Mashed Articles

At the start of Javaposse podcast #244, Dick et al explain how they got digitally disconnected from the outside world… Saboteurs digged 2 holes and cut a crucial fiber cable at 2 different locations. Hacking with a shovel!

Anyway, this is a new type of cyber attack, or is it warfare? Fiber optic cables are usually deployed as rings. So if the cable gets cut at one point, the other part of the ring still works fine and can handle all the traffic. But if you cut it at 2 points, end of story. Not only the Internet connections were down for 50.000+ people, but cell phones were dead as well.

One year ago I could not run even 1 km without stopping. Yesterday I ran my first Marathon – the whole 42.195 km!

What an experience! Nothing that words can explain. It was 4+ hours (4:14’30’’) of joy and pain (what a pain) which taught me a few things:
- There are no shortcuts – you must practice, practice and practice to be able a beat the beast
- It’s not your legs that would fail you but your head – a continuous fight between your brain and your body –“Don’t feel my legs. Shall I stop? No! Must go on!”. Or in other words – “If you can’t run, walk. If you can’t walk, crawl. But never give up!”
- Everyone needs a partner – I had Buddy Runner ‘who’ woke up with me in the early mornings for a run in the last 4 months and kept me motivated all the long way (unfortunately I spilt too much water on myself until my phone died after 3.5 hours).
- I love my family – my wife and kids waited for me in 4 different locations. Gave me isotonic drinks and energy gels (yuck), ran with me a bit but most important – gave me a reason to continue.

The run itself was painful, painful and painful. So why did I do that? I started writing the answer but understood that it is something that could not be explained…

And if you think yesterday was painful, this how I feel today.

This is the last post for me here on Liquid e-learning. I’ve rebranded and moved to www.searchfindlearn.com, because I wanted my blogging identity to say a bit more about how I learn. And search find learn reflects my learning process, from when I was little and played with alphabet blocks right through to my adult digital learning journey.

If you’re using technology with learners in an effective, experimental or innovative way, I’d love to hear from you. I can blog on www.searchfindlearn.com about your project/website/idea, or you can contribute a guest post. Send an email to michelle.gallen at gmail.com describing what you’re up to.

Last time I was visiting our client the person showed me one process which was in suspended status for a long time. Using Adam’s great script(http://sqlblog.com/blogs/adam_machanic/archive/2009/03/30/who-is-active-v8-40-now-with-delta-power.aspx) I identified the SELECT statement which had ASYNC_NETWORK_IO wait type. MS said that this type occurs on network writes when the task is blocked behind the network and we need to verify that the client is processing data from SQL Server. The problem was that SELECT statement retrievs more than 50.000 rows , then the application manipulates (FOR ..NEXT loop) with that data and finally only 200 rows that a client had seen at the end. Well,thanks to SQL Server 2005 we changed the statement to accept a parameter for TOP clause and this wait type has gone. We have not seen a great improvment of the application as we did not expect it but it is another way to identify poor written queries.

Packt books have published Moodle Course Conversion: Beginner’s Guide by Ian Wild. This book promises to help teachers and trainers get “existing teaching material online quickly and easily”.

Getting your teaching material online quickly and easily depends on what material you want to put online, and how much of it you have. But you can certainly use Moodle Course Conversion to make the process quicker and easier.

Moodle Course Conversion is written in plain English. It’s laid out simply, and takes you through what you need to know on a step-by-step basis. It doesn’t get over-excited about the bells and whistles. It gets stuck in right at the start with what you need to know about Moodle and what you need to do to get your course online.

Chapter 1 covers the basics – Moodle history, logging on, editing your profile, deciding your role, and moodle themes.

From Chapter 2, you’re creating your courses. You learn about course structure and format, enrolling students and assigning teaching roles.

Chapter 3 focuses on adding documents and handouts, while chapter 4 deals with including multimedia content.

There’s lots more – with advice and practical tutorials on everything from how to communicate effectively online to setting and marking assignments.

The book is NOT aimed at techies who are setting Moodle up from scratch. It’s for teachers, trainers and lecturers who want to (or are being forced to) convert existing materials for Moodle.

Best way to get a handle on whether or not you like this book’s style is to read over the sample chapter pdf you can download from here: http://www.packtpub.com/files/moodle-course-conversion-beginner-guide-sample-chapter-5-moodle-makeover.pdf

You can also learn more about the book here: http://www.packtpub.com/moodle-course-conversion/book. Packt have other Moodle books – I can’t vouch for them, but you can visit http://www.packtpub.com/moodle-books to check them out for yourself.