BIT320 Remix: Problems Archives

Server Problem??

Following up on Shadywater’s question:

We couldn’t decide if it was our code’s problem or as we recently discovered at bud’s office, could be a server issue. What does everyone else think? Does anyone else run into the same problems?

We have not found this problem to be true. We have had similar issues were our code partly works, but never inconsistency when we update data. Although we have not inserted much today. Yesterday we added lots of data without problems. If it is a server problem please let us know.

In SuperMatt, 12/19/2005 | Original | Archive | Post to del.icio.us | Technorati

RSS Project Question, SuperMatt Goes for Bonus

Matt references an RSS question Aga raised last week. Frankly, I confused this one with a bookmark someone had made about RSS resources they had found for the project. The bookmark sounded like people were charging ahead. Matt and Aga want some ideas for how RSS could be used for Denali. Here’s a couple of ideas:

A feed of the most recent flavor requests from customers. Maybe the zip code could be a category element (i.e., a tag). You could easily aggregate requests by zip. Flavor might be another category element.
You could also have a feed of salesperson updates.

Basically, the ideas is to use RSS as a notification format. Categories give you convenient ways to aggregate the information in the feed.

In Blogonautic Solutions, 12/17/2005 | Original | Archive | Post to del.icio.us | Technorati

RSS Question still not answered

A week ago Aga wondered:

We’re wondering what kind of functionality would you like us to have involving RSS? We have a couple of ideas on how we could feed, but we’re wondering what are some options or preferential ways to feed into (let’s say we have a website…what do we feed it to? is there anything else we should consider?). Though we haven’t gotten to it, we’d like to attempt this portion though we may not get it to work. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

We still haven’t resolved this issue and now I am trying to decide which data I should try to transform into valid RSS feeds. Any ideas or thoughts are welcomed. Thank you

In SuperMatt, 12/17/2005 | Original | Archive | Post to del.icio.us | Technorati

Tabbing Question Solved

So I have found a way to answer Pink Footsie’s question. Her question was:

How do you change the drop down menu in jEdit to tabbing? I know it can be done and it’s easier to switch between windows this way than working with a drop down menu. Oh and how do you bring up the tabs we have in class that have the XML & XSLT transformer on the side?

Here is what I did to fix the problem!

Download the Plug-in called Buffer Tab. You can do this easily by clicking on the Plug-in Drop Down and the open the plug-in manager.
Open up Plug-ins option under the plug-ins drop down and find the BufferTab plug in. Make sure “Enable Buffer tabs by default” button is checked.
Now you should have tabbed browsing for your Jedit page.

I hope this helps blog if you have any other questions.

In SuperMatt, 12/10/2005 | Original | Archive | Post to del.icio.us | Technorati

Screen Shots in Posts

In one of Aga’s posts she talks about the idea of using the print screen function. This is a good idea because it saves students time, and ensure an exact replica of text. However I’m worried about the clearly of the reading. Also it is a huge pain to do. In fact, I have tired numerous ways to insert a screen shot and it doesn’t seem to work. This first way I tired was to save the screen shot as a file then insert it in the blog. That did not work. Then I tired to copy and paste the image in, but that did not work either. In both of these tries, the computer basically tries to post a local file into my blog. The only way I figure I could do this is to post the picture (screenshot) on the internet somewhere then have the html code pull the picture from the website where the file is located. All of this is much harder than just coping and pasting the XML text. Does anyone have an easier way?

In SuperMatt, 11/30/2005 | Original | Archive | Post to del.icio.us | Technorati

Trying to Help Supriya

Supriya ask in her blog:

I have read the part on xsl:copy and xsl:copy of a few times, but I am not sure if I understand exactly when I would use one versus the other. Pg.58 of the book provides a good summary on the parts included in the result tree from the two elements. Can someone give me a practical example (besides the book one on miniscore.xml) as to how to distinguish b/w the two commands?

concept to explain in words but I’ll give it a shoot, hopefully Bud will help me out if I lead you astray. Basically you choose your command based on what you want to return. If you only want to return the current node you use the copy command. If you want to return all of the child/attributes then use the copy-of command. How I would think of it is if you want to just have your output display the top line (current node) use copy, but if you want all of the sub-information (children/attributes) use the copy-of command. I hope this helps.

In SuperMatt, 11/25/2005 | Original | Archive | Post to del.icio.us | Technorati

The Tempo Quickens as the Templetes Diversify

ahhhhhhhh! I’ve been trying to work on this chapter of SQL. And I was moving ok until the end of the chapter and I hit a wall with Attribute Value Templates and Working with Named Templates.

Ok first with Attribute Value Templates:

What is an Xpath?
What is the purpose of this template

Second with Named Templates, I understand that its creating another template rule so that one doesn’t need to rewrite it at every place you want to use it buuuuuuuuut:

at the end of the example, why do they match year and grade?
and why does my sample when I run it have an error message of:

file:/home/usr01/bit320/steviek/webapps/XSLT/basic.p63-2.xsl: XML-0121: (Fatal Error) End tag does not match start tag ‘xsl:template’.
file:/home/usr01/bit320/steviek/webapps/XSLT/basic.p63-2.xsl: XML-0210: (Fatal Error) Unexpected EOF.
Error occurred while parsing basic.p63-2.xsl: End tag does not match start tag ‘xsl:template’.

OK that’s it for right now ;D Over and Out!

In Shady Waters, 11/19/2005 | Original | Archive | Post to del.icio.us | Technorati

The Curve — Why Blogstar gets it

So, with some amusement, I read the various posts over the weekend about the curve. I say “with amusement” because they popped up in the middle of a presentation I was doing on the class remix. Talk about having to be quick on your feet.

At any rate, SuperMatt started it off with:

Our Bit320 class has less than 15 students in it. This is great for learning, but terrible for grading. Most classes have many more people enough to get a large enough sample to allow for a bell curve.

TigerLilly fired back with:

Also, I think the curve does not encourage group work because basically we have to fight for a spot in the ranking. It is not avoidable with the mandatory group work but besides that, I have no incentive to help someone else out.

and finally, our pal Shady resonated to this last sentiment:

Maybe but then what are they doing trying to get us to compete with each other, if they really want us to work together. It’s like MO said:

Rewarding B when hoping for A.

And lets all be honest here, this isn’t a problem. These are opinions. OPINION SLUG!

Then, perhaps unaware of this fracas, or perhaps just hoping it would go away and purposely moving on to a productive topic, Blogstar chimes in with:

Repeating groups occur when you have mutiple columns of the same attributes.

Responding to Tigerlily’s observation (perhaps written after her “I’m not sure I should share information post”):

As I have been looking over my notes, the repeating groups concept doesn’t make sense to me anymore. Can someone quickly explain it?

My observation is this. We are at a stressful point in the semester. People realize they are going to be evaluated, and they want to make sure they get an evaluation that matches their true capabilities. They are worried that they will somehow give away “the secret” to their success.

Let me attempt to relieve these concerns. The test is only 10% of the grade. Blogging is 36% of the grade. You are making many more points by blogging than by taking the test. The blog posts that I consider the most valuable are posts like Blogstar’s (as I write this, Kevin makes a similar post) where the student makes a contribution to the class’s knowledge about the topic covered.

I will grade the blogging portion based on quantity and quality. Contrary to Tigerlily’s and Shady’s observations, the lion’s share of credit in this course is given based on your contribution to the class knowledge. The person who scored the lowest on the exam last year scored an A for the course because he did incredible projects and really contributed.

Remember this point.

In Blogonautic Solutions, 10/24/2005 | Original | Archive | Post to del.icio.us | Technorati

Dumping your Junk

a child turned to me innocently and asked “stephanie where do all the old computers that no one wants anymore go? Do they have homes to go to?”

And I now can answer this little child, giving her some sort of hope, or not: Oh yes, they go overseas to 3rd world countries to become junk in landfills in areas to poor to fight for clean spaces and healthy places to play.

oh yes, the hope that I could give to this child. I ran across the article in NYtimes. This hope that, one day, your backyard will also be filled with useless computer parts that were dumped there by recycling businesses to escape laws for computer recycling. These parts are sold or donated to 3rd world countries that have no use for them. If even we cannot find uses for these things, what makes us think anyone else will?

Where do you put your junk.

In Shady Waters, 10/24/2005 | Original | Archive | Post to del.icio.us | Technorati

Tolling your Bell, Curving your Waist

Yeah so. Matt and Lily have been both expounding on the issues of bell curves. Tigerlily a really good point in that :

Also, I think the curve does not encourage group work because basically we have to fight for a spot in the ranking. It is not avoidable with the mandatory group work but besides that, I have no incentive to help someone else out.

It’s true! The bschool tells us all about group work all time. That once in the real world one, that’s all you do. Maybe but then what are they doing trying to get us to compete with each other, if they really want us to work together. It’s like MO said:

Rewarding B when hoping for A.

And lets all be honest here, this isn’t a problem. These are opinions. OPINION SLUG!

In Shady Waters, 10/23/2005 | Original | Archive | Post to del.icio.us | Technorati

Class curving

I think SuperMatt brought up a good point about the problems with the bell curve. I am all in favor of curving unless the curve does not help everyone. I had that thought about our BIT 320 class. What if we all did A quality work but there is that 10% or whatever that have to get a B- or less. As long as people are not getting worse than what they deserve, I think the B-schools curving policy is fine. But if it goes the other way, it is unfair. I’m not actually aware of if that has actually been the case, but I hope it hasn’t. Also, I think the curve does not encourage group work because basically we have to fight for a spot in the ranking. It is not avoidable with the mandatory group work but besides that, I have no incentive to help someone else out.

In Tigerlily's Blog, 10/22/2005 | Original | Archive | Post to del.icio.us | Technorati

Problems with the Bell Curve

Our Bit320 class has less than 15 students in it. This is great for learning, but terrible for grading. Most classes have many more people enough to get a large enough sample to allow for a bell curve. However are class is so small I don’t think the bell curve rules should apply to us. This is especially true when you look at the high caliber of students in our section. To see the math behind a bell curve click here.

In SuperMatt, 10/22/2005 | Original | Archive | Post to del.icio.us | Technorati

Making WordPress Categories Stick

Matt makes a great post which I will just recopy here:

There is one problem wordpress that was frustrating for me when I first started blogging. Whenever I create a new category for my blog it does not work the first time I publish it. An example of this was my last blog. If you’ll notice I categorized it with under technology, Google, and Microsoft. In this instance Google and Microsoft were new categorizes. The problem occurs when I publish it. What happens is that the new categorizes does not register with the blog. In order to fix this problem I have to click edit and re-select the categories. This problem is easy remedy but still annoying.

Another solution is to hit “Save and Continue Editing”. You will still have to go back and reclick your category, but you will save the step of having to publish and then return to the writing interface.

In Blogonautic Solutions, 09/24/2005 | Original | Archive | Post to del.icio.us | Technorati

Problems in WordPress

There is one problem wordpress that was frustrating for me when I first started blogging. Whenever I create a new category for my blog it does not work the first time I publish it. An example of this was my last blog. If you’ll notice I categorized it with under technology, Google, and Microsoft. In this instance Google and Microsoft were new categorizes. The problem occurs when I publish it. What happens is that the new categorizes does not register with the blog. In order to fix this problem I have to click edit and re-select the categories. This problem is easy remedy but still annoying.

In SuperMatt, 09/24/2005 | Original | Archive | Post to del.icio.us | Technorati

Alittle Confused

This is something that I think will get touched upon again in class, but since I was confused about it, I thought I would see what some of you had to say. I am having some difficultly understanding exactly what a superkey is accord to the Article. A superkey is “is any set of attributes (that is some subset of S) that functionally determine all the attributes in S.” But I am not sure exactly what that means. I understand the basic idea, but it can get confusing.

In SuperMatt, 09/14/2005 | Original | Archive | Post to del.icio.us | Technorati

SuperMatt » Blog Archive » Word Press - still dont use

In del.icio.us/supermatt, 09/11/2005 | Original | Archive

Duplicate entries

In del.icio.us/supermatt, 09/11/2005 | Original | Archive

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BIT320 Remix — Problems