Ruralocity Blog

I’m restructuring my blogging activity and moving over to my vainest domain name yet: www.aaronsumner.com. That’s not to say nothing will ever happen here again, because, you know, you never know.

Anyway, see you there.

The WordPress mobile blogging app is now available for the iPhone. Download your free copy from the iTunes App Store. So far, so good.

This blog of mine just won’t stick. I can’t commit to it in its current form, and I think I know why–it rambles along with whatever interests me at the moment, and if you know me at all you know my interests wax and wane with the tides. So, as elsewhere in my life, this site is chock-full of half-started initiatives that never go anywhere.

I need to work on that. Here, at least.

Awhile back I had an idea about a blog called “Series,” in which I’d post everything I did in a certain venture and give it my all until that venture fizzled. For example, when I had that idea I was getting ready to drive back to Kansas after four years in Seattle. I was going to document the trip with photos and words. The problem with that one was I’d forgotten from the original trip up there that there’s really no time to stop and smell the roses–I was on a mission to beat the truck with all our stuff. I made a half-assed attempt but nothing really came of it.

But I still think it’s an interesting way to get a slacker like me going on writing. So here’s what I’m going to do.

First off, I want a new theme for my blog. The one I was using, Particles, looked neat but had limitations. This new one, plaintxtBlog, is OK and will work for now, but I need something more suited to me. That will probably mean going back to crafting a custom WordPress theme, but I hate PHP. And I kind of hate WordPress. Supposedly TextPattern and Emotion Engine are better ways to go, but they still have that PHP albatross going against them. I think the general consensus in the Rails community is that you should write your own engine, but I don’t see the point when someone somewhere has surely written something that would work for me. I’ll probably just stick with WordPress since it’s easy to host and manage with my provider.

Second off, but more importantly, is the content. This is not the place for random non-sequiters and software tips. I’ve got Twitter and Pownce for that kind of stuff. It’s also not the place for “this is what I did today” posts or what I think about an R.E.M. album I pulled out for the first time in years, because frankly, nobody cares. I’d rather this site document the brief, sometimes intense moments in which I’m interested in something more than anything else.

It’ll be good for a laugh, if nothing else, like “Hey, remember that time I could tell you from memory the specs on a few dozen esoteric European sports cars? Ha ha ha!”

I debated a bit on what to do with what’s here now. A couple of the things I posted drew some traffic, so it would seem foolish to do a mass-delete. I’ll probably make a category to store all that junk, just to get it out of general sight, and go from there. Fresh starts are good, right?

Now I just need to put together time to put this all together and get a new, consuming interest to drive it. School is almost over. I’m in a rather pointless summer class right now, and then my final project looms this fall, and then that’s it–I’m back to determining my own schedule and interests in January. Who knows what those interests might be, but I can tell you they won’t be related to instructional design or educational technology.

So anyway, I don’t know who actually reads this–there are at least a few people popping in and out based on what I see on Google Analytics–but I figured I’d give you a heads up. I need to make this work for me, you know?

Good news–SproutCore has been updated and, among other things, the incompatibility with Rails has been resolved.

I’m interested in SproutCore, the Javascript application framework that was the belle of WWDC last week and what Apple is using for its new Mobile Me web apps. But be careful, Rails developers–after installing the sproutcore gem last night I started getting Rubigen-related errors when trying to generate anything in a Rails project. Uninstalling SproutCore did the trick.

I’m following Gizmodo’s live coverage of today’s WWDC keynote, and saw Schiller referred to the new Mobileme push e-mail/calendar/etc. app as “enterprise for the rest of us.”

It sure would be interesting to see Apple take on the enterprise with this as a service IT departments could install on their own networks, huh?

It’s not secret that I really dislike the KU Template, or the design the powers-that-be at KU have imposed upon all KU departments to promote uniformity across the campus’s web presence. The problems I have with it are (a) from an identity standpoint, one size really does not fit all; (b) it’s not enforced in any remotely uniform fashion (uh, the design joke that is the KU Athletics website, anyone? We win a freaking national championship in basketball and the Orange Bowl and we’re still stuck with what CSTV gives us?); and (c) the XHTML/CSS coding is terrible. I’m not saying it was an easy task, but it is not good CSS, not good semantic design, and it uses an outdated technology to bring it all together (server-side includes? Seriously?).

Unfortunately, we’re stuck with the design–and rather than sit and complain about it I figured I’d go to work implementing a version of the KU Template I could use with tools I routinely deploy–so, less with the SSI and more with the WordPress. Loosely based on work done by a few colleagues of mine (namely Jason and David), I give you a WordPress-powered site with a theme based on the KU Template:

I’m still tweaking it, but it’s getting more solid by the day. I have this in my group’s secure Subversion server, but if you’re at KU and would like a copy let me know.

Now that I’m two years into my graduate program, with the finish line (hopefully) within sight this fall, I figured it’s time to start ruffling feathers. Nobody reads this anyway, so why not pick fights, right?

OK, I’m not really picking fights. But I do want to point out some things that have driven me nuts over the last few years of online (or online-supported) courses I’ve taken–in the hopes that maybe, just maybe, it will change some practices and standard thinking when it comes to online learning. Here’s the first: Posting assignments in Word format.

I’m sure this practice is perfectly transparent and un-noticable in the Windows/Internet Explorer paradigm, but for those of us working outside of said paradigm, it’s annoying. On my Macs, when I want to look at an assignment, I have to download a file and open it. Outside of my browser. Yeah, Leopard’s Quick Look feature makes this less of an issue, but it’s still an issue because I’ve got a file sitting on my hard drive that I don’t need.

Most, if not all, course/learning management systems afford instructors the ability to provide assignments and instructions to students in-system. I know Blackboard and Moodle do. Use them! There might come a day when the majority of your students don’t use a Microsoft product (I don’t), and running these files through a converter will be a nuisance at best and a reason to drop a class at worst.

Hello, blog. Long time no write.

I don’t want to see this turn into a gaming blog, but I just read on WiiNintendo that a sequel to Beyond Good and Evil may be in the works. The original is on my half-finished games list, but don’t let that suggest it’s not good–in fact, I thought it was a well-designed game. I just had other things get in the way of finishing it.

Anyway, neat news. I hope it comes to pass.

I was pretty excited about live broadcasts of every NCAA tournament game on Joost, especially given CBS’ bad habit of dropping a game of local interest in favor of something nobody outside the east coast cares about. Well, sucks to be me–I’ve been trying, unsuccessfully, all morning to get a game to load.

Adam Ostrow at Mashable got a game to load, but I know it’s not a problem between me and Joost in general–I mean, I got an episode of What’s Happening! to play, no problem. Just no basketball.

It’s too bad, because it looks like CBS has completely dropped the multi-paned live look-in view I always loved so much.

Apple officially announced the software development kit (SDK) for the iPhone today. In short: It looks like it will be really easy to download and install third-party applications for your iPhone. You’ll be able to install and uninstall programs directly from the phone or through iTunes. In addition, if you rely on enterprise e-mail (such as Microsoft Exchange) you’ll be able to access mail directly via Exchange protocols (I can access my KU mail from my phone via IMAP, for what it’s worth).

Tons of blogs have covered the news in detail, so I won’t rehash what they’ve said–read for yourself:

• iPhone gets official third-party apps, AIM, and enterprise support (Lifehacker)
• iPhone SDK – what you need to know (The Unofficial Apple Weblog)
• Streaming video of Steve Jobs’ presentation on the iPhone SDK (Apple, via TUAW)
• iPhone enterprise and SDK: First impressions and questions (Daring Fireball)
• Happy now, bitches? (Fake Steve Jobs–don’t read if you don’t like the swearing.)

One downside to how software will be distributed–that is, exclusively through Apple–is that the availability of freeware from small developers will probably be slim and none. Apple is charging developers $99 per year to distribute software through the exclusive channel. So, unless software developers adopt freeconomics en masse, we may be limited to freebies from the big guys only. That’s not the worst thing in the world–giving the small developers a few bucks every now and then is what keeps things moving forward.

Either way, I’ve been waiting for this since the day I bought my iPhone–I’ve been a chicken about jailbreaking my phone because (a) it’s my only phone, and (b) I’m not well-off enough yet to go around throwing money at expensive cell phones willy-nilly.

I finish grad school in December. That’s still quite a ways away from now, but it doesn’t stop me from thinking about how I’m going to spend all of that new free time I’ll have on my hands. One project, I’ve decided, will be to revisit the short stack of games I actually enjoyed but never got around to finishing. This series will be a commentary on these games and eventually (hopefully) reports that I’ve indeed finished them.

Let’s take a look at the games, roughly in the order of when I started them:

• Beyond Good and Evil (PS2)
• The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker (GameCube)
• Tekken 5 (PS2)
• The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (Wii)
• The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (Super Nintendo, via Virtual Console)
• The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap (Gameboy Advance)

Last week I worked on a small school project in which we explored the merit of iPhones in education. Abiliene Christian University, it turns out, is on the forefront of this cause, with an excellent blog called iThinkEd posting the progress of their study into the matter.

Today, ACU announced they will begin handing them out for free to incoming freshmen, beginning this fall. Students will be able to “receive homework alerts, answer in-class surveys and quizzes, get directions to their professors’ offices, and check their meal and account balances” via web-based applications developed by the school.

This is very intriguing! Makes me kind of wish I’d contacted them last week about their work; they’re going to be hammered with requests now. Good luck, ACU!

(Via Engadget)

I use Safari as my web browser because it’s pretty. There, I said it. OK, I also use it because it’s easy to sync up bookmarks between multiple computers and my phone (yes, I use del.icio.us, but I don’t like adding sensitive stuff there, such as where I bank). But as pretty as Safari is, it can be a little light in the features department. That’s what makes Keywurl so neat.

Keywurl is an open source (read: free for you) plugin for Safari, meaning it adds extra functionality to the browser. Once you install it and restart Safari, you can search particular sites directly from Safari’s address bar (or, where you type a web address). Let’s look at why this is handy. This table outlines a few examples:

OK, maybe it doesn’t look as impressive in table form as I thought it would, but it’s really handy, trust me. You can also extend it. For example, here’s an expansion you can use to search KU’s directory:


http://www.aims.ku.edu/directory/search?searchfor_name=@@@


Give the expansion string a simple keyword such as ku, then you can easily look up contact information on campus, using the main KU directory by typing something like


ku aaron sumner


Pretty slick, huh? Here’s one for Emporia State University:


http://www.emporia.edu/search/facstaff/staff.php?search=@@@&Input=Submit


(Note: From what I can tell, ESU’s faculty/staff directory only supports one keyword–so enter in just a first or last name.)

Installation can be a little tricky–locate the README file in the download and follow the instructions carefully. It should only take a minute or so.

Download Keywurl and give it a try. If you have any handy searches to share, add them to the comments.

In the interest of trying out the new Apple TV features we rented Michael Clayton a couple of nights ago. We’re finally getting around to watching it tonight. It’s paused while B. takes a call, so I’ll go ahead and report.

It’s pretty easy to find a movie using the built-in navigator. On some movies you have the option to view the high definition version for an extra buck (which we did). At that point it accesses your Apple Store/iTunes account to make the transaction. Apparently, the first time you do this you have to connect to the iTunes Store on a computer to verify the change to your account. I’m not sure what change I made but I think it was when I told Apple TV to remember my password. Anyway, after I verified the change I went back to Apple TV and repeated my choice to download the HD version.

At that point, downloading starts. I have no idea how long it took to download, but after about four or five minutes it was ready to start streaming. If I rent this way again I might try this option to see how well it works–on this Thursday, though, we went to bed instead.

Fast forward to this evening: We queued the movie up and began playback. The HD version’s picture and sound are both great. The picture quality is 720p, which is the same for most (all?) HD television (Blu Ray is technically much higher quality, at 1080p). The sound is 5.1 stereo, giving my surround sound system a workout. Playback has been flawless.

Again, I’m doubtful that we’ll make regular use of this feature but I must admit it’s nice to have. It’s very easy to use–just be ready to jump to a computer to confirm your account the first time.