Daily Archives: May 1, 2007

Educause Australasia: Dancing with the CIOs and Head Librarians

I missed a bit about Australian Culture. When the program says “dinner from 7PM until midnight” – it is serious about the “until midnight” bit.
I just assumed we would eat and then go our separate ways – hence the logic of Karaoke at 9:30 PM.
That turns out *not* to be the case. We did have pre-dinner drinks, food, and a short speech and a magician for a while. All seemed to be pro-forma. I figured it was winding down in time to go for Karaoke.
But then the rock band showed up. Everybody – the CIOs – librarians – probably 150 people – *immediately* got up and started dancing. Crazy! In the US we would sit at the tables and complain about the loud noise and the go off somewhere else. The tables were empty and everyone was on the dance floor. And not like in the US – they stayed for every single song and only sat down when the band took a break.
It *did* go until midnight. Just like the program said. A few people including myself left right before the last set. I have never seen a group that liked to dance as a group more – except perhaps the Irish.
Live and learn – always an unexpected cultural experience – perhaps tonight will be Karaoke.

Small Code Refactor in Portal

I did a bit of a refactor and removed some duplicate code that was getting ugly to maintain in
SkinnableCharonPortal.java
WorksiteHandler.java
It was the code that sets up the order of the top tabs. Some folks like Charles Sturt are interested in customizing this code and it is really sad to maintain it two places particularly when customizing it across a few releases.
It is a simple refactor – stuff that was natively in the context is now in a map called siteTabs like in this diff:
-#if ( $pageNavToolsCount > 1 || ! $pageMaxIfSingle )
+#if ( $sitePages.pageNavToolsCount > 1 || ! $sitePages.pageMaxIfSingle )
If this goes awry – you will see the string “$siteTabs” in your output. I have tested every place I could think of – but it is always possible to have made a mistake.

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NIFTY Feature – Single Tool Maximized

I just added a feature
http://bugs.sakaiproject.org/jira/browse/SAK-9799
This detects when there is only one tool present in the tool list and then only shows that tool. Like this:
http://bugs.sakaiproject.org/jira/secure/attachment/13879/singletoolmaximized.jpg
This requirement was inspired when I went to Cambridge and watched a seminar where the faculty member did his *whole class* in the wiki. I thought that it was a brilliant and clever approach.
This allows users to even redirect their whole site to another LMS bu using the web tool as the only visible tool and pointing to a URL to something like the /portal/worksite URL.
Other approaches might be melete-only, resources-only, discussion-only, LAMS-only. You could even use the iframe tool and do your whole site using DAV :) The web content tool effectively allows a complete redirect of the site to some other place!
I hope folks find this useful.

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Karaoke Tonight – Melbourne, AU – All welcome

So the Karaoke plan for tonight is as follows:
http://www.kbox.com.au/contact.htm
The above URL has a map
I will try to be there by 9:30 or 10PM. I have no idea how many people will end up there – but what the heck – you have to get the party started some way or another.
By the way the free bus/shuttle apparently stops at 6PM – so it is either a cab ride or a walk.
TEL: 9663 9663
ADDRESS: 52 LaTrobe Street (b/w Russell and Exhibition Street), Melbourne