Derek Hildreth’s Blog

Computers are Changing the Way We Learn: Education in a High-Tech Classroom [Research]

The following is a research paper that I completed a couple of years ago for a class at BYU-Idaho.  I feel that this is worth a spot on my blog as I am proud of any research project that I have completed.  I hope that you enjoy the informative read on my findings of how technology can actually decrease learning capability if not used properly.  Read on…

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Tags: education, games, negative, powerpoint, project, research paper, spellcheck, technology

The Linux Release Schedule Calendar

I have created a calendar which makes it easy to visually track the release dates of the most anticipated FOSS in the Linux community.  Below, is that calendar.  I update this calendar when I happen across an active roadmap for just about any major FOSS project that gets me excited.  So, if you know of a project that is not listed on this calendar, please let me know in the comments so that I can update the calendar accordingly.  Bookmark this page and use it as a reference to track important release dates of Linux projects.  I will try to keep it as up-to-date as possible.  Also, if there is anybody willing to participate and contribute, please leave a comment stating your ambition to help and I’ll add the privileges.

This Month:

This Week:

The Agenda:

Tags: calendar, dates, fedora, gnome, kde, Linux, release, roadmap, suse, ubuntu, xorg

Fedora 9: An Artwork Review

Mairin Duffy has outdone herself this round with the artwork she has dedicated to the Fedora 9 project. She, with help from others, has come up with a theme based around the nickname of the release: Sulfur. With a green-tinted block of sulfur and some relaxing waves, the Fedora 9 theme is shaping up to be very nice. The overall scheme of the theme has changed to darker colors since Fedora 8, which seems to be going right along with the trend I’ve been seeing lately. Personally, I enjoy the “darker” colors, but only to an extent. I don’t want to feel like I’m in a pit of depression whenever I login.

In Artwork Round 3, she has made a change to the black/gray/yellow colors from Artwork Round 2 (see image to right) to darker blues and yellows (see image to left). I’m actually disappointed in that decision, but she’s the artist and I’ll let her do her thing. If it were me, I would have kept the grays instead of going with the blues. Undoubtedly, I would still choose this design over any of the others submitted.

There is one other item that I’m concerned about with the artwork this round. That is, it’s themed around a piece of sulfur. I hope that this doesn’t confuse the newcomers into thinking that it’s more than just a nickname. That’s all it is, a nickname. The main focus of Fedora shouldn’t be a block of sulfur, it should probably be just “Fedora - Infinity, Freedom, and Voice“. But, that’s just my humble opinion.

Tags: artwork, blog, fedora, fedora 9, final, final artwork, Mairin Duffy, review, Round 2, Round 3

Tutorial: Place AdSense in Wordpress Post Template

This is for those running a Wordpress.org blog who would like to add AdSense to their template. The main benifit to adding it to a template is you will no longer have to manually edit your post.

I’m assuming you already have:

• A working Wordpress.org web blog.
• The AdSense Manager Plugin uploaded and enabled.
• An AdSense Account through google.com.

For those of you familiar with the AdSense Manager Plugin, you may have noticed in the instructions that you can place your ads in a template so that you don’t have to manually enter them each time you make a post. The instructions explain that you may place this piece of code into a template:
<?php adsensem_ad('name'); ?> or <?php adsensem_ad(); ?>

However, it doesn’t explain exactly where to place it. Well, it’s pretty easy.

1.) In the Wordpress.org administration panel, click on “Presentation” and then “Theme Editor“.
2.) In the “Theme Files” column, click on “Single Post“.
3.) Within the code on the left column, search for <div class=”entry”>
4.) Place the code (replacing the word “name” with the name of your ad) somewhere within that div class. For example, mine looks like this:

<div class="entry">
<?php adsensem_ad('inside_bluesky'); ?>
<?php the_content(__('Continue Reading »')); ?>
<?php wp_link_pages(); ?>
<p class="post-tags">
<?php if (function_exists('the_tags')) the_tags('Tags: ', ', ', '
'); ?>
</p>
</div>

That should be everything. I’ve shown you how to integrate AdSense into a Wordpress template. If you’d like, you can get more creative and place the same code in other areas of your template.

Good luck!

Tags: adsense, adsense manager, google, how to, integrate, template, tutorial, wodpress

Fedora 9 Dumps CodecBuddy

I just read about this over at LWN.net and it’s a bitter-sweet emotion for myself.

Basically, the CodecBuddy gave users the option to purchase and download codecs that would allow playback of popular media files that are otherwise illegal to us folks in the states like mp3, wmv, mov, and mpeg files. The CodecBuddy (aka Codeina) included in Fedora 8 would prompt a user to purchase proper codecs when they tried to play a particular file such as an mpeg video and directed them to the Fluendo website.

Now that the Fedora Project Board decided to scrap the inclusion of CodecBuddy in Fedora 9, I feel that the decision as a whole was a good one. The CodecBuddy didn’t actually work as planned anyways and most users of Fedora already know that there are free codecs available from the gstreamer family. The only unfortunate side of this particular family is that its legality is somewhat in a gray area.

On the other hand, I feel that it was a great opportunity for some relatively cheap codecs that might actually produce a better result in multimedia quality than what gstreamer currently has. Gstreamer is great and it gets the job done, but a lot of times I’ve found that it’s a bit of a hit-and-miss. For example, I still can’t play .avi files on my machine without terrible sound playback.

Either way, I know that the people in charge of Fedora know what they’re doing and I look forward to seeing Fedora 9.

Tags: codecbuddy, fedora, fedora 8, fedora 9, fluendo, gstreamer, Linux, multimedia