Joseph Brower

Sorry for all of the delays, this last week has been crazy.  Some of you know about the family crisis, others may not.  If you want to know, just shoot me a message.  I don’t really feel like posting it publicly for the world to see.   In my never ending quest of self education, I ordered 4 books (one of which has already arrived).  I’m hoping that these will help to increase my web app development skills.  I’ve been getting pretty good, but I really want to learn AJAX techniques.  One of the books I purchased is called “Professional AJAX.”  I’m sure it will help me out tons, but I need to read a beginners Javascript book first before I can make really good use of it.  That’s on the way and should arrive sometime soon.

My company is letting me present at the UTOSC (see the link in my sidebar… you really should go.)  In fact, they’ve even made some t-shirts to send down there.  If you want to see them, you’ll either have to go to the conference, or just wait until afterword and see a photo that I post here.  I’ve been rehearsing the pfSense presentation and I think I’ve got it pretty well put together.  I’ll be trying to get that recorded and rendered pretty quickly so that everyone can benefit from it.  I’m also getting some equipment to take down that will let me give the presentation on actual running hardware.  I feel that’s the best way for people to learn it.  The only presentation that has me nervous is the Kdenlive presentation, but I’m sure as I rehearse it, it will help to calm me a bit.  Either way, I’m sure I’ll have a blast at the conference.

I’ll be presenting at the Utah Open Source conference for this year.  I’m very excited to be a part of making it happen.  I’ve attended last year and the year before and really enjoyed it, so having the opportunity to be presenting and helping to teach people will be wonderful.  The two presentations that I’ll be giving are about pfSense for networking, and about about Kdenlive for screencasts.  The conference website is http://utosc.com .  If you click schedule, you can see when the presentations will occur.  I strong encourage everyone to sign up and participate, you won’t be disappointed.  Early bird registration ends Sept 19, so register and get a discount.  To register, you go to http://attend.utosc.com.

I’ve always been interested in Open Source for education and a long while ago I tried out SchoolTool.  At that time, the project was one and was very limited in what it could do.  Things have really changed since then.  It has become very documented, has most features that a school would need, and seems to be improving at a good speed.  It is definately worth checking out if you are looking for something to help manage a school (any SIS related activity).  It’s website is schooltool.org .