Thomas' Work Space

1. Do not follow the instructions for installing apache-maven-3.0.4  on “Windows 2000/XP”, or your final test running mvn –version to verify that it is correctly installed will fail.
2. When adapting the Environment variable path, do not use %M2_HOME%\bin, but rather repeat the explicit path, e.g. “G:\conf\lang\java\apache\maven\apache-maven-3.0.4” 
3. 
4. Why is that?

1. We experienced slowness of Moodle during an exam where about 12 students
   1. load a Moodle quiz into the Respondus lockdown browser (lockdown browser hangs with message "page loading"),
   2. but also already when logging into Moodle with a regular browser (hangs on login page).
2. Turns out large classes used the Moodle quiz function elsewhere on campus which put lots of load on the Moodle servers.
3. What can we do on our end to work around this as smoothly as possible?
   1. First, be patient while Respondus-lockdown–browser displays “Page loading”
   2. “Refresh” or “Back/forward” are the next resort once “Page loading” attempt has stopped and the page
      1. states it cannot be loaded
      2. displays an error about missing CSS component (likely due to incomplete load before timeout)
      3. says it “can be loaded only in Respondus-lockdown–browser” while you are in Respondus-lockdown–browser (Huh?).
   3. Keep calm and carry on, i.e. on your current computer.
      1. In general, trying on additional “fallback” computers is likely to make matters only worse, since even more load is put on the Moodle server system.
      2. Specifically, however, does Respondus-lockdown–browser block when a user attempts to load a Moodle quiz in Respondus-lockdown–browser on 2 different computers simultaneously? One student kept getting “can be loaded only in Respondus-lockdown–browser” consistently, until closing Respondus-lockdown–browser on this computer. Then the quiz would finally load in Respondus-lockdown–browser where she was logged in on another computer (can this being tracked by the Respondus-lockdown–browser security layer that checks whether a page is loaded within Respondus-lockdown–browser? Why then no more helpful error message, or is this “Security by obscurity”? Data seems inconclusive).
4. Additional tips for takers (and authors) of Moodle exams are available.

1. I am trying to back up my system partition to external media. The 3rd party utility I boot into refuses to get to work since it sees inconsistencies on the partition.
2. I schedule a chkdsk /f /r from Windows 7 which on restart runs without errors.
3. Upon completion, however, Windows 7 fails to  boot.
4. I go in the Startup Repair, but System Repair tells me it cannot fix my problem, but offers System Restore, which I try twice, to no avail.
5. Cryptic Error IDs 21200664, googling of which leads to nothing but MS System Engineers advising reimaging the system partition to the factory copy which would lose my 16 months worth of system customizations.
6. I feel I have other things to do to research the innards of Windows 7. Faintly I remember that fixmbr used to get me out of fixes with non-starting XP installations. It has been replaced by bootsect /nt60 <driveletter>, and on top of that, it responds with an apparent failure “since the volume could not be locked during the update” (actually deemed likely harmless, or use /force).
7. Windows 7 starts up. (WTH?! Check disk versus the master boot record?!)
8. Now, am I supposed to use a 3rd party or a Microsoft tool for my system partition backup?

1. Symptom: Audacity installation seems to complete without error, but attempting to start Audacity at the end of the installation process results in an error about bad environment with the above error code.
2. For your reference: It is has been the missing Visual C++ redistributable installation here in the past on staff computers.
3. Solution: Download and install the redistributable, then try restarting Audacity: It should start now.

1. The (Drupal-based?) ICS linked for the ACADEMIC calendar does not display properly in MS-Outlook and other ICS-compatible calendar readers (all events form the Academic calendar seem to get display at the current date and time when this screenshot was taken. The ICS portion for the Administrative calendar does not seem to have the same problem).
2. Both do seem to display on the Provost webpage:
3. The same holds true for the underlying registrar calendar ICS that is aggregated by the provost’s page.
4. Some debugging information when loading http://provost.uncc.edu/calendar/ical : “You have subscribed to "p.". 19 out of 169 events were successfully added to your calendar. There seemed to be some problems with the other events in the file you were importing.”

1. TURNS OUT THIS was not a technical issue – we will try and reconnect.
2. our setup:
3. our instructions
4. misc: Do we have to use the phone for audio? We have computer audio
5. misc:
6. our error: “the host has not yet joined the meeting”
7. Submitting support ticket that references this blog post
8. At some point, we get booted to next week’s meeting (no surprise then that the host has not joined the meeting).

1. The Rosewill rcr-ic001 card reader seems temperamental – you need to try several times to insert the card for the reader light to reliably flash.
2. It seems you need the Sony-provided software installed to have Windows recognize the drive: .
3. And offer an import:
4. 
5. However, the import of videos fails for me (only images get imported).
6. But at least I can access the videos through Windows, from here (for non-HD):
7.  
8. Until things go bad (computer slows to a crawl, then explorer crashes):     

1. Computer fails to shut down, with this error:
2. 
3. Pressing “Debug” does not do anything.

Problem: A Student that took the French Respondus Lockdown browser on PC 43, when playing to listening comprehension files,  had no audio on her headset (except for her microphone input was played back for her. The test is single attempt only, and lockdown browser prevents us from troubleshooting.

Cause: Master volume for Wave and SW Synth on lrcroomcoed433b back to 0, like so:

Workaround: plug in one of the black headsets (USB) temporarily (plugging in another brown headset did not resolve the issue).

Solution: None currently: even when the Respondus lockdown browser is not running, Deepfreeze will not allow making changes, and changes in the current user profile will not affect users whose profiels gets created upon login (which is all student users). Longterm: Don’t try to run identical software images on different hardware configurations. Not as longterm: Autoit FTW?

1. Are all things Moodle Kaltura on Windows better than on iMacs?
2. I don’t think so (Windows 7, IE9): Webcamera cannot be activated, hourglass. Looks like the Flash security dialogue does not make it into the foreground.
3.