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Archive for the ‘Notes’ Category

How to work around your HP touchpad image viewer showing only unfocused low resolution thumbnail images

2012/06/13 Leave a comment

Just figured out that to get past that unsatisfactory state, you only need to press the “play” button (and hold the image, if you actually use “play” only as  workaround, not to actually play a slideshow). Go figure. Smile

Categories: documentation, Glitches&Errors Tags: ,

Comparison of NLP Platforms

2012/06/07 Leave a comment

Not really a comparison, only a notebook compiled from online sources. Not really fit for publication either, unless “sharing is caring”. You can view a larger version here.

Categories: Learning-logs, service-is-evaluating-learning-tools, Spreadsheets Tags:

When installing apache-maven-3.0.4 on Windows 7 (64-bit), environment variables do not expand in %Path%

2012/05/15 4 comments
  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. maven install
  4. Why is that?
Categories: Glitches&Errors, service-is-testing-troubleshooting-debugging Tags: ,

Does Respondus-lockdown–browser block when a user attempts to load a Moodle quiz on 2 different computers?

2012/05/08 Leave a comment
  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.
Categories: assessments, audience-is-students, audience-is-teachers, Glitches&Errors, lms Tags: ,

Bootsect (the command formerly known as fixmbr), may enable your Windows 7 installation to start up from a CorruptVolume

2012/05/07 Leave a comment
  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. CIMG0034I 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. CIMG0033Cryptic 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?
Categories: e-infrastructure, Glitches&Errors Tags: , , , , , ,

Error code 14001 when installing Audacity

2012/04/27 5 comments
  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.
Categories: audience-is-IT-staff, e-infrastructure, Glitches&Errors, Institution-is-University-of-North-Carolina-Charlotte, multimedia-recording, service-is-documenting, service-is-testing-troubleshooting-debugging Tags:

Calendar ICS corruption

2012/04/26 Leave a comment
  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). provost-in-outlook-academic-messed-up
  2. Both do seem to display on the Provost webpage:provost-calendar-in-webbrowser
  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.”
Categories: Glitches&Errors, Institution-is-University-of-North-Carolina-Charlotte Tags: , ,

How do we connect to a Pearson MyLanguageLab webcast via Cisco WebEx?

2012/04/13 Leave a comment
  1. TURNS OUT THIS was not a technical issue – we will try and reconnect.
  2. our setup:CIMG0010 Stitch
  3. our instructionsCIMG0032
  4. misc: Do we have to use the phone for audio? We have computer audioCIMG0033
  5. misc:CIMG0035
  6. our error: “the host has not yet joined the meeting” CIMG0042
  7. Submitting support ticket that references this blog post CIMG0001 (3)
  8. At some point, we get booted to next week’s meeting (no surprise then that the host has not joined the meeting).
Categories: Glitches&Errors, textbooks, web-conferencing Tags: ,