Matt's Thoughts

Technology Plans

2009-07-14T20:24:00.000-07:00

This week's class section was entirely about technology planning in libraries and was probably some of the most reading we've had yet. Technology planning has been historically overlooked and mishandled in many organizations.

Coincidentally we've been dealing with this at work for that past several weeks as we've stepped back to reevaluate the purpose and function of our digital repository. We're in the midst of creating documentation about and for our digitization efforts as we try to come to terms with to scope and commitment of our developments. We'll be continuing this process for some time and as we are creating "living documents" we'll have to periodically revisit our plans to evaluate its effectiveness and adapt to future situations. I will probably be involved in technology planning throughout my career considering the complexity of digital libraries/repositories software, hardware, and the specialized staff who offer front line services and the management and maintenance of the systems.

This unit could not have come at a better time. I was able to bring our readings in and share them with the rest of our functional requirements group to help guide and also back up many of our decisions. I think I've also indirectly been promoting the SIRLS DigIn program buy showing all the value I'm getting out of the course in only the first section.

Some key points I've taken away from the readings this week include:

A plan must be a living document meeting the the mission of an organization and you must be not only be aware of technophobes but vigilant against technolust to avoid scope creep. (Stephens, Michael. Technoplans vs. Technolust. Library Journal, November 1, 2004).

A technology plan must be flexible. It is an ever changing, political document explaining in simple language to investors (internal and external) that you know what you are doing. It should be generic enough to get the point across without committing to to many specifics that you honestly can't anticipate and most wouldn't understand. The Arizona State Library's 2007-20012 technology plan (pdf) does does a wonderful job of laying out lots of goals and needs without getting bogged down in too much detail that would undoubtedly change drastically in the five year period it covers. (Michael Schuyler's Computers in Libraries article Life is what happens to you when you’re making other plans. Computers in Libraries, April 2000, pp. 54-55)

Staff, training, support, and maintenance have to be taken into consideration when making plans and also applying for grants. Most libraries cannot afford to offer sustainable services through self funding and will need to coordinate with other organizations, particularly state libraries to leverage funds. Libraries must make sure government policy makers understand the importance of funding and the impact of programs like Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) and E-rate assignments. (Bertot, Carlo et al. Study Shows New Funding Sources Crucial to Technology Services. American Libraries March 2002 v(33)n(2) 2002 pp. 57-59)

I compared the California State Library (pdf) and Arizona State Library plans, since I've have lived in both states and have a vested interest in them. I was impressed with their focus and noticed trends specific to their function and politics. At first, I was a little perplexed that they weren't more "specific" until the readings emphasized the flexibility and generalized nature these plans need to have to be successful.

Although not necessarily a library tech plan I found the Scottsdale Unified School District tech plan (pdf) to follow along with the best practices of the readings. It emphasized needs, mission, budget, and provided several goals with concrete implementation strategies. It also laid out objectives on applying for E-rate annual funding.

Ultimately I've taken from this experience that operating without a plan is like putting your cart in front of the horse. You won't get far and you will loose out on partnerships and funding critical to the survival of your digital initiatives. Most technology projects fail not because they lack expertise or initiative but because they lack solid planning, buy-in of stakeholders, organization, and reasonable scope.

Learning XML Unit 7 Blog assignment!

2009-07-07T20:02:00.000-07:00

Learning XML
About four years ago when we started podcasting in the library I had to learn about XML (Extensible Markup Language) to create a functional RSS feed. We were also asked to begin investigating the pros/cons of RSS and RDF as we first started research work in developing our digital library. So XML quickly became a major part of my working life whether I liked it or not.

I initially learned XML by just looking at what other websites, podcasters, and repositories had done and how they were organized. I also went through various web tutorials, W3.org info pages, and even the Apple iTunes help pages on what elements were necessary to make our feeds work. This process was very unconventional and for the most part worked for my needs but was spotty and to be honest confusing.

Unit 7 of our class has been largely focused on the purpose and use of XML. We were instructed to view a series of instructional videos by Mark Long. Those videos, along with our readings, and the course lecture and assignment notes have been invaluable because I not only learned basic XML structure, which I was familiar with, but the basic rules that apply to that structure. I learned that "well formed" XML may not necessarily "Validate" against the rules of the DTD it is associated with. I don't find XML to be quite that confusing anymore but then I haven't even tackled XSLT (Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations) yet.

The most helpful modules in the videos tutorials were the ones on structure (5 golden rules!), special characters (watch out for those greater than symbols), and most importantly attributes. I'm still not 100% on when to use or not use attributes in XML (I had actually never considered them myself) but it seems as though, most everyone else is still asking that same question.

Practice system update!
So far, so good! I followed the instructions in our Unit 7 assignment and was able to connect to my new "server" remotely, and even though it's a laptop run it in Headless Mode, which for non techies means I didn't use a keyboard or monitor actually attached to the system. In fact, to emulate the sense that the system was indeed headless, I closed it up and stuck it under my desk. Worked like a charm. I have been simultaneously running my VM system as well for added practice and was able to ping both systems and essentially have two separate servers running in my house. Albeit, closed systems. Each system also now has a personal web space for a user, which helped me understand the whole public folders at both the ASU and UofA personal web space accounts.

Learning HTML

2009-06-29T22:02:00.000-07:00

This week we were asked to talk about how we went about learning HTML and the resources we used.

I probably began learning html around 2001 or 2002 which compared to many people I know was late in the game, but my concentration prior to that only required I view web pages, not write them.

My first resource was my coworker and onetime supervisor Kirk. He gave me a lot of initial pointers and basically said to just look at other web pages and see what they were doing and try to avoid using "flashing" text. I also used the W3 school to get the basics and details down. I still use the school today. In fact, I had gotten so use to Dreamweaver and bouncing back and forth between the code and the WYSIWYG editor that I had to double check hand coding basic things.

Some of the more intermediate or advanced areas I looked at were table cells attributes like padding and alignment. I also looked into CSS which I use regularly in my work related dealings but not from scratch, so at this point I have not integrated a stylesheet into my class webpage. Since I'm coding just one or two pages (at this point) I'm not saving much time but if my page were to grow or become more complex I would need to invest the time into a seperate or inline style sheet to better handle the look of the page.

I really wanted to just hand make my class page without the aid of any GUI interfaces. For example Word (and products like it) is one of the worst ways to build a page as it introduces a lot of span tags and back end code you are not aware of and don't need. Some of those interfaces also have a tendancy to leave empty tags hanging around when you cut or delete content.

On an additional milestone I finally installed my practice system and eveything went well. I was able to ping by host name and assign static IPs to both my practice and VM servers. I was even able to see the webpages via m iPod which is connected to the network wirelessly. Now if I can continue to remember all the steps involved I'll be very impressed with myself. The only hangup I had was when I was pinging my practice system and got "host down." I had forgotten to plug in the ethernet cord.

Reflecting on Learning - course presentation materials for our Networking Unit.

2009-06-22T21:23:00.000-07:00

This week in my Applied Technology course we had a variety of learning materials to work with including the standard lecture document, a chapter out of the Linux Administration Handbook, some videos and other links to technical materials.

First we had the course lecture. I had to read this one at least twice to grasp all the details and make sure I understood where Professor Fulton was coming from. That paid off, because as I went throughout the related/suggest links and readings everything came together and was reinforced.

Taking a look at the Linux Administration Handbook's chapter 12 (2nd Edition) on Networking much of the professors lectures were repeated but from a slightly different narrative and as usual full of details. Although the book says its not necessarily designed for beginners, I disagree, its a must have. The historical references and figures were a great compliment to the lecture materials. The footnotes also turned out to be just as important as the paragraph materials, particularly in the section dealing with the "Request For Comments" documentations.

The Wikipedia links were invaluable for their brief synopsis and their structure allows you to skim through if you choose and hit the highlights. Also, being able to drill down through subsequent term links helps build a better understanding of the subjects we're investigating.

We were also asked to watch a few videos about networking. TCP/IP - An Animated Discussion was a basic analogy of how the protocol works. Even though it looked like it was created in Microsoft Paint I found it effective and even entertaining for a subject that had me dose a bit in the Nemeth book. Heavy in humor and analogy the video can be watched several times and goes into the alphabet soup of Internet protocols and systems. The video reminded me of some old Annenburg educational videos I use to like watching in high school, so I found it very easy to watch and retain.

A far more surreal and even effective video was Warriors of the Net. Somehow the creators of the videos were actually able to personify things like "The Ping of Death" and "The Router Switch." This is a highly produced, animated video that takes a look at what happens when you click on a link and request a service (in this case the very video) from a web page. Perhaps seeing Tron as a kid helped me connect with the presentation. Either way, it really drove home the efficiency of information transmission and how "errors" can happen.

I consider myself a visual on hands (Active) learner so the activities we were given are always the most effective. The videos reinforce the readings and the readings reinforce the lectures and provide the details and history we need to move forward. But the complexity of what we are working with in many ways brings out my more "reflective" half as well. At times this is frustrating because I do feel like I'm getting behind (when 3 days after I've started a section and I'm still reading) but I also realize that if I don't do the preliminary work the rest is meaningless. Perhaps it's just getting me back to the way I learned years ago with flash cards and memorization over simple application and experimentation.

This multi-teared way of learning is interactive, interesting and well rounded. I also find the quizzes very helpful as they provide a sort of "self-diagnostics" on what we are learning and how we are interpreting the information. There were a couple of questions that I had to go back over and rethink to realize I was oversimplifying some of the concepts. I hope the rest of the course is structured like this.

Unit 4 Class Assignment: Adding Users and Groups

2009-06-15T21:35:00.000-07:00

For the first time I had almost no problems running through our course exercises. Unit 4 deals largely with permissions and adding users and groups. Our main focus was learning how to add a user and group via the command line and then comparing that with a couple of GUI management tools.

To aid myself in working in the shell, and for future reference, I began writing the basic commands and articles on post it notes and putting them around my desk for easy reference. I used a simple name I could remember for the second user and using the various "sudo" commands as directed was able to add the new user, who was automatically added to a group, and then verify that all went well.

Next we used the Gnome Desktop Utility and being a GUI it not only went well it not only was very intuitive but allowed me to add additional information like contact phone number and address. That was a feature I didn't notice right away with the other adduser utilities. Also Gnome is a feature within the Ubuntu desktop. Opening it was a simple as going to the drop down menus and selecting the application.

Finally we used Webmin and of the three it was probably the easiest to use for actually adding users. The installation was a little more complex as we had to run some aptitude commands to install and configure it. Again I had no problems but had I made one typo or overlooked something I probably would have had different results. Webmin has a very friendly user interface but lacks the advantage of being fully integrated into the desktop (like Gnome) or as simply a part of the system like like the command line.

Altogether I really liked all three ways to add users and if I had to choose would probably use Webmin. However, one thing I wonder about is if you didn't just stick with one utility to add users and groups what issues would you have. Would one utility wipe out the functionality of a user that was created with a different utility if their formatting does not makes sense to each other.

Unit 3 Class Assignment: Text editors a hands-on experience

2009-06-09T20:51:00.000-07:00

This week our class got a real hands-on trial working in the Linux terminal. To be honest I felt a bit lost at first. I've certainly had to unlearn what I have learned, step back and remember the good old days prior to having the graphic user interface crutch. I've also had to get use to not using a mouse to do almost everything. This was a first scary and wonderful step (at least for me) in to a world of much more control and responsibility.

The readings were not as numerous as before but they were still thick in detail and loaded with info. I wish we actually had an additional week just to go back and re-read everything from the past 3 weeks. Some of the information kind of blends together and when your dealing with commands you've got to keep them straight. Fortunately our instructions and tutorials are very clear and once I familiarized I was ready to go.

There were a number of commands we were asked to run this time around including downloading files ($ sudo aptitude install vim-runtime) which worked great, running programs (vimtutor) which didn't work so well but later after some guidance I was able to get a similar one to work (vim tutor), and we even did some configuring via nano where we made .bashrc alias the "ls" command so it would always show hidden files. That worked great.

Additionally I ran some connectivity tests by using a simple ping command and got the IP address of our VM server (ifconfig).

I found the VIM text editor to be fairly easy to work with and quick to understand. Although I had some technical issues at first, I was able to follow along and complete all of the tasks. The main hurdle was just realizing I was not in the actual command line anymore. The VIM commands make a lot of sense and I agreed with the the tutorials suggestion of using the H-L keys to navigate the screen. Once you get that down you actually can zip around quite quickly.

We were also asked to think about how we have done configurations in the past on our computers compared to configuring Linux files this week. I've almost entirely worked on a Mac at home so I've never really "configured" it at least in the way we did via the nano and vi text editors in Linux. So I can't say this is different than what I have done before since it really feels like a whole new ball game. But perhaps I've been "configuring" all along and just didn't realize it.

I certainly have created/changed folders (or directories) and files in the past by right-click selecting them and using key commands to create folders via the Mac Finder which is almost identical in function to a Windows Explorer window. I have also downloaded clients in the past to do batch name changes. This seems like something that I would be able to do just as well if I knew how in a shell. I just have to get those commands down.

Tutorials!

2009-06-02T20:14:00.001-07:00

There were three main tutorials for us to go through in our Unit 2 section of class. Two pretty much involved understanding Linux and its history while the third was a series of YouTube videos made by Professor Fulton on installing the Ubuntu server and (optional) desktop in VMWare.

I already mentioned Arthur Griffith’s Introduction to Linux in my prior post. The next tutorial was a standard text based web page "Learning the Shell" which I printed out. Using it as a guide I followed the suggestions for working within the shell (command line interface) of the desktop. It was pretty thorough and I got a lot out of it even though I did not have and example to go by outside of the basic descriptions on the page. The later sections were of less help however as they were more about listing commands and arguments version actually apply each set. I think the best way to learn anything is through practice and exercises. Talking about something doesn't get the applied knowledge necessary for conquering any skill set. I need to know why and how to use terms, not just a list with basic definitions.

The installation tutorials were the most concrete and easiest to follow. I had a little concern since my version of VMWare fusion was a tad bit different than the one in the videos but everything ended up quite well. Being able to pause and rewind to go over tricky spots proved extremely helpful.

There were other tutorials as well, but again they were mostly lists and or general refernce. Although I have bookmarked them and will assuredly return for review and reference, the tutorials with hands-on lessons were the most effective.

Booting from the Ubuntu Desktop Live CD

2009-05-29T21:57:00.000-07:00

This week I downloaded, burned, and booted an ISO file for the Ubuntu desktop Live CD. Honestly I had never heard of the concept (at least to my recollection) of a live CD although most of my co-workers had.

The download, check sum and burning all went well as our professor and the online instructions said. When I initially booted up my iMac everything looked good. I got the splash screen and ran the verification to make sure my copy wasn't corrupt. So far no problems. I was pretty jazzed.

The next step was to actually finish the boot and about this time I was asking myself what issues might pop up. I have a wireless mouse and keyboard (blue tooth) and was concerned. Of course my fears came true. I got an initial firmware error and then once the desktop was finished booting up I could do nothing. The mouse and keyboard were dead.

I checked with our instructor Professor Fulton and the Ubuntu user forums and came to the understanding that since I was booting from a live CD there wasn't much I could do. I did go out and pick up a usb keyboard but for the time being I used a secondary laptop (Windows XP) and burned an new bootable disc. (We were instructed to burn a separate disc with the drive that would be booting it as each computer can be quirky when using discs burned on different systems.) This time I had no problems and was able to finally get to the terminal/command line easily.

Now I'm ready to actually run some lines and see how it goes. I'm also going through a massive amount on Linux tutorials. The videos are great (via VTC) but there are times the instructor is a bit quick and thick with the details and completely looses me. I'm not too concerned though because the written (hands-on) tutorials should reinforce the concept and drive home the things I need to learn. I'll write more about that later once I've delved further in...

Ubuntu User Forum

2009-05-22T21:55:00.000-07:00

As part of our class activities we were asked to take a look at the Ubuntu user's forums and comment on anything we find interesting. I took notice of two threads:

Install Ubuntu 32 bit or 64 bit?

Interesting thread on 32 vs 64 bit Ubuntu. Some say there is no problem but that your results may differ. The Users then provide interesting snippets asking and answering the question of what RAM and your processor actually do, and how increased memory actually speeds up your work. Some basic but interesting stuff.

8.04 Keeps Getting Worse

The user upgraded to version 8.04 from 7.10 and began experiencing freezing errors on their laptop and loss of internet connectivity. The syllabus mentioned issues with laptops (I'm considering getting one instead of a desktop as my secondary system) and with wireless causing problems with the Linux install. This threads seems to correlate with that although it looks like most users have no problems.

The responses are very helpful in trying to diagnose an extremely frustrating problem for a user. From my experience I had similar problems but one resulting from hardware failures in in the logic board and power supply. Also, one user "muteXe" along with some others suggested that 8.04 is far more stable than 9.04 which also reinforces why we were asked to stick with the more proven version. For the record, I believe our administrators are using Ubuntu 8.04 for the repository we are building at our library.

A Student Again

2009-05-19T21:16:00.000-07:00

After at least 5 years I'm taking classes this time and I'm actually a grad student at the U of A now. Distance Learning is amazing.

2009-03-16T12:59:00.001-07:00

Testing video chat with work this morning. It rocks.

2009-03-13T16:05:00.001-07:00

The weekend begins along with Donovan's spring break so I'll be out and about this next week.

2009-03-02T15:14:00.001-08:00

listening to ...Tiffany Anastasia Lowe sung by June Carter Cash album:Press On

2009-02-27T16:51:00.001-08:00

Just got back from the park and library with the kids. Good times but man the kids are busy.

2009-02-17T19:12:00.001-08:00

back to work...looking over the year in review

2009-02-13T22:05:00.001-08:00

Finishing last minute stuff on latest episode and calling it a night. Had a great time at 4 Peaks tonight too.

2009-02-10T20:02:00.000-08:00

Currently I'm working our 90th podcast...this one deals with an exhibit about a spy...

2009-02-02T19:27:00.001-08:00

back to work at home

2009-02-02T12:32:00.001-08:00

timecode errors during encoding suck....especially 20 minutes in.

2009-01-28T18:51:00.001-08:00

Donovan just told me a joke...Why did the ants go to the shoe store? Because they wanted to get haircuts. :-P

2009-01-28T18:48:00.001-08:00

Lost tonight sweet...

2009-01-18T19:17:00.001-08:00

The Cards are going to the Super Bowl. I don't really follow football and am still amazed. Good game.

2009-01-18T10:48:00.001-08:00

Finally caught the Battlestar premier. Crazy, fracken weird. Only 9 episodes left...

2009-01-14T19:20:00.001-08:00

Another sad day Ricardo Montalban is gone http://ping.fm/aSLJS :'(

2009-01-12T20:41:00.001-08:00

Finishing up some work and wishing it was the 21st so I can get LOST again