James Revillini

eLumen Community Forum

james — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 15:42:04 +0000

I just launched the eLumen Community Forum - it is a place for eLumen users to collaborate on solutions, compare notes, chat about higher education assessment strategies, and get answers about the technical side of running eLumen.

By day, I am the eLumen administrator at Tunxis Community College, and in working with eLumen I’ve run into all manner of snags - I assume that other colleges which are supporting their own eLumen server may be having the same issues, and I’d like for them to be able to benefit fro the solutions we’ve found, and vice versa.

The key discussion area on the forum, I think, is going to be the Mashups board. The Mashup board is the place to discuss bridging eLumen data with other data sources to produce new ways to navigate the data. The reporting mechanism baked into eLumen is pretty good for basic analysis, but to show the numbers in the context of other things, such as a student’s e-Portfolio work, or to deliver the numbers in an interactive web application where relationships are links to new views, would require the data to be brought into something else.

Anyway, enough about that here. No one reads this blog anyway. But I also want to say that I’m excited because phorum is AWESOME software for a forum site, and I’ve already made my own template (called orange on olive), which is featured - you guessed it - at the eLumen Community Forum.

PHP Script: Convert Excel or tab-delimited file to html table

james — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 22:39:15 +0000

Here’s a script which I wrote today while on the jorb. The purpose was so that someone could copy and paste from an excel spreadsheet into a textarea, click a button, and voila: an html table.

The nice thing was that when I pasted Excel data into the textarea, it was tab-delimited with line breaks. At that point, all I needed to do was some replacements and throw a table wrapper on it.

Here’s the code for the conversion function (sorry - i haven’t installed a php code parser yet to style this more nicely):

/** * convert tab delimited file to html table * @input string tab-delimited text * found at http://james.revillini.com * note: you are not required to keep the above copyright notice in this code. */ function tabs_to_table($input) { //define replacement constants define('TAB_REPLACEMENT', ' '); define('NEWLINE_REPLACEMENT', ' '); define('TABLE_BEGIN', '

');
define('TABLE_END', '

');

//replace all tabs with end-cell, begin-cell
$input = preg_replace (’/\t/’ , TAB_REPLACEMENT , $inputlist);

//split the list on linebreaks
$rows = preg_split (’/\r\n/’ , $inputlist);

//replace all linebreaks with end-row, begin-row (with or without altRow class)
$output = ”;
foreach ($rows as $index => $row) {
$output .= $row . sprintf(NEWLINE_REPLACEMENT, ($index%2?”:’ class=”alt”‘));
}

//build table
$input = TABLE_BEGIN . $output . TABLE_END;
return ($input);
}

Joomla Tip: “mgmedia2 component not installed. Please install first to use the plugin.”

james — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 23:25:06 +0000

If you are seeing “mgmedia2 component not installed. Please install first to use the plugin.” then you probably either

just tried to uninstall the mgmedia2 thing from your Joomla admin panel, or
are trying to install mgmedia2.

If you want to uninstal mgmedia2, make sure you go to Installers > Mambots and uninstall the mambot/plugin as well.

If you want to install mgmedia2, you missed a step and you still need to installed the component in Installers > Components. See readme.

I just wanted to put this out there in case anyone is struggling with it.

[SOLVED] Dreamweaver: Site-wide, design time style sheets using templates

james — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 20:32:46 +0000

Prerequisites:

Every page of your site must be a PHP file, or some kind of server side language file.
You must use Dreamweaver templates to make the design-time stylesheet automatically apply itself to the pages of your site.

This solution is not going to work for everyone because of the two prereqs above; sorry about that. But if you do meet those requirements, then your life just got a LOT easier.

It’s simple:

Open your template.
Switch to code view.
Go to the tag
insert this code:
yui-2.4.1-dwcs3-design-time.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css">


Save the template (and apply it to all the pages of your site).


Notes:
The linked stylesheet file is one I use to correct the rendering of a YUI  Grids-based layout because natively, Dreamweaver renders it with the main .yui-b block taking only half of the space of the #bd element.
And a note to Adobe:
BUILD THIS FUCKING FEATURE INTO THE GODDAMNED SOFTWARE. (This is the first time I’ve ever sworn on the record on the Web.  Sorry for offending non-Adobe employees.)



Dynamically populate an element styled with white-space: pre
james — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 16:08:08 +0000
Assume:
$ = document.getElementById;

pre = $(’pre-text-element’);  //pre-text-element is the ID of my pre tag element
You cannot use:
$(’element’).innerHTML = ‘line1\nline2′; //will not work in IE7
You must do this:
e = $(’element’);

while(kid=e.firstChild) { e.removeChild(kid) }  //remove all children in the

e.appendChild(’line1\nline2′);
Lame, huh?



Killing me softly: Searchindexer.exe
james — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 16:04:53 +0000
Do you have a process that won’t die?  Tired of searchindexer.exe calling you at home to harrass you for the rent?  Do you have credit card debt?
Your solution is here!  OK, what you want to do to prevent searchindexer.exe (searchprotocolhost.exe) from spawning everytime some MS product loads, just follow these simple steps:

Start > Run
Enter ’services.msc’ and hit Enter.
Find ‘Windows Search’
Punch the screen (just kidding)
Double-click (on the Win Search item)
Set ‘Start-up type’ to ‘Manual’.
Click the ‘Stop’ button if it is enabled (because that means the service is running)
Click the ‘Log On’ tab
Select each hardware profile item on the list, one at a time, and click ‘Disable’ for each one.

That should stop it from running without hacking your system to bits.  Now, I have to say that I have NO IDEA what this is going to do to the searchability of your MS products.  I mean, if Outlook is firing it up, it must be indexing your e-mail with it or something, so who knows what effects it could have ultimately.  But in the mean time, enjoy the CPU time you’ll save, which I believe translates to energy savings as well.  It must, right?
If I’m wrong, educate me.



Linux Kernel 2.6.22-x and the Zonet ZEW2501 installation guide
james — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 02:55:47 +0000
I finally got the Zonet ZEW2501 USB Wifi dongle working with the 2.6.22 kernel in Ubuntu.  It was quite a hassle.  If you can, shop around for something which linux plugs ‘n’ plays with, rather than going through all this.  But I would guess that if you found this post, it’s probably too late.
So on to the guide (I posted it on the ubuntu forums): http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=3191237#post3191237



Condiments for SWFUpload Initial Release
james — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 05:04:40 +0000
I have released a kit which aims to make life a little easier for those of you who want to spruce up the SWFUpload interface with some style. An example using the tango desktop project theme:




Condiments for SWFUpload
james — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 03:53:10 +0000
DISCLAIMER: I know this page could use some work.  Please offer constructive criticism.
What is Condiments for SWFUpload?
It’s a kit that can help you get started with SWFUpload by providing a pretty good HTML sample, initialization script that could be customized, callback script, and css to make things look nice.

The picture above shows how the thing will look if you use the base style + the tango desktop project override styles and icons (icons are included).
Instructions
Here’s my first stab at some directions for this kit:

Download Condiments for SWFUpload v1.  It was built to work with SWFUpload 1.0.2.
Unzip the package to a temporary directory.
Open the ‘base’ folder.  Copy the files in here to your web root.
Optional but recommended: Open the ‘tango’ folder. Copy the files in there to your web root.
Open /js/swfupload/init.js and configure the flash_path and upload_script properties.
Open /upload_template.html and copy that code to the location where you want the uploader to show up on your site.  Fix the paths to the scripts and css while you’re there.
See if things are working (at least as far as styling goes).

Unless I forgot something, that should take care of it.  This is my first release, so I’m looking for feedback and/or contributions.
Other Information
Tested and looked good on FF 2.0.0.3 and IE7.
Tango Desktop Project icons  are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license.



Awesome Twistie Garlic Bread
james — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 17:23:21 +0000
Add these -
sorry i’ll finish this post later