Author Archives: Bradley Froehle

UThink

UThink: Blogs at the University Libraries is a new project by the University of Minnesota to offer unlimited free blogs to all staff/students/faculty. The system is easy to configure and get started—just login with your x500 and give them a title/tagline for your blog. For example, I got one setup in under 5 minutes or so.

It’s easy to add new posts (just the standard MovableType interface), but perhaps not so obvious if you have never used it before. They do an okay job trying to offer some links to tutorials/help sites, but there’s no direct hand-holding along the way.

I find it relieving (and quite interesting) that they left all the power-user features of MT (like being able to customize all of your pages with templates) in place. However, the beginning user is likely to get confused and will have a tough time fixing any mistakes if they go messing around.

I found the lack of installed plugins depressing, especially since the individual user will have no power to install “personal” plugins for themselves. At a bare minimum, I’d recommend installing MT Textile which significantly speeds up the time it takes to write, and allows beginning users to easily add links and such.

I think it will be interesting to see how adoption goes, especially since it looks like they will be providing each user ample space (they assumed 180mb per user or something like that per 3 years). It also has the benefit of no ads and quick loading times. The only detractor is their obligatory legal statement on the bottom of every page:

The views and opinions expressed in this page are strictly those of the page author.
The contents of this page have not been reviewed or approved by the University of Minnesota.

However, that is easily circumvented with a little bit of css, namely by adding the following to the styles-site.css template.

h5{ display:none; }

Another feature that many people (namely those coming from blogging “communities” like Xanga and LiveJournal) will miss is the ability to “subscribe” to other people’s posts and quickly view new entries. Albeit, this problem is easily survived with RSS readers (like the excellent Net News Wire), I don’t think enough of the users will understand such a concept.

QotD: Questions of the Day?

Question: Is this question of the day format too geeky for me to continue using?

My answer, I think it’s mostly just an easy excuse for me to have content without coming up with anything original.

I don’t really understand the target audience of my blog (friends from/high school college). So what do you want to see here. As an aside, I added the photos section. There’s some miscellaneous pictures there from past trips and stuff this year. I’m not really thrilled with the layout, but I don’t have time as of yet to customize it.

Would y’all be interested in a “photoblog” of sorts, like Proving that a picture isn’t worth 1000 words?

So the question really is this: what do you want to be here?

Final Four

As I’m sure you’ve heard a million times already, the Lady Gopher’s Basketball Team is headed to the Final Four. I won’t be going in the band (since I’m not in WAB). The game is in New Orleans, and they are staying at a $200/night hotel, so it should be a pretty sweet time.

The big game is Sunday, I hope y’all watch. They are showing the game at William’s Arena (for free) if you are interested. It sounds like they might get a band together and play during the commercials and such.

QotD: April Fools

Question: What’s the best April Fools prank that’s been pulled on you?

The one that tops my list is one that some of the girls on my floor pulled on my this year.

To setup some background, about a week ago 4 of us guys were bored sometime after dark and decided to go exploring. We got onto the roof of Ferguson Hall (easy), and then tried the Social Sciences building without any luck (damn the locked doors).

Getting bored, we headed out onto the bridge at which point we boosted Dave up so he could pull himself onto the top of the bridge. He was greeted with the “Cease and Desist” sign on top of the bridge and decided it was a bad idea to go further (the sign is there to keep people from stealing the flags that line the top of the bridge).

So we headed over to the East bank to try to get on some of the roofs of the buildings in Northrop Mall. From there we got on the roofs of Tate (out a window), Murphy (out of a scary roof hatch), and Kolthoff/Smith (out of an unlocked door).

By far the Kolthoff/Smith roof was the most exciting (lots of places to go, including walking all the way around Smith on a quasi-narrow ledge).

Anyway, this leads to the point of the best prank ever. Today in my mail, I received a letter from UMPD:

March 28, 2004

Bradley Froehle:

On the night of Wednesday, March 24, UMPD security cameras captured your image trespassing in two University buildings: Smith Hall and Kolthoff Hall. This is against University policy, as detailed in Article IV, Section 3.4 of the University Code of Conduct.

In light of this violation, your presence is requested at the University Safety and Transportation Building, located at 511 Washington Ave SE. We ask you to please contact Nancy Simms at (612) 481-2365 within twenty-four hors to arrance a preliminary hearing before Judge William Ford. Failure to respond within the designated time period will result in further legal action. We hope to resolve this issue in a timely manner.

Thank you for your cooperation.

[signature of Chuck Miner]

Lieutenant Chuck Miner
CID Division Manager
(612) 379-8890

Being the gullible individual that I am, I bought it for a little while.. enough to actually call the telephone number (which turns out to be April’s cellphone). Coincidentally, the phone number at the bottom is a pizza place, although I didn’t end up calling that one.

You are encouraged to answer the Question of the Day for yourself in the comments or on your blog.

QotD: Guns

Question: Have you ever shot a gun?

Yes. Everything from BB guns to Black Powder Rifles to .30-06’s.

You can thank Boy Scouts for my introduction to the world of guns. However, I’ve never gone hunting and don’t ever plan on it. And if you ask if I support gun control, the answer is YES. The fewer idiots with guns the better.

You are encouraged to answer the Question of the Day for yourself in the comments or on your blog.

QotD: Gambling

Question: What’s the most you’ve ever lost gambling?

The most I ever lost in one trip was $70. Boy did that stink. Especially since before I lost the $70 I was up $50. That was a $120 swing in the matter of a half hour or so.

Overall, I’m $20 in the hole after my three trips to Mystic Lakes. Not too bad when you consider the hours of entertainment.

You are encouraged to answer the Question of the Day for yourself in the comments or on your blog.

QotD: Bush

Question: On a scale of 1-10, how well has Bush done? 1 = shitty, 10 = awesome.

I’d say a 2. At least there haven’t been any big terrorist attacks on our nation since 9/11. But Bush has done nothing but piss off the rest of the world. The war in Iraq is a shame. Bush was just trying to finish the job his father couldn’t do right a decade before.

You are encouraged to answer the Question of the Day for yourself in the comments or on your blog.

Norfolk, VA

For those that are curious, right now I’m at library in downtown Norfolk, VA. I’m in Norfolk for the NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament. Yesterday (Friday), the Gopher’s (#7 seed) creamed the#3 seed, Boston College. Tomorrow at 7pm ET, we play the #1 seed, Duke.

It should be a good time. Although Duke’s band seems pretty dorky (maybe I shouldn’t talk). We got into town on Friday night. Saturday we played at a pepfest thing at a local mall here. It was a competition between the respective bands/cheer squads. We (of course) took first place and won a free movie ticket.

Saturday we tried to go visit Virginia Beach (25 miles away maybe), but the bus service took forever. After about an hour of being on the bus, we had made it half way. So we had to turn around and come home in order to get back for a pep rally or something.

That night, we hung out with the Louisiana Tech band. They were staying at the Marriot Courtyard, which was infinitely nicer than the Radison we were staying at.

Today, we’ve got the day off so I slept in and am now at the library. Some people rented are car and are driving to Washington, D.C.—a 3.5 hour drive!

Ok, I’m sorry this post is grammatically poor and littered with incorrect spellings, but I haven’t the time to proofread it as I have 2 more minutes with the computer.

Hope everything is great back home in the Twin Cities. See y’all on Wednesday.

QotD: Computer

Question: How long have you been using your current computer?

I bought my first Mac, a Power Mac G5 sometime last fall. I own the Dual 2GHz edition with 1.5GB ram. The Power Mac is best described as fast as hell. Coincidentally, it is also the first Mac I’ve ever owned.

Prior to that I was running a homemade computer that I put together in 1998 or 1999. It had a 400MHz processor and 384MB of ram.

My monitor is a Dell 1900FP that I bought last summer. It’s a 19” LCD and is very high quality for something made by Dell.

You are encouraged to answer the Question of the Day for yourself in the comments or on your blog.

QotD: Open Book Tests

Question: How do you feel about open book tests?

They bug me when I know the source material really well because it’s a crutch for those who don’t know the material. Although I’ll have to admit that if I don’t know the material they make things much much easier.

On the whole, I’m against them in classes I enjoy and for them in classes I hate. Although if I had to choose between all open book and all closed book tests, I’d choose all closed book.

You are encouraged to answer the Question of the Day for yourself in the comments or on your blog.