I’ve had occasion over the last couple of days to upgrade our WPMU install from version 1.3 to 1.5.1 and the process was remarkably painless. It took a bit of time to get everything lined up and ready to go but the actual switch over was smooth and easy.

Largely, I followed the guidelines most helpfully shared on Robert Mao’s blog about his upgrade to v1.3. The only onerous parts were getting the DB backed up before I did anything and then getting privs to do the file-system work I needed to do.

Overall, my process was:

1. Make a backup of the whole database - there are a number of ways to do that. I used the DB copy feature in phpMyAdmin. There’s also a handy little DB backup script posted on the wordpress codex, but it didn’t work for me because the account we’re using didn’t have appropriate privileges.
2. Download the latest WPMU package
3. Unpack it at the same level as the current WPMU install. E.g. if your current install in in /web/blogs/ then unpack the latest version to /web/wordpress-new/
4. Copy form the current install into the new install:
   • wp-config.php : e.g.
     cp blogs/wp-config.php wordpress-new/wp-config.php
   • .htaccess : e.g.
     cp blogs/.htaccess wordpress-new/.htaccess
   • wp-content : e.g.
     cp -r blogs/wp-content/* wordpress-new/wp-content/
   • any custom, support directories / tools : e.g.
     cp -r blogs/latexrender wordpress-new/
5. change directory names so the new version is live:
   mv blogs blogs_orig; mv wordpress-new blogs
6. Go to your blog site and log in as the admin
7. Click on Site Admin (far right), then Upgrade (rightmost on the sub-menu), then the Upgrade Site button
8. Once the upgrades finish running check your blogs to make sure everything is running OK

I didn’t have to do any special plugin treatment or anything, but I don’t have many to worry about, and the ones I have are pretty simple. The process if problems do arise is to deactivate all of then and then re-activate them one at a time until you find the problem ones. Fixing plugin problems is left as an exercise for the reader :P

Last Tuesday I had the opportunity to attend a Growing a Greener Campus mini-conference sponsored by IP Logic. Essentially, this was a few presentations about the IT aspects of sustainability from a higher education perspective. For all that it was small, it was a good and useful event.

The first speaker was Debra Rowe and she gave a nice presentation that covered a lot of basics and background about sustainability. One of the very good things she did was to establish some common vocabulary and general context for later discussion. She also tried to do some myth debunking, but ever since reading an interesting article about the persistence of myths I’ve become a bit dubious about the effectiveness of that particular approach.

She talked a bit about the idea of the triple bottom line, an accounting system that takes into consideration social and environmental impacts as well as economic ones. She generalizes it from a business concept to a societal one - that is, a sustainable society is one with a “flourishing environment”, “social well-being”, and “strong economy”. While that sounds good and precise, on further reflection I find that the fuzziness of the terms involved actually makes it less useful than the general definition of sustainability: “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs“. The latter actually suggests ways one might go about creating some metrics (looking at stability / longevity, and at create and consume rates of resources), while the former leads to debates on semantics. On the other hand, TBL invokes some positive goals rather than being just avoidance based. On the gripping hand, it doesn’t really matter how it’s sliced as long as we get done what needs to be done.

She then went on to discuss the role of education in this context. There are two main ways educational institutions are tied to sustainability. First, they educate. That is, the provide knowledge, skills, and, unavoidably, values. She proposes (or perhaps propagates from the US Partnership for the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development?) that “Education for a sustainable society: ‘enables people to develop the knowledge, values and skills to participate in decisions, that will improve the quality of life now without damaging the planet for the future.’”. Second, education is a significant economic sector in its own right and the choices it makes on operational and investment fronts can have a huge impact.

One scary and depressing tidbit - she did a quick show-of-hands poll at one point and only about 25% of the people attending believed we were experiencing human-impacted climate change. This in a group of (in theory) smart, well educated professionals. In the scientific community it’s about as well accepted as evolution - that is, barring extremely unlikely coincidence and the beliefs of some fringe individuals, it’s true.

She covered a whole bunch of organizations and groups that were involved in sustainability efforts, either directly as a primary mission or by participation in some other group. I won’t list them all here, but if you want a jumping off point try the Higher Education Associations Sustainability Consortium. Another good one is the American College & University Presidents Climate Commitment. (Williams has not signed the latter, as far as I know because it feels that the goals are unachievable in the given timeline by anything other than massive purchase of carbon offsets, and that the offset market as it stands in the US is… suspect at best. On the other hand, I’m not convinced it would have been signed even without the climate neutrality clauses.) Another is the Disciplinary Associations Network for Sustainability. A final one is Play A Greater Part, which is focused on particular projects.

She closed with a series of suggestions for things institutions and individuals could do. They’re pretty much the same thing I hear everywhere, but they bear repeating (taken mostly directly from her powerpoint slides, my few edits added context words (e.g. “hot water” in front of “tank”):

Reduce energy, and thereby reduce tons of pollution and save money in the millions.

Buy and invest in renewable energies systems (e.g. Carleton)

Impact the manufacturing sector

Take it to your local and national politicians - this is CRUCIAL

Take it to your local schools, business community, government, non-profits and other higher education institutions

Environmentally and socially responsible purchasing - www.coopamerica.org, www.newdream.org, www.heasc.net - resources page

Environmentally and socially responsible investments - www.socialinvest.org

Caulk and weatherstrip

Get rid of parasitic power consumption - unplug the TV, computer, etc. when not in use!

Fill the freezer and clean the coils

Carpool or use bikes and buses

Turn down the hot water tank to 120 and use water conserving showerheads.

Permaculture instead of grass

Eat lower and local on the food chain

Buy renewable energy locally and offsets (www.nativeenergy.org is a good one)

Be an “energy waste detective”

Reduce, reuse and recyce

Prefer products made out of sustainably harvested materials and sustainable processes

Utilize the media to publicize the positive steps all can take to both teach and model sustainable development.

All of us engaged as effective change agents in our sustainability challenges

Caring involvement instead of despairing apathy

Know that our daily decisions affect the quality of life of people around the globe.

Help create policies that support stronger economies via the building of healthier ecosystems and social systems

She also makes a very good point that the community / government has to be involved at local and national levels. Try to get your community to do an energy audit and sustainability plan. If you’re looking for a starting (and possibly final) framework, the Climate Protection Agreement (signed by over 600 mayors) may be a good place to start. At the federal level, take it (ideally in person or by hand written letter) to your Senators and Representatives. Two good starting actions to request of them are 1. Undo the uneven subsidies, and 2. Pass a carbon tax (Tax pollution instead of income.) or a Cap and Trade system with AUCTIONED CREDITS.

She closed with a really long list of resources. most of which I won’t bother repeating (the mess of links above is already more than anyone will get to). However, There were a few specific to IT which bear repeating:

Green Computing Guide from Michigan State (c. 2004 but still has a lot of juicy stats and ideas) http://www.ecofoot.msu.edu/documents/green.computing.guide.pdf

Computers and lighting in a library analysis at Auburn http://www.auburn.edu/projects/sustainability/storage_public/AU%20Library%20Lighting%20and%20Computer%20Energy%20Report.pdf

EPEAT is a system to help purchasers in the public and private sectors evaluate, compare and select desktop computers, notebooks and monitors based on their environmental attributes. http://www.epeat.net/

Electronics Reuse Initiative started by a university in collaboration with others http://www.wincycle.org/

Greener Computing site http://www.greenercomputing.com/

Cornell University’s Facilities Services Computer & Network Support office guide and accompanying website to promote sustainable computing http://computing.fs.cornell.edu/fsit/Sustainable/FSSustainableComputingGuide.pdf http://computing.fs.cornell.edu/fsit/sustainable/fsit_sustainability.cfm

All in all, a long and interesting presentation. She covered a lot of things I’ve heard before, buit I almost always find it useful to hear other’s perspectives on ideas. She also did a really good job of presenting pro-active steps that one could take in this area - I came away feeling a little less overwhelmed than I usually do when it comes to sustainability issues.

I saw Amory Lovins (of RMI fame) speak at Mass MoCA last Wednesday night about Winning the Oil Endgame. It was neat to have such a big speaker in town, and it took a collaboration among four colleges (Williams College, Bennington College, Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, and Souther Vermont College) to get him here. In addition to whatever else results from the talk, getting those four institutions working together is a Good Thing and I hope to see more of it in the future.

The talk itself was a little strange, both in content and in larger ways. In a general sense, it seemed like the sort of presentation that would be given before a group of diplomats, pentagon officials, industry leaders, etc. and not really appropriate for an audience of students, academics, and community members. While there were interesting parts, in many ways it came off as largely.. irrelevant. As a speaker he came across either as confident, optimistic, and visionary, or as conceited, overly glib, and unrealistic, depending on how charitable or mean one was feeling. Not knowing much about him, after seeing his talk I’d guess he’s a libertarian and an engineer. The talk itself covered a lot of ground, and I’ll just touch on a few points.

He spent a lot of time talking about the hypercar, the design principles behind it, and the way the automotive industry has responded. The hypercar concept is a good one and worth reading about in more detail. Essentially, the idea is that modern materials and manufacturing methods can let us build vehicles that are cheaper and safer than our current ones and that simultaneously get 3x or better mileage and can be adapted to run on fuels / power sources other than gasoline. The design process used was also interesting in the way it exploited spirals of efficiency. For example, lighter materials means the car weighs less which means it needs a less powerful, smaller engine which means it weight even less which means this that or the other part can be removed, and so on. The result is a vehicle built out of expensive parts and materials, but so many fewer of them that the finished car is actually cheaper than our current ones. It’s a nice reminder that there are positive feedback loops that can be good. The industry has responded slowly, but there are indications that they’re finally (after 10-15 years?) really beginning to buy into the idea and we may see cars that incorporate some hypercar ideas actually on the road in the next 5 years.

This touches on one of the less convincing aspects of the talk. He presented his ideas about the hypercar and suggested that it made such good business sense that whoever pursued it would dominate the industry and that it was nigh inevitable. This seemed largely at odds with reality. That is, the hypercar concept has been kicking around for quite a while now and he’s been advocating for it rather intensely and even with 3 million+ dollars worth of RMI effort in the project, it’s only now that the industry is even beginning to look at it seriously. If it was all as good as he says, it all should have fallen into place 20-30 years ago and we’d all be driving 200 kg cars that got 120 miles to the gallon. This discrepancy between his model and reality suggests that one of the other is flawed…

He tossed around a lot of numbers about various returns on investment and consumer savings, but glossed over the difference between societal benefit and individual or corporate benefit. For example, if things work out as he believes and we quickly manage to reduce our transportation oil consumption by 50% that represents a vast savings to the country at large. However, that also represents a vast LOSS for whoever would have sold that oil.

He also tossed around the phrases ‘cellulosic ethanol‘ and ‘algal oil‘ with gleeful abandon. Perhaps with his connections he knows something about pending breakthroughs and / or announcements. The last I heard we were still a long ways away from prime-time on those technologies. Anyone know any more details about that stuff? Regardless, there’s a lot to be said for designing for the future. The trick is designing for the future that will happen rather than just the future one wishes would happen.

On a related note, he seemed to have some strange blind spots, especially in the realm of ecology. He used the term ‘forestry waste products’ several times when talking about feed stocks for ethanol and avoiding using food crops for fuel, but came across as oblivious to the ideas that those ‘waste products’ are actually an important element for forest health. We’re already seeing some issues related to that in whole tree harvesting. With modern process there aren’t really any waste products. If, as he proposes, cellulosic ethanol is a future major fuel for our transportation then that may not bode well for our forests and associated systems. Environmental conscience aside, forests perform some really important services like water and air purification. It’s certainly worth some research into how much forest would be needed to sustain our current and future fuel consumption.

He stated the 70% of our oil goes to transportation and the remaining 30% to buildings. I’d thought agricultural use was a significant part of our oil budget as well.

ETA: The government data suggests the breakdown is something like 60% transport, 27% heating (fuel oil), and 13% everything else. Look at the Finished Petroleum Products section of the linked chart for more detailed numbers. So, he was off, but closer than my best guess was.

Back to the larger talk, one thing I found very strange was how he completely avoided talking about anything individuals could or should do. He focused only on the really large organizations: major auto manufacturers, huge retailers, the DoD, whole governments, etc. On some levels, that makes a lot of sense to me - such groups have huge leverage, and convincing the relatively small number of people that direct those groups can have a disproportionately large effect. However, the flip side of his message was that we as consumers should do nothing different, that the way we behave with respect to resource use is good and normal and even necessary. I have real problems with his implications in that direction and I think his lack of consideration on that front is a serious problem with his thinking.

He had some neat info about modern material and the toughness of carbon fiber composites. He didn’t get into the manufacturing process of such things at all. I’m curious about the embedded resources / energy. I suspect it’s less than metals (if you include mining costs) and more than woods. If anyone has more info about it please post a link or some such.

So, overall it was an interesting talk, possibly even a good talk, but definitely not a great one.

I just lead a small discussion for a few faculty and instructional technologists today over lunch about lecture capture what what would need to happen to get people to try it at Williams. I lead off with a quick slide show to define some terms and to provide some seed questions, then we just talked for about 30 minutes.  Here are the major points I took away from it:

• to make this work we need some way of recording stuff written on a board (we could maybe emulate that with a tablet, sympodium, or smart board, but that’s not ideal)
• the audio is important, but not the video of the talking head; point the camera somewhere more useful
• look into dual-camera systems instead of just camera-projector systems
• the non-fixed installation is better thought of as temporary / movable rather than truly mobile / portable (and, in general we need to find out more about the movable systems)
• some faculty are probably willing to try it at some point
• it might be a really good fit with tutorials for letting different sections see each other’s discussions
• the ability to jump to / find particular points in a lecture is very important and maybe needs to be improved
• some concern about students spending limited time re-listening to lectures rather than doing other course work

One of the big selling points seemed to be that people at other institutions were trying it and finding it useful. Here’s a set of links to some public info I found about that:

• http://www.wpi.edu/Academics/ATC/Collaboratory/News/lecturecapturing.html
• http://www.wpi.edu/Academics/ATC/Collaboratory/News/NERCOMPHandout.pdf
• http://www.echo360.tv/customers/umass.asp
• http://campustechnology.com/articles/52017/
• http://www.dartmouth.edu/~create/
• http://edc.carleton.ca/blog/index.php/2008/02/12/enhanced-lecture-podcasting-benefits/
• http://insidedigitalmedia.com/how-students-use-video-recordings-of-college-lectures-part-1-of-2/
• http://connect.educause.edu/Library/EDUCAUSE+Quarterly/LectureCaptureWhatCanBeAu/40028

The short summary of all those is:

• faculty and students who have tried a lecture capture system have liked it.
• students self-report that it helps their learning
• it has a positive impact on student grades, primarily helping the C and D students (it’s especially good for those who want to learn but are having difficulty with the material)
• there’s little solid data about attendance rates, but anecdotal observation and self-reporting suggest that, counter-intuitively, it’s largely or completely unaffected

Due to a relatively recent security hole in Adobe’s Flash Server 2 we had to upgrade the one driving our Echo360 (nee Apreso) system. It was a little scary to contemplate, but in fact went smoothly.

1. Downloaded the latest version Flash Media Streaming Server 3  from Adobe - Flashmedia3_Int_Strm_ALP.zip - it was a bit disconcerting since this is about 160 megs and the previous version was about 8, but it’s OK.
2. Ran a full back up of the host machine
3. Unpacked the FMS zip file
4. Ran the installer, accepting all the default choices and creating the same admin account and password as for the previous version (I don’t know if that’s strictly necessary, but seemed easiest)
5. Edited the server configuration file (C:\Program Files\Adobe\Flash Media Server 3\conf\fms.ini) to set the VHOST.APPSDIR property (our Echo360 streaming folder is on a different partition from the FMS install)
6. Restarted the FMS
7. Tested a previously recorded presentation and it worked.
8. Haven’t yet tried recording a new presentation, but given that the existing ones worked fine I don’t foresee any difficulties