Sam Moffatt @ Pasamio.com » work

Month in review: January

pasamio — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 07:25:26 +0000

January for me was an interesting and varied month. Here is a quick look back at what I got up to in the month.

Joomla! integration for the Access All Databases
Access All Databases is a USQ system that really screams to be embedded in a CCK style app. It is a set of custom fields, some search and a bit of link tracking. Beyond versioning and approval of edits there is no significant functionality beyond CRUD in this application. At the moment it is a hand built system written in PHP and badly needing redevelopment into a more modular nature. The approach I’ve taken is to experiment with using Joomla! and Flexicontent to rebuild the application from scratch. So far I’m doing well and I’ve managed to recreate the basic look and feel of the site. I’ve got one custom menu module to integrate Flexicontent’s nested categories to emulate the behaviour of another primitive CMS USQ uses called “Finding Information Tutorial.” I’ve done a custom module override for the menu as well to get it using the current USQ look and feel by default. The great thing is that there is a mobile friendly version very easily with standard Joomla! tools. I don’t think I’ll get more time to play with this soon however it is already a good start.

VuFind UConnect SSO
VuFind is the library catalogue system and UConnect is USQ’s custom SSO system that was developed. I’ve gone through and built an integration between the two which looks like the following:

I talk a bit more about VuFind, SSO and authentication in an earlier blog post.

Book Finder
This is primarily the work of Ken MacAlpine who is working on mobile technologies at USQ. Ken developed an SVG powered map of the top floor of the library to aide in the location of books. He put together a database of roughly where the catalogue numbers stop and start for each shelf on each side. It has been integrated into the catalogue and shows up as a “Show on Map” link for Toowoomba Main Collection items.

At some point in the future we will work to expand it to all campuses and collections. When it is clicked it appears in a new window like this:

It is aimed to be the same size as an iPhone display so that it fits neatly there. It also works in all browsers that support SVG. Fallback support is provided for IE since it doesn’t support SVG yet.

ePrints, RPCS and data conversion!
As an interesting exercise I also spent some time converting data from an internal reporting system, RPCS, into our open access repository – ePrints. This was a fun project which required connecting to RPCS’ MSSQL database and outputting an XML file for ePrints to eat. To do this I figured I’d pull out Web Matrix, Microsoft’s cut down editor for web developers. It feels on par with Geany though it has a built in web server, request tracking and a database explorer. It also integrates with the Web Platform Installer product which means I can easily install other applications. I used Web Matrix to kick start the Joomla! install for the Access All Databases research project as well.

The RPCS data is loaded into our ePrints system along side the Author ID project that existed there. We’re also pulling across the data from their system which is going to result in duplicate authors until we merge them down to uniques however doing so in an automated manner isn’t easily possible. There is a whole heap of work to get things together but all in all we’re doing well.

EQUELLA Moodle module
Last but not least I’ve been playing with the EQUELLA Moodle module. It adds an extra option to the Moodle resource drop down and enables access to select items from the EQUELLA repository software.

I’ve used Web Matrix here to deploy out a quick Moodle site utilising the same Web Platform Installer technology and managed to get up and running quickly with everything. The deployment of the module to our main Moodle environment would enable lecturers to directly select course readings to embed in relevant modules on their Moodle course pages – exciting!

ATO, HECS/HELP and interest – or lack there of

pasamio — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 02:51:21 +0000

In Australia, it’s tax time again. This means that the tax office sends me nice letters saying how much I owe them for my HECS/HELP debt, how if I paid it all up front it’d reduce by X amount (if only I had that much money!) and how they don’t charge “interest” on the loan, they merely “index” it against the cost of living. What ever makes it easier to sleep at night. But recently I realised something simple: the Australian Tax Office charges interest not including amounts you’ve already paid.

So lets step back and explain the process. In Australia the government gives you an “indexed” loan to help pay your university education debt. It is “indexed” at the cost of living set by a method I’m not entirely privy to but doesn’t entirely make sense. For 2009/2010 the indexation was “1.9%”. A far more accurate way of explaining it is that you are charged interest equivalent to the rate of inflation averaged out for the year on the first of June. Interest calculated yearly, interest charged yearly. Repayments to the loan are based on your income so if you earn less than a certain amount you don’t have to pay at all and it is on a scale so the more you earn the more you pay back on your loan.

The money is normally taken out automatically from your pay like withholding. This means that you don’t ever see that portion of money. In my case I lose $200 per fortnight to my HECS/HELP debt. This means that per year I knock off roughly $5.2k from my debt with the Australian Government. Funky.

The trick comes in is that this amount isn’t paid onto my loan until after I’ve done my tax. So all the money I’ve paid thus far this year doesn’t get counted and interest is charged including anything I’ve studied up until May the same year. Since semester 1 starts in March and “census” date is in April (the date at which course fees are paid) and semester two starts in July (next financial year), you get interest calculated on both semesters (plus in my case a summer semester, semester 3) not including the amount you have already had “withheld” over the same period of time.

So when it comes down to it, it is better to opt not to have your employer withhold your HECS/HELP debt, save the money in a high interest account somewhere and then a few months into the new financial year pay it as a part of your tax debt. Of course the problem with that is that you pay tax on the interest you accrue from the bank account however you’re at least earning money and not losing any money in the process.

The question of course becomes, who earns the interest on the withheld money? I’ll leave that as an exercise to the reader.

The reality of employment

pasamio — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 12:38:05 +0000

There are times when 140 characters just isn’t enough, microblogging works but in this case I have a quote which would be put 86 characters over twitters limits (I tried):

And generally speaking, “large, deep-pockets organization(s)” are no more stable than a startup, from the grunt’s perspective. At any moment, you’re one spreadsheet away from being laid off to improve the quarterly statements.

It’s taken from a comment on the Slashdot article about the JRuby guys splitting from the Oracle/Sun behemoth. It is an interesting statement and something I feel is a rather accurate representation of the way life really is and a quite straight forward and direct statement of fact.

Yay for Macroblogging!