The Patient Scholar
Reflections on Learning and Teaching
Tue, 30 Sep 2003
Sometimes you bite of more than you can chew, and never really know
that your ability to process everything is just not there.
Sometimes I feel like that.
My goal right now is to be ABD (all but dissertation) by the end of
spring semester 2004. What this means mostly is a lot of
reading. In order to be ABD I will need to successfully complete my
comprehensive exams, and thereby demonstrate that I am aware of all
the important conversations in my discipline; well, at least within my
fields: United States government and politics; and public
administration.
So, I will create here a
repository for my notes. As I work my way through the reading list, I
will post my notes here. Drafting them in HTML/XHTML will serve two
purposes. First, I’ll be able to access them anywhere I have access
to a web browser and a network connection. Second, using Plucker, I can process them for
viewing on my Palm Vx.
Actually, there is a third reason: I can scratch the
technical yen in a way that is useful to me academically.
Fri, 19 Sep 2003
Slashdot
has a post and discussion regarding EGOVOS 3, a
gathering and discussion by European government leaders about
open standards and free
software in government.
Current onerous licensing issues facing the State of Utah could be significantly
mitigated by the use of open source and free software. One
participant in the Slashdot discussion had this to say:
Governments have the power and resources to train
thousands of admins to hack free software systems, and they could save
millions by not buying you-know-who’s licences. So, I hope this goes
well.
While Utah may not have an abundance of resources currently, there
is already familiarity among state IT staff with various open source
and free software solutions. All that is needed is a little official
encouragement and acceptance.
Wed, 17 Sep 2003
I have recently acquired a Palm Vx from my wife, and have been
experimenting with a number of different software packages. Two in
particular are interesting.
The first is Plucker, a package
designed to convert HTML and text files to its own open format.
Plucker can “pluck” files from the web, or from a local system.
The second is Adobe’s free Reader
for Palm OS. This application allows the user to load and read
PDF files on a Palm handheld.
Thu, 11 Sep 2003
The Patient Scholar is now online.
