.)
Technorati Tags: website MP3 player, javascript tricks and tips, WordPress tips, del.icio.us tools, play tagger, Grey Eye Glances
The Simple Dollar » Live Free: Seven Pieces Of Open Source Software That Transformed My Life
Okay, “life transforming” might be a little extreme … but then again I haven’t tried most of them yet.
I have tried GAIM, and I like it. I use Firefox, Thunderbird and (obviously) WordPress on a daily basis (though I haven’t heard of most of the extensions he mentioned).
I loaded Open Office once, but I had a really hard time letting go of Excel. Oddly, I had a hard time letting go of Word, too, and I HATE Word. I guess I’m familiar enough with them that I don’t want to learn anything new anymore. That’s depressing.
I’m intrigued by a few of the others. Once I rebuild this system, as I keep promising myself I’ll do soon, I’ll try a couple of these and see if they live up to the hype.
Technorati Tags: open source software, personal productivity, free software
SimpleTags - A WordPress Plugin for Technorati Tags
Found a plug-in for WordPress that makes it dead easy to create Technorati tags. Easy enough that I may actually do it! And those of you who know how lazy I am, will truly appreciate the gravity of that statement.
SimpleTags is a WordPress plugin that will allow you to easily generate Technorati tags at the bottom of your blog entries. There are several plugins already available for this purpose, but they all require you to use custom fields within WordPress. The SimpleTags plugin eliminates this need, so you can now easily generate tags with your preferred method of posting, be it by email, a blogging tool like w.bloggar or from WordPress itself.
I’m not really sure why I should do it, but if it’s this easy, why not? Besides, not understanding has never stopped me from doing things before…
Technorati Tags: plug-in, WordPress, Technorati tags, SimpleTags, blog, indexing
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