I started to look at how to config a Amazon Mechanical Turk user interface to recruit workers to write tags for some research papers in Engineering Education. These papers are in .PDF format.
I first used <iframe> </iframe>, didn't work. There was just a pop-up window asking me whether to download the pdf. Then I realized this probably the problem of the pdf viewer of my browser. After Googled it, I found many people have had this problem. I figured that the best solution among those suggestions probably be to move the nppdf32.dll file in Adobe Reader folder to the Mozilla Firefox Plugin folder, but then I found that the Mac version of Adobe Reader doesn't have a nppdf32.dll file.
After spending quite a while wondering online, I found this best solution for me: to install the Schubert|it PDF Browser plugin. After installing this, I can view the pdf in a nice window in Firefox browser, but my Mechanical Turk code still didn't work, it was just showing a blank box, and other things under the box have disappeared. Then I changed the <iframe> </iframe> to <embed> </embed>, work nice!
Now I am worrying that this is working for my browser, but probably won't work for all my workers' browsers. Everybody is using different versions of OS, different versions of web browsers, different versions of pdf readers, and having different preferences about whether to download the pdf or view it online. Everybody has encountered similar or totally different problems and solved or not solved in different ways. What it takes to give everybody the best web experience?
Showing posts with label programming. Show all posts
Showing posts with label programming. Show all posts
Sunday, July 10, 2011
Friday, July 8, 2011
Fix Macfuse on Mac OS X 10.6.8
This is my first real technical blog post. So the story is that I really want to continue my web programming learning process, the first thing to do is to mount the remote server as a local drive on my new Mac. This Mac came just a few days before Apple launched the whole new Lion OS, so my version is Snow Leopard 10.6.8, and it's running on the 64-bit kernel. After I installed Google MacFUSE and the Macfusion GUI, I encountered two problems:
1. When I tried to mount using Macfusion, I would constantly received the error: Remote host has disconnect. While I was sure the remote host has no problem.
2. The MacFUSE preference pane is 32-bit only, when click MacFUSE from the system preference on a Mac that runs 64-bit kernel, it will cause the system preference quit and reopen.
The first problem is the major problem, I googled and found these two blog posts quite illuminating:
http://rackerhacker.com/2009/08/28/fix-macfusion-on-snow-leopard/
http://www.5dollarwhitebox.org/drupal/node/97
I tried these two solutions, but they didn't work for me, I simply cannot find the 'sshnodelay.so' file here on my machine. Maybe because these two blog posts both are from some time last year, there have been quite a bit of updating going on. Then I found this blog:
http://blog.philippklaus.de/2011/04/fix-sshfs-with-macfuse-on-mac-os-x-10-6-7-snow-leopard/
It should work for both 10.6.7 and 10.6.8. I simply downloaded the 2.1.9 version of MacFUSE it pointed to and installed it, problem solved!
One last thing to say here is that the default mounting path of Macfusion is home folder of the server, if you want to visit files that is not under the home folder like me, simply specify the path to "/" as the screenshot showed below.
For the second problem, it's minor, but quite annoying. Every time if I click the MacFUSE from system preference, the system preference would restart and show 32-bit. I solved it by downloading the MacFUSE preference pane file from here. After downloading, unzip and copy the MacFUSE.prefPane to /Library/PreferencePanes/, and replace the previous version.
Other things I learned:
(1) The Mac OS X 10.6.8 doesn't allow the user to enable root user for security reasons.
(2) The 'sudo' command is for avoiding root user, so if I use 'sudo', I do not need to be a root user, I just need to type my admin password.
(3) I have to memorize some of the bash command for Linux, such as sudo, cd, ls, ~, etc. Here is for my preference in the future.
(4) The newest Lion OS is really attractive and at a very reasonable price for update. The multi-touch function is really cool and fascinating. However, after I got this trouble with MacFUSE on my version of OS, I decided to be patient. Who knows what kind of problems I will encounter with a whole new OS? But from another aspect, it's always worth to explore and to tackle with new challenges. It's always great to realize how little I know, and how much I've learned and will learn in the future.
1. When I tried to mount using Macfusion, I would constantly received the error: Remote host has disconnect. While I was sure the remote host has no problem.
2. The MacFUSE preference pane is 32-bit only, when click MacFUSE from the system preference on a Mac that runs 64-bit kernel, it will cause the system preference quit and reopen.
The first problem is the major problem, I googled and found these two blog posts quite illuminating:
http://rackerhacker.com/2009/08/28/fix-macfusion-on-snow-leopard/
http://www.5dollarwhitebox.org/drupal/node/97
I tried these two solutions, but they didn't work for me, I simply cannot find the 'sshnodelay.so' file here on my machine. Maybe because these two blog posts both are from some time last year, there have been quite a bit of updating going on. Then I found this blog:
http://blog.philippklaus.de/2011/04/fix-sshfs-with-macfuse-on-mac-os-x-10-6-7-snow-leopard/
It should work for both 10.6.7 and 10.6.8. I simply downloaded the 2.1.9 version of MacFUSE it pointed to and installed it, problem solved!
One last thing to say here is that the default mounting path of Macfusion is home folder of the server, if you want to visit files that is not under the home folder like me, simply specify the path to "/" as the screenshot showed below.
For the second problem, it's minor, but quite annoying. Every time if I click the MacFUSE from system preference, the system preference would restart and show 32-bit. I solved it by downloading the MacFUSE preference pane file from here. After downloading, unzip and copy the MacFUSE.prefPane to /Library/PreferencePanes/, and replace the previous version.
Other things I learned:
(1) The Mac OS X 10.6.8 doesn't allow the user to enable root user for security reasons.
(2) The 'sudo' command is for avoiding root user, so if I use 'sudo', I do not need to be a root user, I just need to type my admin password.
(3) I have to memorize some of the bash command for Linux, such as sudo, cd, ls, ~, etc. Here is for my preference in the future.
(4) The newest Lion OS is really attractive and at a very reasonable price for update. The multi-touch function is really cool and fascinating. However, after I got this trouble with MacFUSE on my version of OS, I decided to be patient. Who knows what kind of problems I will encounter with a whole new OS? But from another aspect, it's always worth to explore and to tackle with new challenges. It's always great to realize how little I know, and how much I've learned and will learn in the future.
Sunday, February 6, 2011
Is Étude a Whole Game?
I am reading the David Perkins's book Making Learning Whole today. Chapter 3 of this book focuses on how to work on the hard parts of learning. According to Perkins, the learners definitely need to pick out the hard parts in the whole learning game (Perkins' opinion is that learning shouldn't just learn the elements without knowing their usage, nor should it be only "about" something without really practice it in person, learning should be like playing a whole game, at least a junior version of a whole game.) to practice and practice and practice, but this oftentimes is not fun at all. How to making learning the hard parts fun? Perkins suggests to make exercise into Études. While I agree with this, I also think how to use études also matters a lot.
Recall my experience of learning playing piano, I did play a lot of études from Bayer, Carl Czerny, Hanon,etc, but I didn't feel it was fun or useful at all, nor did I have any concept of the whole game. The way suggested by Perkins is that when the learners playing the whole game, there are some hard parts, and an ideal way to practice the hard parts is to use études, in order to play the whole game better. But when I was learning to play the piano, almost all we did is playing the études, and had no ideas how these études could fit into the whole game. This is a misuse of the études as elements without knowing the whole game. So, the situation turns to that we always play the hard parts: Bayer, then Czerny-1, Czerny-2,Czerny-3...harder and harder... If the learning game is all about the hard parts, then it's too hard for the learners to enjoy.
Another of my thought triggered by this book chapter is that I begin to ask whether I am playing the whole game when I am learning the PHP programming now? It seems I got some small tasks to practice on, so I am definitely playing the junior version of the whole game. However, I feel I do not know the elements, so oftentimes, I feel I don't know how to play the game, I basically have nothing to use when I am playing. I lack of the fundamental knowledge of how computer system works, I don't know the Bash commands, I don't know the DOS commands, I don't even know HTML, how could I learn PHP well? Although I did wrote some codes that have the required functions, but I deeply doubt whether it's efficient or bug free, and I have no ways or no time to deeply examine that, all I want is to finish the game. So my opinion is that before we play the whole game, we at least need some elements and some "about". This is just a half-cooked opinion, I am still not sure about it. Maybe it's just the residual effect of the "element" and "about" education I received. Also maybe it's just because of the age: I am just paranoid by the fact that lots of excellent programmers are much younger than me, and I starts to learn this too late to enjoy it without worrying about anything.
Recall my experience of learning playing piano, I did play a lot of études from Bayer, Carl Czerny, Hanon,etc, but I didn't feel it was fun or useful at all, nor did I have any concept of the whole game. The way suggested by Perkins is that when the learners playing the whole game, there are some hard parts, and an ideal way to practice the hard parts is to use études, in order to play the whole game better. But when I was learning to play the piano, almost all we did is playing the études, and had no ideas how these études could fit into the whole game. This is a misuse of the études as elements without knowing the whole game. So, the situation turns to that we always play the hard parts: Bayer, then Czerny-1, Czerny-2,Czerny-3...harder and harder... If the learning game is all about the hard parts, then it's too hard for the learners to enjoy.
Another of my thought triggered by this book chapter is that I begin to ask whether I am playing the whole game when I am learning the PHP programming now? It seems I got some small tasks to practice on, so I am definitely playing the junior version of the whole game. However, I feel I do not know the elements, so oftentimes, I feel I don't know how to play the game, I basically have nothing to use when I am playing. I lack of the fundamental knowledge of how computer system works, I don't know the Bash commands, I don't know the DOS commands, I don't even know HTML, how could I learn PHP well? Although I did wrote some codes that have the required functions, but I deeply doubt whether it's efficient or bug free, and I have no ways or no time to deeply examine that, all I want is to finish the game. So my opinion is that before we play the whole game, we at least need some elements and some "about". This is just a half-cooked opinion, I am still not sure about it. Maybe it's just the residual effect of the "element" and "about" education I received. Also maybe it's just because of the age: I am just paranoid by the fact that lots of excellent programmers are much younger than me, and I starts to learn this too late to enjoy it without worrying about anything.
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