Author: primaryt

fsc Could not connect to compilation daemon in CentOS

Posted on by primaryt

Trying to install etherpad on CentOS and I ran into the fsc issue. Scalac throws a load of errors during compile so that’s a non starter. Interestingly enough even if you change fsc to scalac in comp.sh you still get fsc errors. Even overwriting the fsc binary w/ the scalac binary throws errors..

scala version: 2.8.0 (installed from tar) also tested 2.7.7

Error output:

# fsc -verbose
[Server arguments: -d /usr/share/etherpad/. -verbose]
[VM arguments: ]
[Temp directory: /tmp/scala-devel/root]
[Executed command: List(/usr/local/scala/scala-2.8.0.final/bin/scala, scala.tools.nsc.CompileServer)]
[Port number: -1]
Could not connect to compilation daemon.

selinux is disabled:

# /usr/sbin/sestatus
SELinux status:                 disabled

Paths set as:

# export | grep SCALA
declare -x SCALA="/usr/local/scala/scala-2.8.0.final/bin/scala"
declare -x SCALA_HOME="/usr/local/scala/scala-2.8.0.final"
declare -x SCALA_LIBRARY_JAR="/usr/local/scala/default/lib/scala-library.jar"

/etc/hosts is correct, we can ping localhost:

# ping localhost
PING localhost (127.0.0.1) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from localhost (127.0.0.1): icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.047 ms
64 bytes from localhost (127.0.0.1): icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=0.047 ms

Tried fsc -reset to no avail:

# fsc -reset
Could not connect to compilation daemon.

Anyone any other suggestions?

Note: I was able to get it to compile the .jar file after a hell of a lot of tweeking and playing around w/ scala_home etc.  However fsc still fails/failed.  Spent quite a lot of hours on this, would be nice to get a resolution to the fsc issue.

Note: Last time I helped someone with this it was due to the VPS (don’t try to install Etherpad on a VPS) didn’t provide swap space so erm, yeah..  Of course scala and fsc didn’t work properly..  I isolated this by doing

scala -verbose >> logfile.log 2>&1

The error I got was this one which is commonly related to VPS’…

Ye Olde Android adventure – Day 2

Posted on by primaryt

Today as I ventured towards Droidville I met a sage who reminded me about some useful keystokes.

Eclipse: Control Alt Down duplicates line
Emulator: Rotate screen – Control F11

As I moved closer to Droidville the air began to fill with hope, thousands of hopeful children and teachers poored into the streets, so I quickly hid and jumped into Bar Youtube (Part of the Starbucks chain) and watched another video to further my understanding of the power of Android, another good one this time by Ye old O’Reilly

Building my team to fight the forces of evil

I got in touch with a developer through rent-a-coder called Kumar Bibek who has 3 years experience fighting the forces of evil (developing Android apps). We had a conversation that went something line:  “I can make the bow, can ye make the arrow?”  We agree’d on 100$ for the array (final bits of the work that were out of my skill set).

Overview of the bits I’m doing:
Making Classdroid look fit for a princess (Layout design/User interfaces)
Making Classdroid easy to use  (Application flow)
Making Classdroid link together (Intent assignments)
Designing how Classdroid will save our princesses minions (Database design)

Overview of the bits he’s doing:
Not shooting the messenger (Code to read/write preferences/settings to/from SQLite)
Carrier Pigeon nurturing (Control method for post to WordPress)
Controlling the Eye of  Gondor (Camera SDK modifications)

In the Sage’s library I found a piece of parchment with some notes scribbled on it:
Resource = text,pictures, sound objects, layout….
Intent = change the page
View = new page layout/display
\n = newline when using text elements

Very cryptic clues, maybe I will need them to enter the great hall of Droidville?

It’s been a long day…..

As the day drew to a close and the Sun nestled the hills of Azrowilsden I discovered WordPress have an android application that does 80% of what I want to do from a control point of view so I’m going to hack into that to save me needing to write the function that posts the RPC over XML to WordPress.  This is why the world should embrace more open source, it empowers us all instead of dumbing us down like iLem users who are too scared to google how to create an android application (or don’t see it being a valuable use of their time).

As the iLem users fall off their platform I am gently warmed inside by the knowledge that we are creating a better, more open world without any corporate borders.  One application at a time.

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Making a Google Teacher Academy Application is easy

Posted on by primaryt

Making my Google Teacher Academy Application video only took about 30 minutes.  The thing that took the longest was deciding what I was going to talk about.  My recommendation to you is just to talk about something you are passionate about and not to try to think about what other people would want to hear.  If you are thinking about applying I strongly recommend you put a little time aside to create a presentation because when you do it will make you think ab0ut a) what you are passionate about and b) it will make it easier for people to understand what you are passionate about. This was an unexpected outcome from doing my video and it has proved to be massively useful.

How I picked my topic

Initially I was going to do a high and mighty review about using ICT in an innovative way in the classroom, this just seemed too vague with a whitewash of buzz words and sales schpeil.  I decided to do a presentation on something I think could affect education in the future and is slightly fringe and creative.   Admittedly I spent hours looking at the brief by Google dissecting it and thinking about how I could make the perfect presentation.  Ultimately I figured presenting something I am passionate about would come across better.  I wrote my script and saved that to PrimaryPad, a few people jumped onto the Pad and modified all the incoherent bits so I was using simple language in my presentation.

Creating the presentation

I used Microsoft Powerpoint to create the presentation slides, I wanted to keep things simple and as text free as possible.  All of the images I used were Creative Commons and found through various creative commons image search websites such as flickr.

Recording the video and audio

I used a flip video camera to record the video and a Samson USB microphone.  I put the flip video camera on a box and stood in front of a white wall.  I recorded the video through the day to make sure there was some natural lighting.

Making the video

I exported each of the slides from Powerpoint to a .PNG file and then imported those files into Camtasia Studio.   I dragged the video and audio that I recorded on the flip camera and the Samsun microphone into Camtasia Studio.  Once I had the audio, video and slides into the program I synced up the audio, chopped out all my out takes(about 80% of the content was useless) then and added a few transitions.  I normalized the audio and shrunk the video from the camera into a corner.  Finally I added a few transitions then exported the project to WMV which I then uploaded to Youtube.

Tools used:

View my application video

Matt Lovegrove’s application video

Chicken Saltash’s application video

Oliver Quinlan’s application video

Ian Addison’s application video

Mr Lockyer’s application video

Chris Wilde’s application video

Martin Waller’s application video

lardyken‘s application video

David Mitchell’s application video

Jan Webb’s application video

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Microsoft Office Web Apps 2010 in the primary classroom

Posted on by primaryt

Microsoft have released Office Web Apps 2010, this is big news for Primary Schools.  Continue reading to find out why…

Price

Office Web Apps is completely free, you don’t need to buy into Microsoft Office or pay any registration free.  In fact you can start using it right now by visiting Microsoft Office Live.

Documents are stored online

When you work on an office web app all of your documents are stored on Microsoft’s Skydrive.  This means that even if your local computer crashes you won’t lose any documents.  By storing files online you can also access them from anywhere with an internet connection and easily share and collaborate with other people.  Of course the collaboration isn’t as great as PrimaryPad as it is only sentence by sentence and not really-real time 😛

No download or purchase required

Because Office web apps 2010 are completely online you don’t need to download, install or configure anything before you get started.  Watch the video below to get an idea of how simple it is to use.  For advanced editor features you will have to purchase Office 2010

Management with Live @ Edu

Live @ Edu is a service available for your primary school that allows you to have a management portal that manages the configuration of Microsoft Office Web Apps for your school.  Live @ Edu offers a lot more than this but essentially if you think of it being a way to customize a pupil or teachers experience of using one of the Microsoft Office Web Apps tools then you can’t go far wrong!

Limitations

With Web Apps being relatively new (although in Beta for a long time at Microsoft) there are some obvious limitations:

  • Difficult to wrap text around images
  • Impossible to send content straight from a school MIS to the Web Apps.

I strongly recommend signing into your hotmail/live account and clicking the Office button and having a play.  Only you will know how your school uses Office applications so only you can say what is a limitation for you.  If you do find any please post them as a comment!

Summary

With office 2010 being familiar to schools and a very few barriers to uptake I can see this perfectly complimenting the work we are doing in Bradford, I look forward to deploying Live@Edu and think that the impact of extending learning should be easily measurable from an assessment point of view.  The conservatives want to focus on the basics, what better way to focus on the basics than by delivering them anywhere, any time?

Have you had a chance to play with it yet?  Is it too limiting for you?  Do you believe we should be blogging/emailing  instead of word processing?

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Google Cloudcourse is not a learning platform

Posted on by primaryt

"CloudCourse is a course scheduling system. ” — Google Code.

Not a learning platform.  (as claimed by this post)

C’mon people, just because something is a web based tool that can be used WITHIN a learning platform doesn’t mean it IS a learning platform.  Educators are already confused enough with companies offering them learning platforms that don’t do what a learning platform should do according to Becta(RIP) and Wikipedia.

Obviously a lot of people are still confused to what is a learning platform.  I recommend you watch this video.

There is a live version of cloudcourse for YOU TO PLAY WITH here.

It is pretty much irrelevant for Primary Schools, I will try to find a creative way to use it in a primary but don’t hold your breath…

I am waiting on a call/email from Irwin(from the CloudCourse team) who will hopefully disagree with me and prove me wrong.

Does Cloudcourse compete with Frog, Moodle & other learning platforms?  No.

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