Thanksgiving for Mexico

Some of you may think we're headed to Cabo or some exotic location, from the title of my post. Quite the contrary, we are headed to Juarez, Mexico for Thanksgiving this year.

"Change" has been a big theme in the media and political spectrum this year, but we've been planning to return to help the poor in Mexico since we last helped out 2 years ago. We are working to Change peoples lives as best we can. We would appreciate your thoughts and prayers, as there have been over 1000 homicides in Juarez this year.

For those interested, here are some specifics:

• Sunday - Travel day. Please pray for our time together, the blending of our team, the safety of our bus, and calm hearts for us as we go into a place very different than Boulder County.
• Monday - Bethel Orphanage and Agua Viva Senior Men's Home. We will be spending the day loving the kids and these "grown up" orphans. We will share a meal together, share the Gospel, and mostly provide a visit in Jesus' name. Please pray that we would be bold and not timid and make the most of sharing with these sweet new friends quickly.
• Tuesday - Bethel Orphanage. There is something wonderful about spending two days in an orphanage. To be able to say to the kids on Monday, "Hasta mañana" is simply the best! We will play soccer, basketball, football and other games with the kids this day. Pray for us as we leave part of our hearts behind as we say, "Adios" to our new friends on Tuesday afternoon and believe that God is with them always.
• Wednesday - Brother Ray's Feeding Center/Church. Today we will worship with Mexican brothers and sisters, we will help feed 200 people and minister to Jenny Tapia and her small band of servants who work faithfully in this place each week.
• Thursday - Loma Blanca Colonia ("White Hill"). Today we will serve a big Mexican feast to the colonia. We may have 400 people. Please pray that we have enough food, that there be a real sense of peace and calm on this place, that we will not be stopped by the poverty that we see and instead see this neighborhood with the eyes of Jesus. We will also share a puppet show with a theme of "Do Not Be Afraid, God is Always with Us!" Pray for strength and good relationships on the team because today we will begin to be very tired.
• Friday - Loma Blanca Colonia. Today we will have a health fair for adults and kids. We will share the importance of good spiritual, nutritional, emotional, community health. We will also be doing a mini "Operation: Christmas Child" and deliver shoebox presents to the kids.
• Saturday - Travel Day. Again pray for safety and for sweet reflection on all that we've seen this week.

I would encourage you to make a difference this Thanksgiving. Help out in a food kitchen or invite those without family over for Thanksgiving dinner. We have so much to be thankful for, even in these tough economic times.

Vaya con Dios!

FLL Rising Stars!

This was our first year in First Lego League, so we had no idea what to expect when we started the season. The plan was to learn how to build a robot, program it, learn about climate and have fun!

The season started on September 5, and our team was able to meet once a week for about 2 hours. We tried to split the work up during each meeting, with some focused on research and some on building or programming. We made sure to rotate the work, so everyone got a chance to experience every aspect of the project. We also attended a Rookie Booster event, which helped get us on the right track and build some confidence.

The Regional Qualifier tournament was held yesterday at Monarch High School. It was a blast! There were 24 teams, so it was a very active place. It was fun to talk to the other teams about their experiences and see all of the different designs to accomplish the same tasks. The boys were a little nervous at the beginning, but they acted with gracious professionalism and most importantly: had fun!

Thankfully, our first competition run was absolutely perfect for the tasks we had programmed. We scored 120 points and, too our complete amazement, were in first place for the first 2 rounds! Our 2nd and 3rd rounds had some alignment issues, so our scores were considerably lower. Since they take the best of three rounds, our first round kept us in 5th place!

We were even more surprised during the award ceremony, the judges awarded our team with the FLL Rising Stars award! From the FLL site, this award is given to "teams that the judges notice and believe will soon be among the best and the brightest. The Rising Star Award recognizes a team that the judges believe stands out and that we expect great things from in future Challenges." Of particular mention, the judges thought our use of our robot arm and captured buoy to activate the storm mission was particularly innovative.

I'm very proud of our Hurricane Buster Bots team: David, Connor, Drew and Caleb. I look forward to next year!

Converting content to DocBook via XQuery. It's fun!

New versions of Jing and Trang!

Woohoo! after almost 5 years, James Clark has released a new version of Jing and Trang. They are available at: http://code.google.com/p/jing-trang/.

I've run into a few issues with trang and XSD in the past. Hopefully this addresses some of those issues? Will run a few tests and post my results...

UPDATE:Sigh. Trang still won't convert XSD to RNG. XSD continues to be the biggest thorn in my side. Long live RelaxNG!

UPDATE 2:Good news! This feature is on the "someday" list: http://code.google.com/p/jing-trang/issues/detail?id=4

Vote Fett '08

I just had to carve a campaign slogan for my favorite political character...

Scott voted by mail. You can't complain, if you don't exercise your right!

Meteorologists Predict Intensely Brisk Autumn

Let's be careful out there! Thanks to the Onion News Network for this important bulletin.

Extreme Weather Alert: Meteorologists Predict Intensely Brisk Autumn

Trying to find a decent PDF to XML conversion tool

High School Musical fun

Try JibJab Sendables® eCards today!

Scott is no longer KC0BAX. I am now Whiskey-Zero-Xray-Mike-Lima (W0XML)!

Applied for a new call sign. Hopefully will be W0XML soon!

If you're not RelaxNG, you're working too hard!

This has been my favorite catch phrase, now it's my bumper sticker. The beauty, is that it can be yours too!

http://www.cafepress.com/RelaxNG. Everything is sold at cost, so I'm not in this to make a profit, just to spread the word!

Save Colorado ranch lands!

I grew up on a ranch in southeastern Colorado. While I don't want to be a rancher, it's an important part of my heritage, and I'm proud to support those who try to make a living in a tough economic climate with hard work and determination.

Unfortunately, the US Army is trying to make it even harder! If you aren't familiar with the Pinon Canyon site and proposed expansion, I encourage you to visit http://www.pinoncanyon.com/.I also urge you to sign the petition, even if you don't live anywhere near Pinon Canyon or eastern Colorado!

The fact is, I DO support our servicemen and love our country. What I don't understand is why the Army wants to take Colorado land from ranchers and turn it into a live fire range! Aren't there ACRES of desert in Nevada, Arizona or New Mexico that are inhospitable to everything but scorpions and rattlesnakes? Why not use those instead of ruining land that actually can sustain grass? In reference to my point, I recently got an email from "Not 1 More Acre!", a grassroots organization trying to fight this expansion:

July 9, 2008

Letter to the editor
Chicago Tribune

Anyone even remotely familiar with the Army's efforts to destroy 1,000 square miles of native grasslands in southeastern Colorado will find the picture of an environmentally friendly military created in your story "Army's challenge: Be lean, mean - and green" (July 5) to be greenwash.

Despite the clear opposition of local ranchers and counties, the Colorado state legislature, and Congress, the Pentagon remains hell-bent on tripling the size of Fort Carson's 238,000-acre Piñon Canyon Maneuver Site to create a high-tech multi-service battleground roughly four times the size of the city of Chicago. The proposal to dramatically increase the number of live-fire exercises, heavy vehicle traffic, pyrotechnics and the use of incendiary and highly toxic weapons systems will devastate the last intact shortgrass steppe in the American Great Plains.

Grasslands are now the most endangered ecosystem on earth and the interconnected grassland ecosystems of southeastern Colorado and northern New Mexico are of local and global significance. At stake is the key role the shortgrass steppe plays as precious and unique wildlife habitat, as a hedge against another Dust Bowl, as a recharge area for critical groundwater supplies and as an important form of carbon storage and gas recycling for a planet imperilled by global warming. The region's unique combination of canyonlands, forested mesas and grasslands contains critical riparian systems that support a diverse range of flora and fauna found nowhere else. These ecosystems - now functioning in equilibrium - cannot be replaced if destroyed.

The Army's expansion would also force generational family ranchers from their lands, people who have a long history of working sustainably with the land and of making a vital contribution to the food security of the nation.

It is well past time that our national political leadership put an end to the Army's real estate take-over of southeast Colorado. Hybrid Humvees and solar panels are no compensation for the irreparable environmental harm the Army's grandiose expansion will visit upon this unique environment.

Sincerely,

Andy Stahl
Executive Director

Purgatoire, Apishapa & Comanche Grassland Trust
Not 1 More Acre!
PO Box 773
Trinidad, Colorado 81082

The fact is, there is already a huge maneuver area in the Pinon Canyon area. I bet it's big enough for plenty of tanks, hummers and other vehicles and soldiers. It's the expansion big enough to make it a live fire range that has me worried. My great-grandfather collected over 3,000 indian arrowheads and other artifacts from the area. In fact, his collection is in a museum in Trinidad. There are many native american artifacts that will be damaged or unreachable if this expansion goes through. It's a bad idea from an environmental, historical, economical, political and relational point of view!

Also under threat are the largest dinosaur track sites in the US, pictographs made by the region's original inhabitants, Native American sacred sites and Hispanic placitas. Scars carved into the landscape from wagons traveling on the Santa Fe Trail are reminders of the fragility of the native grasslands. The threat of military takeover prompted the National Trust for Historical Preservation to place the area surrounding Piñon Canyon on its list of America's most endangered historical places.

Copies of all relevant legislation and other documents can be found at www.not1moreacre.net/docs

Please consider supporting keeping Colorado ranch and grass lands in the hands of their best trustees: the Colorado ranchers!

Proud papa

My oldest son sang his first solo today! I'm so proud!

Firefox World Record Download Day

Get Firefox 3 for free, and help set a world record! http://www.spreadfirefox.com/en-US/worldrecord

Check it out!

UPDATE:Firefox 3 will be available today at 17:00 UTC (11am MDT)

DocBook groups on Plaxo and LinkedIn

For those of you interested, I've set up a DocBook group on Plaxo (http://docbook.plaxogroups.com/) and LinkedIn. Please join if you are interested in DocBook or in networking with DocBook professionals!

Successful, but non-restful vacation

Whew! We just got back from a whirlwind tour of Washington, D.C. Since the kids will be studying American History next year (Exploration to 1850), we thought we would have a little hands-on field trip to help secure a tangible picture of where some of these events took place!

Here's what we saw:

• Union Station
• Mount Vernon
• George Washington's Grist Mill and Distillery
• US Capitol Tour with Sen. Wayne Allard's office (Dirksen Senate Building)
• Washington monuments (Washington, Lincoln, WWII, Korea, FDR, Jefferson, Iwo Jima)
• National Zoo
• National Gallery of Art (Forest of Fontainebleau exhibit, etc.)
• Smithsonian Air & Space museum
• Smithsonian Natural History museum
• Library of Congress
• Arlington National Cemetery
• Bureau of Engraving and Printing
• From afar: White House, National Archives, FBI, Ford's Theater

As I said, successful, but not restful. We walked our legs off, even with the DC Metro ferrying us! Our feet were killing us.

I did find a very cool tool to help with the planning and coordination of the trip. I had been using Dopplr, but a friend recommended TripIt. I would HIGHLY recommend TripIt. Setting up my itinerary was as easy as forwarding mail from my hotel, rental car, airlines and tours, and it tied it all up in one convenient location for me. Check it out!

Metadata and Interoperability

Jim Earley has a very thoughtful post on metadata interoperability: http://jims-thoughtspot.blogspot.com/2008/04/metadata-interoperability.html

As part of DocBook v5, we added the ability to include content from other namespaces in the <info> block to support adding Dublin Core directly in your content. The <info> element's purpose is to house metadata that is not intended for display, so it's a really good fit.

Jim's argument, is that the various standards out there (DocBook, DITA, ODF at a minimum) should move to Dublin Core for metadata, and stop re-inventing the wheel. Dublin Core is an internationally accepted standard for metadata, so why not use it directly?!

I whole-heartedly agree. This approach would add more compatibility between standards, and maybe even facilitate better search! Along with that, Dublin Core is extensible, so it shouldn't be too difficult to add additional metadata fields if you need to.

more on DocBook vs. DITA

Teresa Mulvihill has written an article on DocBook vs. DITA at: http://www.dclab.com/dita_docbook.asp.

It's a well thought-out article, but I'd like to make a few clarifications:

As you may know, Jim Earley and I have presented on this topic and our Doc Standards Interoperability Framework at several conferences, and still hope to form an OASIS TC on document standards interoperability.

In the article, Teresa states:

"DocBook is hierarchical by nature, and must be developed to allow for single-sourced content. DocBook has a fixed element and attribute set."

I've successfully used and recommended single-sourcing approaches with DocBook, without additional development. It's quite easy to set up a book or article and use XIncludes or even file entity references to pull in content from a common pool of content structures (usually section or chapter).

It's also fairly easy to extend the elements and attributes in DocBook. This has been made even easier with DocBook v5.0 and RelaxNG. In fact, the DocBook Subcommittee for Publishers that I chair, has helped organize the source patterns for DocBook v5 with a modular approach, enabling easier customizations to be created. Our subcommittee has created a customization geared specifically to publishers, without all of the technical blocks and inlines in full DocBook. This significantly reduces the tag set for folks that do not produce software or technical documentation to use the DocBook standard for general publishing!

DocBook can generate more than PDF, HTML and HTMLHelp. The docbook-xsl-1.73.2 stylesheet distribution supports: html, htmlhelp, javahelp, manpages, xhtml, Word roundtrip, slides and websites!

I would also argue that DocBook can be used on very high volume documentation projects, as well as small and medium projects. Just ask Sun, HP, various Linux distros, and more listed here: http://wiki.docbook.org/topic/WhoUsesDocBook

You might also find Norm's blog on DocBook vs. DITA interesting: http://norman.walsh.name/2005/10/21/dita

We are also working on some exciting developments for the Interoperability Framework, so stay tuned!

DocBook vs. DITA: revisited

The Content Wrangler has published a very interesting article by Dick Hamilton on choosing an XML schema.

I get asked very similar questions all the time! I think I'll start sending folks to this article as recommended reading...