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I am officially on the speaking schedule for WordCamp Hawaii on Saturday, 24 October 2008.

See Wordcamp Speaker: Bill Sodeman for the announcement of my talk entitled How to Blog Your Career Without Breaking Your Budgets.

I’ll talk about how I’ve used WordPress to help me document and record my teaching, writing and social media activities.

It will be a 30-minute talk, with a few demonstrations, an nice set of slides and plenty of time to talk story with attendees.

Budgets?

Yes, I did mean to use the word “budgets”. People have a financial budget, and they also have a time budget or schedule, too.

It makes sense for faculty members should keep track of their activities, but that can be a challenge. Faculty tend to work on their own, without much or any administrative support. It’s a lot like being an entrepreneur, without the thrills of elevator pitches and business plans.

I have a renewable contract at HPU, which means that every 5 years I must ask the university to renew my contract. We don’t have tenure at Hawaii Pacific University, but in early 2011, I can request a promotion to full professor.

Both the reappointment and promotion processes require me to produce a large, well-organized binder with statements of my activities, and plenty of supporting evidence.

I’ll also discuss how entrepreneurs, students, and other people can use the techniques I’ve developed in WordPress to help their own careers and professional goals.

Many thanks to Roxanne Darling and Judi Clark for all their work on WordCamp Hawaii.

The latest patch for Mac OS X finally closes a major hole in the operating system’s DNS (domain name system) software. Apple’s description is in this knowledge base article (About the security content of Mac OS X v10.5.5 and Security Update 2008-006 ).

Of course, Apple is late to the party. By early July 2008, Microsoft had a Windows patch ready for distribution, and the major *NIX systems had their own patches ready. This Cnet article called Massive, coordinated DNS patch released has more information about this project, which preceded the public announcements about the flaw.

It’s sad that Dan Kaminsky’s warnings, detailed in a 24 July 2008 Cnet article called Kaminsky (finally) provides DNS flaw details, did not inspire an urgent response form Cupertino. Apple’s July 2008 patch addressed DNS server issues, but left most Mac users without a fix.

There are still other ways to redirect a computer to a bad domain name, of course. Another piece of prevention involves using OpenDNS instead of your ISP’s domain name servers. OpenDNS is free, fast, and provides spellchecking and phishing protection that is better than most PC and Mac security software.

See these articles from the New York Times (Apple Update Finally Fixes Important DNS Bug ) and ComputerWorld (Apple releases Mac OS X 10.5.5, patches nearly 70 bugs) for more details.

Related posts and pages on billso.com

• OpenDNS
• Hawaiian Telcom
• 25 July 2008: Fixing the DNS security hole
• 24 February 2008: Pakistan blocks YouTube, breaks trust
• 15 January 2008: OpenDNS update
• 3 September 2007: When users block the ads, should web sites block the users?
• 13 July 2007: Speed up your broadband connection with OpenDNS

I noticed three uniformed HPD officers at the Hotel and Fort Street crosswalk a few minutes ago. Two had Segways, and one was on a bike.

I overheard one saying that they are giving out warnings to pedestrians who crossed against the light. Education is always good, especially with a few thousand new pedestrians on the Mall. Hotel Street is a transit road, and there’s at least one bus rolling through every few minutes.

Image courtesy of GeishaBot through a Creative Commons license.

Related posts on billso.com

• 3 August 2008: Welcome to the crosswalk
• 13 July 2008: My sidewalk nightmare
• 6 June 2008: Can the blind hear hybrid cars?

During the last month, I’ve watched faculty and staff moving great quantities of furniture between classrooms and offices. It’s a summer ritual at HPU.

We work and live on an island, so shipping pre-assembled furniture to our campus can be expensive.

There are several sites with interesting collections of economical yet attractive flat pack furniture. These designs are much easier to ship to Hawaii in bulk than comparable pre-assembled furniture.

Here’s two YouTube videos with some interesting ideas in flat pack furniture.

• Treehugger Picks: Flat pack Furniture
• More Creative Furniture for Cramped Urban Living: 20 Pieces of Ingenious ‘Flat Pack’ Furniture

Here’s are 2 cardboard classroom desks that were designed by students at the Rhode Island School of Design. The specific dimensions of this cardboard chair, complete with a functional desk, are available at the YouTube page for the first video called Amazing Cardboard Chair Design Unfolding RISD.

This next video shows the assembly process for a Legare desk, available from SimonHelene.com. The components are manufactured at the company’s factory in New York state, and can easily be shipped in a flat pack. Putting the desk together is much easier than the flat pack kits sold at many big box stores.

The fall semester starts today at HPU. I’m teaching 2 sections of a freshman course this morning, and my graduate course on Technology Strategy this evening.

I also have online sections of Technology Strategy and Information Systems Management.

I’m using WebCT as my learning management system (LMS) this semester. I’m teaching five sections this term, so I’m cutting back on my blogging.

My students should log in to Campus Pipeline, go to the My Courses tab, and click on the appropriate course link to open WebCT.

During the semester, I will assign articles, videos and links from billso.com as readings in my graduate courses. If WebCT or Campus Pipeline go offline for a day or more, I’ll place announcements on billso.com.