Mechanical Turk for transcribing audio recordings and captioning

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I sometimes record lectures or meetings for later reference, and have found Mechanical Turk to be an efficient and affordable method for transcribing them. It can be quite confusing to get started using MTurk though, and the available blogs on the subject don’t really help you navigate the current MTurk interface, so here is the step-by-step process I use to have a lecture transcribed:

Cut your audio into 5 or 10 minute clips

Download Audacity – a free audio editing tool that works on both Windows and Mac.

Import your voice-recording file. (File > Import >Audio)

If you see a warning about FFMpeg being missing, just ignore it.

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Drupal 7: It is recommended to install the PECL uploadprogress library

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When installing Plupload module to work with Media module on a Hostgator site, I got the error:

Your server is capable of displaying file upload progress, but does not have the required libraries. It is recommended to install the PECL uploadprogress library (preferred) or to install APC.

Looking at the suggested library (pecl.php.net) it was a shell script that pretty obviously required privileges that I would not have on a shared host. However, Hostgator has another library already installed that implements PECL: CodeGen_PECL. It just has to be enabled.

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How to make a diff file on Mac

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I had occasion to make a patch file the other day, and since I do this so rarely, it took some time to look up how to do it. So here, in a nutshell is how to use diff on a Mac.

Open terminal.
At the prompt, type
diff -up newfile oldfile

But really the easiest way to get the paths right is to type:

diff -up

…then drag first the new file, then the old file from the desktop onto the terminal window right at the end of the line after -up . It will fill in the paths for you.

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WordPress: SimpleLDAP plugin updated to work with v3.5

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The SimpleLDAP plugin by Cliff Griffin is exactly what I needed for a proof-of-concept WordPress site I’m working on, but it hasn’t been officially updated in a while and was not entirely compatible with WordPress v.3.5.

I’ve updated the plugin to eliminate the errors I was getting, and it now works fine on my site, but it could probably use some TLC from someone more experienced with working with WordPress.

The original version of the plugin I used as a basis is v1.4.0.5.1, available at http://wordpress.org/plugins/simple-ldap-login/.

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Drupal 7: Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 52428800 bytes exhausted

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Working with Drupal 7, you may get an error like the one below. (The actual number may be different.)

Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 52428800 bytes exhausted

If you don’t have one already, add a text file called “php.ini” to the root directory of the Drupal 7 site, and add a line like:

memory_limit = 96M

or

memory_limit = 128M

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HTML 5 Treasure Hunt game framework

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I’m working on an HTML version of a Flash Treasure Hunt training game I built a couple of years ago. When it’s done, this will be more of a flexible framework than a specific game, capable of being used for any of the many situations in healthcare that require finding the right tool, part or medication quickly and accurately. Searchable anesthesia carts, cardiac arrest team “crash carts”, cardiac catheterization tubing racks, operating rooms, and even patient rooms are just some of the possible settings that could be portrayed in the game.

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.NET error: Unrecognized attribute ‘targetFramework’ on IIS6

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I recently had to move a .NET application directory to a new location on an IIS 6 server. When I did, of course everything broke. Among the errors that had to be fixed was this one:

Unrecognized attribute 'targetFramework'.

This is usually because the application pool is not set to use the framework assigned to the application in IIS Manager. 

There are several ways to fix this. I chose the easiest one: setting the application extension path to the correct executable.

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Easy, trackable WordPress elearning with Gravity Forms quizzes and the TinCanAPI

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I work in a small learning management department in a large Health System. One of the “forever” problems we’d like to solve, is how to get out of the way of our many clinical subject matter experts and make it EASY for them to put trackable learning content online by themselves. Why is this still a problem in this age of online applications? Simply put: cost, learning curve and trackability.

Licensing costs in a decentralized environment
Software license costs are a big issue in a distributed authoring environment, particularly for departments that watch every penny. There are hundreds of potential authors out there, mostly in departments that do not prioritize the purchase of elearning software. Licenses for the big elearning software packages (Articulate, Storyline, Lectora, etc.) are not inexpensive, even with academic discounts and whatever site-licenses may exist.

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Safari Error: “The website requires a client certificate”

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While experimenting with LDAP connections in Safari, errors like this one started popping up:

“The website _____ requires a client certificate”

A dialog would open, listing some old MobileMe certificates. Apparently if any old, expired or corrupt MobileMe certificates are still lodged in the Keychain, you may get this error sometimes. MobileMe has been disabled and signed out on my Mac for years, but the fact that the certs were still there caused the problem.

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