Technical Issues archives

Heads up, all you Learning Labs fans: Sometime this evening (probably around 10:00 central time) I’m going to take the Learning Labs offline for a bit so I can upgrade to the latest version of Moodle. This will take anywhere from five minutes to an hour, but I’m guessing it’ll be on the shorter end of that spectrum.

Moodle 1.9 has a ton of new features, but nothing that’s going to make the site look out of the ordinary the next time you sign in. Let me know, though, if you see something odd.

There was a major power outage in Lawrence early this morning, and some of the servers didn’t come back up right away. Everything should now be back to normal.

The following Stratepedia services will be briefly unavailable:

• Learning Labs
• Hello (The Stratepedia Blog)
• Stratepedia Guidebooks
• Feeds

These sites will also be unavailable:

• CRL Media Archives
• Preparing Preservice Educators website
• Content Literacy Continuum website
• Virginia CLC website
• Virginia CLC coaching calendar
• Xtreme Reading website

I recently ran into the problem of having people not be able to play a DVD that I had burnt for them. They were using it on their computers and it seemed to be isolated to the PC users and I couldn’t figure out for the life of me what was causing the problems. However, I think I now have a solution!

PROBLEM:
It is my understanding that when a computer company installs a DVD player in their machine, they package a player and set of video encoders/drivers with that machine. This is why the DVD seems to play on some machines and not on others. Different manufacturers use different software to interact with their DVD player and it’s not consistent across the board. Mac computers seem to have this pretty well covered and are able to process a wide range of media with no problems. Also, since it’s one company, they have standard hardware/software installations. If you’re on a PC, it’s kind of hit and miss. The standard Windows Media Player requires that you have a plugin to handle certain burnt DVDs and I believe it costs a small sum to purchase. Or it could be just a problem with older versions of the software, I’m not sure.

So what can you do about this?

SOLUTION:
A very helpful IT person at my office recommended a free, open-source program called VLC Media Player. You can download it at: http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

This program is supposed to be very versatile at playing any number of video formats including DVDs which is great since video is becoming increasingly popular. Although I have not used it on a PC, the MAC version seems to work great and some internet searches reveal it to be a legitimate and popular solution. There are versions for all different types of operating systems, so all of you Linux users out there can enjoy this as well!

If you try this with (or without) any success, please leave a comment and let me know how it works!

Dossier is getting the updates I promised a few weeks ago, and also moving to a new server. I’m going to do this tomorrow, May 1. I’m planning on doing this during the day since nobody’s really using the system just yet, but if I’m wrong now’s the time to let me know. If this will conflict with your plans I’ll reschedule this for a night or weekend.

(By the way, all the changes I talked about before made it in, except for the last one. The question types changes will have to wait for a future release.)

The problem I was having last week with the custom iPhone view for this site has been resolved! For those of you without an iPhone, here’s a rough example of what you’re missing, courtesy of the iPhoney Mobile Safari simulator.

Also, just so you know–video clips from this site don’t work on an iPhone due to its lack of support for Flash. Someday we’re going to get around to converting our clips to QuickTime for better portability.

Unfortunately, the modification we were using to produce an iPhone-specific version of this site doesn’t play well with the new look we installed last week. I’ve disabled the fancy iPhone version for now until I figure out a workaround. No worries, as you can still view the site with Mobile Safari just fine. Also, I have a feeling I’m the only one this affects–so no harm, no foul.

The Stratepedia Blog (this site) is getting a facelift! The site will be unavailable for about 60 minutes beginning this afternoon at 4:00 CDT while we slap on a fresh coat of paint.

Update: All done! What do you think of the new look?

Update: Everything’s done and all services should be back online. Let me know if you have any problems accessing something.

I have some overdue software updates to take care of on our main server–this unfortunately means that some services and sites will be unavailable for an hour or so. I’m going to get started around 4:00 central time. Sorry for it being in the middle of the day but my schedule doesn’t allow for all-nighters right now.

The following sites and services will be affected:

• Stratepedia (main site)
• Stratepedia blog
• Learning Labs
• Virginia CLC site
• Virginia CLC coaching calendar
• feeds.stratepedia.org
• CLC main site
• Preparing Preservice Educators site
• XtremeReading site
• CRL media archives

Depot and Dossier run from their own respective servers and will not be affected.

Over the course of the week each of the following services will be down for brief, one-time intervals:

• Virginia CLC site done!
• CRL Media Library done!
• Stratepedia Blog (this site) done!
• Virginia CLC coaching calendar postponed

Downtime should be limited to no more than 30 minutes per site. Please let me know if you have professional development or other things scheduled this week and if my plans will mess with your plans.