Cole Harbour Place

Hey all, here is something I whipped up, which is where my C@P Site is located, Cole Harbour Place.

And here's the adjacent Cole Harbour High School:

And finally the Pope John Paul XXIII Church in Cole Harbour:

All of the KMZ files for viewing in Google Earth can be found here.

Breaking the System

I read this great article on Wired today, http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/01/ff_lottery/. If you have a chance to read the article you will learn some very interesting things about the world. Firstly, there are systems behind everything. Secondly, there are some very smart people who bother to take the time to figure out the systems. And finally, the people who invent and run the systems do not generally react to the problems.

Now, I'm not about to go and teach a class about breaking the lottery system, but I think that it brings out an important part of technology that many people seem to ignore.

Take a movie, for example, Live Free or Die Hard (2007). In this movie, the idea is that "hackers" in a mobile workstation (a semi), have the ability to hack the world and create a "firestorm". In this movie, these hackers are made out to be these shady characters who operate exclusively in DOS, and access non-Internet-linked systems from their laptops.

But what if it didn't take these computer gods to break the system. I think we must consider the possibility that the are people such as the topic of that article who have that capability, and could pull off some incredible technological feats if given the opportunity.

Food for though, I think!

Flippidy-do-da!

I thought the title was clever...

So what would my C@P Site do with a flip cam? Well, in the words of that woman from the Simpsons, "won't somebody please think of the children!". Right on, voice actress, one of the things that I'd like to do would be to use it with the kids. Particularly during the February/Canada Games Break, I'll have some time with the kids, and I'd like to do some sort of group project involving the whole "lights, camera, action!" thing. My thought was something sports/Canada related that the kids could be given at the end of the week.

Secondly, one thing that would not necessarily be during my season, but rather the next season (the summer). As some of you may know, we do kids day camps during the summer (in fact, all summer). We often have people come in (such as the reptile guy from an earlier post) and the domino man that we'd love to have footage of. We give DVDs out to the kids during Claymation camp, and it would be easy and fun to put those on as well.

Tying in with the last point is the other day camps that are done in Cole Harbour Place, such as the dance camp, which do performances that could be recorded and shared, would be particularly fun! One idea I had for this would be to pick a camper to be the "camera guy/gal" and let them be the one to actually take the video, or to take turns, so that they get the experience out of it.

There are also some less kid-oriented things which we could use the camera for, particularly in that we currently don't have a functioning digital camera! Although the flip doesn't (as far as I know), take stills, it is possible using the camera to take stills from a video, which would likely be all we needed.

One final thought that I'd like to do would be to create a sort of 360 degree view of our C@P Site for the website. I think it would be really cool and useful!

Those are a few things I'd like to do with it given the opportunity, but I'm sure there's a lot more out there to do!

Some things

So, I've got two things to talk about today, one is something I've been up to, the other is just a cool article that I find pretty interesting.

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So, first up, is something I've been helping two patrons with over the last couple days. Anyone wanna guess what? Well, its websites!

First up is the S.A.I.L. group, which I am helping develop their very first website, http://www.sailgrouphalifax.com, which although is still in its infancy (ie, lacking any content!) will be filling up shortly.

The second is with a lady named Selina who has been in the C@P Site before for classes, and has recently been complaining that her site is too hard to update. We decided that I will implement a Joomla system (if you haven't heard me talk about it before, it is my favourite thing!) in order for her to be able to update easily (http://www.joomla.org). Her original website can be seen here, and the new version can be seen here. They look the same, sure, but underneath is a system that she can edit, post to, etc. all by herself.

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Second topic is something that I think any cellphone user, techy or otherwise, can appreciate, what the heck is 3G/3G+/LTE/WiMax/4G/other funky acronyms. It can be found on Engadget here. I found it pretty darn interesting, I think (at least some of) you will agree!

Thats it for me!

Some photos

Hey all, just wanted to share some photos of this summer's camps!

We had a reptile man in!

I was attacked!

Computer work...

Robotics work!

Hope you enjoyed a look at what we do during the summer months!

Challenge 2.3 Response: A Series of Haiku.

Organisation,
It is very important,
I must work on it.

Where is my paper?

In this scary mound of them?

It cannot be found.

In a computer,

They will be placed for keeping,

Reading and changing.

We will be better,

Able to find all our things,

No more confusion.

When we have no sheets,

Then I will be sure of this,

Organised, we'll be.

New Computers!

This weekend I purchased, built, configured and installed 3 brand new computers for our C@P Site. They have dual core, AMD Athlon II X2 255 3.1 GHz processors, 4GB RAM, and all the other goodies. Have a look :)

Capturing C@P

Here it is, my poster :)

Spreading Christmas Cheer

This Friday I decided to update the C@P Site bulletin board and make it a little more "cheerful". Check it out!

I'm not dead yet...

Hi there to all those who are reading. If you don't already know me (perhaps my local celebrity status is not as widespread as I had previously thought...?), my name is Matt Chamberlain, and I am the Winter Intern at the Cole Harbour C@P Site. As we are having a few issues with the network here at our C@P Site, I feel this is an opportune time to talk about myself.

It was a chilly day in Autumn, the leaves stopped falling, the wind in Ottawa calmed, and certain urban legends claim that Brian Mulroney himself shed a single tear, knowing what this would mean for his poor country.

Matt Chamberlain fun fact: he sent a letter to the Prime Minister (Jean Chretien) when he was a child to tell him personally about his plan for a system of tubes to connect to the smoke stacks in Dartmouth to some sort of (albeit poorly conceived) energy-harnesser.

Fun fact #2 (you will be quizzed later): he once had a nature club (free membership which was quite a deal for the members, though no events/administration/point made it destined to fail in the long run), to which he invited several people, including family friends, employees, and the Admiral of the Navy (cool kid).

Success

Our biggest success this summer was with a girl who joined our camp, without any real knowledge of computers or technology. At the beginning of the summer, she was reluctant to do much of anything, because she didn't feel comfortable. Throughout the week, we were able to get her to start trying new things with the computers. By the end of the week, she was the most interested and excited one in the group. When she left, she was completely comfortable using the computer, and exploring new possibilities. We are excited to see her next year, and see how she has progressed throughout the year.

By Miles and Matt

Optimization!

Since I've seen that a few people here have been designing pages based on Joomla, I thought it would be useful to share some information I have found regarding improving load times of pages. I found that the base install and subsequent modifications could lead to a very slow loading site. Anyway the link is here: http://www.joomlaperformance.com/articles/performance/so_you_want_to_speed_up_joomla_3_14.html.

The major points to look at are the optimization of the SQL tables, caching in Joomla, and Gzip compression. Check it out, it made a HUGE difference!

Sorry, you suck at typing!

I came across this article on the net while investigating how to implement pretty 404 pages in Joomla! (check it, http://www.coleharbourcap.ca/doesnotexist.html). It is a pretty interesting article about the etiquette towards your site members when the search engine (or lets be honest, the user themself) makes a boo-boo and types a bogus filename. It's a good read, check it out!

http://www.alistapart.com/articles/perfect404/

June28th-July2nd

What a whirlwind week this has been! As the last week before the start of the CH C@P site summer day camps, naturally, there was plenty to do. In addition to working on my skills with the software needed for the summer camps, I also attended an emergency first aid course. Having not taken a first aid course in years, I was surprised by how much has changed. I feel much more prepared to deal with any situations that might come up, though I hope we will be able to go the whole summer without having to use anything I have learned. I also attended a workplace harassment presentation with many of the other day camp workers who are at Cole Harbour Place for the summer. Although I did learn a few new tricks with the programs I’ll be using, I would say the focal point of my week has been attending the first aid and Harassment presentations because it has reminded me of all the changes that are going to come next week with the start of our “Lego Robotics” camp. Until next week!

June 21st-25th

Hey, my name is Miles and I am one of the interns at the Cole Harbour site. This has been my first week working at the C@P site, and it has been quite an interesting week! We certainly hit the ground running this week in Cole Harbour, we spent the first day entirely redoing our two bulletin boards; taking off the posters for programs that have pasted and putting up notices for upcoming events, as well as just touching up the decorations to make the boards more eye-catching! I’ve also been learning to use the programs necessary for our camps such as ‘Scratch’ and ‘MonkeyJam’. Today we are finishing up the installation of the necessary programs on the computers for the ‘Claymation’ camp and I must say, it’s making me realize how excited I am for the camps to begin! Until next week!

My Weeks

Hi there all. Not sure if all of the interns read this, but it is interesting to hear what others are doing.

My weeks have involved a broad variety of tasks. I was here last year, so I had an idea of what I wanted to do. Firstly, I redid the website completely. Please have a look here if you're interested: http://www.coleharbourcap.ca. I see that some others have used Joomla!, and we followed suit. This is one thing that I feel that C@P Sites in general, even though they are technology-based, are lacking. There have been a lot of new additions as far as functionality, including a survey system for our campers, soon a number of other campers at Cole Harbour Place, and our patrons. This also involved the move to Google Apps for our email, calendar and documents, and their appropriate documentation.

We have also been running one-on-one classes, and have one to two per day. This is a great source of revenue, and can be worth $50-$100 per week. These are rewarding, and classes have been based on basic computer use, Microsoft Office, and specific usage questions. Work is also being done to bring the classes back to a larger scale.

At one point, the Cole Harbour C@P Site held full classes, with up to 8 students/class, on a number of topics. As instructors moved on, eventually there were no more left, no resources to train new ones, and the program ceased to exist. As this could provide great income, as well as a useful service to the community (many people have been asking about this service), I have great interest in revitalizing it. This is my next project.

Finally, I have been planning day camps, which we will be running starting July 5th. These are in Lego Robotics, Claymation, and a brand new Computers and Technology camp. These are much of the same curriculum as last year, so not too much needs to be done. Miles, the other intern that will be here for the summer, starts Monday, and then we will be finalizing day camp schedules and activities.

In all, it has been an intense but fun couple of weeks, and I am quite pleased with the progress we have made so far.

Talk to you all later!

Matt Chamberlain - Cole Harbour C@P Site

Hello there all, my name is Matt Chamberlain, and I'm the intern for the Cole Harbour C@P Site. I'll try to keep this fairly brief.

My main interest is computers and technology, so the C@P Site is a great fit for me. I was here last summer as well, and so it is not too huge of a learning curve this time around. I will be at Dalhousie next year studying Computer Science.

I am going to be doing the day camps here at Cole Harbour Place, which will be in Lego Robotics, Claymation and Computers and Technology. I will also be doing a few other projects, such as getting the website up to snuff (my work so far is at http://www.coleharbourcap.ca, with the structural redo complete). I've also been doing one-on-one classes, once or twice a day.

As far as hobbies go, people are sometimes surprised to learn that I am quite interested in plants. It seemingly isn't often that technology and plants are two interests. My favourite types of plant are carnivorous plants and cacti. I have about 25 plants in total, as well as 10 cactus (Melocactus zehntneri) seedlings, with more seeds on the way. With respect to cacti, I am quite interested in their slow growing habits, and the fact that they take so much time and patience to raise them from seed to mature cactus, generally on the order of years.

I hope this gave you all a taste of me, without having to take a bite. We'll be seeing you.