Category: primary

A week in the life..

Posted on by John McLear

I haven’t been very vocal lately, because I have been busy…

Satpin

I have been working on Ian Addisons new project now called Satpin (something to do with phonics according to Miss Pitkethly).  My Javascript skills have improved massively doing this project which I have enjoyed thoroughly.  Javascript is awesome.  I need a decent tutor though, I am cobbling my way through stuff using “John” logic which isn’t good enough.  Once the project is complete/stable I will be releasing it open source (it will require a LAMP stack).  I am spending masses of attention to detail on this project, more than I have ever done.  I’m focusing 99% of my efforts on UI.  I decided to make it writeable by anyone which will upset some people but oh well..

Wind power

I have been finishing the electrics on my wind turbine, which is now up and running (hopefully okay).  It’s been a while since I did any component level work and Sparky helped me which was good.

Apache load balancing

We spent a few hours working on how to improve load balancing on our main apache cluster.  We are considering casandra if we grow any quicker than our current projections.

Shib constipation

Mid week I struggled and I’m still struggling massively with a Shib SP deployment.  I’m running the same config as another deployment but I am getting errors.  Think this is a job for team john and tom to get sorted properly.  We are doing it so we can work with the Swedish equivalent of JISC for their Etherpad deployment.

Classdroid

We got classdroid working properly, well, sort of.  Turns out Android isn’t as cool as I first thought.  Well, android is..  Turns out motorola/lg etc. are idiots and install custom software including custom camera intents that breaks a lot of the phones functionality.  Thankfully google will fix this with any v2+ updates.  The LG Optimus is due V2.1 this month so I am willing to wait a few weeks instead of trying to squash a documented/fixed bug.

PHP

I helped Challenge CLC with a touch of PHP this week, super easy stuff.  It is always good to collaborate with people, especially when I am so comfortable helping out in PHP.

Etherpad

I did a few more edu installs of Etherpad, nothing exciting here.  Wrote a new way to integrate with the scribblar API.  Stefan has the code if anyone wants it.   Important thing to note, why the Hell are so many Americans and now Africans getting me in to do Etherpad deployments yet there are so few EU deployments going on?  Is their something about Europeans and our lack of encouraging collaboration in the work/edu place?

Finally.  Happy Pirates day!  Now gimme your loot.

Classdroid on the iPhone

Posted on by primaryt


I keep getting asked if Classdroid is coming to the iPhone…

It is complex so I wanted to write a specific blog post.

Firstly, I don’t like the iPhone. I don’t like how its marketed, how it’s sold, how it’s app store works, how the community support is supposed to work, how the licensing model works and what impact it has on the tech industry as a whole. “We need substance, not glitter” is probably the best way to put it.

Now you know how much I dislike the iPhone it will be of no surprise that I love Android, but this isn’t about love/like/dislike. It’s about economics. I would need to charge $5 per device or so and sell 400 copies of Classdroid on the Appstore and still wouldn’t break even.

Classdroid must remain free and open source to encourage others to use it, if you don’t know about crowd sourcing and how that develops applications then here is a quick example of why open source is good…

Before Classdroid got to market someone had made language support for traditional/simplified Chinese. That would of taken me hours to do, but it’s now done just by some guy I don’t even know. Classdroid includes parts of the WordPress open source App so we were able to make it, test it and publish it quickly without writing too much code.

Stop ranting and tell us when it’s coming to the iphone!

It’s coming to the iphone as soon as:

a) Apple allow iphone apps to be developed on something other than Apple devices.
b) Apple reduce/drop the ridiculous 100$ annual SDK fee.

OR

c) Someone who does done apple/ios development reads our source code and makes an apple version then publishes it under their name (that is fine with me). The code must remain open source, that is the only prerequisite.

So that’s it, Basically I would need about $1100 just to start coding.. It’s not worth it for a handset that is losing market share month after month.

If you really still want Classdroid for your iPhone then ask about, see if someone you know, knows an iPhone developer who will be happy to help out. If so then get in touch or point them at the source code.

The 2009-2010 Salute

Posted on by John McLear

End of the 2009-2010 school/work year and it has been an immense year.  I’m signing off from work for a bit (2 weeks) to regain some sanity and reality but before I do here are the people I want to thank for this year.

Ian Addison (Great to chat with seems to understand both technical and teaching aspects of my work)
James Langley (Great at everything to do with ICT and primary schools)
Chris Mayoh (Fantastic feedback on our services)
Jo Dean (Amazing understanding of making managed service contracts work)
John Sutton (Fantastic understanding of encourage schools to adopt blogs)
Simon Finch (second to none understanding of internet provision in schools)
Kumar (Brilliant Android/Java developer)
Takeektas (Amazing artist)
Redhog (Breathtaking brilliant developer(this guy would blow your minds))
Teeny Tiny (Supportive, supportive, supportive.  Lucky to have known her so long)
Mark Chambers (Every sentence is like a change factory)
Harshad Taylor (Amazing sys admin with great network stability and flexibility and great personality)
Ramsbeb (Great supported of modern technology)
Stefan Richter (Genius behind scribblar very open to work with new services)
Joe Cornelli (Great philosophical mind, I’m expecting great things)
Terry Freedman (Always supported my articles, always been there for guidance)
Chris Ratcliffe (I hate sales blokes but Chris breaks the mould..  Has been so keen to share and help, he puts edu first)
Tim Rylands (Probably most inspiring man of year)
Deputy Mitchell (I can only say thanks to this man, he works so hard, does so much, I think he has a doppel)
OmnomnomTom (If code needs writing properly, this is the man I turn to)
Margaret Vass (Great supporter of blogging, I truly hope glow supports her as well as we did)
Sharon Dominik (the only person I always answer my phone to)

Everyone who works on an open source project.  Kudos, gg and ftw and obviously (this is delivered in person) those at Primary Technology who support and endure the challenges we all face on a daily basis.

And last but not least is my dad, who as you know is my alpha, beta and gamma.

Thanks so much for this year, everyone has made it special and I’m hoping 2010-2011 can provide some fruits for you to pick from!

Basic overview of my workload till next year up till April:  Launch new PST, Launch new SC (inc new standard), polish PGA, launch SIMS service, launch XPArena,

Classdroid public beta

Posted on by John McLear

Here is the Classdroid apk for public beta. We only have support for primaryblogger and xparena(not a live service) available right now. We are waiting on Moodle V2 to bring moodle support in.

1. Get the Classdroid.apk
2. Read this guide for how to install an .apk
3. Make sure you have a Primaryblogger account & Blog
4. Have fun 🙂

Note:  We still have a lot of GUI tweeking to do but most of the functionality now exists. We will be releasing the source code once beta testing is complete.

Thanks to this guy for the great custom artwork/logo/icon!

Go here for info on classdroid

Security Warning: Using a mobile phone to take pictures of kids activities/work

Posted on by John McLear

Did you know when you take a picture on your mobile phone it may add your current location to the Exif data of the image?

So if you are out on a school trip and have GPS or location enabled on your device then you upload an image to an e-portfolio or blog anyone will be able to see the latitude and longitude of where you took the picture.

I discovered this when working on Classdroid and Kudos to Hak5 for the useful link.  Safe to say all images uploaded from Classdroid will set the location as: “The moon”.

This is especially a concern if you out doing school trips and updating your blog on the fly.

How to turn off location tagging. On Android, Click Settings then Locations then un-tick My Location.