Mike Badger

(SYS-CON Media) - Whether you're a company of one or 100, managing knowledge is a core concern and implementing a knowledge base is a sensible way to capture your content. Dokuwiki is a practical open source Web application for creating a knowledge base that's easy for novice Webmasters to set up but flexible and full-featured. The Dokuwiki Web site (www.splitbrain.org/projects/dokuwiki) describes the Dokuwiki as "a simple to use wiki aimed at a small company's documentation needs. It works on plain text files and thus needs no database. It has a simple but powerful syntax which makes sure the data files remain readable outside the wiki." Dokuwiki runs on a variety of Web servers, including Apache and IIS and requires PHP 4.3.x or higher. If you do not have your own Web... (more)

LinuxQuestions.Org: Help Is a Question Away

Effective problem solving in Linux has nothing to do with knowing what the right answer is; it's about asking the right questions to find the right answers. You can efficiently solve problems and enhance your Linux experience by using a series of five questions to resolve configuration issues and error messages. The individual questions that follow seem simple, but taken together they p... (more)

Scratch 1.4 Beginner's Guide Now Available

Scratch 1.4 Beginner's Guide Cover Packt Publishing announced that Scratch 1.4 Beginner's Guide is now available for purchase. This hands-on tutorial teaches you the basics of computer programming using Scratch, a drag-and-drop language, so you can teach your students how to think and create digitally using a friendly environment. This book provides teachers, parents, and new programmers w... (more)

Getting Started with Scratch 1.4 (Part 1)

The anticipation of learning a new programming language can sometimes leave us frozen on the starting line, not knowing what to expect or where to start. In this two-part article by Michael Badger, we will: Take a tour of the Scratch interface Create a couple of sample projects Learn some basic Scratch programming concepts Get our minds racing Our specific objectives include: Learning how ... (more)

Why Scratch: Build a Parent-Child Bond

A co-worker, who doesn't have a web site or I'd link to him, wanted to know how he could teach his son how to program.  I recommended Scratch. Naturally, the boy wanted to know how to do shoot-em up games. Well that turned to discussions about keeping score which required variables and logic, among other things. Soon, there was something that needed gravity. More discussion. More experim... (more)