Author Archives: Bob Walker
The importance of language in Agile
Reading Adrienne Clarkson’s essay on the ‘Why language matters…’ (Globe and Mail, Sept 15, 2018), reminded of one of the problems I’ve consistently had with the language of Agile as it makes it way into software development in higher education. … Continue reading
Migrating Blackboard Journals as FoM ePortfolios
Background: The Faculty of Medicine MD Undergraduate Program (MDUP) used the Blackboard Journal tool as an ePortfolio during the 2015, 2016, 2017 academic years as part of the MEDICOL program delivery of resources. However, as of Sept 1, 2018, Blackboard … Continue reading
Linux Mint video tricks
Installed Linux Mint at home on my desktop. Works great, except I wasn’t happy about the resolution of my only Samsung flatscreen (as 2nd monitor), which was stuck at 1024×768. Finally got around to researching, and I found some tricks … Continue reading
Requiem for the UBC Granola Bar
I went to buy my (almost) daily UBC granola bar today. Since I first discovered them, I’ve been hooked. I have my own list of kiosks/cafe’s where they are sold. I have often relied on them to get me through … Continue reading
Old vs New
Chain broke on my bike ride home. Olden Days: – push the bike the 2 miles (now 3 km) home. Now: – Find an Evo car(with bike racks!) with my smart phone and book it. – Unlock the car with … Continue reading
ead drained my battery
I had the lovely yearly experience of changing my CWL password the other day. This is sort of a forced-march; trying to login quickly to get something done, then *boom* — slow down… login to change your password, type old … Continue reading
ghost in the machine
We finally got around to switching our Shaw cable service from analog to digital. I know, I know, it took a long time, but one of the reasons I procrastinated as long as I did was because of the FM … Continue reading
The oscars almost melted my laptop
It’s true! While watching the Oscars, I had my laptop on my lap, setting up a demo. Here’s what was going on: MySQL Eclipse. Chrome had already closed Firefox as it was eating 1.2Gig Oracle Virtual Box Blackboard VM (in … Continue reading
Hosted WordPress – installing themes with SAFE MODE
Second time I’ve had to do this, so why not document? If you are running WordPress on a hosted site with a VM (such as Plesk) you may have difficulty installing new themes as WordPress/PHP wants access to the /tmp … Continue reading
BB9 – Feature Loss SP11-SP13
Moving from BB9.1 SP11 to SP13 introduced the removal of the inline Folder View from a course. The only method of seeing a Folder View of the course as of SP13 is from a pop-up window. Supposedly this change was … Continue reading