Brian Fitzgerald's Radio Weblog

"Visiting Seattle" Site Posted

Thu, 03 Jul 2003 22:07:19 GMT

Hey there NECCers. Kirk and I said that we would post the site and it is now up. You can access it at http://necc.lps.org/necc01/ You will find a link there where you can download the entire project.

Stuck in the middle

Thu, 03 Jul 2003 12:29:58 GMT

I was pretty excited to get home. It's been a great week in Seattle, but I'm looking forward to spending the holiday weekend relaxing. We ended up getting out of Seattle nearly 5 hours late and consequently missed all connecting flights in Denver. United put us up in a hotel here, but that was a whole other mess. Anyway, we're flying out of here later today and will be getting into the Omaha/Lincoln area sometime this afternoon. If you are a workshop attendee from NECC looking for downloads, please give me time to get home and get that stuff compiled and uploaded. Thank you.

You Think You're Ready, Then...

Sat, 28 Jun 2003 17:42:03 GMT

I burned all my CDs for the NECC conference workshop. When we went to open the file off of it for the VERY FIRST ACTIVITY OF THE FIRST DAY the file wasn't on that CD. ARRRGGGHHHH!!! For all of you looking for the butterflies file: here it is for Macintosh and Windows.

Edubloggers Get Together

Fri, 27 Jun 2003 20:36:14 GMT

Got an invite from Tim Lauer to attend a Edublogging get together Monday night at NECC. We've got some Software Plus/Microsoft/HP thing that night, but I really hope to get to the Blogging event and see how many are there and what is being discussed. I think this is really getting ready to take off in our district and it would be very nice to be able to talk to some others that are promoting it in their own K-12 environments.

Love 'em, Hate 'em

Fri, 27 Jun 2003 20:28:46 GMT

It's amazing how much you can appreciate and abhor the same thing. Today Kirk Langer and I flew from Omaha to Seattle for the NECC conference. There is no way I'd rather travel and I really love not having to set aside four days for the drive here and back. It's so nice however, to be done flying. They pack you in there so tight. It's like those cattle you see stuffed in those trailers on the interstate. Thankfully we are here for a few days before we have to go hand over good money to be thrown through the same ordeal again. I dream of the day I can turn my frequent flyer miles in for a first class upgrade.

NECC 2003 Section Created

Fri, 20 Jun 2003 22:34:26 GMT

I've created a section to begin placing downloads and resources related to the workshop that I'm teaching at NECC this year on Macromedia's Fireworks and Dreamweaver software.

New Look

Fri, 20 Jun 2003 22:32:07 GMT

I've made some minor changes. I'm not sure if its better or worse looking now. Maybe I'm just tired of green. I'll give it a few days and see how it strikes me then. If I still like it I'll copy the stylesheet to the pages behind the home page which currently still sport the old look.

Learning ColdFusion

Fri, 20 Jun 2003 20:28:46 GMT

I haven't done much posting about ColdFusion on here, but a few months ago I picked up Ben Forta's 'Certified ColdFusion MX Developer Study Guide' to begin working towards that certification. I really wish that I had picked up this book sooner as it would be a good book for a beginner, yet it takes you as far as you want to go. It doesn't contain all of the examples and super in-depth explanations that some of the phonebook size volumes have, but it's easy to understand and walks you through things very concisely. I worked through the first half of the book quickly as it was pretty familiar material. Now I'm painfully drudging through the last half. =)

Bloggers Rate the Most Influential Blogs

Fri, 20 Jun 2003 20:21:39 GMT

Mark Glaser examines the world of blogging and asks the top bloggers to each submit what they consider the top ten influential blogs on the internet.

Favorite Apps Updated

Fri, 20 Jun 2003 16:47:07 GMT

I've updated my Favorite Apps page. There were some applications that I simply was not using any more and others that I have been using for a while now that I had just not added.

A blueberry by any other name

Fri, 20 Jun 2003 16:25:13 GMT

Kirk Langer posted a link to this article on his website. It's a great story about a business lecturer who changes his tune on whether schools should be run like a business.

Distributed Denial of Service Explained...

Wed, 18 Jun 2003 16:59:20 GMT

We all hear about Denial of Service attacks and even worse, Distributed Denial of Service attacks. What are they? Here is an article that tries, rather well, to explain to DalNet users what these attacks are in an easy to understand way.

What Makes a Weblog a Weblog

Wed, 18 Jun 2003 14:05:20 GMT

Dave Winer has a work-in-progress on his Harvard weblog examining what exactly makes a weblog a weblog.

Liquid Nitrogen Ice Cream

Tue, 17 Jun 2003 13:28:40 GMT

Wish you could make that home ice cream a little quicker? Check out this article/recipe at Popular Science.

Darn Chiggers

Mon, 16 Jun 2003 14:28:31 GMT

I got bit by chiggers sometime late last week. They are driving me NUTS!!!

MS Mac Browser: Fuhgeddaboutit

Mon, 16 Jun 2003 13:39:01 GMT

SEATTLE -- Microsoft says it will no longer develop versions of its popular Web-browsing software for Apple Computer's Macintosh system, saying Apple's own browsing software is a logical choice for Mac users. Except for two minor upgrades, Microsoft's Internet Explorer 5 is the last version it will develop for the Mac, said Jessica Sommers, product manager for the software company's Macintosh Business Unit. [Wired] Some people really blast the Internet Explorer browser on Macintosh and I'm not completely sure why. There have been some things that have frustrated me in regards to the way that it handles form submission, but that has been my only complaint. While its true that it has been a couple of years since the MBU has released a solid upgrade to Internet Explorer, browser development has slowed everywhere when compared to the speed at which it was moving in the mid-nineties. If anything, I've been very impressed that the browser remains one of the Macintosh's best with almost no changes over two years after its release. While I don't use it anymore, many people enjoy it and use it daily and I'm disappointed to see it go.