Utah Open Source Planet

My current job is researching the best use of web2.0 technologies and principles in the classroom. I and the other researchers use web analytics extensively in evaluating the effectiveness of websites we build. This post is the first in a two-part series about why and how to use web analytics for your social learning website.

This first part explains a bit about what web analytics is and why you should use it.

Why web analytics

All websites have a reason for existence. Depending on the site the reason could be to make money, provide leads, provide support, teach students, etc. Using web analytics helps you achieve your site's purpose in two ways:

• Using web analytics, you can measure the experience and behavior of visitors to your website. Using what is known as KPI (Key Performance Indicators) you can evaluate if your site is meeting your goals for visitors to the website -- or not.
• Using these KPIs you can identify areas where your site is failing to meet its goals and where it's doing well

From these insights, you make decisions on what to do to improve the website. Then you evaluate the success of your changes by measuring changes in the experiences and behavior of visitors to your site, again using your KPIs (I'll write more about KPIs in Part II).

In short, web analytics exists to power the generation of actionable insights.

Web analytics seeks to measure three things

• Behavior? -- What visitors do on the website -- how often do they visit, what pages do they visit most, how long do they stay on different pages?
• Outcomes -- all websites have desired outcomes. The exact desired outcome varies site-to-site depending on its goals. Some sites want visitors to sign up as members. That's one outcome. An e-commerce site's desired outcome is a purchase. A support site's desired outcome is for the visitor to find the answer to the question they had.
• Experience -- answer why the visitor did what they did.
• Why did the customer add an item to his shopping cart, go through all the steps of the checkout process and then leave the site? Did they find the same item for cheaper on another site? Was the shipping price too high?
• Similar questions can be asked about a social learning site. Why doesn't one student ever visit the site? Why does another student visit twice a day. Why does a student do what they do?
• Surveys and testing and experimentation are some of the best ways to understand visitor's experience.

In my mind, the third thing is most important. It's nice to know that a student spent an hour looking at online learning content but we'd really love to know why they did it. Did the student spend the hour because they were studying for a test? Were they finishing an assignment? Is the material helpful? What material is most helpful? Do they enjoy learning with the material?

So behavior and outcomes give you the raw data about what's happening but experience helps you understand visitors in a more holistic manner. Understanding experience gets you into the mind of visitors to your site. Why they do what they do.

Recap

Web analytics help you improve your site in the following manner.

1. Web Analytics provides you with information to understand what visitors do on your site and why.
2. Using this information, you identify weakness you can correct.
3. You experiment with potential improvements and test your changes using your web analytic data.
4. Repeat starting at step 1

Part I explained what web analytics is and why it is valuable. Part II will explain step-by-step how to use web analytics on a social learning site. I will explain the process I'm going through to implement web analytics on a new social learning website I'm building for BYU.

Especially relevant with the recent outage in the Middle East and Asia.

The map

And a great overview of the whole mess at O'Reilly Radar

When I first read about Google Friend Connect, an upcoming service that will allow website owners to easily add social network functionality to their own websites, I immediately thought of these lines from NBC’s “The Office”:

Dwight: Why am I being forced to come in tomorrow and pretend that a website made sales that I made?
Ryan: This is a temporary measure to increase the legitimacy of the site.
Stanley: I don’t like when my clients call me to help them use the website, I’m not seeing commissions on that.
Ryan: I hear you Stanley, that is a great observation. Problems like that will not happen when we launch Dunder Mifflin Infinity 2 point O.
Stanley: When will that be?
Ryan: TBD. Phyllis?
Phyllis: Did the police solve the problem with the…
Ryan: Yes, yes they did, yes they did.
Ryan: Yes, the social networking feature of the Dunder Mifflin Infinity website was infiltrated by sexual predators.
Dwight: I don’t understand why our website has to have social networking at all.
Jim: Yeah, I actually have to agree with Dwight on that one.
Ryan: It’s all about creating a one stop shop consumer experience, alright? You’re chatting with your friends, you’re talking about the latest music, about the election; all of it is happening in our virtual paper store.
Jim: And then an older gentleman asked you “Boxers or briefs?”
Creed: I don’t get the big fuss here, I like the site.
Kelly: If I’d have created a website with as many problems, I’d kill myself.
Ryan: Do you have a question Kelly?
Kelly: Yeah I have a lot of questions. Number one, how dare you?
Michael: [slow clapping] Ryan has done a very good job, and I am not applauding sarcastically. Think about it, a month ago nobody would go on this site because we were worried about getting molested, or losing our identity, having it stolen. But now, at a time TBD, all of the problems will be in the past. Ya done good kid, ya done good.
– Source: OfficeQuotes.net

I thought all this was pretty funny, but the ability to drop social features onto your website with little more than some pasting of JavaScript might just prove us all wrong.  :)

Example:

3 of your friends liked SemiGloss Oxford White Cardstock #80.  Click here to get new friends!

A family friend recently moved to Utah so his wife could attend BYU.  He’s looking for work and has experience coding in C and Python.  If you know of any opportunities, would you please let me know?

Any parent with an autistic child will look for something that may have triggered autism in the family.  As there has yet to be a gene discovered that causes autism, more focus is being made on the possible causes in the environment.  

One modern concern is that vaccines with thimerosal, a mercury-based compound used in some vaccines as a preservative, could be causing autism.  Why?  Because autism is very similar in symptoms to mercury poisoning, and all children get several series of vaccines before they are 2.  The timing is right, the source is identified, everything seems to be pointing in the right direction:  Except there is no scientific proof that thimerosal causes autism.  

But that isn’t stopping some families, which have gone to court.  Most studies rejecting thimerosal as a cause of autism were conducted before 2004.  Since then, according to the plaintiff’s lawyer, 35 articles that were peer-reviewed and published suggest a possible link.  That is what their court argument is running on.  

The problem is they have a huge opponent:  The US Center for Disease Control has not found any link, and therefore considers the claim baseless.  Instead they warn parents to the dangers of not having their children vaccinated.  In fact, there was a recent article on a national outbreak of measles among children.  The MMR vaccine should be protecting them, so either the vaccine is not working or parents are not letting their children have the vaccine. 

What’s my take on it?  Children need to be vaccinated.  Vaccines are very important, particularly for those diseases that are very dangerous (small pox, polio, measles, etc.).  The good news is that thimerosal is being used less and less, and was actually removed from most infant vaccines in 1999.  

Where is it still being used?  The Flu shot.  So, don’t give your children the shot, have them use the nose spray instead.  It was recently approved for child usage, and works just as well.  There are some other shots that you should look out for, and if you have any questions or concerns, ask your doctor.  There are alternatives to thimerosal vaccines for those parents that are concerned, and your doctor can help you make that decision.   

This summer, we had an instructor cancel on us for three classes we had scheduled.  Unfortunately, we don’t have the staff to cover these classes, so we are looking for a contract instructor that would be interested in teaching these classes, non-credit, for students should they register.  If you are interested or curious, please contact Inita Lyon at 801-585-1964 for details.  

vi Editor
The first class is the vi Editor class.  It’s scheduled for June 18th, from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM.  

Shell Scripting Level 1
An introduction to shell scripting taught in the evening, scheduled for June 3rd and June 5th from 6:00 PM to 9:30 PM.

Shell Scripting Level 2
Also an evening class, taught June 17th and 19th from 6:00 PM to 9:30 PM.  

If anyone is interested in teaching these classes, please let us know as soon as possible.  Inita will be happy to answer any questions, give you an idea as to how the class should be structured, and which books are being used.  

Thanks in advance for anyone who signs up! 

This past week has been a beast.  The weekend before, my car would not start.  It just died, with no apparent reason for the problem.  It’s a Volkswagen Jetta 2003 TDI.  I’ve had little problems with it before, but now that the warranty has gone out, I get the major one.  

Of course, I’m of the school of thought that it’s easier to fix your car than to take it in.  Boy was I wrong.  The last car I had to fix was my Geo Metro, which is more of a toy, and has mostly all mechanical parts.  I loved it, because I could troubleshoot and replace just about anything on that baby.  I was real cut up when the thing finally gave up the ghost, and I needed a new car.  

I chose the Volkswagen because they had a good reputation for reliability, and they were filled with the features I was looking for.  Also, they had a Turbo Diesel Injection engine that gets up to 52 mpg with the Jetta (the New Beetle got 60).  That’s why I really wanted it.  Sure, diesel was more expensive than regular gas, but I could burn biodiesel. 

Well, biodiesel hit a snag when I found out about a Salt Lake County law that prohibited the transportation of used cooking oil without a $million insurance policy.  My guess is a company business was being protected from biodiesel hobbyists, but none the less it put a dampener on my plans.  Still, it was cheaper to drive my car than my wife’s Subaru, because I got just great mileage.  

Well, now the thing will not start, and I have to take it into the shop.  It’s not the starter as I originally thought, but something with the electrical equipment.  Add that with my botched attempt to tow the sucker (apparently there isn’t a tow hook on the front of the thing), it’s going to be rather expensive to get it fixed.  

So now I’m looking for a new car.  With the option of biodiesel pretty much null, I need another vehicle with excellent fuel economy, and will be comfortable for me, my wife, my son, and the new baby on the way.  So, I started checking out Hybrids. 

Now, don’t get me wrong, I would rather have another alternative, i.e. electric car, but currently there isn’t an electric car option that will give me the range that I need.  The batteries are just not efficient enough (though they may be in the next 5 years).  Hydrogen isn’t really an option, because there isn’t an environmentally friendly way of creating it in a timely manner.  That, and fuel cells are just too expensive (can’t imagine why, with all that platinum).  

The Hybrids I checked out were listed on http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/hybrid_sbs_Cars.shtml, which is the government’s fuel efficiency listing of vehicles.  I was looking for a cost-effective vehicle that would get roughly the same fuel efficiency that I get with my Jetta TDI.  

The Prius
The first car I think of when I think Hybrid is the Prius.  At first I thought it was a joke, not getting the fuel efficiency that most other economy vehicles get.  But then I actually took a ride in one.  It’s nice, very geeky, and has a great display.  The ride was smooth, and when running just on battery power, it’s very silent.  You can also urk more bang for your buck if you let the wheels charge the battery for you.  For those on a hill (like the one here at the U), it’s great!  And finally, the fuel efficiency is about 50 mpg on the Highway.  That I like. 

The Civic
The runner-up is the Honda Civic Hybrid.  It’s a little more expensive, gets almost the same mpg, and has roughly the same options.  Why didn’t I choose it?  because it’s a little more expensive!  I’m a Scot, after all.  ^_^  

Other options were looked at, but nothing else came even remotely close.  I looked at GM cars, Ford, and others, but none offered the same level of fuel efficiency as either the Prius or the Civic.  I never thought I would go back to a Japanese car after driving a German one, but it looks like I may.  After all, my Korean vehicle lasted longer than any other car I’ve had. 

There is still one thing missing before my wife and I actually get the car, and that is the ability to car-pool.  Once we get that worked out, we will be all set.  It means one of us relocating our work spaces, which could happen soon, and it will not be me.  ^_^ 

After reading through CrackBerry’s Top 10 Reasons Why the iPhone is NO BlackBerry I thought I should compare it to my situation.

I really like my AT&T BlackBerry 8820 a whole lot. I really hate Windows Mobile devices, and dislike the Treo line. But I still want an iPhone really badly. This article makes it sound like BlackBerrys are better. I disagree.

10. The iPhone’s Not Designed for One-Handed Operation

Duh, I call this a feature, not a problem. Even when I am not driving, I still hate typing with one hand. I could care less.

9. Every iPhone is Created Equally–At Least on the Outside

Again, so what. The one model of iPhone is the model I would want.

8. No Removable Battery, No Backup Power Supply for the iPhone

Based on my BlackBerry usage, the removable battery is completely unnecessary. I generally only charge it once every 2 - 3 days. I have never replaced a battery on a cell phone ever. I usually replace the phone before the battery dies. Even if the iPhone’s battery doesn’t last 3 days, charging it once a day is not a problem.

7. The iPhone Has No Native Video Recording Capabilities

And neither does my BlackBerry! I have an 8820, no camera at all. I mean WTF?! I have to step down to the Curve which is a rickety P.O.S. to get a camera? No way.

6. The iPhone Is Too Darn Expensive

Considering I didn’t pay for my BlackBerry (my company did), this doesn’t apply to me again. Plus the difference between an 8820 and an iPhone is worth the benefits.

5. The iPhone Doesn’t Support VoWi-Fi–Even Though It Could and Should

And neither does my AT&T BlackBerry! Not that I really care though since I am on my company plan with huge voice and data discounts.

4. iPhone User? No GPS for You

Ok, this point isn’t completely negligible. I did run TeleNav on my BB for a while. It is incredibly cool, and does some very awesome things with GPS. But in truth I never really used it. GPS for Google Maps was plenty for my usage.

I’d miss the GPS in Google Maps on an iPhone but not seriously enough to not buy one.

3. Want an iPhone? Hope You’re Ready to Switch Wireless Carriers…

Wrong again! I’m already on AT&T. I’m already suffering with Edge (no 3G on AT&T BlackBerrys).

2. No Physical Keyboard? No Thanks.

I am pretty good with the BB keyboard. I will concede that using a virtual keyboard will suck for quite a while. But I will get over it. I am flexible and adjust quickly. The increased screen size is worth the short period of adjustment.

1. The iPhone Third-Party Apps Debacle

The only apps I would miss, that either don’t already exist, or don’t have a webapp replacement, is my Google Talk or an IRC client. There are ways around both via Webapps, though not quite so pretty. Oh well. not a big deal.

In summary, BlackBerry has GPS, better 3rd party app support (for now), and a physical keyboard. iPhone has a camera, huge screen, total hawtness, awesome mobile web browser, media player that doesn’t totally suck. I can certainly say I’m going to get an iPhone as soon as I can.

Today my wife was feeling really bad, and we needed to work out a way for my son to get to school and get home.  So, I took a sick day to take care of my wife and my son.  So I ran to work first to set up the CCNA Bootcamp that started today, and then I ran back home to take my son to school.  

Once there, I checked with my son’s teacher and told her the results of his psychologist visit.  Jonathan couldn’t wait to start playing, and ran right in with the other children.  

I then came home, did some yard work, got some Jello for my wife, and then headed back to get my son.  He was sitting on the teacher’s lap, and looking at a book!  Now, you may think this isn’t a big deal, but my son has no attention span for books as part of his disorder.

As we were leaving, he gave his teacher some eye contact.  Eye contact!  He doesn’t give people eye contact, as part of his disorder.  This is a huge advancement for him.  It means that he is working through his disorder in order to communicate.  

Overjoyed, I brought him home.  He then asked for juice, which he never has before.  His vocabulary is growing, and each day I get more and more excited.  He’s spending more time indicating, and less time trying to make me get what he wants.  Of course, he still wants to do things on his own, and I’m still willing to let him dress himself and get his own dinner.  But all things considered, I’m excited that he is willing to include us in his life.  

Education is an interesting beast.  Everyone wants to learn as much as possible in as little time as possible, so that they can apply what they have learned right away.  Unfortunately, the human mind doesn’t work that way.  Instead the brain keeps your short term memory locked up and passes on only a small portion to your long term memory.  So no matter how much you can technically cram into a small amount of time, only a small portion will be translated to long term memory. 

So what is a professional trainer to do?  How do you deal with cognitive load while still giving a high-quality and timely education experience?  it’s a problem that educators have worked on for generations. 

I was thinking about this in preparation for a training trip.  I will be participating in training to expand our Mac OS X 10.5 Certification offerings, and I want to be sure that any feedback will be timely and well placed.  So I started reviewing in my mind the events, lectures, and material from the first couple classes I attended. 

For those couple of people who have been following my blog, you may recall previous posts that covered these events.  The materials have a much better design, and provide a lot of great material.  But that’s just the problem:  they have a lot of material.  

Both classes have been tight to teach in the allotted time.  Why?  Mostly because the exercises tend to be longer, and there are more details in the topics.  In fact, both classes would do well to have an additional day added to the course format.  

So what can we learn from this in terms of cognitive load?  More is not better.  In fact, more is definitely that:  just more.  Instead, the material should be either watered down (so more time can be spent on reinforcing the concepts), or more time should be added to the course. 

But what’s the magic number?  How do you determine the cognitive load distribution for your students?  The best way would be to 1) make your lecture time and exercise time half the total course time, and 2) Multiply the Lecture time and Exercise time by the number of skills and knowledge per sub-task.  This gives you roughly equal time per sub-task for students to focus on.  And finally, 3) take the time of day into consideration:  morning is great for lecture while after lunch is best for an exercise.  

Of course, in reality, one doesn’t necessarily have complete control on the amount of time the training can take.  Most employers want a content-heavy training so as to decrease the training costs.  So the best thing a trainer can do is provide additional, supplemental information in an external resource.  Online materials are ideal.  Also, continuing discussions long after the training is over is wonderful, if time and resources allow.  With reinforcing materials provided in a central repository (either online or in take away materials), the learners are able to refer back to what they think they recall, but can’t quite remember. 

Generally I don’t change designs of a site, mostly because I’m not a big design person.  But today I found a really cool Steampunk theme that I just had to implement.  I really like it, and I hope you all do too.  ^_^ 

I think I’ll stick with this one, since it’s a pretty nice theme.  At least until I find one that is a bit more in line with the topics I cover.  

Let me know what you think!  

This week we took my son in to the Psychologist for another evaluation.  His intelligence was evaluated, as well as his motor skills, and a huge focus on his interaction.  The psychologist was a little distant, perhaps a little exhausted by the end of the day, but did a fantastic job. 

What was interesting was his final conclusion:  He doesn’t think that our son is particularly Autistic.  Probably based on the questioning look on my face, he mentioned that he thinks my son may in fact have Asperger’s syndrome, which is similar to Autism but different on many levels.  This really took my by surprise, because I have been spending most of my time learning about Autism and had no knowledge of Asperger’s syndrome. 

Asperger’s syndrome begins roughly the same time as Autism, and is so similar in it’s onset to Autism that many children are misdiagnosed.  The main symptoms are delayed speech and focus on specific items/subjects.  It actually is very similar to the overall “Robb” behavior, that of very shy boys that are rather knowledgeable in their chosen fields.  But if it’s a common Robb trait, it’s all been at such a minor level that it hadn’t been an issue.  

So how is this different than Autism?  Autism has a higher social impact, as well as a higher verbal impact.  Many autistic children have their intelligence affected (with the exception of high-level Autism), while Asperger’s children tend to have higher than average intelligence.  And finally, Asperger’s children tend to have a better chance of becoming main-streamed in society than Autistic children.  

Now, the psychologist still said he will call it Autism for our son for now, because of one thing:  his almost total lack of interaction with people.  My son is very much in his own world, rarely interacting with other children or adults outside of a few select family members.  It actually takes some time before he “let’s you in”.  He just recently started to acknowledge my mother, which thrilled her pieces.  This is not a common trait in Asperger’s, but is very common for Autistic children.  

The one thing that has me hoping for Asperger’s is the chance that my son could start talking within a few months, and in full sentences.  Autistic children have a lesser chance of talking in general, while Asperger’s syndrome has a faster catch-up time for speech and communication.  

There is one more disorder that I haven’t mentioned, which is PDD.  PDD, or Pervasive Developmental Disorder (of which both Autism and Asperger’s are a part), is more like a “middle” road as far as speech is concerned.  Children tend to start speaking around 7 or 9, and catch up quite quickly from there.  

So, what does this all mean?  Well, it means that we continue to work with him.  The psychologist gave us a more targeted model for our son, so we can work with him more directly.  It involves parallel play that moves to interactive play, making him say “hello” and “good-bye” to everyone in the room, work on eye contact, and specifically work with common signs to get him communicating.  He will provide 30 things in particular to work on that focuses in these areas, which is perhaps the best thing we could have gotten.  

So while I’m grateful for the help and support that Pre-School is giving him, nothing is more stressful in feeling powerless to help your child.  Now we know what to do, and why we need to do it.  We are now empowered to help our son, and can go at it with a will.  It’s amazing what a targeted program can do.  

• Standing in line for My Chemical Romance #
• Opening band kind of sucked. Still waiting for MCR #
• Dude. MCR puts on an awesome show. #

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• Catching up on past Tekzilla shows #

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• Watching Star Wars Episode 1. Thank goodness for Tivo. #
• Ubuntu Hardy bug report http://tinyurl.com/5qxy7p #

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• Finally got the bugs squashed after the Hardy upgrade. #
• It seems every new version of the Linux kernel breaks VMware modules ability to actually compile. Is this a failure on Linux or VMware? #
• @mollywood It’s better too look good dead, than to be alive and ugly. #

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Due to the comments I recrived on the last post on this topic, I decided to make a few changes.

First I want to say thank you to everyone that showed interest. Apparently this type of plugin is desperately needed. My initial version was just a quick hack to transfer meta data to and from my iPod. Note the extremely hackish nature of the link between iPod and rhythmbox tracks (filename only).

1. The most common complaint was the rhythmbox crashing bug (Segmentation Fault). This is caused by the gpod module when it attempts to locate and read the itunes database on the iPod. My fix was to just check if gpod found the itunes directory, print an error to the console, and skip any processing at all. This will prevent killing rhythmbox, but doesn’t actually fix anything.
2. More intelligent rating updates. I used mockenh’s idea to compare last played dates to determine which rating to use in case of a conflict.

I don’t really have the desire to implement playlist, or podcast synchronization since I have very little time, and I am only a mediocre programmer at best. If someone wants to swipe my code to build on, they are more than welcome to.

1. I just use a periodic rsync to copy music from my iPod to my PC. rsync -av /media/BFUNGUS/iPod_Control/Music/ ~/Music/ Change any paths as necessary.
2. Since I don’t copy songs to the iPod using Linux, I didn’t write that support into it
3. The detection of the iPod mount location is dependant upon the GnomeVFS module. It must correctly recognize your iPod as a Music Player
4. The python gpod module must be installed. Debian users can apt-get install python-gpod

ipodsync v0.2

Lately I have been feeling disappointed.  It seems that more companies are determined to keep their “proprietary” baggage with their products, instead of taking advantage of the open source projects out there.  Personally, I blame the Dot-Bomb period of the 90’s when everyone and their dog funded kids that had no business model, but could boast a good URL and use of Linux.  Yes!  Linux!  I don’t have to pay for it, therefore it has to be a good company!  

Well, that ship had sailed, and the smart companies with business models came through the wash unscathed.  Many became brilliant Wall Street darlings, raking in profits like crazy.  And these companies usually fall within two categories: 

1.  Open Source (or Open Standard) companies that feed off of support or advertisement revenue
2. Proprietary companies that feed off of sales and license fees, as well as support and advertisement revenue

This weekend I finally finished History of Food by Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat (ISBN 9780631194972), as translated by Anthea Bell. I’ve mentioned this book before as I began it, and covered the development of societies and the gender roles that were naturally created from the hunter-gatherer society.

but the book is more than that, it began to weave in and out of history and legend as each new food source was uncovered. It became less of a history of man’s development with food than the history behind the French development in each area (starting on page 365 “Part V Luxury Foods” in a 763 page book). It moves in and out of history, with little need for chronology. The central theme is, after all, the food itself.

Perhaps the most disappointing move in the book is the Franco-centric focus. Little is mentioned of the Asian development of food, other than it’s differing characteristics from those of the Gauls. German development is only mentioned when similar to the French, and Italians are only mentioned in conjunction with pasta. Americans, I’m afraid, are nothing more than ridiculed for their concepts of food, and only mentioned positively when the tomato, maize, and potato are introduced to Europe.

There are whole dimensions of food that are left out in the cold to wither and die because it doesn’t fall within the Gallic centerpiece. Now, I know that French cooking is supposed to be the pinnacle of the culinary world. I know that all the prestige of the culinary arts are tied into the French way of doing things. But there are too many facets of food to tie to just one culture.

I have long contended that culinary excellence has everything to do with the cultural heritage that it represents. Culture is alive in food, it thrives, and it spreads. And we in the United States have a unique position, if we can but grasp it: We have all these gastronomic adventures within reach, if we are but willing to try them. Greek, Italian (not canned, please!), French, British, Japanese, Chinese, Creole, etc. They are all there, all waiting for us to step out of our comfort zones and experience. And at the same time, learn a little respect for a culture that created this wonderful experience.

If it were not for the beginning of this book which covers the first development of food in society (which the French cannot with any hope of sincerity claim as their own), the book would have been immediately relegated to the shelf and never looked at again. The beginning is it’s one saving grace.

Now, I can’t fault Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat for his focus on French cuisine. After all, he is French, and therefore has a predisposition to the French development of food. His focus is also primarily within his home town, which I think actually declares his bias rather well. But it would have been more accurate to say “A French History of Food”, or perhaps “A Gallic History of Food”, rather than just “History of Food”.

Anyway, it is till an excellent read, though if you are not interested in the specifics of French cuisine you may end up skipping several sections. But for nothing else, read the first four sections. That is where development of food in multiple cultures (at least in this book) is at it’s most pure.

Recently my 3 year old son was diagnosed with autism. We took him into a speech therapist after I finally convinced my wife and her family that his lack of speech at 3 was not normal and needed to be addressed. The speech therapist diagnosed his speech development at 11 months, and identified some common behaviors that were typical with autistic children.

At this point, my mind seemed to turn off. I was concerned for my son’s chances of having autism, because my older brother has symptoms similar to autism. This brought about a lot of fear, anxiety, and almost hopelessness because I didn’t know much about autism other than stories of severe cases.

The therapist reminded me that he couldn’t diagnose autism, but gave us some options for speech development and recommended us to the University of Utah for his actual diagnosis. My wife cried as we went home, and I remained numb. We started that day to get our son into the system, which could (and does) take weeks to get to the end goal of getting help for him.

Since then we have met with a behavioral specialist, and I started doing some research online to understand autism. I checked out the National Autism Association website, which gave me a lot of good information.

Autism isn’t genetic, though it does tend to run in families. The reason why they don’t call it genetic is because researchers have yet to find the “autism gene” that would identify autistic characteristics. That, and the fact that autism diagnoses are more common, suggest that autism is environmentally triggered. The problem is, the trigger hasn’t been found.

Some believe that autism is caused by immunizations due to a mercury-based preservatives, though it has yet to be proven. There are also a lot of similarities between mercury poisoning and autism, but again it hasn’t been proven conclusively to be the link.

While speaking with the behavioral specialist, she noted that my son has a very mild form of autism that is effecting only his speech and interaction. This is because he has already started to write his own name (on his own, I might add), and has mastered many skills that other children his age are not commonly doing. His comprehension and problem-solving skills are impeccable, which really impressed the specialist.

So, now I no longer feel as afraid or concerned for my autistic son. He is scheduled for pre-school, where he will have his own teacher that will work only with him. They also figure that he will be fully main-streamed into the school system by the first or second grade. We are also going to work on his speech at home with a combination of pictures and American Sign Language, to help him better communicate his needs and wants.

And the most encouraging news so far: my son has started talking! He’s speaking words more than once, and being more regular in his communication. While most parents with 3 year olds are complaining about the incessant questions and talking of their kids, my wife and I rejoice in every slurred word my son says more than just once. Our dream is to have our son rise to his full potential and overcome his disability.

I know that this isn’t a normal post for my blog, but I want to reach out to any readers that have autistic children, or are concerned about their child’s development. Autism covers a range of severity, and most autistic children tend to be exceptionally intelligent. They just have trouble communicating or interacting. If you have any questions or concerns regarding your child’s development, get them tested as early as possible. The earlier they are tested and diagnosed, the better their chances are to halt and even reverse the symptoms.

My current job is researching the best use of web2.0 technologies and principles in the classroom. I and the other researchers use web analytics extensively in evaluating the effectiveness of websites we build. This post is the first in a two-part series about why and how to use web analytics for your social learning website.

This first part explains a bit about what web analytics is and why you should use it.

Why web analytics

All websites have a reason for existence. Depending on the site the reason could be to make money, provide leads, provide support, teach students, etc. Using web analytics helps you achieve your site’s purpose in two ways:

• Using web analytics, you can measure the experience and behavior of visitors to your website. Using what is known as KPI (Key Performance Indicators) you can evaluate if your site is meeting your goals for visitors to the website — or not.
• Using these KPIs you can identify areas where your site is failing to meet its goals and where it’s doing well

From these insights, you make decisions on what to do to improve the website. Then you evaluate the success of your changes by measuring changes in the experiences and behavior of visitors to your site, again using your KPIs (I’ll write more about KPIs in Part II).

In short, web analytics exists to power the generation of actionable insights.

Web analytics seeks to measure three things

• Behavior? — What visitors do on the website — how often do they visit, what pages do they visit most, how long do they stay on different pages?
• Outcomes — all websites have desired outcomes. The exact desired outcome varies site-to-site depending on its goals. Some sites want visitors to sign up as members. That’s one outcome. An e-commerce site’s desired outcome is a purchase. A support site’s desired outcome is for the visitor to find the answer to the question they had.
• Experience — answer why the visitor did what they did.
• Why did the customer add an item to his shopping cart, go through all the steps of the checkout process and then leave the site? Did they find the same item for cheaper on another site? Was the shipping price too high?
• Similar questions can be asked about a social learning site. Why doesn’t one student ever visit the site? Why does another student visit twice a day. Why does a student do what they do?
• Surveys and testing and experimentation are some of the best ways to understand visitor’s experience.

In my mind, the third thing is most important. It’s nice to know that a student spent an hour looking at online learning content but we’d really love to know why they did it. Did the student spend the hour because they were studying for a test? Were they finishing an assignment? Is the material helpful? What material is most helpful? Do they enjoy learning with the material?

So behavior and outcomes give you the raw data about what’s happening but experience helps you understand visitors in a more holistic manner. Understanding experience gets you into the mind of visitors to your site. Why they do what they do.

Recap

Web analytics help you improve your site in the following manner.

1. Web Analytics provides you with information to understand what visitors do on your site and why.
2. Using this information, you identify weakness you can correct.
3. You experiment with potential improvements and test your changes using your web analytic data.
4. Repeat starting at step 1

Part I explained what web analytics is and why it is valuable. Part II will explain step-by-step how to use web analytics on a social learning site. I will explain the process I’m going through to implement web analytics on a new social learning website I’m building for BYU.

Today Yahoo announced that they are joining forces with the OpenSocial platform, and will be joining both Google and MySpace to build “The OpenSocial Foundation”. This new foundation “will seek to ensure that the technology behind OpenSocial remains implementable by all, freely and without restriction, in perpetuity.” It is modeled after the current industry-supported OpenID foundation. As an addition to that announcement, Google has released “opensocial.org” to promote the development of OpenSocial on a standard platform away from the Google environment.

Read more about it over at OpensocialNow!

Sorry I haven’t been all that talkative lately. Lots going on.

Hey, has everyone heard about Grand Central? It is a service offered by Google that will allow you to do all kinds of great stuff with your phone and phone numbers. You can white/black list people. You can record phone conversations. As the page says, “So many features, you won’t believe it.”

Just head over to http://www.grandcentral.com/ and check it out.

Because it’s beta, you can only sign up if someone invites you. My question is… anyone have an account that would be willing to invite me?

We’ve found and hired a general manager as my replacement at work. I started training him yesterday but have yet to start looking for my own new job. If you have or know of any openings for a tech savvy business guy, please let me know.

I don’t normally blog about this kind of thing but I just have to say: Either WBC is an organization that parodies anti-homosexual extremism or Fred Phelps is himself a born homosexual and hates himself so bitterly that it drives him to spread the hatred.

I actually find this remarkably comforting. When I heard that there were baptists protesting at President Hinckley’s funeral I was disturbed. Now I know that they aren’t real baptists and they might be either funny or mentally ill. God loves you. Seriously he does. He wants you to do better than you’re doing (maybe lots better) and stop doing the things you shouldn’t be doing but he does love you.

This message will self destruct. Really I’m gonna delete it. Just wanted to get it out there for a moment.

Especially relevant with the recent outage in the Middle East and Asia.

The map

And a great overview of the whole mess at O’Reilly Radar

A while ago, I stumbled on a project called wine-doors. I was instantly surprised by it’s power and usefulness, particularly for users switching from one operating system to another.  Wine-doors is a windows software compatability and installation tool. It provides for automated installer packs that describe how to install a piece of windows software, complete with installer-automated scripts. All a user has to do is insert a CD, click on the entry in Wine-Doors for the application in question, and click install.

It works with both Application Packs on remote repositories, as well as single local Application Packs. Application Packs can require a CD or local resources for teh install, or download things from the internet. They contain lots of useful metainfo, and even support things like dependencies.

On first run, it even configures your Wine environment to really good defaults, and even downloads some necessary software. If you tell it that you have a valid Windows license, it can do things like download some Microsoft libraries and fonts, and it sets up the Mozilla Gecko windows tool that allows other programs to render HTML.

I absolutely love this tool. I think it can be amazingly useful for convincing Windows users to switch; in the near future, I plan on writing a tutorial for writing ApplicationPacks, as well as hosting a repo server and a Debian apt-get repo for the packages (debian packages are avialable, but as single downloads).

From the Economist:

At some point in the decade after he moved from the farm in Nebraska where he grew up to the innovation hub that is the San Francisco Bay Area, Evan Williams accidentally stumbled upon three insights:

1. that genuinely new ideas are, well, accidentally stumbled upon rather than sought out
2. second, that new ideas are by definition hard to explain to others, because words can express only what is already known
3. and third, that good ideas seem obvious in retrospect.

There was a very long thread on the misc@openbsd.org mailing list of the last week. It all started with some comments from Richard Stallman responding to complaints to him about his past remarks on BSDTalk. Lots of flaming and other arguments ensued. Including this snippet.

Theo: “Since both emacs and gcc contain code inside them which permit them to compile and run on commercial operating systems which are non-free, you are a slimy hypocrite.”

RMS: “I see you are being your usual friendly self ;-}.”

Much of it was very thought provoking, but the majority was just bickering. The biggest point of the whole war being that RMS had specifically recommended against OpenBSD because it “included” non-free software, referring to the ports system. Theo and others took offense at this because the ports system doesn’t “include” any external software, it is only a framework of Makefiles that make installing lots of software packages, Free and Non-Free, easy. And the entire ports system is 100% Free-Software.

IMHO, the saddest part of this whole debacle is the fact that besides the extremely obscure gNewSense pet project of RMS, there is no other operating system, or distribution of an operating system more Free than OpenBSD. Both RMS and Theo have similar goals with Free Software, but have radically different tactics and personalities.

In response to Herlo’s reviews of openSUSE here and here , I thought I’d give Fedora 8 a shot and give an openSUSE user’s perspective.

Lets start with the bad:
First, during the installation it detected my video resolution wrong (nvidia 6800gt) so I had to do my installation without being able to read most of the screen (didn’t see any easy way to switch to text mode, I was using PXE). I did not have this issue with Ubuntu or openSUSE 10.3 on the same computer but I tried a different computer with an Intel video card and couldn’t reproduce the error.

Second, for some reason the nspluginwrapper was installed by default and caused Firefox to be extremely unstable and crash on any website that had embedded audio or video, once I removed the package Firefox became much more stable. Having it installed by default really made no sense because the computer I was running was a 32-bit system and the point of nspluginwrapper is to allow PPC and AMD64 users to run 32-bit plug-ins.

Third, codecs (mp3, video) were not easily installable. I understand that Fedora can’t include these in the distribution but I would’ve loved an easy way to retrieve them. I had to add extra repositories manually (after googling and finding which ones I needed) and then install them. In openSUSE the community repositories are readily available in yast and all I have to do is enable them, there is also the 1-Click install so you do not have to locate/add any repositories. Codecbuddy is a noble attempt but I would like more options than Fluendo.

Fourth, Flash was not readily available (it comes by default in openSUSE 10.3) and I had to search around the Internet (again) for a repository that included it. Luckily Adobe does provide a Fedora specific repository but I think this repository should be included by default in Fedora (or easily enabled).

Fifth, By default Fedora has chosen the iwlwifi drives for my Intel wireless which is great because its a completely open source driver that does not require a service running. But there are some known bugs in this driver and required me to modify my home network so I could connect to it and I can’t connect to my work network at all. This decision would not bother me except that they do not provide the closed ipw3945 drivers in the repositories as an alternative (openSUSE 10.3 provides iwl as an alternative in the repos).

Sixth, I’ve eluded to this a few times already but openSUSE 10.3 provides many community repositories in yast ready to be enabled but it’s also easy to add and find new ones through webpin and the openSUSE build service and add them quickly through yast/zypper. With Fedora it is a little more complicated to locate and add repositories.

Seventh, Most of the system-config-* applications required a running X server, so I was not able to manage my computer remotely with the provided tools. (boot, date, network, packages, printer, selinux, services, time, and users). Not only did they not have a cli/ncurses based interface, some of them even crashed with python errors instead of letting me know I needed X or they gave me a notice that they are deprecated. Why would you want to enforce configuration tools to require X? These tools also did not provide a central “Dashboard” to use them, so a user has to “Just know” what tool to use for the job, they can’t just browse around an easy to use control panel.

Eighth, By default NetworkManager was not on, I can’t think of any reason not to enable NetworkManager by default on a desktop distribution, especially when a wireless network card is available.

Most of the issues aren’t that big of a problem to solve for relatively experienced Linux users but I think they would be show stoppers and scare regular users away from Linux, there are also some issues with Fedora that are more personal preference than bugs:

First, I think clearlooks is a much better theme than the default Fedora one.
Second, I prefer the SLAB menu from openSUSE. Novell did a lot of usability research that I don’t think should be overlooked and even if Fedora doesn’t want to provide it by default, it should at least be in the repositories or an option in the installation. I found it very difficult to find the things I needed, one example was I wanted to modify SELinux to be permissive instead of enforcing, so I went to System->Administration and it wasn’t there, I had to go Applications->System Tools->SELinux Management. What is the difference between Applications->System Tools and System->Administration and why doesn’t SELinux fit in the latter?

Now that we’ve hit the bad and ugly, lets end on a good note?

First, I really love yum over yast’s package management module/zypper. The console output is a lot more detailed and the GTK interface isn’t as invasive as yast’s (yast’s GTK interface takes focus as it runs updates, so its nearly impossible to use the computer while using it). Also, zypper/yast is unbearably slow, I turn auto-refresh off and only update when I know I have time to wait. Yum on the other hand is lightning fast and I wasn’t afraid to use it.

Second, Bluetooth support was enabled by default, although the default configuration didn’t allow me to connect to my phone, its nice to actually have devices detected and ready to be configured out of the box.

So, overall my personal preference is for openSUSE, I think the advantages out weigh the downfalls but at the same time I believe both distros could learn from each other.

I awoke this morning to this year’s first snow fall. Yipee! I grew up in western Oregon along the ocean where it almost never snows. Because of that, I haven’t yet lost my sense of childhood wonderment at the sight of the world transformed.

A car, a tree, a house, and a family at play

Cars and dirty b&w slush

A recent New York Times article very clearly and rationally explained my stance on marriage. As long as the government recognizes and assigns rights/privileges to those with a marriage licenses, it is an infringement of the civil rights of those denied licenses.

Those opposed to granting marriage licenses to others based on the choice of partner often spew forth ideas based on religion. I have no desire to legislate religion, but the marriage license is not only a religious idea, it is deeply intertwined with government processes, rights, and privileges, making it a civil right.

I can think of two possible solutions to this violation of rights. Remove the marriage license as a government document and tool to determine ones rights. Or the easier alternative to remove the immoral, discriminatory restrictions for getting said marriage license. Religions can continue to decide which marriages they accept or not.

While working as a SysAdmin (System Administrator) there are many tasks of different types. Any good sysadmin knows that there is always room for improvement. Some actually go so far as to script and/or automate everything. These types often end up spending weeks or months developing automation systems while the rest of their duties suffer as do their users.

I once saw an article describing this dilemma. Basically all tasks can be broken into categories based on the difficulty of the task and the frequency of the task. Steps to reduce the time and effort to do these tasks should be prioritized by category. Tasks that are easy to do, that you do frequently, should have shortcuts applied when possible. An example might be using your shell’s alias feature. Tasks that are easy, that you do rarely, don’t bother over complicating it yet. Hard stuff that you do frequently should be automated as much as possible. Perhaps you could try your hand at Shell or Perl scripting. Those rare tasks that take some time on your part should be clearly documented to take out the guess work, perhaps even include copy/paste’able code fragments as well.

I highly suggest these two books by Thomas Limoncelli. The Practice of System and Network Administration, and Time Management for System Administrators. The first book covers a lot of general theory of system administration, not necessarily platform specific but there is lost of unix information. The second book offers excellent ideas and tips on managing your time better, reducing distractions, and getting rid random people interrupting you to ask why their email is slow.

Since Rhythmbox doesn’t handle smart playlists on my iPod, my days of listening to music directly from my iPod are over.

While I do use iTunes at home to do my normal master sync, I need to have my music on my computer at work. So I simply rsync my iPod’s Music to my computer.
rsync -av --delete /media/BFUNGUS/iPod_Control/Music/ ~/Music/
Change the location of your iPod if named and/or mounted differently.

This works great. Rhythmbox found and read the tags of my music, and I have a fully functional music player. Except for one thing. I regularly use ratings and time of last play to make smart playlists. I need this data synchronized to and from my iPod.

Enter the iPodsync plugin for rhythmbox to synchronize ratings, time of last play and play count to and from the iPod. It will autodetect the iPod via GnomeVFS calls. It connects the rhythmbox API to the libgpod API to make the mesh. After installing and enabling the plugin, it will add a Tools -> Sync iPod menu item to initiate the sync. There is no other GUI yet to give you an indication of progress, but it is pretty darn quick. Any Rhythmbox GUI experts want to help out??

Anyway, here it is.
Just extract this archive to your rhythmbox plugins directory (/usr/lib/rhythmbox/plugins). Restart rhythmbox, and you should be good to go.
Rhythmbox iPod Sync plugin

In case you’re worried about the tax implications of Utah’s referendum 1, please take a moment to read the Utah Taxpayers Association’s most recent newsletter or watch the “Truth by the Numbers” video they put together.

The Utah Taxpayer’s Association is very pro-voucher.

Those of you who are relatively familiar with my random ramblings know that I’ve long discussed the idea of introducing laptop or tablet computers into the primary education system in new an exciting ways. My chief argument is that, for the cost that schools pay for their existing computers, text books, projectors, and other technology, the schools could afford (and perhaps, even save money) with providing each student with a lower power handheld device that combines all of that functionality. Some of the ideas so far:

 1. Replace conventional textbooks with digital ones. This offers a plethora of a benefits - the simplest being that schools would save money on Textbooks, as the printing costs would be cut out. It would reduce back strain (less in the bag), make lockers less cluttered, and never again would a student ‘forget their book’. It opens up all kinds of exciting opportunities for interactive content - your textbook contains movies, hyperlinks, vivid graphical examples, integrated applets. Course content could even be customized to make the book simpler to use. Is your course not using a particular part of the book? The instructor can get rid of it. They can customize the example problems to only show or highlight ones you are to do.

2. Automatically managed todo lists. Students would always know exactly what their homework was, and when they needed to do it. You could even integrate time management tools to help them make sure they’re getting the work done.

3. Less paperwork makes things easier to handle. Tests, quizzes, and homework can be partially or completely auto-graded, or all put in a convenient digital place for the instructor to grade

4. Multimedia displayed in class can be shared with the student. Cut out the need for expensive projectors and screens by directly sharing course content with the student. This way, the student automatically has the content saved to their computer for studying or use later, and could even do things like annotate a presentation as you’re showing it.

5. After school hours, a social community system for school students. A convenient program and network for sending your friends a message or finding out what they’re up to tonight. Quickly find times, dates, and information about events going on in your community or school.

 What suggestions do YOU have? How could a GNU/Linux system be used in ways to benefit the education process? What software would you want to see on such a system?

I’ve been working on ideas for a framework that makes sharing application data and instances easily sharable between multiple computers. I like the idea of Anywhere Computing, where it doesn’t matter what computer you’re at, the same applications and data is available to you.

The way I see it, 6 things are needed in each implementing machine:

• Data Transport Protocol
• Authentication Protocol (Kerberos)
• GUI Sharing Protocol (X11)
• Type-Specific Load Handler
• Application Request Interface
• Compatible Window Manager

Now, there are a few usage examples of how this would be useful. The first is to share a GUI app with a friend, or with yourself. This is how it’d work:

1. In the Compatible Window Manager, Drag-and-Drop the Window/Application you want to share into an Icon representing the destination machine.
2. Your computer generates a WINDOW_SHARE_OFFER file, which describes the window and some info on how to connect to your machine. This file is sent over the Data Transport Protcol to the destination machine
3. The destination prompts their user, asking if they want to accept the share request. If they say yes, the destination generates a Kerberos ticket for X11, bundles it up in a WINDOW_SHARE_AUTH file, and transports that back to the Origin.
4. Origin Connects to remote X11 and shares the Window

Next example is, sharing a file along with the ability to edit it simultaneously.

1. You drag and drop the file in question onto an icon representing the destination.
2. Your computer generates an ACCESSIBLE_FILE_OFFER, which contains information about the file, the application it was meant for, and other meta information. It transmits this via the Data transport Protocol to the destination
3. The remote user is prompted on if they want to open or save the file. If they just want to save it, it is simply transfered using the Data Transport Protocol and saved with it’s meta information. If not, while the file is being transfered, the meta information is passed to the Type-Specific Load Handler
4. The Type-Specific Load Handler assesses, via a database of information, what the best or available applications for accessing this type of data is. It there are no perfect results or ambiguity, it can prompt the user. If this application is already loaded, it can load the file in it. If not, it quries the Application Request Interface (A package manager, or similar) to find and install the application.

A final example is if you’ve just logged into a machine somewhere and want to access the applications you were running at home.

1. Your machine makes a WINDOW_LIST_REQUEST, and transfers it to your home computer
2. Your home computer, after authenticating you, creates a WINDOW_LIST, a list of all available GUI Windows, and sends it over the Data Transport Protocol. It can contain inline Icon or other meta information, and is later updated in realtime with a WINDOW_LIST_UPDATE
3. The remote machine can then choose which windows to access. When one is selected, it creates a WINDOW_SHARE_REQUEST and transmits it to the host. Windows are shared in a reversal of the first example above.

We all know that SCO sucks. By extension, the people who work for that deplorable company also suck and because now SCO isn’t doing so well financially, SCO is laying off a bunch of employees. These people took the bet that SCO would win and now that SCO is losing, they’ll expect to pretend that nothing ever happened and jump to another job. Of course, they stood to gain a lot if SCO’s attempt to extort money out of the Linux world would have worked. Fortunately SCO’s plan has failed miserably. Sorry SCO employees, You can’t eat your cake and have it too (as the saying originally went) — no jobs for you!

Techcrunch is reporting that Spectrum Equity Investors let a $300 million private investment to purchase a majority share in The Generations Network (Ancestry.com, MyFamily.com, etcetera.)

Isn’t the way Google wants to track everything about you a little unsettling?

At least it now lets you access your data and doesn’t publish it with “anonymous” (obvious) ids like AOL does. Still the privacy freak in me is a little troubled.

That said, Google has definitely been one of the more benevolent companies out there, at least in my mind anyway.  I’d be interested in seeing what systems they have in place to make sure employees don’t abuse this info.

After my Compaq Presario V5101US bit the dust (And it was a part that had been repaired MONTHS BEFORE while it was under warranty!), I started to look for a new laptop.

I’m a full time student at Weber State University, and I’ve been exploring options to go paperless. If I can do everything on a laptop, that’s added convenience, and less to lug around Campus. The problem is, conventional laptops aren’t up to the task. I can’t efficiently take notes in classes like Math, Engineering, and Physics, where I need to be writing awkwardly formatted complex formulas, and drawing diagrams and graphs.

Thanks to the folks over at ComputerGeeks.com, I found a great Toshiba M200 Tablet PC. That’s right, folks - this thing allows me to write right on it, to take notes in digital format yet in my own handwriting. And I also like the simple IDEA of the interfacing options a stylus presents.

Microsoft, despite all it’s faults, is generally regarded as the king of tablet PCs, and on the surface, the Linux offerings of tablet compatability and software applications don’t compare. But, of course, Microsoft lost this battle a decade ago, and there’s little they can do to persuade me now: Linux is going on the thing.

Ubuntu has long been my distribution of choice, and it was the obvious choice for an application like this. Despite being such a unique device, virtually every aspect of this (except for the elusive SD card slot) is 100% out of the box Ubuntu compatible. This is the first device (except for older, plain x86 desktops) that I’ve been able to say this for. Every aspect from the wireless (Thanks to the folks over at Intel) to the NVidia video should work well.

It, being a unique machine, does have some quirks - the main being screen rotation. I did, however, find a nice script to handle this…I’ll update this once I test it and know:

#!/bin/sh
#Author: Patrick Coke, Tim Pope, Leon van der Ree
#With Improvements and Merging by Michael Heath and others
#
#
while xset q>/dev/null 2>&1; do
sleep 2 # Polling Interval, 2 seconds
lid="`cat /proc/acpi/button/lid/LID/state|awk '{print $2}'`"
# Looks to see if what orentation the screen is in (Normal or Left)
# and puts the orientation into the $orientation variable
orientation="`/usr/bin/X11/xrandr --query | /bin/grep 'Current rotation' | /usr/bin/awk '{print $4}'`"
dpms="`xset q|grep 'Monitor is'|awk '{print $3}'`"
if [ "$orientation" = "normal" -a "$lid" = "closed" -a "$dpms" = "On" ]; then
# Rotates screen orentation to the right
/usr/bin/X11/xrandr --orientation left
xsetwacom set "stylus" Rotate 2
xsetwacom set "cursor" Rotate 2
xsetwacom set "eraser" Rotate 2
xsetwacom set "stylus" xyDefault
xsetwacom set "cursor" xyDefault
xsetwacom set "eraser" xyDefault
elif [ "$orientation" = "left" -a "$lid" = "open" ]; then
# Rotates the screen back to normal
/usr/bin/X11/xrandr --orientation normal
# Rotates the stylus cordinate plane to normal
xsetwacom set "stylus" Rotate 0
xsetwacom set "cursor" Rotate 0
xsetwacom set "eraser" Rotate 0
xsetwacom set "stylus" xyDefault
xsetwacom set "cursor" xyDefault
xsetwacom set "eraser" xyDefault
fi
done

I’m hoping to use this as a demonstration of the Tablet PC potential of Linux, and keep this site updated with installation tutorials, customization tutorials, and useful info about Linux Tablet PCs.

That brings me to where I need some help. If you know of a particularly great Linux tablet-enabled or tablet-friendly application, I’d love to hear about it! This goes from standalone applications to gournal, to applets or desktop environment tweaks you like to apply that make it easier to work with your tablet.

Well, the party is over and hope that everyone enjoyed it. There are several that walked away with some cool swag. If I remember right, there were a few blankets, a backpack, stuffed geckos, 5 ipod nanos, a watch, and a digital camera. So a special thanks to Novell for providing the swag, pizza, and food. Also the OSTC (Open Source Technology Center) was nice to let us use their building.

Here are some photos too:

Photos

We have a great opensuse 10.3 launch party planned for this Thursday at 18:00 at the provo, UT Novell buildings. Anyone and everyone in the area are welcome to come hang out and enjoy pizza, soda, and installing. We already have a server for network installs, and hopefully some Novell employees to talk about 10.3.

I added a page to opensuse.org for people to list and find other release parties.