unhandledexception.net

Concordia has finally decided to use moodle, an open source e-learning platform, which is a good thing. They finally understood, that if they want professors to make good use of the internet they need to have the tools to do so. fortunately, this isn’t a problem in Computer Science, because they do have the ability to publish stuff on the web, and use mailing list software (apart from a small minority that don’t understand that their W: drive is NOT web-viewable).

So, going to moodle.concordia.ca produces the following garbage:

You have reached moodle.concordia.ca, to access moodle please go through the www.myconcordia.ca portal.

Yeah, so i’m stubborn. Let’s try www.moodle.concordia.ca/moodle/login

Direct Login through this page is not available to members of the Concordia University Community. Moodle must be accessed through the MyConcordia Portal under the heading: "Concordia Course Websites".

WHAAAAAAAT? I need tu use MyConcordia?

So if I understand correctly, I have to go to this utterly crappy web site, created by PeopleSoft, in order to access course information? Then I have to click on at least 5 links to get to it? Why the hell implement it this way, instead of simply using its own authentication? That’s gay.

Here’s the latest class passtime addiction, slowly but surely, gaining ground in Concordia classrooms, along with the power bars. Ever wonder why we’re all clustered in the corners?

Here’s Armagetron!

Time flies, eh? It’s been 7 years we have Google, though it looks like we had it forever! It’s so useful now, that it’s hard to imagine life without it.

Of course, Google has expanded, offerring, apart from the search engine, an image search, newsgroup search/browser, a directory, Google News, a completely automated news aggregation system, Gmail, Google Talk, Google Maps (offering maps, directions and satellite views), Google Earth, offering a 3d view of the earth, among many others of course.

So, long live Google!!!

Those fellow software engineering students who have been around me, certainly know that I don’t like using the Computer Science labs very much. There’s always something wrong, either the screen is filthy, the mouse moves too fast, and some of these computers are extremely slow.

One of the things that was really getting on my nerves is, upon opening Firefox, the following dialog box would appear, asking me to select a profile. If I chose profile6, then it would moan about it not being a valid profile. And, it is worthwhile noting that I REFUSE to use Microsoft Internet Explorer, under ANY circumstances (everybody should).

So Today, I finally got around it. Of course, our frontline IT staff here at Concordia doesn’t know anything about the problem. Ah well, you don’t really go far if you can’t first admit there’s a problem.

Let’s thus cut to the chase. Here’s the solution.

Let’s first take a look at the default profile.ini file, located in C:\Documents and Settings\s_govas\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox:

[General]
StartWithLastProfile=0

[Profile0]
Name=profile6
IsRelative=0
Path=G:\Netscape
Default=1

We see that profile6 refers to a profile situated in G:\Netscape. Ok, so G is the network drive that refers to /nfs/winhome/u/username/, the user’s personal windows home dir, where u is the user’s username first letter, in lowercase of course.

So let’s create a folder called “Netscape” in G:, and start firefox. Bingo!

Firefox will create an empty profile. You can then tinker your firefox settings to your liking . Now if I can find how to save my bookmarks, as for some reason Firefox won’t read any bookmarks.html file.

Here’s how to set up these bookmarks:

1. Open Firefox, go to about:config (yeah, enter that URL)
2. Look for the browser.bookmarks.file (type ‘book’ in the filter field if that helps)
3. Double-click on that setting to set the path. Something like G:\bookmarks.html should do.

Mozilla won’t be able to find the file, so it will create it. Now you should be able to bookmark something and have it saved next time you login. You can also, of course, overwrite the default file with another bookmarks.html file, say… from home.

Some changes have been made to my site. the blog has been moved from /blog to the root, so update your bookmarks, or refer to the first page of the site for all the links.

I also changed some of the colors here… I’m not too fond of white.

Have a nice weekend everyone! I have some assignments to do, notably, COMP 361.

Today, CCSS held their annual Spice Up Your Life event, where students get to meet with their profs in an informal setting, with very spicy food. Unfortunately, I had class at that time, but I did make an appearance later on, and was greeted by a large portion of the skrud.net gang.

Before the event and my class, I finally took the grand tour of the new EV building beyond its lobby.For those who are unaware, the EV building is the new addition to Concordia University’s downtown campus, housing the faculty of Engineering and Computer Science, and the faculty of Visual Arts. I have to say, it is a really nice, state of the art building. The architecture is postmodern, but a little on the industrial side, to save some money I guess The ENCS conference rooms are awesome! State-of-the art, with Electrical and A/V sockets on the floor for multimedia, projectors, etc. I think Graduate students and profs are going to have lots of fun in that building. As for us, undergraduates, we get the same old Hall building, and the annexes scattered in the area, CL, FG, BE, and occasionally the dreaded LS building, 1/2 a mine away. Now, there are supposed to be some terasses built on the rooftops of that building, with nice views, I just can’t wait.

Yep, t’is this dreaded time of the year again. Summer’s officially over until next year. I live in Montreal, Canada, and I dread winter, so obviously, this is not good news. I love the sticky summer heat, the green grass, the pitch blue skies and the burning summer sun. I couldn’t care less about cleaning the white sh*t off my driveway, digging out the car, falling on the ice, freezing in the blistering cold, waiting for buses, and all these great “pleasures” winter has to offer.

On the bright side, summer’s still with us. We had several gorgeous, sunny, warm days in the beginning of last week, and there are still a few good days on the forecast for this week, but of course, with lower temperatures.

As usual, let’s hope this winter won’t be too cold, and will leave us soon.

Yup, unbeleivable today! Looks like it’s fire drill day. After the Hall building drill, I went to the LB building, and as soon as I submitted the last post, guess what? The LB building is being evacuated! Are they ever going to leave me alone?

So I went to eat at La Belle Province and now I’m in the EV lobby.

I am now headed to the CL building where I’ve got class in a few minutes… Let’s hope… no fire drill.

Oh no! looks like they’re evacuating the EV building! Just kidding.

This morning, I go to school to get some studying done. I think it’s better to study there, as this forces me to wake up early to take a rush-hour bus. So I go into one of the computer science labs to finish up an assignment and get some studying done. Yes, I like to study early, so I dont have to do it all at the end.

DEAD WRONG: Quarter to 11, they decide to do a fire drill. Why? What does a fire drill do, aside from wasting time and getting on people’s nerves? If there’s a fire, all you do is follow the signs to the exit. That’s not too hard to do is it?