Mahara

Twitter / mjollnir

Twitter updates from Penny Leach / mjollnir.

1. mjollnir: today @nigelmcnie is my hero http://nigel.mcnie.name/blog/mysql-is-a-database write to /dev/null, it's fast! #lolmysql
2. mjollnir: kind of amazed that a 5.1 that causes new cracks in walls level damage is still called an aftershock, and not"another big earthquake" #eqnz
3. mjollnir: RT @ThisCJ: Kia kaha, Christchurch! Hang in there!
4. mjollnir: RT @KokoKabana: Just went to bed...then got up and put some knickers on in case there's an earthquake and I have to run out into the str ...
5. mjollnir: @pipes word
6. mjollnir: i think i need to unfollow @nz_quake - it's kind of freaking me out
7. mjollnir: wait - there are now earthquakes happening in the wairarapa and hawke's bay now? nz you better still be there when i get home for chrissy
8. mjollnir: @johubris oh my god SO WOULD BE IN if i was in nz
9. mjollnir: so do we think #eqnz is going to cost anderton the election?
10. mjollnir: Triumphant but SORE after hours of rock climbing. Could well be a new obsession

Last updated on 08 September 2010, 4:18 AM

she.geek.nz - planetmahara

Infrequently updated

On loving (and hating) software, and how crippling it is to run in high heels

I have a well established (and well deserved) reputation for hating MySQL and being a Postgres fan. While this is functionally true, I want to examine what is actually behind it.

I tried to find an analogy recently to explain this to my friend Michel, and the best I could come up with was (and actually I think it fits perfectly) the following:

Imagine that you are an athlete. A runner. And you have the most amazing comfortable ergonomic shoes. These shoes fit you perfectly, they are tailored to exactly your body, the way you run. They help you run faster, they enable you to excel at the sport that you have chosen. Then imagine that for whatever reason, you join a running club, and this running club has a policy of running in high heels.

"But why would you do that?!", you exclaim in dismay. "When you could use these other shoes, which are much more comfortable and actually help you run faster".
"Ah well", they reply. "We've always run in high heels and it works fine for us".

That is how I feel whenever I have to touch MySQL.

I remember having seen one of Kathy Sierra's talks about creating passionate users - not sure where, maybe Webstock 2007. 'Passionate users' is something that may seem absurd to many computer users who struggle with daily computer use (I have written about this before), but the reality is that I am a passionate user. There are certain pieces of software that I use every day, and feel passionate about! While writing this blog post, I realised that what I'm really talking about here is tools - things that I use in my daily work as a software developer.

I honestly love working with Postgres. I love working with Git. There are actually times where I need to do something, or solve a problem, and I feel like this software helps me do it. After I solve the problem I am grateful to be able to work with such tools. This is where the random "I love postgres!" or "I love git" tweets come from.

This is a really important point - it's not that I hate MySQL (although I do), or CVS or SVN (also true) - it's that I actually love Postgres and Git, and when I need, for whatever reason, to work with Mysql or CVS or SVN, I really miss the features that make me love their competitors.

Of course, this fails to take into account that different pieces of software have different purposes and features, and this is a good thing, because diversity encourages competition which makes software improve. Interestingly, I don't know if I feel this way about all software - I love Vim, but I don't hate Emacs - I just don't use it. When I have to use Emacs (it happens), I am sometimes frustrated that it's different - but I blame myself for that (not knowing it well enough), rather than blaming the software for being substandard. I'm not sure if Vim is any better or worse than Emacs - Vim just suits me better. In the case of Mysql and Postgres, I actually think that Mysql is substandard, and similarly for Git and CVS or SVN.

There seems to be a scale for my reaction to using different software:

• Love: I feel that the software is predictable, elegant and helps me achieve what I want and get my work done. I sometimes feel love for it when it's particularly helpful.
• Ambivalence: I use the software, but don't feel particularly strongly about it.
• Hatred: Using it actively hinders me working, because it is lacking features I need, or is unpredictable and unreliable. I feel despair when I have to use it.

Obviously, the two extremes are both forms of passion, although I'm sure that the first is what Kathy Sierra was talking about. But I wonder if the software that falls into the third category only exists when there is a competing piece of software that falls into the first category. If I had never used Postgres, would I hate MySQL so much? Probably not, although I might hate it a little bit. I'm sure people that have always run in high heels and never experienced how much easier it is to run in sneakers don't hate their high heels, because they don't know any different.

So the conclusion I must draw, is that I don't actually hate MySQL or CVS or SVN - I hate being forced to use tools that I consider to be substandard than their equivalents, which I actually love. To me this is such a black and white issue I am completely baffled when other people don't see it. Considering the way that most people interact with their computers, if software exists that actually makes people feel love - why on earth would they use anything else?

mahara stand at swiss open expo

This Wednesday and Thursday I'm going to be at the Swiss Open Expo, "manning" the Mahara stand. Liip are always in heavy presence at the Open Expo, but this time will be the first time we have a Mahara stand, so it's pretty exciting!

If you're in or around Winterthur and interested in Open Source e-portfolios, come and say hi!

LEAP2A support coming soon to a Moodle near you!

Finally, I am very happy to annouce that I will soon be working on adding LEAP2A support to the Moodle Portfolio API that will be in Moodle 2.0.

There's already a rough specification for this work, and it's been on my TODO list for a very long time.

LEAP2A is a very simple and open atom-based e-portfolio standard, to promote interoperability between e-portfolio systems. Interoperability is very important in an e-portfolio system, because it is vital to be able to transport portfolio data around with you, as you move between educational providers, into higher education, and on to professional development. Imagine having in one portfolio system, your entire portfolio of work, starting from your first day at primary school, right up to your continued professional development. Of course, one would use many different portfolio systems over that time, so some sort of open standard to transport data around is imperative.

I was involved with the LEAP standard group last year when I was living in London, adding LEAP2A support to Mahara. I attended the LEAP meetings in the UK, and worked on the export side of the project. Nigel took over when I left Catalyst and continued, adding the import side (which is of course, much harder).

But wait, you ask. Isn't Moodle a learning management system, not an e-portfolio? Why do we care about interoperability with an e-portfolio standard? The answer is of course, that while you're working, you are entering data into Moodle, and at the end of the course, the natural thing to want to do is to export some of that data into your portfolio. At the moment, we have the Portfolio API in Moodle for that, which I worked on for last year for 3 months, during my time at Moodle HQ. However, at the time I wrote it, it wasn't at all clear what portfolio standard we should support, so content is transferred in "raster" format (rendered to HTML or a file like a pdf). Since then though, LEAP has emerged as a clear front runner, and now that Mahara 1.2 (almost released!) fully supports importing and exporting LEAP2A, the time is right for us to take the plunge and add LEAP2A support to Moodle's Portfolio API. This improves the integration between Moodle and Mahara, as well as opening the door for Moodle to integrate better with other e-portfolio systems that implement the LEAP2A standard.

I am therefore very grateful to the State of New Hampshire for providing the funding to Liip for me to do this work. This comes from a grant from the New Hampshire Department of Education, and a collaborate group made up of the following school districts:

• Exeter Region Cooperative
• Windham
• Oyster River
• Farmington
• Newmarket
• Timberlane

Special thanks also to Matt Oquist who has been tirelessly helping me find funding for this work!

Changing my approach to keysigning

After attending Debconf 9 in Cáceres, Spain, and talking to various people about their different approaches to validating identity, I have decided to change my approach to keysigning.

In order to sign your key, I must have met you before and can recall your face or name. If I have not met you before, I must have had an interesting conversation with you during this meeting, and am relatively sure I will be able to recall you in future meetings.

I will of course still need to look at government issued identification for people I don't know very well who fit into one of the two above criteria.

Part of the reason for this change is that for the second time, someone didn't want to sign my key because my New Zealand passport has the name "Penelope" (along with all other documents like my two driving licenses and Swiss B Permit). While I can understand this, to me it shows that the traditional method of verifying identity using government issued identification is fundamentally flawed. When I think about what comprises my identity, yes, my name is a big part of it, and I consider my name to be Penny. I have never in my life been called Penelope. Not by my family, teachers, colleagues, friends or lovers. It's just not part of my identity, and anyone who knows anything about me, probably knows that. So what are we trying to achieve by keysigning then? The fact that the person you meet is in control of that key, and you've verified their identity. Sorry, but "Penelope" doesn't go a very long way to make up any part of my identity.

Identity is something I've been thinking about a lot lately for various other reasons (largely after reading Simon Grant's book about the use of e-portfolios for personal information, personal development and personal values), and intend to blog about in the future.

At any rate, conferences like Debconf are a great way to meet people and have interesting and thought provoking conversations, and me being difficult and refusing to sign someone's key because I didn't know them, or hadn't had any sort of meaningful conversation with them, led to a few interesting and thought provoking conversations. So there's an added bonus.

Best Education Hacker award

It seems I am the recipient of one of this year's Google-O'Reilly Open Source Awards

This is really an amazing thing for me and I'm quite overwhelmed by it. Looking back over the last 5 years I've been working on this Open Source Education stuff, there are so many people who have helped me out, inspired and motivated me, and I'm quite sure that this award is a recognition of all of the work of those people as well. The list is far too long to mention, but some of the people who stand out the most over the years are Andrew McMillan, Martín Langhoff, Richard Wyles, Martin Dougiamas, Eloy Lafuente, Nicolas Connault, Nigel McNie, and Heinz Krettek.

Additionally, I am one of those lucky people who get to work on Open Source during work time - from 2004 to early this year for Catalyst in New Zealand, and now for Liip in Switzerland. I am immensely grateful that I have had the encouragement and support of my employers.

Finally, a pony!

The response to this has been immense - I have had emails, tweets, instant messages from many many people. I cannot respond to everyone individually but I am very grateful for the support from each and every one of you.

Mahara hackfest weekend of 26/27/28 June

There's a huge amount of work still to be done for Mahara 1.2 to be released, and Nigel and I have decided to have a formal hackfest rather than just our semi regular Saturday morning CH/Saturday night NZ irc hackfests.

We will be in the irc channel (#mahara-dev on freenode) all weekend (barring normal everyday things like eating dinner) and working on the list of things still to do for Mahara 1.2. We will ourselves mainly be working on the theming changes that Nigel already blogged about, but anyone else interested in getting into Mahara development and helping us get 1.2 out the door would be more than welcome to join in and we have many bugs on the tracker that you can help with!

Announcement: Liip now a Mahara partner!

I am happy to announce that Liip are now a Mahara partner! Mahara is an Open Source ePortfolio system.

In many respects Mahara is a "sister" application to Moodle, providing students with a learning environment that they themselves own, giving them them the ability to showcase their work and collaborate with their peers. However, Mahara is also well suited as a social networking system, running out of the box without Moodle.

Mahara was originally funded by the New Zealand government's Tertiary Education Commission, and has grown into a thriving open source product that is increasingly being adopted worldwide. It makes a lot of sense for Liip to be a partner, both because we're already the official Moodle partner in Switzerland, and Mahara fits very well into our existing list of projects we work with, but also because I have been involved in Mahara since the start, and wanted to continue my involvement since coming to Liip. Liip have been fantastic supporting me in this goal!

hello, I now live in Switzerland!

Here's my general update of what's happened over the last few months of completely shifting my life around.

I'm living in Fribourg, Switzerland. This is a really cute little town, just 20 minutes train ride from the capital, Bern. I think it's supposed to be officially French-German bilingual but it really isn't. French is the language spoken in all the shops and cafes. I don't have any French yet, so this has been a bit of a challenge - the lowest point was trying to buy the official Rubbish bags at the supermarket.

It took quite awhile to find an apartment - I think I looked at between 20 and 25 altogether before I found a perfect apartment just over a bridge from the fringe of town - I'm living in a renovated apartment in an old house on the river bank and it's absolutely perfect. I can hear the bells from the cathedral and I have a good walk to work, 35 minutes, and there's grass and river and a bus stop outside for the mornings where I take longer than normal to get up. I found a vegetable market just over the bridge on Saturday mornings, that has a whole stall dedicated to mushrooms! This made me disproportionately gleeful. After almost a month of looking at apartments that I didn't want, I visited the apartment, signed the contract, moved in, and bought & assembled most of the furniture within a single weekend, with the help of my amazing boyfriend. Apparently this is almost unheard of in Switzerland.

I'm working at Liip, and it's great. I cannot imagine being thrown into a better bunch of people in a foreign city/country/language. I'm working on Moodle, doing some Open Source projects, working with great people, drinking a lot of beer and throwing the pony around. This is not a euphemism! I got to be a part of the group celebrating Liip doing so well at the Best of Swiss Web awards (more on this in another post), and it was just awesome to watch my new work people excel at what they do.

I went to the German Moodlemoot in Bamberg last month and had a great time (finally getting to try the Moodle Mojitos) and met some more Moodlers for the first time - most notably Heinz, who it was fantastic to meet, and David, who dutifully bought me beer for helping him with git, as well as seeing the familiar faces of Martin, Helen and Petr, which always makes me happy. For the first time I was at a conference and people who weren't me talking about Mahara (although of course I talked about Mahara as well), and that was a pretty big buzz in itself.

I love Swiss trains! Travelling back from Bamberg I changed about 4 times, and the change that made me switch onto a Swiss train made me warm and fuzzy. I also like Spätzle, Lindor chocolate, Cardinal (my local beer), Coop, Olivenbrot, the pizza place near work, Lily's, and Freitag (I am happily telling everyone I'm Swiss now that I have a Freitag wallet, which is complete nonsense). lost.ch makes me happy, having my name on my letterbox makes me happy (this does not happen in New Zealand). My boyfriend makes me happy. Inappropriately appending 'chen' or 'li' on the end of everything makes me gleeful and drives everyone else crazy. So far, I don't think much of Cablecom, Migros, apartment hunting, eating Pferd (pony!) or endless dairy products.

I have seen live: Gazpacho twice (although once was in München) and Explosions in the Sky. I hate smoking in bars, but I loved both bands.

As soon as I have conquered German and French (any day now: yeah right!) I will be completely happy.

farewell Catalyst

Today is the end of an era. After almost 5 years, this is my last day at Catalyst.

I started working at Catalyst in May 2004. I had about 2 years experience working in the Industry, but I'd never worked on Open Source before. I used Open Source happily, but had no idea that I could be a contributor. Suddenly, that was all to change.

My introduction into the Open Source world was through The NZ Open Source Virtual Learning Environment (NZ(OS)VLE) project, which was a NZ-Government funded project to deliver a Learning Management System that could be deployed through NZ at low cost, to encourage collaboration between all the institutions participating.

And man we did a lot of awesome work on that project. Suddenly there was Moodle being used all through NZ. The Open Polytech deployed it, and at the time it was the largest installation of Moodle in the world. I used to wake up every morning and fix performance issues, I did a huge amount of work for Postgres support, I was pretty much paid to work on Open Source full time.

Eventually NZVLE funding ran out, and we started working on commercial Moodle projects - still managing to keep a happy balance with Open Source. The elearning team, which I was the second member of by about 3 months, grew.

Mid 2006, I started working on another government funded project, to deliver a portfolio system. This was to be what NZVLE was to Learning Management Systems, to portfolios. I started off co-leading this project, that would grow into Mahara, and I fell in love with it.

Eventually, various circumstances dictated that I had to work on other projects for a while, and Mahara fell away from me into other capable hands.

Life continued. Other than the projects I worked on by day, I also collaborated with various people on other projects under the roof of Catalyst - SuperHappyDevHouse the NZ edition was born, Linuxchix stuff happened, Linux installfests, Planet Catalyst was started, at first subversively. I did mentoring, I travelled quite a lot to talk at conferences about the work we were doing, I wrote articles, I helped start the Eight....

Catalyst began to feel like a family to me - there were people there who were like cousins, some like brothers and sisters, again others favourite aunts and uncles. I don't think a single day went by where I didn't learn some new cool computer thing. Traditions were started and continued: beer o'clock, pizza thursday, hot teen vindaloos, special coffee, mjollniraptors, hot cold hot cold, g<tab>, foosball, "where's $person?" emails, so's your face, boozey lunch, thrash metal Friday, bubble wrap, red liquorice bribes, step mania, haiku battles...

But like most young New Zealanders, I wanted to travel. The mjollniraptor was to become the Inter Continental Ballistic Mjollniraptor. After a few months in London, it became clear that Catalyst UK didn't hold much appeal for me, and there were many reasons for me to go to Switzerland. Liip offered me a job and I happily accepted, and look forward to starting with them on Monday.

I'm not sure whether it's completely ridiculous or perfectly appropriate that my last day at Catalyst is Black Friday, but here ends my journey with you for now. Ka kite ano, so long & thanks for all the beer, g<tab> etc.



Edit: The most recent explodingdog is incredibly appropriate:

I am too cold to work

mahara.org relaunch

mahara.org has just been relaunched! Nigel and everyone else have done a great job with the project.

Mahara has come a long way since the original mahara.org was launched, and because of this, we're now actually using Mahara to power mahara.org, rather than Drupal, which is what we had been using for the last 2 or so years.

I'm looking forward to seeing some communities building up over there, everything from developers to translators and practitioners. Actually building the community on a Mahara installation will hopefully see some interesting usage patterns, and since they'll all be in a central place it'll be much easier to showcase best practice.

In related news, I was in Birmingham today for another LEAP day - the standard we're going to be adopting for Mahara import/export, as well as interoperability with other portfolio systems. It was really interesting to see what other portfolio vendors are doing. I have a weird mix of pride and disappointment that we're the only open source portfolio represented in the implementation partners.

Last updated on 08 September 2010, 4:18 AM