PlayStation 3: The next generation - Tech News - CNET.com

...research efforts for the PlayStation 3 are focusing on distributed computing, a method for spreading computational tasks across myriad networked computers

Organize, collect, share your books with Singlefile - seems to ba a neat idea. I'm sure I could implement the bones of this in Conversant for my own purposes.

One set of exam papers down, and one set (almost ready) to go. Hopefully the weekend will be a bit more relaxing as a result.

The two-week Easter vacation starts today. My students don't return until 8th April. Time to catch up with all the things that have been queuing up recently. Here are some of the things I need to do over the next two weeks:

• Catch up with my family
• Catch up with my sleep
• Take lots of long walks with Rio (and anybody else that wants to tag along on the dog walk)
• Catch up with all the great stuff that's happening with Conversant and Radio
• Catch up with the extereme learning stuff
• Catch up with the departmental admin
• Catch up with the coursework assessments/organisation
• Tidy up my office at work (OK, that would be a displacement activity ;-))
• Tidy up my study at home
• Tidy up the garden
• Tidy/back up the files/folders of my iBook

My last reserves of energy ran out on the train through to Linlithgow this morning and my brain shut me down. Alas, I didn't receive an external interrupt until the warning bells on the ScotRail service sounded as the doors were shut and locked just before pulling out of Linlithgow station. Yes! This is just an reverse-anthropomorphic way of saying that I slept past my stop B-{

To make matters worse, a colleague was waiting to pick me up at the station as were going to a meeting together. So, I got off at the next stop - Polmont - from where I phoned Paul and eventually got through to him. The good folk of Polmont in the station waiting room had a good laugh at my predicament ;-)

To cut a long story short, 20 minutes later I caught the next train back to Linlithgow and finally met up with Paul. We arrived at our meeting 30 minutes late. Needless to say the good folk in the meeting had a good laugh at my 'excuse' for being late!

Must....get....more....sleep. But hopefully not on the way home tonight since if I sleep through my stop then, It'll be 30 miles further on before the next station - and no way to get back since I will have missed the last connection!

Must...stay...awake!

Secure Server for Frontier and Radio

Macrobyte is pleased to announce that a secure web server is in development for Radio UserLand(tm) and UserLand Frontier(tm).

This is another thing that's kept Seth busy! Excellent news for those that need a secure server option and yet another example of how productive Macrobyte is using UserTalk.

Congratulations Seth

O K I > Overview

The Open Knowledge Initiative is defining an open architectural specification to be used for the development of educational related software.

Completing my exam papers has become my top prioriy task. Until I finish them I am masking all interrupts and I've lowered the priority of displacement activities to the minimum level.

There's a backlog of really interesting stuff that I've also suspended for the moment. I will service these interruptions in due course.

Apologies if my response time is a lot slower than normal. As the sign in my office states "Please be patient - I only have two speeds and if this one isn't fast enough -- then I'm sure you won't like my other one!"

Dave announced Radio Community Server today:

Radio Community Server (RCS) is a software application for Radio UserLand or Frontier/Manila that makes it possible for individuals or organizations to host communities of Radio users. It offers all of the community functionality currently offered by UserLand's centralized system.

RCS is the perfect product for the development of private knowledge networks that live behind firewalls in corporate or institutional environments. It also is perfect for publications and ISPs that want to host public communities on their own systems. By offering this software for free, UserLand is saying: Let's Grow Communities Now.

Wow! This is a mindbomb. RCS costs $0. This is bound to grow the Radio/Frontier/Manila community. No wonder Seth says he's busy - he's working on a search engine for RCS.

It's going to be a week or so before I can dig into this but it looks like a candidate for part art of the Extreme Learning project at the local school. The price is certainly right!

All you computer language historians might want to check out the Computer Languages History (preview) timeline. My second prgramming language - taught at university - was Algol 68. My first was FORTRAN covered in school as part of the CSYS Maths class ;-) Ah! happy days ;-)

Oliver Wrede's owrede_log: Golden rules for Newbies to Frontier and Radio Userland

via SiT - MVU - Instructional Design Standards for Quality Online Courses

More than a year ago, MVU began developing rigorous standards to guide the design and evaluation of online course quality. Based on decades of research and the work of the best minds in the field of Instructional Design, we have recently completed a comprehensive set of standards that can now be used to design and evaluate online courses.

The relative dearth of posts made over the weekend is due to a hectic calendar of events rather than a diminution of my enthusiasm to wweblog. I didn't even find time to complete the exam paper questions that are (over)due B-{

Chores took up much of the day on Saturday but the drudgery of that was more than compensated by the 25th wedding anniversary party that Alison and Andy threw on Saturday night. Not that it was a wild party - it was just that the company was great and it was good to catch up with old friends.

Speaking of old friends, one of our teachers was also there. It's been 30 years since I was taught by Mr Forrest (Robin) - he was the PE teacher at Dunbar in the 70s - and we reminisced about school volleyball and rugby and Dunbar Sand Yacht Club of which we were founder members. Volleyball, in particular, since our Dunbar team won the East of Scotland regional finals in, I think, 1976. All the more remarkable was the fact that we came from the smallest school in the competition and no-one even considered serious contenders. The team had Robin to thank for coaching us so well. I was vice-captain. My best friend - Huey White - was the captain. Robin, sports, and sand yachting, were very positive influences on my life at that time. There's no doubt inspirational teachers can have a major impact on our lives. Robin was one such person.

Time flew at the party which is always a good sign. So it was 3am before we got home. I had about 4 hours sleep before getting up to take Heather to the farm she helps out on on a Sunday. I was on the beach with Rio, our dog, by 8 o'clock. It was great to have the two-mile long stretch of Belhaven Bay to ourselves.

TThe rest of Sunday was a basically taken up with Dunbar's John Muir Association activities. I helped to set up and staff our exhibition at a local volunteers' event in the afternoon.

Why I didn't get round to posting this on Monday heaven alone knows. Perhaps I was going to add some interesting news...

My latest thoughttrain about Extreme Learning (XL)