homoLudens

This can’t be as simple as it sounds:

Stephen Tallent: Frontier ODBC Extension 1.0b14r15
Stephen Tallent has released a new version of the ODBC Extension for Frontier that fixes several threading bugs and also fixes a small memory leak. The ODBC Extension allows a Frontier user to easily write cross-platform scripts for connecting Frontier to any ODBC compliant database system??? [Scott Young's Radio Weblog]

I was told a couple of years ago that our Follett Online Public Access Catalog was ODBC compliant. Could I export hunks of my catalog to a Manila blog? Hehe.

I spent the morning encouraged and helped by Assistant Principal Jiang (to the right), Dong Hui H.S, to make a few first steps toward an online collaboration between our two schools. Dong Hui now has its first weblog.

In the great public education tradition of keeping expectations low
enough to lead to some semblance of happiness, we’re going at this slow
and simple. Five of Dong Hui’s first year English students started
postinfg to the new blog while I hung out chatting about big dreams and practical limits. Once
back in SF, I’ll try to get a few of our Gal students to reply to the
Dong Hui pioneers. Then we’ll think together online about what we want
to do beyond that.

I tried a Blackboard site for managing all this, but we had log in
problems on the UC Berkeley server. Manila
was an easy substitute, but has an equally serious limitation in not
handling Chinese script. We’ll start with English to English.

The best part of all this was spending five hours in the Dong Hui
server
room with English teacher Arthur Ying (below, right), server
administrator, Teddy (below, left), and the ever unflappable
Asst. Principal Jiang.  I was genuinely in China for those hours.
The rest of the time has felt like an endless commute by plane, bus and
taxi. Much more interesting than a tour of Yangjou, eh? And that
doesn’t take into account the thrill of back and forth taxi rides in
Shanghai’s rush hour traffic.