ECLUG -Eastern Connecticut Linux User Group- eclug |
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Monday, March 10, 2003
 ECLUG Consensus on Blog usefulness After spirited and wide ranging discussion of wiki's versus blogs versus listservs versus forums and other methods of exchanging ideas, the members of ECLUG reach a consensus. Here, Dave gets a well-deserved pat on the back for suggesting and creating this blog and inviting all the eclug members to participate. ;-) Friday, February 28, 2003
 Re: fyi eclug blog, php tutorial?:
The links for these are: Glenn has some samples above that, as well.These are from IBM Developer Works:
-dm "the linux philosophy is laugh in the face of danger. Oops. Wrong one. 'Do it yourself.' That's it." - l. torvalds Tuesday, February 04, 2003
Well, okay, since this is here, and I'm in...seems like a good place to blow my own horn. My site, School-Library.net has really turned into a site promoting OSS for schools, now. It still houses a broad spectrum of academic resources, lesson plans, etc., but over the past year the focus has really turned to OSS for schools. I distribute several Linux distros on CD. including some for Macs, OpenOffice.org for doze, 'nix and Mac, some other OSS applicatinos for doze and darwin/OS X. Not only do I sell the darned CDs, fo course, but I encourage teachers, students, administors, et al. to learn as much as possible about OSS and offer my meager assistance whenever possible (which usually consists of pointing them to a listserv or other resource). I get a steady traffic, a lot of e-mail asking questions and the occassional order for a OpOf.org CD (finally sold one for Mac yesterday), etc. I feel good about contributing to the promotion of OSS in schools. The few bucks I have made haven't even paid for my hosting, but I don't really care about the dough. It seems that due to budget cuts, I will be leaving my present school, but I will be leaving with the knowledge that OpenOffice.org is on a lot of machines there now and the administration is very, very aware of the benefits of OSS (I took a knoppix disc in and wOwed them!) and plans to migrate over the next couple of years. I have also loaded up Doze versions of Celestia for some science teachers and a few other things. One local fellow has contacted me about starting a OSS consutling business for schools. I am far from being any kind of expert on OSS at all, but I do know schools. I was thinking more about starting a non-profit to build linux machines out of discarded and donated parts to give to schools or less fortunate students who lack computers. Well, that's enough rambling. I would never do this on the list, as it would be equivalent to spam, IMHO, Unlike your inbox, however, this is read only by choice, so I do not feel as though I am imposing. Hope nobody is offended. The Eclug guru expertise helped make me the OSS user I am today, so Eclug has contributed to the migration of at least one school, and, likely wherever I land next. tony School-Library.net Freedom to Learn! Hmmm..I am wondering if a forum would be more appropriate than a Blog, for the LUG. And, of course, we already have a listserv with archive. I like blogger, though, I have one at: http://mrbaldwin.blogspot.com/ Although I rarely post to it, I am afraid. tony School-Library.net Freedom to Learn! I don't appreciate being spammed with invites to this blog place, nor do I appreciate posts from the eclug list being posted here, or at eclug.tripod.com. You have not discussed this with any other members of the list as far as I'm aware, and you don't even post to the list or attend meetings. Please stop. --Sean Sean, 1. If You tell me what Your list email address is, I will remove You from the invite list and You will never be bothered again by me. You apparently joined this blog to post, and cleverly entered Your email address as "abuse@blogger.com". This user has been removed from the Team list. 2. Only a few sample posts were entered here, to give folks a feel for how it might work. I am very aware that to post someone else's private messages to a list is a violation of Personal Privacy, not to mention rude. I only did a couple, which, if You bothered to take the time to check the dates, and frequency of these examples, You would be able to determine quite easily. So far as I know, none of the examples came from Your messages to the list, but if any of them were, let me know which ones and I will be glad to remove them. 3. I did send out invitations last year when this blog was created. Nobody responded. So much for discussing with other members of the list. 4. I post to the list very infrequently, yes. It is a relatively busy list, and I wish I had the time to follow it more closely. Because it is so busy, I find that managing the email from it a challenge, and I am establishing a separate email account just to absorb the volume. My Yahoo account routinely fills up, and I want to be able to manage. I like the idea of using a blog with commenting. It should be possible for Team members to post to this blog via email. 5. I do attend meetings when I can. I recently moved about an hour away from New London, and it is more difficult to attend than it used to be. Sean, Please send me Your email address as appears on the eclug list so I can remove You from this blog, as You have said You would like to be. This will ensure that any future re-invites will not be directed Your way. I am very sorry You feel the way You do, and assure You that no offense was intended. Now, as to some accusations that have been levelled in a comment to this post by Sean - Here is what it says: ------------------------------------------------------- I don't think that the rest of the ECLUG group would appreciate this type of behavior, and as sean has stated, this wasn't discussed on the list, as far as I can tell. You are also apparently using this facade to potentially collect banner revenue from the page hits. Why do you need a hit counter on a page that isn't even sanctioned by the group? Spamming the group's members with unsolicited blog invites is also not the best way to earn new friends in the community, so I would like to give you some advice on that. Stop. It's commendable that you have created this "fan" page for the ECLUG group, however, your participation in the group is very low, and I don't personally recall being asked to opt-in for this blog, repeated meeting spam, or otherwise. Have a wonderful day. ------------------------------------------ 1. No banner revenue from page hits is being collected by me or the eclug. I created this as a "donation" of a potential resource to the group, a source of convenience, should Members choose to use it. But that's a Community decision, and I have not pushed the idea on anyone. It was created last year, and until I reinvited everybody, (as you can plainly see by the contents) it was pretty much uniformly ignored. Tripod provides free webspace - 20 Mb - for homepages. This is one of those. As a condition of such, Tripod places banner ads at the top...not me, not eclug, and not Blogger. 2. The reasons for the hit counter are listed in the blog entry noting it's addition. Why not? Why have a newsfeed? An internet? A civil society? 3. I was unaware that an explicit "sanction" from the group was required, but if it is, by all means, put it to a vote. Lauren has the admin password and privileges to both the blogger and tripod accounts, and can lock me out and take down the site at anytime. I would think that if the Group finds the blog useful, and would like to share some discussion or knowledge with the greater Linux using public, then the Group members would use it and do so. I leave it to each Individual to decide whether or not to share their information, discussion, and knowledge in this way, or restrict it to the privacy of the eclug list. 4. Send me Your email address that is being "spammed" with "unsolicited invites" and I will personally guarantee that You will never get one from me again, as I will remove You from the re-invite list. This list consists of those who were on the eclug list last summer when I created the blog, and who did not respond by joining. It is never sent out automatically, a Team member with admin privileges must explicitly send it out. 5. This is not a "fan" page for the Eastern Connecticut Linux User Group. It's a utility for them, if they want to use it. My email address is dredeyedick_nospam_aT_earthlink.net for any who seek permanent removal from the reinvite list. 6. "Have a wonderful day. " yourself. Everybody else, Thanks for coming. Welcome. Glad You could make it. I hope You find it useful. -Dave Manchester on behalf of noone in particular but myself. Wednesday, August 07, 2002
Hitbox Counter Added Don't get turned-off by the image on the left below the newsfeed...it's a stats gatherer slash hitcounter. Hitbox has good free stats, so I got it. We'll be able to tell how useful People in the Group (and elsewhere) find the discussion that takes place here (if any). The stats are public. Link to www.entenation.co.uk added Entenation has been credited and linked with their image to the left, just below the Blogger link image. Commenting Added This site now has dynamic commenting. I found this really kewl place called entenation.co.uk that has this neat thing. Try it. If You need a question answered or have something to say about a discussion or item on the ECLUG weblog, click on the "comment" link below the item You want to comment on. The only drawback is that You have to have the browser set to accept popup windows, and some People like to turn them off to avoid ads (I know I do :-) ). Anyway, the comments are preserved in the popup message box, where You can peruse them at Your leisure. And there's a Permanent ("permalink") feature to the comments so You can link to them statically on a page if You want. Pretty phat, eh? I hope You like it. Monday, August 05, 2002
Linux Newsfeed Added You may notice there is a Linux newsfeed to the left now. It's free to nonprofit groups and personal or hobby sites from moreover.com. A comprehensive of available newsfeeds can be found at http://w.moreover.com/categories/category_list.html. Saturday, August 03, 2002
Command Line HTML Fetcher
Friday, August 02, 2002
Added links to template, hard link for archive Links have now been added to the blog template for eclug.net, at the left and at the bottom. Also, until I know the blogtags better, I fixed a problem with the Archive link by hard-coding it in the blog template. -DaveM Convert Newsgroups to html? -003-
Note: GNUS is now at: -Laurin Convert Newsgroups to html? -002-
I've done this before with various existing tools, but currently my tool of choice is 'Mailman' which does this automagically. You could also use MHonArc, which works well also, as an external package, as long as you have access to the raw spool (mbox, maildir, /var/spool, etc.) The problem with archiving them though is now you need to add searching capabilities.. oh wait, I've done that too (again for the lists I run). Try using UDMSearch, small, light, fast, and very capable.
In posting the Hacker's response, above, note I again used the subject as an html-tag-bolded header only with an " -002-" to indicated it's place in the discussion. I know, I know, it's not strictly true and is an accident of the sequence in which it hit my mailbox, and if multiple Persons were blogging at the same time while following this convention, there might be duplication of these little numbers, but - hey - just something I'm doing now to give a possible example, to throw darts at. Convert Newsgroups to html? -001-
Before you say: "Why don't you use Deja News...?" this is for a school INTRANET with it's own semi-private news groups and it would be available to someone who has an account at the school and has access to the school network. It should be something pretty simple to do in perl/python or another Notice above in this posting I tried a few things that might make it easier to locate discussion stuff here. In reposting Glenn K's message, I made the "subject" the first line (this gives a header to the entry, sort of ); I added " -001-" (space-dash-zero-zero-one-dash) immediately after it. I closed the bold tag, then added a paragraph tag at the end to force a new paragraph. This gives a bold header to the entry, and makes the entry easier to discern from the rest of the entries. I added a break tag at the end to put Glenn's name on a separate line, as it appeared in his email. These are just a couple conventions I'll follow when posting the rest of the discussion of this thread, as a sample. Invites All Out It's 5:29 am and I just finished sending out all the invites to everybody on the eclug list. (I think I got everybody...if I missed someone, email me at dredeyedick@yahoo.com and I'll do it up.) You may notice I had to make-up some last names, as blogger requires a last name when You add a Team Member. In some cases I was able to figure it out from the email address, but I may have made some mistakes. In others I used the email address to create a last name with no_spam underscores, etc. The interface won't let me edit them, so if it becomes an issue with anyone, let me know and I can remove the thing, and we can do the invite process over again with the correct info, so Your posts will be with Your preferred name at the bottom. I'm bushed. Ciao4Now - DaveM eclug mailing list So I got the listserver names from Laurin and am now in the process of sending out Blog invites to the rest of those on the list. If I missed anybody, email me at dredeyedick@yahoo.com and I'll take care of it. Laurin's an admin User here too, so if I'm not reachable, he can send an invite. Archive Wierdness There seems to be some weirdness about how blogger creates the archive...I'm still looking at it. Try clicking the archive link at the left and it'll take You to a bombed document.write statement. Clicking on the first link will take You to the real archive, the other one, marked ">>current" yields an error. But once in the archive, there's no direct link (yet) back to the top, without Your having to type it in manually. Thursday, August 01, 2002
I've found the eclug blog. So, being a web log - perhaps I should find / and / or comment on interesting linux news? Welcome to the ECLUG Weblog
So I did. So here's the setup: I created an account at www.blogger.com called "eclug". (link opens new window). Then I went over to www.tripod.com and created an account there also called "eclug". I gave them the same password. My idea is this: Since blogger lets You do collaborative stuff, why not just make it a collaborative weblog? This would avoid the problem of the lists email intensity...each reply is a separate piece of email to handle. Each post to the list requires a separate decision - to read or not to read? To reply or not to reply? And then there's the additional overhead of email account handling. Don't get me wrong. I am not saying to get rid of the list. But I do think having it in weblog format might offer some conveniences. Like having immediate browser-based access to the ongoing discussions, and avoiding all the email account Now I would like to offer a good reason to keep the list. A list is comfortably informal, whereas knowing Your comments appear on a web page might be an inhibiting factor to some. (not me, of course - heheh). HOW WE GONNA DO THIS? (IF we gonna do this...)Blogger lets You set up collaborative weblogs, with some Users designated as "administrators". Only administrators can edit, delete, and archive entries. I'm still learning the setup, but it seems like we can make it so that we can designate, say, 3 or 4 administrators and let everybody have the password to post. That's what it looks like to me at the moment. I say we give it a shot, on an experimental basis anyway. WIN-BASED BROWSER ISSUES So far I have not had net access on a Linux-based machine, but I want to share what I have noticed about using Windows based browsers to work with this thing. I first started this using my preferred browser while on a win platform - Opera (6.04). Unfortunately, blogger seems to like IE better...there are some display and other difficulties in the blogger interface when it comes to getting along with Opera, even when Opera is set to identify self as IE. Oh well. If anybody's interested, try it with Konquerer or Mozilla, and let me know how it works (if at all(!)). Wrapping Up Anyway, here's the ECLUG Web Log site. I hope You like it. I'll put a few of the items from the list on it so Y'all can get a feel for it. In the meantime, uh, Come blog with us. |
