Finally got my laptop back from (not) being repaired – annoying but I’ve finally had a chance to do some more Drupal work for LSMedia. I’ve added the chance to log in to the site, or register for it using OpenID providers, Twitter and Facebook connect. Logging into the site purely using my Facebook or Google account (no usernames or passwords needed here!) is pretty cool, and it’ll hopefully increase the number of signups to the site as people create accounts using the third party sites. I’ve also updated every module we use and the Drupal core files to make the site more secure, and installed the Mollom anti-spam system.
Recently a lot of Facebook fan page owners have started to make it so that the main content of their pages can’t be seen unless you become a fan of, or ‘like’ the page, presumably to increase the proliferation of their page amongst Facebook newsfeeds and increase the chance of it going viral.
Often however, when I see my friends have joined these pages I am curious as to what the page content actually is, but I don’t want to litter my newsfeed by liking or becoming a fan of the page. Also, pages that have to use this technique (such as the McDonald’s example above) are generally pretty rubbish. Nether the less, it can be worth a quick look using the code and bookmarklet below, which make it easy to see hidden content without actually becoming a fan of, or liking the page.
Just copy and paste all of the code below into your browser’s address bar when you are on a hidden content page and press enter. Double-clicking on the text should select it all for you, then you can copy it.
Alternatively, you can use this bookmarklet: Show Page – just right click on it to add it as a bookmark/favourite – or drag it to the bookmarks/links bar of your internet browser. Then, next time you’re on a Facebook page where you have to become a fan / like the page to see its content, just click the Show Page bookmark and the content will generally be revealed.
Unfortunately this doesn’t work with all the Facebook pages that use a different technique (than CSS visibility styling), nor pages where you must complete a survey or invite friends before the page’s content is revealed – sorry!
I’ll blog more about the nerdy jQuery side of how I made all this later, but in the mean time I’ve made a fun little page that will show you the cost of each of your lectures expressed as a price per hour based on the number of contact hours per week, number of weeks in the academic year and tuition fees per year. You can try it out here, you just need to enter in your number of contact hours per week.
Friday night marked the announcement of the 2010 Liverpool Guild of Students election results, revealing which students will take a paid position and an extra year in Liverpool to direct the policies and performance of LGoS. The night was characterised by the highest voter turnout in LGoS history, but also by the first time that the University’s student media covered the event live, with the results and discussion being available online within seconds of it taking place through a live video and a Twitter text stream.
All the hard work was done by the University’s GuildTV society, from filming and producing a panel of students discussing student politics and interviewing past and present candidates to setting up the live stream using Ustream and stocking the wine and nibbles in our makeshift ‘green room’. I attended on Friday mostly just in case the website suddenly died mid broadcast, but also to man our Facebook and Twitter social media channels and add election specific coding to the homepage, including quickly whipping up a live Twitter stream of election related updates displayed on the homepage of the LSMedia website. The Twitter stream came in handy as our broadcast was shown on the University’s Guild’s bar’s three or four projector screens without any sound so the stream of text information managed to convey more information than the muted video would have. Ustream behaved perfectly but we suffered one problem where the University’s WiFi would disconnect us periodically, resulting in cursing and and a mad dash to reload a page to log us back into the wireless network. Annoyingly, about 10 minutes after we finished broadcasting I realised that a simple blank page with a meta refresh tag would probably have generated enough HTTP get requests to keep us logged into the network permanently.
Overall, we recorded 4 and a half hours of live footage of interviews, discussion and results which was broadcast to around a hundred computers but would have been watched (or at least observed, in the case of the streams in the bar) by slightly more individuals.
While our output was nowhere near as polished as Southampton or Loughborough’s, it was pleasing that it was all done on such a small budget and DIY attitude, as indeed all of Liverpool’s student media output is done. We used pretty low-tech methods and equipment, in contrast to the more established media outlets such as the aforementioned universities of Loughborough and Southampton who have in the past been generously loaned equipment by the BBC. It’s frustrating sometimes that Liverpool currently has such a modest student media platform, with no printed student paper for example, but when I look at what the societies that make up LSMedia have done with limited resources I’m quite proud. We’re still lightyears away from having elected student Presidents of Media and Communications but we do now have a professional website, novel election coverage and an ‘ezine’ that actively hosts successful and commercially very viable events, such as this month’s fashion show and Showcase gig. I think now we just need support from a member of staff to bring back a professionally produced printed publication, as without initial funding (to tide the project over until it makes sufficient advertising revenue) and a dedicated role it will be very hard to fund such a publication out of the student pocket and within the two to three years that even an enthusiastic undergraduate can dedicate to a student organisation.
I’m working on setting up the behind-the-scenes Drupal framework for our coverage of the Liverpool Guild of Student’s election on LSMedia. The GuildTV guys are throwing themselves into it with live streaming of the results party, candidate interviews and infographics all appearing on the website over the next week or two.
I’ve just found out that my NUS roof garden article will be published in the May issue of Spotlight magazine – I’ll add a scan/pdf version of the article to the blog then.
Charcoal is an easy way to add scientific symbols to your writing without learning special shortcuts or wading through lots of unnecessary symbols in your computer's built in character map. Clicking any of the symbols within Charcoal will instantly copy them to your computer's copy/paste clipboard, so make sure there's no important data stored there before you use Charcoal.
I created Charcoal after wasting so much time searching for the mu / μ symbol to use to represent micrograms or microlitres in my lab reports for University.
All operating systems and most word-processing suites have an 'insert symbol' or character map function, but they're often hidden away or fiddly to use, for example displaying characters in a small font and with little spacing can make it hard to find the right symbol, as can having to scroll through collections of unnecessary symbols or Arabic or Cryllic script just to find what you're looking for.
Charcoal displays only commonly used symbols in an easy to access form. With the rise of webapps such as GMail and Google Docs web browsers are always to hand, and Charcoal's bookmarklet (drag this link to your bookmarks bar: Insert Symbol) makes it easy to access instantly.
The interface can be scaled to almost any level you please simply by using your web browser's usual font controls and if you resize the pop-up window your width and height preferences are remembered for the next time you use Charcoal.
If you have any suggestions for additional characters to add then feel free to contact me.
This poster (from this comic), a ‘guide to using an apostrophe…, complete with velociraptors and goats’ should be obligatorily displayed in schools and offices nationwide! I’m a bit of a grammar pedant (despite a worrying reliance on spellcheck…) but it’s still frustrating seeing glaring and jarringly obvious apostrophe errors everywhere, especially in a (luckily unofficial!) Facebook group attempt to promote my university:
It’s true, Carlsberg don’t produce universities. But if they did, they’d probably produce ones with students who couldn’t use an apostrophe either…
