About Me
IT Analyst in Southwest VA. Originally from England, born in Liverpool, and brought up mostly in Steyning, West Sussex. Started life as David Tod, but changed my name in 1993.
Went to college in at the University of Bristol, lived in Italy and Japan before coming to the U.S. Somehow via an MA in English and PhD work in Instructional Technology, have ended up as an IT Analyst.
Now living in Blacksburg, Virginia with two lovely daughters.
If you wish to email me, you'll notice that I own my last name as a domain, so my email address is my first name at my last name dot com.
On Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/dcartertod
Category Archives: Work
Where to find a Security Analyst
We are looking for a security analyst (pdf). Where would be the best place to find a geek with a pony tail who wears darkly humorous t-shirts, and finds this funny?
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ISP Troubleshooting Suggestions
We often are called on to solve strange problems that students have with Blackboard, and I see these discussions on some of the lists all the time. A year or so ago, I pulled together a list of things to … Continue reading
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Merlot RSS for searches
I probably missed this since I don’t typically pay much attention to Merlot, but Merlot looks like it finally has RSS feeds for arbritary searches and categories now (e.g. literature). It could do with a little polish, e.g. putting the … Continue reading
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Blackboard’s Pending Patents
Blackboard has a number of pending patents in addition to the recently granted one. These were posted by Santo Nucifora to the Blackboard list out of ASU. PUB. APP. NO. Title 1. 20060168233 Internet-based education support system and methods 2. … Continue reading
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Blackboard’s LMS Patent
Blackboard has patented “technology used for internet-based education support systems and methods”. Frankly, they should be ashamed. It’s a tissue of fabrication. Full text here and more reaction here.
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Web Developer Position Available in Virginia
I forget sometimes that I have this soapbox. We are looking for a web developer. A 2.0 kind of developer. Here’s the job description I wrote, that was turned down: Do you know the difference between usability testing and asking … Continue reading
Exim configuration for Mailman with Redhat RPMs
I’ve been working on installing Mailman at our institution. It’s been interesting and fun (I’ve been working particularly on altering the default design), but we ran into a problem that had me scratching my head for the past couple of … Continue reading
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Blackboard, F5 (BigIP) and Internet Explorer Performance
We have run into some very strange performance problems with Blackboard and Internet Explorer recently. We think there is an interaction with our load balancer (which is an F5 BigIP – forget which version). We have found that Internet Explorer … Continue reading
Posted in Blackboard, Work
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Gmail for Domains
Earlier I wrote about Microsoft offering e-mail hosting for universities and colleges – what I wasn’t clear about was that this hosting was at the college’s domain, e.g. @email.yourcollege.edu. I think this is a big deal – with MSN, it … Continue reading
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Will Richardson Moving On
Will Richardson announces that he is moving on: “…today I notified my superintendent that as of May 15 I would be leaving the district for parts somewhat unknown.” I met Will at a conference in D.C. a couple of years … Continue reading
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