Month: February 2015

by Clint Lalonde on All the rest

Necessary Illusions

I’m getting grumpier. It comes and goes, but I find myself yelling “get off my damn lawn!” more than the laid back 20 year old hackysack playing me would have ever even thought possible.

Is this really what today was all about? Is this how we sum up today?

The prominent discourse I saw on social media today. Tweets aplenty about blue dresses and llama chases.

Meanwhile, one of the most significant decisions about the future of the internet was made today; a decision that Open Media has called, “monumental, and historic” and “a historic victory for the Internet and for Internet users everywhere.” A victory in a battle that has been ongoing for 10 years. The FCC in the US has ruled in favour of Net Neutrality. Yet it seemed that every time I looked at my Twitter or Facebook feed today, or peeked into my Feedly account, all I saw was llamas and dresses (with the occasional much appreciated exception).

I know, I know. Grumpy. What is the harm in blowing off some steam and having some fun? I am guilty as charged of engaging in meme silliness. We all need to have some fun. And you can easily argue that it is the same internet that amplifies llamas and dresses that made possible today’s Net Neutrality win. Tweets, status updates, online petitions, grassroots democracy enabled by the internet making positive change happen. And you would be right. That does make me feel less grumpy.

But still…in the back of my mind, I know I am living in a world where llamas and dresses win. Perez Hilton and Buzzfeed. Necessary illusions. And the Net Neutrality victory today seems hollow when I know that tomorrow the zeitgeist will be populated with llamas in blue dresses.

 
by Clint Lalonde on EdTech, Textbooks, WordPress

Pressbooks Textbook development

It’s been awhile since I’ve written anything about Pressbooks development, and we have a couple of new development projects in the works that you might be interested in.

First, we are working with the excellent FunnyMonkey team to develop an open source PDF output engine. Right now, outputs of PDF in PB requires a commercial PDF output engine PrinceXML. Prince does a really fantastic job of creating PDF versions of the books created in PB, but the fact that it is a commercial license is a barrier for others who may want to adopt PB.

This project has been on our ToDo list for awhile, and I am really happy to see the work that Bill, Jeff and Brad have been doing to develop an open source PDF output engine based on mPDF.

The idea with the new PDF output plugin is not to replace Prince, but to provide an alternative for those who don’t wish to purchase a Prince license. PB will work with both.  mPDF won’t quite match the feature set of Prince, but it should still provide an adequate alternative for creating PDF’s without having to dish out money for a commercial Prince license.

Second, we are working with Hugh and the Pressbooks.com development team to develop an Open Document Type (ODT) output engine. This ODT output will also be suitable for use with MS Word (I can hear the sound of bemused puzzlement from some of you). Yeah, Word. I think that, if we are serious about making these books adaptable and editable, we need to make our content available in as many formats as possible, including formats that faculty are used to working with. And, for better or for worse, that is Word. I think that is what most faculty are used to working with, and if it means they will customize content and remix it and – ultimately – adopt it, then let’s make it available in a format that can be edited using Word.

The third bit of development revolves around the excellent work on accessibility that Amanda is doing with Tara Robertson at CAPER-BC and Sue Doner at Camosun College. We are going to be releasing an accessibility toolkit very soon that is targeted at faculty who are adapting and creation open textbooks to help them understand some of the basic design principles of accessibility. Based on some of the accessibility user testing Amanda, Tara and Sue have done, our new co-op student Ashlee from the SFU Computing Science program is working on baking some new accessibility features into PB to make the platform even more accessible for students.

Look for these to make their way into Pressbooks in the coming months.

* I updated this post after Brad informed me that these changes are not specific to Pressbooks Textbook, but will be submitted back to Pressbooks for inclusion with the core package.

 

 
by Clint Lalonde on All the rest

Check your Telus contract

Telus has announced that they will begin charging users who go over their monthly cap. They also rolled out a new user website where people who use Telus can monitor their monthly data usage.

I am a Telus internet customer coming close to the end of my 3 year agreement with them, so I logged onto the new site to see how close I was to my 250GB monthly cap and was surprised to see this:

telus

Wait a sec. Does that say my limit is 150 GB? But Telus, we have a 3 year agreement that says I get 250GB.

telus4

When I called Telus to ask them what was up, they said the plans were changed in October, and my plan was downgraded to the 150GB cap plan. The customer service rep on the other end of the phone said that she could upgrade me to the 250 GB plan for an extra $5 per month.

What? Wait a minute. You want me to pay an extra $5 a month to get something from you that we have already agreed to in a contract that you would provide? I mean, we have a contract! This is exactly the type of behaviour that contracts are supposed to avoid. I agree to pay you each month for a service, and you agree to give me what we paid for for the term of the contract which, in my case, runs until April.

But yet we have a situation here where it seems like Telus has arbitrarily changed the terms of the contract I have with them and downgraded my account by 100GB —– sh0rtly before they announce that they are going to charge extra for people who go over their cap? That is just….wrong.

My “contract” expires in April. Telus has given me a higher cap and increased bandwidth for lower price for the rest of my contract. But this is an appeasement (and even then the rep on the phone told me that they were able to offer this deal to me, not because they messed up, but because I was a good customer with an excellent payment record).  Customer service reps being customer service reps can only do so much. They can’t change corporate policy with a customer on the phone. The pisser is, I don’t know if I would get much better service or value if I take my business elsewhere, such is the state with ISP’s these days. But come April, I’ll be looking to switch.

Or maybe I should just switch now and drop Telus, despite having 2 months left on my contract? I mean, if they can arbitrarily change the terms of our contract, then why can’t I?

If you are like me and signed a long term contract with Telus many years ago that agreed to give you 250GB monthly usage, check your current usage cap and make sure you are still getting what Telus agreed to give you in your contract.

Poor form, Telus. Poor form.

 
by Clint Lalonde on For Fun

New camera

Just after Christmas I got my first DSLR camera. Nothing fancy. An entry level Nikon D3200 that I picked up at a Boxing Week sale.

I’ve wanted a DSLR for a long time. I used to shoot film with a Yashica 35mm, but when that bit the dust a decade ago, I switched to digital point and shoot as DSLR’s were crazy expensive at that time. But in the back of my mind, I always planned on getting a DSLR.

The proverbial straw came this past Christmas when I ordered our family printed calendar from Shutterfly. Each year for the past 8, I sift through the family photos for the year, pick the best, and print a calendar for the next year.

Well, this year when I got the calendar, I was extremely disappointed by the number of blurry, low light, fuzzy and generally craptacular photos from the past year…

A good photo made bad by a camera phone

Good photo op gone bad.

The phone camera just wasn’t cutting it, especially since the vast majority of photos we take are in the low light of our house.

A second reason I decided this was the year was the subject in the photo above – my daughter. This past year, she has taken a real interest in photography, claiming the ancient Canon Sureshot – that first digital camera I bought close to a decade ago – as her own. She didn’t mind the age. She was too busy enjoying taking pictures and making videos with the limited capacity of the camera. So, I thought this would be a perfect opportunity for both of us to kindle a common interest together, and this Christmas, she got a new camera as well. Not a DSLR, but a decent quality point and shoot number with a few manual overrides.

This month, we have been learning our new cameras together. I’ve been trying to take D’arcy Normans  advice to shoot a lot of photos, and my daughter and I have been going out on the town for photo walks together, taking pictures of whatever strikes our fancy. And we’re having a blast.

DSC_0154 Morning light photo shootDSC_0163These cameras have already proven to be one of the best purchases I’ve made in a long time.