Ken Fogel

This coming Fall term I will be teaching two courses at the Concordia University School of Extended Learning or as I like to call it “the department formerly known as Continuing Education”. They are Java Programming Fundamentals on Tuesdays and Web Services and XML Processing on ... (more)

With the installation complete it was time to test the critical software I use daily. The first was Microsoft Outlook and as I expected it worked perfectly. So did the rest of the Office suite. Next on my list were the Java environments that I use, Eclipse and NetBeans. First I ... (more)

It is now one week since I upgraded my primary desktop system to Windows 7. I had been an early adopter of Vista and had a number of problems, even an occasional BSOD in the early days. I delayed putting Vista on my school computer because it did not support Novell which is used ... (more)

Step 1: Download and install WampServer Download the latest version of WAMP from here. As of this writing the current version is 2.0h dated 04/16/09 and file you will download is called WampServer2.0h.exe Run the file WampServer2.0h.exe You will be asked to agree to the software ... (more)

Before I started to write this I checked out Roger Ebert’s web site. The only one of the five movies he liked was Watchmen and likely because it was the only movie with exposed boobies. I thought I would write about these five movies from the perspective of someone who though Cli... (more)

I am writing this just before I watch lecture 4. I have completed assignments 1a, 1b, and 2a. I will be able to start 2b after today’s lecture. I will reserve detailed comments about the course until I finish it but I will say that Allan has a much better tan than Evan. The assi... (more)

This week I am taking my wife’s uncle to the hospital for radiation therapy. He is 88 years old and is slowly dying from lung cancer. As a cancer patient he has been visiting the oncology clinic every three weeks since his diagnosis to assess the course of the disease. At his las... (more)

Before the registrar at Stanford writes me a cease and desist letter, let me state that I am not a student at Stanford. Rather I have downloaded the 17 lectures and 3 supplemental sessions of the CS193P course entitled iPhone Application Development from Open Stanford. According ... (more)

Two years ago my department submitted a proposal to the Canada–Québec Agreement On Minority-Language Education And Second Languages Instruction. This is a fund established to support projects in education in the English language in Quebec. Similar agreements exist to support the ... (more)

While writing my article on configuring Eclipse for PHP in Windows for my Ulitzer (http://kenfogel.ulitzer.com) page I encountered a problem with the WampServer. Initially WampServer would start up properly and work for a while. But after using the Restart All Services a few time... (more)

This summer I am scheduled to teach two courses in the School of Extended Learning at Concordia University. They are: CEBS 210 Microsoft Outlook Online Course This course gives students the ability to work effectively using e-mail in a professional environment. Students will lear... (more)

I have had problems with CNN video for some time. On some Windows computers they would work and on others they would fail. The failure occured with both IE7 and IE8. By clicking on the yellow icon on the status bar next to the message ‘Done with Errors’, the error dialog stated t... (more)

In a recent lab session with my students one of them presented me with what I thought would be a simple problem to resolve. Their code was transforming a DOM into an XML document using the XSLT engine in Java 1.6. The source of the data was an ArrayList of JavaBeans created from ... (more)

My wife and I have been driving a 2008 Toyota Prius since December 2007. With a year under our belt I thought I would reflect on our experience in a way that might interest anyone considering a Prius. Our previous vehicle was a 2004 Honda CRV and prior to that we went through thr... (more)

When I got a Palm Pilot some years back I was somewhat awed by the fact that it was as powerful as the first few generations of the original Macintosh and fit in my hand. But it was not as convenient as I had hoped and data entry with the stylus was far from reliable. Combined wi... (more)

It has been about two months that I have lived with my MacBook. I had planned to write sooner but I realized that I was still suffering from Windows Comparison Syndrome. Well I have moved on to Windows Companion Syndrome so it is time to write again. The MacBook has become my co... (more)

It is now one full week that I have had my MacBook. In this week I have come to learn what makes a Mac special and what makes a Mac an infuriating machine to own. Let’s begin with the infuriating. There is no such thing as Mac software, at least in the retail channel. Here in Mo... (more)

In August 1980 my wife and I borrowed three thousand dollars from a bank. One thousand was earmarked for body work on our van. Two thousand dollars was for the purchase of an Apple ][+. I wanted the Apple because I thought it would be the neatest toy I could ever own. A neighbor... (more)

I just received my assignment for the spring semester at Concordia University’s Continuing Education department. These are non-credit courses that focus on training students to write code in Java. I will be teaching: CI651/C1 JAVA PROGRAMMING FUNDAMENTALS Wednesdays 2008-04-02/200... (more)

Since the release of Eclipse 3.3 and continuing thru to the new Fall release I have observed an annoying problem when running Eclipse in both Windows XP and Windows Vista. Without any discernable reason or time frame, the Project Explorer window loses files and directories. They ... (more)