Student Email Rant

An anonymous student in an anonymous course writes, “I won’t be able to make class today. I was wondering if I will be missing anything.” Now if you’ve been teaching for any amount of time, chances are you’ve seen some variant of this pop up in your own inbox. My response was genial enough, directing the student online to access the notes from the missed lecture. What I wanted to say, though, was this:

“Jeez, you’re not coming? I’d better not put a lecture together, then, if you’re not going to be there. So no, you won’t be missing anything. Nothing important. We’ll likely just sit around and talk about our weekend, and maybe gab about the last episode of Lost for a while. Don’t worry about getting in touch with your classmates, or stopping by office hours to catch up on what you missed. This simple 2 liner email will do just fine. Oh, and when I mentioned on the first day of class that you should always put the course number in the subject of the email so that your note doesn’t get marked as spam? I was kidding about that. Since you didn’t do it, I guess you got the joke.”

Sheesh. Someone needs to read this posting.

Joke of the Day

Sister Mary Katherine entered the Monastery of Silence.

The Priest said, “Sister, this is a silent monastery. You are welcome here as long as you like, but you may not speak until I direct you to do so. “

Sister Mary Katherine lived in the monastery for 5 years before the Priest said to her, “Sister Mary Katherine, you have been here for 5 years. You can speak two words.” Sister Mary Katherine said, “Hard bed.” “I’m sorry to hear that,” the Priest said, “We will get you a better bed.”

After another 5 years, Sister Mary Katherine was called by the Priest…”You may say another two words, Sister Mary Katherine.”

“Cold food,” said Sister Mary Katherine, and the P riest assured her that the food would be better in the future.

On her 15th anniversary at the monastery, the Priest again called Sister Mary Katherine into his office. “You may say two words today.”

“I quit,” said Sister Mary Katherine.

“It’s probably best,” said the Priest,

“You’ve done nothing but bitch since you got here.”

Futurama Dating Service

Man, I can’t wait until this show comes back on the air…

DVD Review: Slither (2006)

Carole and I kicked off our Halloween Movie Marathon with director James Gunn’s Slither (2006).  No big names, a relatively small (20 mil) budget, and a cheesy aliens-no-wait-zombies-no-wait-both are taking over the world plot promise disaster and boredom, right?  Wrong!  It was a really enjoyable flick with lots of great gross out moments and plenty of tongue-in-cheek humor.  I wonder what that means exactly (tongue-in-cheek).  Hmm, let’s look it up:  apparently, the phrase “tongue-in-cheek” first appeared in the writings of Richard Harris Barham in 1845, in his The Ingoldsby Legends to describe a Frenchman.   It is “a term that refers to a style of humour in which things are said only half seriously, or in a subtly mocking way. ”  Thanks, Wikipedia.  Umm, oh yeah, back to the movie.  So, to summarize, go to Blockbuster.  Rent good movie called Slither.  Wear metal plate over mouth to protect self from brain eating slugs.   Movie good; me like much.  The end. 

The good: Special effects, great lines, and noone takes themself too seriously.

The bad: It gets off to a bit of a slow start, but recovers quickly.

The grade: A

Filebox Extender Now Freeware

One of my favorite Windows utilities has just become freeware. Check out Hyperion’s Filebox Extender. Download and install it, and wonder how you ever got by without it. Plus, it won’t run on Vista, which IMHO is an added bonus!

DVD Review: The Break Up (2006)

In honor of Carole’s birthday, I rented a nice chick flick on DVD: The Break Up, with Jennifer Aniston and Vince Vaughn. Started off pretty decent, then rapidly devolved into a steaming pile of poo. Why was it so bad? Well, for one thing, Vaughn’s character is pretty damn hard to sympathize with for most of the movie. I mean, gimme a friggin’ break — just help do the dishes already! There are a few great comedic exchanges between Vaughn and the new beefy version of Favreau, but overall watching the movie is like watching one long, drawn out, uncomfortable argument. Jason Bateman’s talent is wasted on a bit part. Slap on an ambiguous ending and an unlikely (seemingly split personality) character growth moment for Vaughn, and there you have the movie. Like I said, spop.

The good: Vaughn is always good for a laugh. His exchanges with Favreau and the “dates” Aniston’s character brings home are especially memorable.

The bad: Everything else.

The grade: C-

carole turns 27

Carole turned another year closer to 30 today We had some family and friends meet us at Don Pablo’s, which was a good idea. We decided to hold the dinner at 6:30 and bring Brighton, which was a bad idea. Lots of fussing, crying, and wondering why his 7:00 bath time was completely ignored by everyone. I walked him across the street to the pet store at one particularly fussy moment, and he was entranced by the colorful fish. Next year, we’ll need to either eat out earlier or bring the party to home base…

Course Feedback Tool

The purpose of this post is twofold: first, I want to test out this new code formatting plugin I downloaded, and second, I wanted to share my anonymous course feedback tool with anyone else who wants to adapt it for their own Web site. You can see the end result on my own Web site.

I’m posting this primarily for my friend Jon, who wanted to do something similiar on his site. I says to him, I says, “Hey, Jon, why reinvent the wheel, man? Just use my code and modify it to fit your needs.” And he says, “Yeah man. Cool.”

Note: You’ll need to have the GD Image Library enabled on your PHP server for this to work. Otherwise, you’ll need to come up with an alternate method to authenticate for human-ish users.

You can download the source files from this link.

File 1: feedback.php (main file to display the feedback tool)

<?php

$prof_email = ""; // plug in your email address here
$server = ""; // plug in your server name here

?>

<html>
<head>
    <title>Course Feedback Tool</title>
</head>
<body>

<h1>Anonymous Feedback Tool</h1>

<p>Reasons you may want to use this tool:</p>

<ul>
    <li>To request a special lecture topic
    <li>To ask a question you didn't want to ask in class
    <li>To give me feedback about a particular course
    <li>To gripe or complain about a lecture
    <li>To comment on an especially good or helpful lecture
    <li>To provide a review for one of my courses
    <li>To provide ideas for activities or outside readings
    <li>You get the point, right?
</ul>

<?php

if (isset($_POST["submit"]))
    {
    $usercode = trim($_POST["user-code"]);
    $passcode = trim($_POST["system-code"]);

    if ($usercode == $passcode)
        {
        $message = "Nature of Feedback: ".
        $_POST["nature"]."nnCourse: ".
        $_POST["course"]."nn".
        $_POST["comments"];
        mail($prof_email,"feedback from Web site",$message) or
        die($server." mail appears to be down.  Please let me know ASAP!");
        ?>
        <hr>
        <span class="font-weight: bold">
        Thank you for your feedback!  I appreciate all comments.</span>
        <?php
        }
    else
        {
        ?>
        <hr>
        <span class="font-weight: bold">
        Sorry.  Your user code did not match the verification code.
        Please go back and try again.</span>
        <?php
        }
    }
else
    {
    ?>
    <hr>

    <span class="font-weight: bold">Please complete the form below.</span>

    <form id="feedback" method="post" action="<?php echo $_SERVER["PHP_SELF"]; ?>">

    <table>
    <tr>
        <td>Nature of Feedback:</td>
        <td colspan="2">
            <select name="nature">
                <option>Suggestion for Lecture Topic</option>
                <option>Feedback Concerning Lecture</option>
                <option>Feedback Concerning Class Activity</option>
                <option>General Classroom Issue</option>
                <option>Review of Class</option>
                <option>Feedback Concerning Web site</option>
                <option>Resource Suggestion for Web site</option>
                <option>Other</option>
            </select>
        </td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td>Course:</td>
        <td colspan="2">
            <select name="course">
                <option>DIG3930: ST: Rapid App Web Development</option>
                <option>DIG4716: Internet Interaction</option>
                <option>DIG4922: Media for E-Commerce II</option>
                <option>DIG5647: Sci and Tech of Dynamic Media</option>
                <option>IDS3701: Internet Software Design</option>
                <option>Not Course Related</option>
                <option>Other</option>
            </select>
        </td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td valign="top">Comments:</td>
        <td colspan="2">
            <textarea name="comments" rows="5" cols="35"></textarea>
        </td>
    </tr>

    <?php

    $str = "ABCDEFHJKMNPQRTWXYZabcdefhkmnrtwxz234789";  // removed confusing characters

    $codelen = 4;
    $code = "";

    for ($i=0; $i < $codelen; $i++)
        {
        $num = rand(0,strlen($str)-1);
        $code .= $str[$num];
        }

    ?>

    <tr>
        <td>Verify-Code:</td>
        <td>
            <input type="text" name="user-code" size="5" maxlength="4">
        </td>
        <td align="left">
            <img src="makecode.php?code=<?php echo $code; ?>" style="border: thin solid black">
        </td>
    </tr>
    </table>

    <p>Please copy the <b>case-sensitive</b>
four digit code from the right into the area
to the left to verify you are a human. If you
would like to leave your name or contact details,
you can provide it in the comments area.</p>

    <br>

    <input type="hidden" name="system-code" value="<?php echo $code; ?>">
    <input type="submit" value="Submit Anonymous Feedback" name="submit">

    </form>

</body>
</html>

File 2: makecode.php (used to generate the authentication image code to keep out annoying spam).

1 <?php
2     header ("Content-type: image/png");
3     $img_handle = ImageCreate (65, 20) or die ("Cannot Create image");
4     $back_color = ImageColorAllocate ($img_handle, 255, 255, 255);
5     $txt_color = ImageColorAllocate ($img_handle, 0, 0, 0);
6     ImageString ($img_handle, 40, 5, 5,  $_GET["code"], $txt_color);
7     ImagePng ($img_handle);
8 ?> 

Enjoy, Jon!

E.R. Promos

Ever notice how ridiculous the promotional spots for E.R. on NBC have become? A running joke Carole and I share is how the spot for next week will be hyped… generally something along the lines of, “Television drama has never SEEN anything like THIS,” or “Next week, you won’t believe your eyes,” or “Don’t miss an unforgettable episode that will change your life. Forever,” or “E.R. will CLEANSE your SOUL in only 40 unforgettable minutes.”

I can understand a bit of hype here and there, but this is getting to be a little ridiculous. I mean c’mon, E.R.! Not that any other show out there is doing any better, though…

Top 5 Low Cost Tools for Web Development

I’m compiling a list of the tools I find most useful on a day to day basis for PC-based Web development projects.  I do most of my work in straight up HTML/CSS, JavaScript, or PHP these days.  The programs I list here are smaller, low cost (and often freeware) types of tools rather than the ones developed by the behemoths that are Adobe and Microsoft.  As a dynamic Web developer, I find these tools great for coding, but I’m sure graphic designers and visual developers would choose a different list.  So, here are my top 5 for the moment:

5. Allway Sync.  While not technically a development tool, this is GREAT for making backups of projects and moving files between computers on a USB drive.  And, the synchronization algorithm actually seems to work.  It is reasonably priced at between $20 and $30, depending on whether you purchase it during a special promotional period or not.  I’ve been using this one for a couple years now.  There is a trial version available, but it will complain if you use it too heavily and nag you to buy the full version.  Well worth it, in my opinion.

4. Anry Color Picker.  This nifty (and free) little program allows you to move the color picker from outside your graphics program to grab colors from any Windows application or file saved on your hard disk.  You can select a color and then have its RGB code copied to your clipboard to paste into a style sheet or PHP file.  Sweet.  I just discovered this handy little app a few months ago, but have used it several times since then.

3. Firebug.  Firebug is a robust plug-in for Mozilla Firefox that enables tracking and debugging of JavaScript errors and monitoring of all sorts of other processes.  I’m still learning how to configure all the options, but one of my favorite features is the ability to monitor XmlHttpRequests through the built in console rather than writing explicit debugging code or opening up your server-side files directly from the browser.  IETab, an extension to render the page in Internet Explorer 6 from within Firefox is a close runner up, but it is a bit buggy, particularly with heavy JavaScript or AJAX code.

2. Xenu’s Link Sleuth.  Investigates broken links and builds custom reports for you based on the results.  Hmmm, now that is something Web developers might find useful … oh, and did I mention it was freeware? 

1. EditPlus.  My number one tool for development would have to be EditPlus.  Small, lightweight, fast, efficient, and configurable, with built in support for S-FTP so I can work directly from the server.  Its backup saving option has saved my butt three times this week already.  It costs $30, but it’s worth every penny.

Other runner-ups: Total Commander (awesome hybrid of old school DOS power with Windows GUI convenience and speed, but I just don’t use it that much), WinSCP3 (use daily, but more of a communications tool than a development tool), and ClipMate (great clipboard management tool).

I’m still looking for an all-in-one suite that will handle many of these functions from within a single program.  I’m also on the hunt for a nice program to preview different resolutions without having to fiddle with my desktop’s display properties, though this Web site is a nice start. 

Anyone have their own list they would like to share?