Updated: 2013-12-02 04:24 EST

1 Readings, Assignments, Labs, and ToDoIndexup to index

1.1 Assignments this weekIndexup to index

Check the due date for each assignment and put a reminder in your agenda, calendar, and digital assistant.

1.2 Lab work this weekIndexup to index

2 Final Exam – Wednesday December 11 15h30 (3:30pm to 6:30pm)Indexup to index

4 From the Classroom Whiteboard/ChalkboardIndexup to index

Subject: Important Message from CoursEval
The 2013 Fall surveys have been opened for almost a week now and the response rate is very low. Could you please encourage your students to take a few minutes and complete their assessments. The information you receive could be very useful to you. The survey will be open until Friday, Dec. 6th at midnight.
Course Assessment Administrator

5 Real Sysadmin WorkIndexup to index

5.1 Reporting Bugs – A Case History in Four HoursIndexup to index

My course notes are written using the vim text editor in Pandoc Markdown format and then processed automatically into Plain Text and HTML. I needed to know how to have Pandoc produce a formatted plain-text output file that wouldn’t lose any of the formatting information and could be re-input to Pandoc to re-generate itself exactly.

  1. 9:00am: I go to the Pandoc Markdown web site and search the documentation for a “pandoc” output format. I don’t find anything.

  2. 9:30am: I go to the Pandoc-Discuss online discussion forum to see if anyone has asked about a “pandoc” output format. I don’t find anything.

  3. 9:45am: I join the Pandoc-Discuss discussion forum, using my Google account.

  4. 9:48am: I post this question to the Pandoc-Discuss discussion forum.

  5. 11:17am: I get a reply suggesting a partial solution from a user Dirk.

  6. 11:31am: I explain why Dirk’s solution doesn’t work.

  7. 11:38am: I get a reply from John MacFarline, the author of Pandoc himself, giving me the correct solution. He updates his answer again at 11:43 with a further explanation.

  8. 11:45am: I try his solution and discover something odd. I produce a small example that shows the odd formatting.

  9. 12:12am: I post the odd example to the forum.

  10. 12:36am: A user Tillmann Rendel say that I’ve discovered a bug.

  11. 12:50am: Tillmann goes to the source code of Pandoc and locates the Perl code that causes the bug.

  12. 12:52am: Pandoc author John MacFarlane confirms the bug and fixes it. He “pushes” the new version of the Pandoc source code out to the web server so that everyone can update their own copy of Pandoc. I download and build the fixed Pandoc.

Let’s see you try doing that with a bug in Microsoft Word. :-)

5.2 Take Notes In Class!Indexup to index

Take Notes in Class

Take Notes in Class

Author: 
| Ian! D. Allen  -  idallen@idallen.ca  -  Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
| Home Page: http://idallen.com/   Contact Improv: http://contactimprov.ca/
| College professor (Free/Libre GNU+Linux) at: http://teaching.idallen.com/
| Defend digital freedom:  http://eff.org/  and have fun:  http://fools.ca/

Plain Text - plain text version of this page in Pandoc Markdown format

Campaign for non-browser-specific HTML   Valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional   Valid CSS!   Creative Commons by nc sa 3.0   Hacker Ideals Emblem   Author Ian! D. Allen