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South Devon College and Paignton Community College (actually a school) are two very different entities. There is no Paignton College in the area. So thanks, impersonal media empire who is quick to report and slow to verify facts, for freaking out my mother.

#mmuk09 is the hashtag which marks tweets on Twitter as belonging to a specific topic. That particular tag belongs to MoodleMoot UK 2009, which was held yesterday and today at Loughborough University here in the UK. I learned a lot:

1. I learned how to pronounce Dougiamas.
2. I also learned how to pronounce Lafuente.
3. Moodle actually has a community. You’ve probably heard it has (you’d be right) and you may have seen a lot of activity on the forums and on the tracker, but you don’t realise what that means ’til you go to a Moot. I’m not sure of the numbers but the lecture theatre we used (which held exactly 256 people!) was packed to standing room only.
4. People on Twitter sound very unlike what you’d expect when you meet them in person.
5. It’s great to hang out in person with people you hang out with on Twitter, Facebook et al, even if only for a day or two. Roll on the next (relevant) RSC-SW event!
6. I now like Zane Lowe on Radio 1 and have to listen to something/someone called Deadmaus Deadmau5 (yes, that’s a five, thanks @powdermonkeydan) as the drive home was long and I don’t have a CD changer.
7. Moodle 2 is due to be released at Christmas 2009, but some people close to the project think this is a little optimistic. There is, however, an incredible buzz about Moodle 2 and the community is being encouraged to bug-hunt and where possible, bug-fix.
8. There will shortly be a competition on Moodle.org to create a course which promotes best practice in Moodle course creation…! Prize is yet to be determined but the point is to get exemplar courses on demo.moodle.org to show the world what Moodle can do.
9. Mahara may be the single most important piece of software you can link Moodle to, and link to Moodle.
10. Having followed a Mood via Twitter, it makes a little more sense having tweeted from one, alongside goodness only knows mow many others. What at first seems disjointed starts to make sense, but you need to be following a number of peope (who you can find via hashtags (if it works) or via yout Twitter client’s search function).
11. I need to be running (K)Ubuntu or get a Mac, not only for the kudos of it: fewer problems all round for those attendees using those systems than those using Windows systems (me).
12. Sean Keogh, organiser of the UK Moot (the very first Moot anywhere, ever) doesn’t want the full responsibility of the job next year, so is looking to share the responsibility with others. Contact him via moodlemoot.org.

I had a great time, learned a lot, and got a much greater sense about what Moodle is about, even though I thought I had a pretty good idea in the first place. The phrase ‘you don’t buy the software for the software, you buy the software for the community’ has never been more true.

Edit: Something I missed of the post above is that I enjoyed hearing about the early days of Moodle, for example, the near-daily code releases from Martin, the organiser Sean emailing Martin and asking about LDAP authentication (I think it was) and receiving a LDAP authentication plugin via email the next day… From such humble beginnings so much has been achieved and so much more to be done!!

Lastly, how does ‘Dr. Dougiamas’ sound?

Sainsbury's price-per-item FAIL

Taken just this evening in the local Saino’s. Sadly I don’t think this is an any way a rare occurrence, tho I do love it when I get to the checkout and am asked to pay NaN for that week’s shopping.

Head over to failblog.org.

About this time last year, I found and ‘passed on’ via the medium of blog, an image I found called simply ‘Bacon flowchart’. The full explanation for the image is right there in the title.

Well, the blog software was found to be vulnerable to XSS or banana peels lying carelessly on the street and was hacked to buggery and back before you could say ‘viagra spam’ so I lost the image. Well I could have gone looking for it but fate emailed it to me today (yes, fate and destiny are getting all 21st century, you can probably find them on Twitter) and so I am reproducing it here.

For a while, if you typed ‘bacon flowchart’ into Google, that blog post was the first result back. Wonder if it will happen again?

Bacon flowchart

Have a look at these simplified, generic snippets of XHTML markup. Is this valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional?

<a href=”img.jpg” title=”image”><img src=”img.jpg” alt=”image” /></a>

or is this?

<a href=”img.jpg” title=”image” /><img src=”img.jpg” alt=”image” />

See that in the 2nd snippet, the anchor tag is self-closed, and there is no closing anchor tag as in the first snippet?

The W3C’s Markup Validator seems to think that both are okay, even though the second snippet turns everything after it into a hyperlink…  Wierd.

If someone can explain this to me (as I can’t be bothered to read the specification documents) do please let me know.

Canon EOS 5D Mark II, as reviewed on Digital Photo Review (www.dpreview.com):

Some of the features/improvements:

*  21 megapixel CMOS sensor (very similar to the sensor in the EOS-1Ds Mark III)
* Sensor dust reduction by vibration of filter
* 3.9 frames per second continuous shooting
* DIGIC 4 processor, new menus / interface as per the EOS 50D
* Image processing features:
o Highlight tone priority
o Auto lighting optimizer (4 levels)
o High ISO noise reduction (4 levels)
o Lens peripheral illumination correction (vignetting correction)
* RAW and SRAW1 (10 MP) / SRAW2 (5 MP)
* RAW / JPEG selection made separately
* Permanent display of ISO on both top plate and viewfinder displays
* AF micro adjustment (up to 20 lenses individually)
* Three custom modes on command dial, Creative Auto mode
* Image copyright metadata support
* 3.0″ 920,000 dot LCD monitor with ‘Clear View’ cover / coatings, 170° viewing angle
* Automatic LCD brightness adjustment (ambient light sensor)
* Live view with three mode auto-focus (including face detection)
* No mirror-flip for exposures in Live View if contrast detect AF selected
* Movie recording in live view (1080p H.264 up to 12 minutes, VGA H.264 up to 24 mins per clip)
* Two mode silent shooting (in live view)
* HDMI and standard composite (AV) video out
* Full audio support: built-in mic and speaker, mic-in socket, audio-out over AV (although not HDMI)
* IrPort (supports IR remote shutter release using optional RC1 / RC5 controllers)
* UDMA CompactFlash support
* New 1800 mAh battery with improved battery information / logging
* New optional WFT-E4 WiFi / LAN / USB vertical grip
* Water resistance: 10 mm rain in 3 minutes

Please, someone, buy me this camera and a selection of ‘L’ series lenses right now and I will take photographs of you and yours for life.

I just came back from my first outing to the second ‘camera club’ meet in the village where I now live, and within minutes of getting on teh Internet, stumble across this gem from Cyanide and Happiness:

Made at ruletheweb.co.uk/b3ta/bus/ and I also found www.says-it.com, responsible for some of the funniest church signs I have ever seen.

(If you don’t get the reference, check out The Natural Confectionery Company’s advert on YouTube.

Says it all really:

See richarddawkins.net and atheistbus.org.uk for some sense when it comes to religion.

…while I move to Devon. Normal service will be resumed as soon as I get a working internet connection.

Try following me on Twitter, twitter.com/vaughany or keep an eye on the feed on the lower-right side of this page. I can update that via my mobile, for an extortionate amount per message.