Author Archives: theirishduck

I’ve been using a regular expression (PHP’s preg_match function) to parse email addresses. The addresses have a consistent pattern that look like: anamehere+XXXXXXXX@mail.example.com The XXXXXX section is a random set of characters: a-z, A-Z, 0-9 and -. The regular expression’s job was to extract that random set of characters, which is easy to do: 123 $email_addr = ‘anamehere+XXXXXX@mail.example.com’;preg_match( ‘|anamehere\+(.*)@.*$|’, $email_addr, $match );$email_code = $match[1]; SinceContinue reading “PHP Regex”

As you all know, probably from reading my blog often enough, simulations as a learning mechanism has been employed for many years in various forms (from flight simulators to business simulations) and is getting more popular weekly. Games are now quickly gaining ground as legitimate learning experiences also. It is important that eLearning designers andContinue reading “More ELearning and Games findings”

At work, I have been asked to create a series of animations for the Department of Health and Health Services (Hospitals) to act as a value add for the Courseware I am creating. Won’t bore you with all the Blooms Taxonomy and all that, that can be another post. Sure, I can do that, as you all know,Continue reading “My animation/film production workflow”

I used to be pretty passionate about the OpenGL (http://www.opengl.org) graphics API, and I spent a fair amount of my time doing scientific visualisations. I still use it sometimes and think it’s a pretty well designed API, and it’s certainly still much more pleasant to program with than Direct3D, mind you I haven’t done much D3DContinue reading “OpenGL Reflection”

Surfing today I found a cool site that might be useful for all those eLearning developers like me. Its called XtraNormal.com . From what I briefly saw all you do is write a script, then drag various “action icons” into the script for things like camera angles, facial expressions, gestures, and animations. There’s definitely a bit ofContinue reading “Xtranormal”

Came across this site just recently called the Games and Simulation for Healthcare Library and Database.  This website aims to provide a portal and network to meet the needs of clinicians, researchers and educators in the healthcare community who want to integrate games and simulation into their scholarship and patient care strategy.  This resource also welcomesContinue reading “Games and Simulations for Healthcare”

When I first started learning how to design, I often compared my work to that of those I admired, and justly felt lacking about my own skills. I frequently asked myself, “Why doesn’t my work look that good?” Even now, with the title of designer is on my business card, this inferiority complex hasn’t completelyContinue reading “Design thoughts”

To Moodle or not to Moodle, that is the question. I have come to a crossroads with a project that I would like to implement. I am currently in the process of developing a series of e-Learning courses that will be part of a blended management training program, which I may sell. Here is whereContinue reading “To Moodle or not to Moodle…”

A very common theme in the Moodle forums is problems with email notifications for things like submitted assignments, forum posts, graded assignments, etc. It’s good to know that I am not the only one having these kinds of LMS problems. I was having issues with email notifications only working every once in a while and I finally had timeContinue reading “Email Notification Drama Llamas in Moodle”

As you all know, its that exciting time of year. Conference Time. I have been looking forward to this event because it shows me the leading people in the areas of web standards, accessibility, XHTML, JavaScript and CSS. The organizers of the conference, John Allsop and Maxine Sherrin, always do an awesome job developing a conferenceContinue reading “Web Directions South – Day 1”