I saw that google has opened their google transit service by publishing an API. I think this is a fantastic idea so I wrote UTA the following letter. Hopefully they will soon be using this service.
click more to see my letter.
I was asked how to detect if the flash plugin is installed. I found some pretty good info adobe puts out on this.
There are several useful articles here
http://www.adobe.com/support/flash/detection.html
This one is particularly applicable to detecting if the flash player is installed.
http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/knowledgebase/index.cfm?id=tn_14526
I’m glad they have this information because although most browsers do have flash installed developers should still play nice with those who don’t and they should espicially make sure that the user has the correct version for any newer features of flash that they are using.
Get your own pirate name from piratequiz.com.
part of the fidius.org network
Verizon called me to try to sell me the modem capability on my blackberry. They made it sound like it was free at first but then after I asked it turns out it is another $15/mo. Why the extra charge? The fee they are charging is already exorbant. Verizon should try to include more for the fee but instead they want to try to get every penny out of their customers that they can.
I was having trouble with maven today and trying to figure out what was going on because none of the error messages I was getting made any sense. After troubleshooting I finally figured out I somehow didn’t have a build.properties file. This was causing everything to behave differently than what I expected. I’m still not sure how this file ever got deleted in the first place. Luckily I was able to recreate it quickly.
So the moral of the story is to make sure you have a build.properties file in your home directory if you start having trouble with maven.
I was able to set up wireless for the SLCC (Salt Lake Community College) wireless network yesterday. I am taking classes from the Weber State University CS department to finish my bachelors and they are on the SLCC campus so I’m able to use their wireless network.
It was simple enough to setup but definately more of a pain than it should have been. They make you go into the library and sign a paper form then they configure an active directory account for you that allows you to login to the wireless network through LEAP. They then make you hand your laptop over to one of their techs to configure LEAP. To do this I had to wait in line for about 20 minutes behind the five other people also trying to get wireless set up.
I can’t help but think this could be much simpler. They could allow you to sign the form electronically then they could create your active directory account through a script and then provide good instructions and a download for installing LEAP. This could save them and many students a great deal of time. Hopefully this is what they will move to in the future since this really is a relatively simple process and shouldn’t be so tedious espicially for a school that says they have ~25000 students between their various campuses. It seems like it would be a reasonable investment to get an automated system setup.
Overall though it is at least nice to have wireless included as part of the fees I’m already paying instead of having to pay YAAF (Yet again another fee).