Category Archives: computer

I am so done in…

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It’s been a busy time here at Statrix. I am just winding up two years worth of volunteer work as the webmaster for a conference held here on Oahu this past weekend. Admittedly the first year wasn’t particularly daunting. But starting in January 2010 things started to pick up.

I’m not going to say much about the conference itself, but I will say that being part of the host committee and seeing all our work come to fruition was one of the most gratifying experiences of my life.

For the website I used a combination of Drupal and CiviCRM. For the most part everything worked beautifully. I will say that anything that did go wrong was probably my fault and not that of the software.

Drupal is a pretty well known CMS and I don’t have much to say about it other than it works great. CiviCRM on the other hand is a tool not everyone needs, unless you need a really good Open Source constituent management system.

We used CiviCRM to:

  1. Sign up initial contacts
  2. Sign up volunteers
  3. Register attendees in conjunction with PayPal
  4. Bulk mail attendees with monthly updates
  5. Track mailings (opens/opt-outs/etc)
  6. Create some reports (others were hand coded)

I’m probably missing something but even so it’s pretty obvious it did a lot and did it well.

Sadly I came down with a virus the week before the conference so I was pretty much out of it for most of last week. I could, thankfully, diddle the data when required: and it was. I also had to rouse myself and present a paper as well as lead a late night discussion. I managed both of those tasks on adrenalin.

I’m quite thankful I had the opportunity to participate and, though in some ways I’m sorry it’s over, quite glad I’m almost done. There’s still wrap-up work to do and that will continue for another month or so, but nothing on the order of what I’ve just been through.

I am, once all is said and one, quite done in!

Aloha.

Playing with R…

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Here’s a topo map of Honolulu from Punchbowl to Diamond Head using data generated by the USGS National Map Seamless Server (available at http://seamless.usgs.gov/website/seamless/viewer.htm). I’m playing with the R language using the book R in a Nutshell which I just purchased as an O’Reilly deal of the day.

Honolulu Elevations (Punchbowl to Diamond Head)

Honolulu Elevations (Punchbowl to Diamond Head)

Both the language the book are pretty cool.
R

Back to business….

Google Apps class…

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A quick non-biking note, I sort of use Google Apps. My email runs through Google though I am using my own domain name and I sometimes open documents there. I also help manage a couple of workgroups with websites, though they don’t use Google Apps. Why am I mentioning this?

Today I got a notice from O’Reilly,the publisher, about a five week class on using Google Apps that will be held online (oddly enough, during my lunchtime here in Hawaii). It seemed a like a good opportunity to learn a bit more…at least I can keep my brain active.

Google Apps Class Header Image

Course: Google Apps.
Instructors: Michael Milton
Length: 5-Weeks
Class Dates: Tuesdays, August 31 – September 28, 2010

I’ve got a two of his books in the Head First series and participated in an online seminar he gave on data analysis which was really quite good so I signed up for this class as well. The worst that can happen is I’ll do something else at lunch. :-)

Aloha!

Google Apps…

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I’ve embarked on an experiment to use Google Apps in place of some of the tools that bluehost, my hosting company, allows. Don’t get me wrong, I like bluehost. I’m happy with the service, the tools, and most everything except, perhaps, the webmail system. To be honest I don’t even use the webmail that much. I pretty much use the Apple Mail app and IMAP to collect my mail. Still there are times…

I’ve got very limited needs. I wanted to incorporate Mail, Docs, Calendar, and Sites and I’ve only got a couple of users and they are all me. I may be incorporating this system on the system I manage that I’ve mentioned before, which is also hosted by bluehost, so I figured I’d better give it a try myself first.

A search of the help files for both Google Apps and bluehost didn’t quite explain everything to me. In fact I did end up somewhat confused, but in the end it turned out to rather more simple that I thought. I’ve got everything working and the only glitch, and it may not turn out to be one, is that I haven’t ported my old mail to my new mail system.

I’ve got to double check a few things first and I may try to write up a tutorial on how I did it as, contrary to most instructions I found on the web, I didn’t need to contact bluehost’s support center. I was able to make all the changes in cPanel.

And…in breaking news…I have been able to transfer my old mail from bluehost to my gmail account using gmail’s POP fetching utility. The trick, just in case I forget, is to avoid duplicating email names. That is, my old email was xxx(at)example.com. My new email is the same on gmail. However telling gmail to go get xxx(at)example.com failed for obvious reasons. Instead I told gmail to go get mail from transfer(at)example.com, but gave it all the other correct information. The other necessary trick is not to use mail.example.com but instead use the name of the bluehost box I’m on – boxXXX.bluehost.com.

Works like a charm.

Again, I’ll try to write this all up in a bit.

I’m off to play with all my new toys!

Aloha!