Well I can’t seem to figure out how to select multiple categories in OSX. On a PC it’s as simple as Control+Click…etc, but apparently that is not the case. Ah well.
I don’t remember what was going on in Update part 1 so I guess this effectively an entirely new Update, but that’s ok. Not much has been happening that is note worthy. Lots of work, lots of reading, and lots of media cloisters projects. I haven’t actually had any papers do yet (gasp), but I’ve had reading like whoa. I guess I can’t complain because it’s easier to pace yourself with reading than it would be cramming for a paper. As for media cloisters stuff…well I am continuing work on my baby, Media Cloisters Test Site, …it’ll be a great day when this thing goes live and replaces the hideous current Media Cloisters Site. Hopefully we’ll have this live sometime in the next month or so.
Let me just say that CIS here at Vassar College sucks. CIS stands for Computer Information Services for anyone who didn’t know. These are the people who are supposed to be the bleeding edge of modern technology. They are supposed to be the ones with the plethora of knowledge, but alas, not here at Vassar. In fact, I would venture to say that the Media Cloisters has a combined knowledge that far exceeds that of CIS. The primary reason our new site for the Media Cloisters hasn’t switched over to the official Vassar hosted space is because they do not like the idea of us 1. blogging 2. using MT, and 3. using MySQL. If they had there way we would be stuck using Blackboard as our frontend for the site. I must admit that blackboard is quite good for class discussion, class assignments, lecture notes, etc….BUT having said that, it is not even close to a suitable solution to run a user oriented and user friendly website with. The frontpage of blackboard is simply horrid. My previous statements regarding how cutting edge and current a CIS group should be stresses the stupidity and moronic decisions that they are trying to enforce on us. MT and the overall blogging environment is a new and up-and-coming technology, but it is a very mature environment already. As for the lack of desire to support MySQL my answer is a easy, what are you smoking? Again, they would rather we use the built in support for BerkelyDB instead of using an open source alternative such as MySQL. Again, just stupid.
That’s it for my rant I think.
As for my other Media Cloisters projects…I am part of the newly formed Networking and Server maintenance group. We will be in charge of a variety of tasks including finding and implimenting a reliable and cost effective backup solution for the Media Cloisters. This doesn’t sound like a difficult task until you realize we have some roughly 800GB worth of data to back up at any given time. This will be interesting. Our other main endeavor is going to be setting up a streaming video (with audio) server for use by another Media Cloisters project, the Digital Ethnography group. This again will be quite interesting because there are so many possible options for us to explore and impliment.
My final Cloisters project hasn’t really began just yet, but it will eventually be taking part in setting up, administrating, and analyzing a honeypot. This is going to be insanely cool, I can’t wait. Granted, we’ll have to see how much traffic we actually see. I guess that’s it for now.
Wandering the Interwebs 