newquisk's blog

My home wireless network was driving me crazy yesterday, so I decided to look around for some utilities that might help me diagnose the problem. I found iStumbler, a wifi network detector for Mac OS X. In addition to displaying all the wireless networks that your Mac can see, it also tells you what channel a given network is operating and percentages for that networks signal strength and noise. It allowed me to see at a glance what channels my neighbors' myriad networks were operating at, and then I reset my own network's channel to something that wasn't being used. We'll have to wait and see if that helps the network's reliability, but it can't hurt to try.

I've been on something of a science fiction kick for the last few months. After blowing my budget for new books I decided to check out the Baen Free Library, a an online science fiction library. It allows you to download nearly a hundred free science fiction books by authors such as Larry Niven, Harry Turtledove, Linda Evans, David Weber and Elizabeth Moon. Books are available in HTML, Rich Text Format, and other file types, and are free of DRM.

I just snagged Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle and Michael Flynn's book Fallen Angels, which I've been meaning to read for a while. I probably won't read the whole thing on my laptop, but its a good way to get a few chapters in and see if it's worth picking up.

Check out the library at http://www.baen.com/library/

When working with audio (especially with podcasts) I often find myself needing to quickly change my Mac's active inputs and outputs (e.g. switching from the internal microphone to an external one, sending sound from the system speakers to my headphone speakers, etc.). Rouge Amoeba's created a quick menu for Mac OS X that allows me to do that with a single click of a mouse button instead of digging around for the "Sound" preference, which is what I used to do. It's called SoundSource, and it's available from their Freebies page.

Hosts Ken Newquist and Courtney Bentley lead off the podcast with news about network drive changes for those using Macs. In Tech News they update listeners on the fate of the Deleting Online Predators Act, discuss UCLA's adoption of Moodle as their campus course management system, speculate about Apple's new DashCode tool for creating Dashboard widgets, and ponder a web site that delivered one new Apple bug a month for each day in January.

Looks to me like Blackboard is worried about the upcoming review of its contravesial patents by the Patent Office - they've recently pledged not to sue any open source or home-grown course management software providers or users. So Sakai and Moodle are safe, as are their various open source kin ... but if a company bundles these products with its own proprietary software, then they're fair game. Or so says Blackboard.

I think they're clearly doing this to try and reduce some of the intense backlash against their patents that's arisen within the higher ed community, and to help blunt the open-source inspired patent challenge. They also try and mollify people by suggesting they won't sue individual schools, colleges, universities or museums for using its for-profit competitors because that wouldn't be in their interest ... but they reserve the right to do that if they change their mind.

Mac users are used to jumping through a few hoops to connect to network shares -- it's been that way at every place I've worked, from newspapers to universities. Fortunately, you only need to jump through those hoops once ... if you create an alias

After you've mounted a network share on your Mac, you can create an alias (aka a shortcut to our Windows friends) to that share by right-clicking (or command-clicking) on the drive icon that appears on your desktop. Then choose "Make alias" and an alias to that network share will be created on our desktop.

Later, after you've disconnected the share, you can double click on the alias and it will re-log you into the share without all that mucking about with login screens and having to select the drive you want.

To simplify matters even more, I put all my network share aliases (including the one for my PowerMac at home) into a folder, and dropped that folder on my Dock. Now I have can get to any network share in two clicks.

I hate to say it, but sometimes duct tape just isn't enough. In those cases, its worth visiting ThisToThat.com, which is a web site that tells you how to glue a variety of materials together. You select the two types of materials you want to glue (ceramic to fabric, vinyl to wood, etc.) and it tells you what adhesive to use.

I learned about it while listening to one of my favorite podcasts, Roll 2d6, which is a gaming podcast (as in pen-and-paper, "let's roll some dice" games like as board games, card games, war games and role-playing games, not computer or console games).

Looking to get things done a little more quickly in Mac OS X Mail? Then check out this list of Mail Keyboard Shortcuts. A few of my soon-to-be-favorites:

• Mark as flagged/unflagged: Command-Shift-L
• Mark as read/unread: Command-Shift-U
• Send message: Command-Shift-D
• Mark as junk mail: Command-Shift-J

Google has Blogger and Gmail widgets available for Mac OS X Dashboard. Useful for those like me, who occasionally forget to check their less-used Gmail accounts.

http://www.google.com/macwidgets/

Notes about Smith College's adoption of Moodle.