Gary Bishop

Musical Game Idea

Sat, 09 Mar 2013 12:11:00 EST

It's spring break and 50 days until Maze Day ! I'm thinking of a new musical game but I need help with the music . My hidden agenda is getting samples of the sounds children make when they are imitating music instruments. I'll use the samples as a training set for a system to allow spoken input of music but I need a fun activity to motivate kids to give me the samples.

Help test the new Tar Heel Reader

Thu, 24 Jan 2013 10:11:00 EST

The new edition of Tar Heel Reader is ready for testing. Please give it a try and report any problems you see. Also, tell us ways we can improve it to meet the needs of your students.

Maze Day 2013

Sun, 04 Nov 2012 14:47:00 EST

Maze Day will be Monday 29 April 2013 from 9AM until 2PM in Sitterson Hall on the UNC Chapel Hill Campus.

Crawl Space Humidity Wrap Up

Wed, 04 Jul 2012 08:14:00 EDT

This is an update of my 2011 and 2009 posts on my attempts to control the humidity in the crawl space of my house in central North Carolina.

Mobile Safari is the IE6 of this decade

Tue, 13 Mar 2012 12:43:00 EDT

My otherwise portable and standards compliant code is gradually filling with iOS specific hacks because Apple knows best.

Remotely refreshing multiple browsers during web testing

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 19:43:00 EST

I'm working on the rewrite of Tar Heel Reader and testing it on desktop, iPad, iPod Touch, and IE6-8. I hate manual steps in my edit/test loop. The i* devices are particularly bothersome because I push my changes, pick up the device, hit the home button to wake it up, slide-to-unlock, and then hit the tiny refresh button. There had to be a better way.

How many Tar Heel Reader users have Javascript disabled?

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 09:40:00 EST

I'm redesigning Tar Heel Reader in hopes of taking load off the server and making the site friendlier to tablets and phones. Over the last few weeks I did a mockup with jQuery Mobile that works well enough on mobile devices but it was just kludged into the current system and it didn't work at all on IE6. So, I've decided to back up and rethink things.

VirtualBox Tricks

Sun, 01 Jan 2012 20:24:00 EST

I need to run an old version of Ubuntu Linux on my new server to support some otherwise obsolete software. It should have been easy but my ignorance made it take a few days of intermittent head banging. Here are few notes for my future self.

Yogurt

Thu, 03 Nov 2011 19:22:00 EDT

I learned most of what I know about making yogurt from Maria Lorraine's post at Chowhound. I combined what I learned there with some technical articles and reading tons of other web postings. This recipe is the result of considerable experimentation and has been successfully producing thick delicious yogurt for many weeks.

Maze Day 2012

Thu, 03 Nov 2011 09:31:00 EDT

This year Maze Day will be 26 April 2012 from 9AM until 2PM in Sitterson Hall on the UNC Chapel Hill Campus.