Rants, Raves, and Rhetoric v4

Author: Ezra S F

  • The Shot Heard Round the Vista World

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    What is the worst possible outcome of an event from an admin’s perspective? You lose everything. Next worst is lose a large portion of the data. Losing days worth of data, as Utah did, is huge. This is the biggest news since the merger of Blackboard and WebCT, I think. To Utah’s credit, they have…

  • Social Marketing

    Normally, I consider John Dvorak a crotchety old-timer who doesn’t get human-computer interaction due to his myopic self-centered view. (His use isn’t usually my use, so he gripes seem inapplicable.) Finally, he got one right… almost. In his most recent blog post… er… opinion article, he described people using social networks as “marketing” themselves. Actually,…

  • VLE vs PLE

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    PLEs reflect the needs of a student information gatherer. VLEs (aka LMSs) reflect the classroom and institution online. (PLEs vs VLEs) Blackboard Vista is a VLE. Its competitors are all VLEs. Vista is the worst VLE of them all as its designed to host multiple institutions in one site. The GeorgiaVIEW project takes the VLE…

  • Chinese Scroll

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    Japanese Scroll, originally uploaded by Ezra F. This hangs in one of the hallways of my grandmother’s house. Its been there since at least I was little tyke. I have no idea what it says. 🙁

  • Writer’s Block: Google Me

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    I have! Irregularly. Now, I have a Google Alert which tells me about new instances of my name. In general, it makes me a little apprehensive. HowManyOfMe.com says my name should not exist. As far as I can tell, no one else with my name is active online, so… I am exposed. 🙁

  • I Beat My Grandmother

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    And mother at Rummikub. Of course, Mom beat me 3:2. 🙁 I am used to winning 4:1 except against William (2:5). tag: games, Rummikub, family

  • MPG

    I scored 39.1 miles per gallon on the drive home yesterday. Its not a hybrid, so I think this is pretty good. By doing more drafting or cutting back on driving so fast, I could break 40. tag: car, environment

  • Twitter

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    Heh… I am now on Twitter.

  • Intellectuals and Politics

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    The Age of Enlightenment ended over a century ago. It was known for producing a number of intellectuals. Are intellectuals a dying breed? According to Wikipedia, “An intellectual is one who tries to use his or her intellect to work, study, reflect, speculate, or ask and answer questions about a wide variety of different ideas.”…