Sunday, December 31, 2006

Going into overtime!

The game wasn't supposed to be that close, but the game went into overtime. Guess we got our money's worth for New Years! Too bad the game ended the season for the Broncos. Hopefully we will have a better season in 2007.

Give me an "F-R-E-E-Z-I-N-G"!

This image is blurry because my hand is shaking from the cold! It's all because we wore regular shoes instead of snow boots. Wet socks for 4 hours is a good way to get chilled...

New Years Eve at the Broncos!

Dawn and I went to the Broncos game to celebrate our New Years Eve.

Friday, December 22, 2006

First Candidate for the Next Generation!

Norm Walsh has posted the first candidate release of DocBook v5.0! We are getting very close to releasing the next generation of the DocBook standard.

You can download the new schema from: http://docbook.org/xml/5.0CR1/

There are a few outstanding issues we will be voting on in January, including:

  • The creation of a new generic container as a sibling to chapter, etc. vs. creating an acknowledgements element at the same level
  • Allowing info in HTML tables (they are allowed in CALS and would be useful for metadata)
  • Allowing task to be a sibling of section

Wednesday, December 20, 2006

Dreaming of a White Christmas

I'm dreaming of a White Christmas, and I'm going to get it! A massive storm has hit Colorado, and we have 25" so far as of 11pm. It's supposed to continue snowing until noon tomorrow, and the rate so far has been 1-2" per hour! Here are some pics:

Update: the snow is tapering off as of 9am on 12/21. Storm total: 26" with drifts to 4'!

Friday, December 15, 2006

The Proliferation of Social Bookmarking Sites

Do we have enough social bookmarking sites yet?!?

I am a frequent reader of Rich Burridge, who provided a Roller template for adding social bookmark links to your blog posts. I thought I'd give it a try on Blogger to see how it works, too. Here's the Blogger template if you want to do the same. Just add it at the bottom of your post template:

<div>
  Share and enjoy: 
  <a href="http://www.blinklist.com/index.php?Action=Blink/addblink.php&Title=<$BlogItemTitle$>;Url=<$BlogItemPermalinkURL$>" rel="external" title="Bookmark it with Blinklist"><img src="http://blogs.sun.com/richb/resource/bookmarkIcon-blinklist.png" width="16" height="16" alt="Bookmark it with Blinklist" /></a>
  
  <a href="http://www.bloglines.com/citations?url=<$BlogItemPermalinkURL$>" title="Submit to Bloglines"><img src="http://blogs.sun.com/richb/resource/bookmarkIcon-bloglines.png" height="16" width="16" alt="Submit to Bloglines"/></a>
  
  <a href="http://blogmarks.net/my/new.php?mini=1&simple=1&url=<$BlogItemPermalinkURL$>;title=<$BlogItemTitle$>" rel="external" title="Bookmark it with Blogmarks"><img src="http://blogs.sun.com/richb/resource/bookmarkIcon-blogmarks.png" width="16" height="16" alt="Bookmark it with Blogmarks" /></a>
  
  <a href="http://co.mments.com/track?url=<$BlogItemPermalinkURL$>&title=<$BlogItemTitle$>" title="Track with co.mments"><img src="http://blogs.sun.com/richb/resource/bookmarkIcon-co.mments.gif" width="16" height="16" alt="Track with co.mments" /></a>
  
  <a href="http://del.icio.us/post?v=4;url=<$BlogItemPermalinkURL$>;title=<$BlogItemTitle$>" rel="external" title="Bookmark it with Del.icio.us"><img src="http://blogs.sun.com/richb/resource/bookmarkIcon-delicious.png" width="16" height="16" alt="Bookmark it with Del.icio.us" /></a>
  
  <a href="http://digg.com/submit?phase=3&url=<$BlogItemPermalinkURL$>;title=<$BlogItemTitle$>" rel="external" title="Submit it to Digg"><img src="http://blogs.sun.com/richb/resource/bookmarkIcon-digg.png" width="16" height="16" alt="Submit it to Digg" /></a>
  
  <a href="http://cgi.fark.com/cgi/fark/edit.pl?new_url=<$BlogItemPermalinkURL$>&new_comment=<$BlogItemTitle$>&new_link_other=&linktype=Misc" title="Submit it to Fark"><img src="http://blogs.sun.com/richb/resource/bookmarkIcon-fark.png" height="16" width="16" alt="Submit it to Fark"/></a>
  
  <a href="http://www.furl.net/storeIt.jsp?t=<$BlogItemPermalinkURL$>&u=<$BlogItemTitle$>" rel="external" title="Bookmark it with Furl"><img src="http://blogs.sun.com/richb/resource/bookmarkIcon-furl.png" width="16" height="16" alt="Bookmark it with Furl" /></a>
  
  <a href="http://ma.gnolia.com/bookmarklet/add?url=<$BlogItemPermalinkURL$>&title=<$BlogItemTitle$>" rel="external" title="Bookmark it with Ma.gnolia"><img src="http://blogs.sun.com/richb/resource/bookmarkIcon-magnolia.png" width="16" height="16" alt="Bookmark it with Ma.gnolia" /></a>
  
  <a href="http://www.maple.nu/bookmarks/bookmarklet?bookmark%5Burl%5D=<$BlogItemPermalinkURL$>&bookmark%5Bname%5D=<$BlogItemTitle$>" rel="external" title="Bookmark it with Maple"><img src="http://blogs.sun.com/richb/resource/bookmarkIcon-maple.png" width="16" height="16" alt="Bookmark it with Maple" /></a>
  
  <a href="http://www.newsvine.com/_tools/seed&save?u=<$BlogItemPermalinkURL$>&h=<$BlogItemTitle$>" title="Bookmark it at NewsVine"><img src="http://blogs.sun.com/richb/resource/bookmarkIcon-newsvine.png" height="16" width="16" alt="Bookmark it at NewsVine"/></a>
  
  <a href="http://reddit.com/submit?url=<$BlogItemPermalinkURL$>&title=<$BlogItemTitle$>" title="Bookmark it at reddit.com"><img src="http://blogs.sun.com/richb/resource/bookmarkIcon-reddit.png" height="16" width="16" alt="Bookmark it at reddit.com"/></a>
  
  <a href="http://www.simpy.com/simpy/LinkAdd.do?href=<$BlogItemPermalinkURL$>&title=<$BlogItemTitle$>" title="Bookmark it at Simpy.com"><img src="http://blogs.sun.com/richb/resource/bookmarkIcon-simpy.png" height="16" width="16" alt="Bookmark it at Simpy.com"/></a>
  
  <a href="http://www.spurl.net/spurl.php?v=3&title=<$BlogItemTitle$>&url=<$BlogItemPermalinkURL$>" rel="external" title="Bookmark it with Spurl"><img src="http://blogs.sun.com/richb/resource/bookmarkIcon-spurl.png" width="16" height="16" alt="Bookmark it with Spurl" /></a>
  
  <a href="http://slashdot.org/bookmark.pl?url=<$BlogItemPermalinkURL$>" title="Submit it to slashdot"><img src="http://blogs.sun.com/richb/resource/bookmarkIcon-slashdot.jpg" width="16" height="16" alt="Submit it to slashdot" /></a>
  
  <a href="http://tailrank.com/share/?text=&link_href=<$BlogItemPermalinkURL$>&title=<$BlogItemTitle$>" title="Track with TailRank"><img src="http://blogs.sun.com/richb/resource/bookmarkIcon-tailrank.png" width="16" height="16" alt="Track with TailRank" /></a>
  
  <a href='http://technorati.com/search/$utilities.encode("<$BlogItemPermalinkURL$>")' title="See who links to it via Technorati"><img src="http://blogs.sun.com/richb/resource/bookmarkIcon-technorati.png" alt="See who links to it via Technorati" height="16" width="16" /></a>
  
  <a href="http://wists.com/r.php?c=&r=<$BlogItemPermalinkURL$>&title=<$BlogItemTitle$>" title="Bookmark it with wists"><img src="http://blogs.sun.com/richb/resource/bookmarkIcon-wists.png" height="16" width="16" alt="Bookmark it with wists"/></a>
  
  <a href="http://myweb2.search.yahoo.com/myresults/bookmarklet?u=<$BlogItemPermalinkURL$>&t=<$BlogItemTitle$>" rel="external" title="Bookmark it with Yahoo! Bookmarklets"><img src="http://blogs.sun.com/richb/resource/bookmarkIcon-yahoo.png" width="16" height="16" alt="" /></a>
  
</div>

The question is, do we really need all of these social bookmarking sites? Seems like we have a lot of duplication of effort and proliferation of similar services...

One other cool feature, is that the new Blogger beta allows you to label posts, similar to the way Roller and MovableType let you categorize your posts. Originally, I had to use my tag cloud in del.icio.us to provide a similar categorizing scheme on Blogger.

Wednesday, December 13, 2006

New Discussion List: OASIS DITA S1000D Interoperability

I've kicked off a new discussion list at OASIS to address interoperability between S1000D and DITA!

The address of this list is:
dita-s1000d-discuss@lists.oasis-open.org

Anyone, including OASIS members and non-members, may subscribe to this list in order to discuss the merits and possibility of the proposed project. The list is now open, and can be joined by sending a message to:
dita-s1000d-discuss-subscribe@lists.oasis-open.org

Here is the official statement of scope:

DITA is an OASIS XML markup standard designed for topic-based authoring and re-use. It is also designed for interoperability, with a highly flexible specialization mechanism. For more information please see: http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=dita

S1000D is also an XML markup standard designed for re-use. This standard is aimed primarily at civil and military equipment documentation. It is also focused on Data Modules and a Common Source Database. For more information please see: http://www.s1000d.org/

This discussion list is intended to facilitate an effort to graft S1000D type modules onto the DITA type hierarchy. The result would support content that's completely interoperable and provides a relatively good transform target (because of similar semantics and structure). This approach will have significant long-term benefits toward interoperability of content and authoring tools between the two standards.

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Monday, December 11, 2006

Sing-Along Messiah

A friend of ours wanted to celebrate her birthday yesterday by getting a group together for a sing-along of Handel's "Messiah".

At the Boettcher Theater, the Colorado Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, soloists and the audience held a “sing along” of Handel’s beloved masterpiece. We had a good mix: 2 Bass, 2 Soprano, and 3 Alto. We sat together for Part 1, since we wanted to enjoy the time together, instead of splitting up to sit by SATB sections. Cindy even brought full scores for everyone to sing from! The problem, is that we happened to pick the Tenor section. We had a very good, strong tenor right behind us, and the two of us Bass singers kept getting thrown off our parts.

For Parts 2 and 3, the two of us Bass singers moved to the Bass section. It was much easier to sing on key and at the right time! We had a great time, and even got to sing the Hallelujah Chorus twice, as an encore.

You can also attend and just listen, but singing was very fun. I would highly recommend this next year!

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Happy "Holly" Days!

We welcomed a new member of our family this weekend: Holly!

She's a Soft Coated Wheaten Terrier, and absolutely adorable.

We were planning to surprise the kids on Christmas Day with a puppy, but saw her this weekend and decided it would be better to go with a puppy we really liked early, rather than wait and have one not be available, or have no choice in the personality. Holly and our collie, Duncan, get along famously. They already run and play together.It's fun having a puppy again, except for a few accidents and waking up at 2am, she is very well behaved. I think she has made a great addition to the family. Merry Christmas and Happy "Holly" Days!

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Wednesday, December 06, 2006

XML 2006: DocBook Dinner

We had a great time at the DocBook Dinner at XML 2006. Attendees included: Norm Walsh, Nancy Harrison, Gary Cornelius, Elliotte "Rusty" Harold, Michael Smith, Bob DuCharme, Liam Quin, Jean, Paul Downey, myself. (I think I'm missing at least two others, so please help me complete the list!).

UPDATE: Doh! Eliot Kimber was sitting right next to me, and we chatted quite a bit. Sorry, Eliot!

We dined at Legal Seafoods, and had quite the variety of topics to discuss!

Tuesday, December 05, 2006

XML 2006: Boston

The view from above. They put me on the 29th floor, so I had a very nice view!

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