16 Jul 2009
It’s been quite a few weeks since I’ve been able to devote any time to blogging. It has just been a really busy time for me. However I’m currently sat on a train between Edinburgh and York so it’s an excellent opportunity to have a bit of a catch up. Specifically I wanted to post something about one of the biggest things I’ve worked on recently - The Higher Education Academy Conference 2009.
Read More13 Jul 2009
I’ve been tinkering recently with some things around portable applications which I will probably post more about in the hopefully not too distant future. One of the things I’ve been trawling around for and busily configuring are various free web server packages that are “portable”. Unfortuately it has taken a fair bit of effort to actually track down and configure something that is portable enough. The problem for me is that I have a particular need to locate the web server within a particular sub folder and in the case of most software packages this is not an option.
Read More01 Jun 2009
Recently I’ve been working a little bit with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. It is recommended that Internet Explorer is used to interact with this web based system as it provides the widest and tightest integration and range of features. Unfortunately I have a strong preference for Mozilla Firefox over Internet Explorer.
Read More25 May 2009
It’s been rather busy of late and I’ve only just got chance to start posting again. So I thought I’d best begin by posting about the weekend of the 8th, 9th and 10th of May.
Read More14 May 2009
Today I came across an issue in Microsoft SharePoint Server 2007 (a.k.a. MOSS). I was trying to upload some Microsoft PowerPoint slides into a slide library in a My Site and everything had gone fine with the first presentation, but the second one I tried came up with an error:
Read More10 May 2009
I have a problem with my mobile phone number … I can never remember it because I rarely tell it to anyone any more. So when I do need to tell someone and there’s no one around who can tell me what it is from their phone I have to resort to looking it up on my own phone. The quickest way I’ve found to do this is to punch in a special Vodafone code.
Read More02 May 2009
Here’s a little tip for anyone who owns a Sony PRS-505 eBook reader. It has a couple of expansion slots on it for an SD card and a Sony Memory Stick Pro Duo, and whilst these are intended to allow you to expand the number of books you can carry around there’s a bit of extra functionality you can draw upon here.
Read More28 Apr 2009
Today I was taking part in an online presentation from Dr. Simon Ball of JISC TechDis; one of his regular HE updates. They use an online presentation system known as Instant Presenter to deliver the presentations on a roughly quarterly basis and they last for about half an hour. A genuine whistle-stop tour.
Read More28 Apr 2009
When I’m asked about setting up a new wiki for a group, I often recommend PBWiki as it has a number of good features and for education it can be used for free. Since I work within the HE sector this is a simple and quick solution for many of the cross-institutional groups and many people are familiar with it.
Read More27 Apr 2009
I’ve recently been helping some colleagues develop some reporting templates and they had a very particular requirement around drop down lists (which I’ll probably post about at some point in the future). One issue that did occur however was that the dynamic lists that were incorporated into the workbook were added to and even though I had mentioned to the users about using Excel’s name manager to redefine the range of cells with that name, they forgot and inevitably the workbook would end up back with me to rectify.
Read More