Genre-is-any | Thomas' Work Space

Calendaring: How to view all your Moodle course assignments in Ninermail, OWA or MS-Outlook – Short version

2011/11/21 plagwitz 2 comments

In Moodle:

With Firefox (3.6 here), go to Moodle Calendar: https://moodle.uncc.edu/calendar/view.php?view=upcoming&course=1
Right-Click on and choose “Copy Shortcut”:

In Ninermail/OWA: click “Calendar”, right-click “My calendars” , click “Add calendar’, click radio-button “From internet”, paste URL you put in clipboard into textbox, click button “OK”, right-click calendar added, click “rename” and call it “Moodle”
Alternatively, in Outlook Desktop: go to “calendars”, right-click “shared calendars” , click “add calendar’, click “from internet”, paste URL you put in clipboard into textbox, click button “OK”, right-click calendar added, click “rename” and call it “Moodle”
Want a longer explanation?

Categories: audience-is-students, audience-is-teachers, documentation, lms Tags: calendaring, moodle, ms-outlook, OWA

How to run Windows Media Center during a Remote Assistance Session

2011/11/20 plagwitz Leave a comment

The /gdi switch for Windows Media Center allows for operating Windows Media Center full screen during
1. Windows Live Messenger Remote Assistance sessions if you have to help a relative over the internet.
2. Should also work in MSTSC Remote Desktop sessions if you manage media with Windows Media Center on your work network.
You can combine the above switch e.g. with the program guide shortcut to go directly there: /homepage:VideoGuide.xml /PushStartPage:True
Put the following in the “Target” field of your shortcut that you start on the remote computer (running Windows7 32-but here) during your remote assistance session:
%windir%\ehome\ehshell.exe /nostartupanimation /gdi /homepage:VideoGuide.xml /PushStartPage
Voilà, or rather: “Dem Inschenör ist nichts zu schwör”.

Categories: documentation, e-infrastructure, Media Tags: 7, ms-live-messenger, ms-windows, mstsc, remote-assistance, windows-media-center

How to use the online Spanish pronunciation help to generate phonetic alphabet transcriptions and text-to-speech

2011/11/18 plagwitz Leave a comment

Go to http://showroom.daedalus.es/es/tecnologias-de-la-lengua/phonetictrans/phonetictrans.php, enter your text, select your phonetic symbol set:
Unlike with the Portuguese help, there is no text-to-speech option here.

Categories: Advanced, audience-is-students, audience-is-teachers, Beginner, e-languages, Intermediate, learning-materials, Spanish, Speaking, websites Tags: links, phonetics, transcribing

Troubleshooting the wireless headsets in the TV viewing area

2011/11/18 plagwitz Leave a comment

For lack of small group work areas, the 3 headsets help sharing the LRCROOMCOED433. They amplify the sound for the TV viewing audience, allowing to turn the TV volume down so as not to disturb other users in the shared area.
No sound?
1. headsets turned on?
2. headset volume turned up?
3. headsets batteries dead?
4. transmitter turned on?
Static noise on headsets?
1. headsets batteries weak?
2. no line of sight to transmitter?
Other things you can try:

a different headset. We have 3.
a different transmitter. We have 2.

An image says more than 1000 words:

Categories: audience-is-language-learning-center-staff, audience-is-language-learning-center-temp-staff, audience-is-students, documentation, e-infrastructure, hardware, headphones, Listening, TV-viewing-area Tags: FAQs, films

How students access language learning materials on the Library ereserves system

2011/11/11 plagwitz Leave a comment

Note the important update in red below.
This has been tested at post date with Firefox. ereserves seems to be not compatible with Internet Explorer 8: i
On the Library home page, from the top menu: “Research & Course Help”, choose menu item: “Course Reserves” (or, if this menu changes again, I have a hunch that deeplinking may be more stable: http://library.uncc.edu/caos/coursereserve, what’s in a URL…),
sign in with your Ninernet ID,
enter search term
1. select from the dropdown “search by name”, an enter part of your course name in the textbox,
2. or click on tab:”Course Reserves Pages by Instructor”, and from the dropdown, select your instructor,
click search,
then select your course from the results grid.
Enter the password, which has been given to your by your instructor.
In the results grid, click on the desired chapter and tracks. Note: You need to disable your web browser”s “popup blocker”.
In the popup window, click on link: “More information”,
when offered, , like in this screenshot:
you cannot save the file, or rather: only a text file with links to the audio which you cannot play, like rtsp://dlib4.uncc.edu:554/e_reserves/CD1bonneforme12-16.rm). That is by design.
Instead of trying to save, select to “open” the file. You need have a streaming audio playing software installed, like Real Player or the open source VLC-Player.
instead of VLC, as offered by default, like so :
choose “Open with”, “Other”, pick “RealPlayer” from the list, like so:
Here is a more on what does not work with ereserves. The only combination I could get to work with eReserves streaming audio is – see resulting screencast (requires Windows Media Player) of streaming a long file successfully – is RealPlayer 14, Firefox 3.6 on Windows XP3, and that only after resetting the Winsock catalog which I can do for the entire LRC only nownext time the lab is reimaged. For now, use instead audio from Moodle metacourses where possible.

Categories: audience-is-students, e-languages, learning-materials, library-unit, Screencasts, service-is-library, websites Tags: ereserves

Streaming Problems with Realmedia via RTSP from ereserves with VLC Player (and Internet Explorer. And NetOp School)

2011/11/10 plagwitz Leave a comment

VLC-player
1. version 1.1.9, but also currently newest 1.1.11 as well on Windows CXP SP 3
2. opens from IE8 and Firefox 3.6
3. but is not able to play files (tested even multi) through. Rather, it nicely falls on its face, with the audio stream simply appearing to stop, mid-sentence, after 2:38 (pretty consistently – a buffering bug? A great way to slip through pre-testing).
4. In the LRC, I could hardly bring the taskswitcher up, let alone (15 minutes of waiting) the task manager, to even find that vlc.exe is the culprit, with a CPU utilization of 99% solid (Ouch!).
5. Not quite so bad in the office computer where it hovered slightly above 25%, maybe busying only one CPU core.
My Google searches do not find anything quite similar.
RealPlayer 14 to the rescue?
1. In IE8, RealPlayer does not open when clicking on the web page link with the RM file which causes a dialogue to open if VLC-player is the default player, rather a strange unplayable content error..
3. In Firefox, RealPlayer open and plays (and pre-buffers) the stream completely.
4. Note that ereserves “download as zip” cannot serve as a workaround: gives you only the links like http://dlib4.uncc.edu/streaming/media_play.php?file=9364cb66b9e1cae26aed0f471e9eab5b, which require you to re-authenticate, even if in the same browser session, and do not redirect to the resource, neither audio nor web page form which you could launch the audio (in short, I do not get what this download as zip is good for)
5. Next Problem: This may work on my office computer. In the lab we have NetOp School installed. That adds another layer of NetOp School problems which look like they can be resolved ~~next time the lab is reimaged. For now, use instead audio from Moodle metacourses where possible.~~ next time I get around to design and run a Symantec-Ghost Software and File Action on the computers (all LRC lab PCs) and test the result (on PC10) which was now.