I want to be a part of it, New York, New York!

I've spent another great week in the Big Apple. Our flight was delayed several hours inbound because of the rain on Monday, but the weather was just great for the rest of the week.

I was pretty beat, since we were supposed to arrive at 8pm, got in at 12am, and then had to unpack and crash by 1am.

On Tuesday, I had to hit up the Greek place near Madison Square Garden. The Gyro platter was awesome! For dinner, we went to Nick and Stef's Steakhouse at the Garden. I had so much for lunch though, that I had to settle for a light Caesar Salad w/ steak tips.

On Wednesday, I had a return visit to Guy and Gallard for a wonderful Cuban panini and the best Beef and Barley soup I've ever had! For dinner, we went back to the Tir na Nog Irish Pub near the Garden, though I opted for a burger this time.

Thursday was my favorite day of all. I worked from the hotel in the morning, doing updates to our documentation and preparing for our afternoon meeting. Around 11:30, I finished up and decided to make a "quick" run to the World of Disney store. Unfortunately, I didn't quite realize the hike from 9th and 36th to 5th and 55th! I made it around 12:15, and had a 1pm meeting at Two Penn Plaza near the Garden. I had about ten minutes to shop, and then run for a cab. The cabbie tore through the streets, giving me a true cab experience, and getting me to the meeting on time. He got a really good tip, too!

Our meetings finished up at a reasonable hour, so we walked to the Empire State Building. Unfortunately, the line was still really long, and I didn't want to stand around all night. So, we walked up to Rockefeller Center. They had a ton of Easter lillies out front, and they smelled heavenly. The ice rink was very cool.

The highlight of the night was going to the Rainbow Room at the top of Rockefeller center. In honor of New York, I had a Manhattan (a little strong, but the cherry finish was great). From the Rainbow Room, I think we had one of the best views of the city, without having to wait in line for hours!

Since it was nearing 9pm, we left for some lower cost dinner, and came across Via Brazil, a nice atmosphere with live music off Little Brazil. I had a mixed grill, and a terrific banana tiramisu for dessert.

Friday had another trip to Guy and Gallard this time for a Sicilian panini and some terrific clam chowder. After that, it was good bye to the great folks at McGraw-Hill Education, and back to my family in Colorado!

See also: General

Simplified DocBook 1.1 Official Release!

It is my pleasure to announce the release of the official Committee Specification for Simplified DocBook 1.1!

The second candidate release has been out for several months, with no major problems reported.

The major features of Simplified DocBook include:

• The imageobjectco tag has been removed; it should never have been present.
• The spacing attribute has been removed from variablelist.
• The package element has been removed.
• The biblioref element has been removed.
• The content model of subscript and superscript have been adjusted so that they no longer contain references to elements not present in Simplified DocBook.
• adds the subscript and superscript elements.
• adds the anchor element to a few more parameter entities.
• adds the anchor element and the remap attribute.
• introduces HTML tables but no other additional markup.

These enhancements should also make it much easier to convert HTML documentation to DocBook.

I've always been a very strong proponent of Simplified DocBook, and will continue to do so on the DocBook TC. I think these are very positive changes.

Special thanks to Norm Walsh for handling the builds and release of Simplified 1.1, and for putting up with all of my quesions and promptings...

See also: DocBook

A Great Loss

My sincerest, heartfelt condolences go out to all members of the Catholic Faith this evening at the loss of Pope John Paul II.

My thoughts and prayers are with you all during this time of sadness.

Though I am not Catholic, I personally know quite a few who are, and are feeling the loss of such a great man.

Though we are of different faiths, there are some core beliefs which we share, and I think that Pope John Paul II had a personal belief and relationship with Jesus Christ, and is therefore with Him in heaven tonight.

Even though many in this world do not share those core beliefs, I'm sure everyone would agree that John Paul II made a major positive impact on this world.

It is my great hope that the next Pope will carry forward this great humanitarian, and spiritual work, bringing many to faith in Jesus.

See also: General

Giving Chance A Chance

I needed to get a USB hard drive for transferring files to/from clients. I priced them out at the local Best Buy, and found most 512MB versions around $79. I was curious to see how much an equivalent USB drive with MP3 features would cost, and was pleasantly surprised to find the iPod Shuffle for only $20 more! For that alone, the extra cost for the functionality was worth it.

My hotel in NYC happened to overlook the Lincoln tunnel (I think?), so I was getting quite a bit of street noise in the room. Even with the heater blowing and a pillow over my head, I could still hear it. So, I picked out a soothing blend of Jazz and New Age instrumentals, loaded them in the shuffle, and was good until morning!

The Apple billboard I saw in Times Square "Give chance a chance." was very appropriate. As far as the Shuffle is concerned, I like chance!

My son saw my Shuffle, and wants to save up for one of his own, too! He's quite the artist using Garage Band, and wants to jam to his own creations.

See also: General

The Dark Side of New York

I'm in New York again this week, and I can't believe I missed this: http://www.starwars.com/episode-iii/release/promo/news20050329.html

The event was at 11am, and I was in meetings from 9am-6pm. Doh. Oh well, if New York was going to have a Dark Side, I'm glad this was it!

For more Dark Side fun, check out: http://www.mms.com/us/mpire/ The Boba Fett M&M figure is cool, too.

In other Star Wars news, it looks like the Star Wars Lego game is out! It's gotten pretty good reviews, too: http://ps2.ign.com/articles/599/599286p1.html?fromint=1

I was going to ask for it as an Easter present, but it wasn't out yet. Instead, I got the Buck Rogers series on DVD!

I'll have to ask for the Star Wars game for some other occasion (for me or my boys!)

See also: Sci-Fi

New York Newbie

This week was my first client engagement in my new job at Flatirons Solutions. Our client: McGraw-Hill Education in New York City!

I flew out on Sunday with our Chief Technical Officer, Eric Severson. He’s an amazing guy with years of experience dating back to the SGML days. He started his own company, Avalanche, was a VP at Interleaf, then at IBM, and now a founder of Flatirons Solutions. He worked on the CALS Table Model, and was a President of SGML Open and OASIS. I’m trying to learn as much as I can from him.

We cabbed in from La Guardia, and got to our hotel which was in the middle of Manhattan, and I mean in the middle! In one direction, I could walk to Times Square, in another to Madison Square Garden and the Empire State Building, and in another, Grand Central Station.

Here's the view from the hotel room:

I’m only disappointed that I didn’t get a chance to visit the Empire State Building, Statue of Liberty, see a show on Broadway, visit Trump Tower or visit the site of the 9/11 terror attack.

I also didn’t get to see the Hudson River, but did have meetings in the Hudson conference room! :-)

I tried to get as good of a taste of New York City as possible, and our host Ed was a splendid guide! Our first day for lunch was at a terrific sandwich shop. I had an Italian muffaletta and a cup of gumbo. For dinner, we met with our Documentum rep, Gary, at City Crab. I’m not a big seafood eater, but the jumbo fried shrimp and chopped salad was just great!

The next day started out rainy (gotta remember an umbrella next time), then was a blizzard of snow at lunch (gotta remember my USAF trench coat next time), and howling freezing wind by dinner (gotta remember a hat and gloves next time)!

For lunch, we went to The Stage Door deli and had an awesome hot pastrami and some of the best pickles I’ve ever had. For dinner, I was able to meet up with my college roomie and good friend Danny.

I was supposed to meet Danny at Grand Central Station, but couldn’t get a cab outside of Madison Square Garden (where our client meetings were), so I thought I’d start walking toward Times Square and hail one on the way. Because of the bitter cold and driving wind, it was next to impossible. I got all the way to Times Square, took a few pictures, and finally got a cab. I told him Grand Central Station, and he said I was headed the wrong direction. Well, I’m a noob. What can I say? :-)

When I finally met up with Danny, he had made reservations at Becco over near the theater district. So, we walked basically all the way back to Times Square and Broadway, and had to resort to buying some knit caps in the Fashion District on the way.

At Becco, we had a great 3 pasta continuous serving, and a very interesting black currant martini, and a delicious dessert sampler, including New York Cheesecake, gelato, custard, and chocolate mousse.

We hailed a cab back to my hotel, and Danny went on to Grand Central to catch a train home. What a fun time!

For lunch the next day, we went to a great little Greek place with the best Gyro I’ve had in a long time. It was huge, with lots of lamb and sauce. I should’ve gotten the Greek salad version though; it would’ve been a lot less messy, especially eating in the conference room.

We had a really long day, from 9 to 9, and then Eric and I went to Tir na Nog, a really neat Irish pub across from the Garden. I decided to order a New York strip steak, and it was great. Our hostess was from Northern Ireland and I had a Harp lager, so we really experienced Ireland!

For lunch the next day we went to Gray’s Papaya – home of the best hot dogs in NYC. The price is right, and the papaya drink was marvelous to wash down the three dogs…

After the meetings, it was off to La Guardia again. We may have left a little too late, because I got to experience the New York traffic jam. We still made it to the plane with plenty of time to spare, even with a really long line at security.

I’m definitely glad to be home again. While we had some very interesting meetings with a great group of folks, I missed my wife and kids terribly. And besides that, I got to spend about 2 hours with my wife for our 9th anniversary! (Happy Anniversary, babe!)

Thanks, New York!

See also: General

See DC-Dot run. Run DC-Dot Run!

While researching some information on IMS LOM (Learning Object Metadata), I came across this incredible metadata editor: DC-dot developed by Andy Powell, UKOLN, University of Bath.

You can access it at: http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/metadata/dcdot/

Point it to my blog, and you can see the metadata I've been incorporating into all of my pages! I've been using the Dublin Core recommendation for expressing metadata in html.

The other cool feature, is that it can express the metadata in RDF, as well as convert it to IMS LOM and more!

Thanks, Andy!

See also: XML

Irish eyes are smiling!

Congratulations to my friend, Cam and his wife Becca on the birth of their firstborn daughter, Erin Grace on March 1st!

I'd bet anything that little Erin will have Irish red hair like her mother, and Cam's love of all things Scottish and Irish!

Welcome to the world of parenting, with all of it's hardships and joys.

See also: General

Bounty Hunter art!

Finally, I can learn to sketch my favorite character in the Star Wars Universe:

http://www.starwars.com/kids/activity/draw/f20050228/index.html

I had to give up collecting All Things Star Wars a long time ago. Now, I collect All Things Bounty Hunters.

Here are a few of my other favorite links:

• http://www.bobafettfanclub.com/index.shtml
• http://www.jedi-academy.com/fett_tips.html

See also: Sci-Fi

Pilgrim's Progress: quick links to TDG references

This tip has been out there for a while, but I just stumbled across it:

Mark Pilgrim posted a tip for Firefox users to link to the DocBook:TDG reference pages!

In Firefox, create a new bookmark for http://docbook.org/tdg/en/html/%s.html, and then give it a keyword (I used the letter d). Then you can type things like d xref into your address bar to go to the xref reference page. Go go gadget hyperlink.

Too cool. I used "db" for my keyword to match the namespace prefix Norm has been using for DocBook NG, but it works just the same. I type "db article" now, instead of having to navigating from my blog links. Thanks Mark!

See also: DocBook

Bob Stayton: Hot Off the Press...

Michael Smith reported that the third edition of "DocBook XSL: The Complete Guide" by Bob Stayton is now available!

If you spend any time on the docbook lists, you will quickly realize that Bob is THE go-to guy for complex DocBook problems, with Michael and Jirka closely behind.

If you spend any time with DocBook stylesheets, you should also quickly realize that YOU NEED THIS BOOK!

Bob has added over 150 pages with this edition, so it's by no means a minor rev.

Check it out at: http://www.sagehill.net/docbookxsl/!

See also: DocBook

A Brand New Day

I started my new job at Flatirons Solutions, but I'm not the only one with a fresh start this week!

Congratulations to my sister, Heather, and brother-in-law JC on the birth of their new baby girl last night!

Kiera Lynne was 7 pounds, 9 ounces, 19 inches long. Very good size, and they were worried that she might come too early.

We're going to see them on Saturday, and I can't wait to hold my new neice.

All of my kids are very excited about their new cousin, too.

Children are, indeed, a blessing from God. And it's really a blessing when they are out of diapers, too! ;-)

See also: General

Former astronaut to head up NASA

Looks like NASA will get a new chief! Check the stories out at: news.google.com

Gregory has a pretty impressive bio.

and from http://academy.gsfc.nasa.gov/2001/Speakers/Gregory.html:

He has also been an astronaut on several shuttle missions, serving as both pilot and commander. Before that, he acquired an impressive military background, retiring from the Airforce as a Colonel after logging 7,000 flight hours and serving as an engineering test pilot for both NASA and the Air Force.

Mr. Gregory attended both the Air Force Academy and George Washington University, and his academic and career honors are numerous.

I don't know his stance on manned missions to the Moon and Mars, but I hope he is for them. I would sure like to see a new era of manned space exploration ushered in! And if you need any volunteers... I'm there, man!

See also: Space

Scotty here, one to beam out...

Folks,

it is with fond memories of every one I have worked with during my 9+ years of service at Sun, that I announce my departure.

I have been given an exciting opportunity as an XML and content management Solutions Architect at Flatirons Solutions (http://www.flatironssolutions.com) in Boulder.

While at Sun, I have worked for SunSoft (Solaris Tech Pubs), Sun Educational Services, Global eServices Engineering, Global Knowledge Engineering, and CNS Knowledge, Data and Operations.

I've helped create online documentation for Solstice Backup, Solstice Job Scheduler and the Solaris Administration Guides, created education.central, worked on the next generation of SunSolve, the Astoria, Voyager and KASP content management systems, and the Service Parts Repository (SPRuce) and the Sun System Handbook, and was consistently one of the top 15 most popular blogs on blogs.sun.com.

God willing, our paths will again cross some day. It has been an honor and priviledge to work with all of you incredibly talented folks. Sorry if I missed anybody. Please forward to anyone you think might be interested in hearing the news.

My last day at Sun will be February 17th, but you can continue to follow my adventures at: http://shudson310.blogspot.com

Please stay in touch!

Best regards,

Scott Hudson

See also: General

Time for an IPA

Norm Walsh has just released the 9th version of DocBookNG, code named: IPA

This release includes:

• Added citerefentry and citebiblioid to the list of elements that can appear in bibliography entries; removed titleabbrev.

• Reduced the content model of a bunch of inlines (command and others that were way to broad).

• Added link, xref, superscript, and subscript to the list of “ubiquitous” inlines.

• Added date to the list of publishing inlines.

• Added some inlines to computeroutput and userinput.

• Added some new exclusions (preventing admonitions and formal objects from being nested; removing some of the same from footnote).

• Removed the highlights element. A candidate for the role attribute if I ever saw one.

• Fixed bug that didn't allow sect1 in article when numbered sections are included.

Check it out!

BTW, Norm, I know I always bug you about this, but can you please create a version of IPA for Simplified DocBook?

See also: DocBook

Storm Chaser Convention coming to Denver!

The 7th Annual National Storm Chasers Convention is coming to Denver from February 18-20th!

Speakers include: Dr. Al Bedard, Dr. Erik Rasmussen, Dr. Howie Bluestein, Dr. Josh Wurman, Dr. Greg Forbes, Tim Marshall, Tim Vasquez, Scott Blair, Jim Reed, Jim Edds, John Davies, and more.

Complete details and registration is available at: http://chaserconvention.com/site/

Last year, I attended Tim Vasquez's Severe Weather Forecasting class after the convention. While it was very informative, it's definitely NOT for the uninitiated! I have taken the Meteorology and Climatology undergrad courses at Colorado State University, and was a little rusty in the class. If you want to go, definitely bone up on your map skills (identifying and drawing front lines from isobar readings, etc.)

Not sure if I'll be able to go at all this year, as I'm starting a new job on the 21st, but more on that later...

If you want some local involvement with weather reporting, you should also check out CoCoRAHS! There is also a great article on CoCoRAHS at: http://www.thedenverchannel.com/weather/4157645/detail.html

See also: Weather

Connor's Weather Service: That's my boy!

Nick O'Kelly from 9 News in Denver requested kids send in audition tapes for a chance to be on a morning weathercast with the Weather Whiz Kids contest.

My oldest son, Connor, and I went to work gathering the latest weather data from Denver/Boulder Severe Weather at the National Weather Service.

We put together a script, and he drew up a map of Colorado with a few significant current temps from the viewing area.

Next we did a practice run (we only had a week to get a tape/DVD in for the studio deadline), and then filmed it on our new Sony digital camcorder.

We took the camera up to the iMac and captured the clips in iMovie, put together a quick intro image in iDVD, dragged the iMovie over, and burned the DVD!

I sent it in, and we waited, and waited. Yesterday, during the morning show, they featured Connor's audition! We didn't tape it, unfortunately, but lots of friends and family saw the segment and called or emailed in to our new TV star!

We still don't know if he's won a spot on site at the studio, but his clip is featured on the 9 News website at: http://www.9news.com/

I'm so proud of my little weatherman!!!

See also: Weather

DocBook XSL 1.68.0 released

Michael Smith has announced the 1.68.0 release of the DocBook XSL stylesheets!

Here is the content of the announcement:

Version 1.68.0 of the DocBook XSL stylesheets is now available for download from the DocBook SourceForge site:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/docbook/

This release adds some significant new features, particularly for FO/PDF output.

As with all DocBook Project dot-0 releases, this release should be considered somewhat unstable and will likely be followed by a stable 1.68.1 release within the next two weeks (to correct problems reported with the dot-0 release).

Among the user-visible changes:

FO

• Moved footnote properties to attribute-sets.
• Added support for side floats, margin notes, and custom floats.
• Added new parameters body.start.indent and body.end.indent to the set.flow.properties template.
• Added support for xml:id
• Added support for refdescriptor.
• Added support for multiple refnamedivs.
• Added index.entry.properties attribute-set to support customization of index entries.
• Added set.flow.properties template call to each fo:flow to support customizations entry point.
• Add support for @floatstyle in figure
• Moved hardcoded properties for index division titles to the index.div.title.properties attribute-set.
• Added support for table-layout="auto" for XEP.
• Added index.div.title.properties attribute-set.
• $verbose parameter is now passed to most elements.
• Added refentry to toc in part, as it is permitted by the DocBook schema/ DTD.
• Added backmatter elements and article to toc in part, since they are permitted by the DocBook schema/DTD.
• Added mode="toc" for simplesect, since it is now permitted in the toc if simplesect.in.toc is set.
• Moved hard-coded properties to nongraphical.admonintion.properties and graphical.admonition.properties attribute sets.
• Added support for sidebar-width and float-type processing instructions in sidebar.
• For tables with HTML markup elements, added support for dbfo bgcolor PI, the attribute-sets named table.properties, informaltable.properties, table.table.properties, and table.cell.padding. Also added support for the templates named table.cell.properties and table.cell.block.properties so that tabstyles can be implemented. Also added support for tables containing only tr instead of tbody with tr.
• Added new paramater hyphenate.verbatim.characters which can specify characters after which a line break can occur in verbatim environments. This parameter can be used to extend the initial set of characters which contain only space and non-breakable space.
• Added itemizedlist.label.markup to enable selection of different bullet symbol. Also added several potential bullet characters, commented out by default.
• Enabled all id's in XEP output for external olinking.

HTML

• Added support for refdescriptor.
• Added support for multiple refnamedivs.
• Added support for xml:id
• refsynopsisdiv as a section for counting section levels

Images

• Added new SVG admonition graphics and navigation images.

Thanks Michael, Bob, Jirka, and everyone who contributed to this release!

Please give the stylesheets a try, and report any problems ASAP!

See also: DocBook

Contemplating a move...

Hello out there in blogger.com land!

My current blog is hosted at: http://blogs.sun.com/shudson310

I'm contemplating moving my blog here to blogger.com. Not only could I get some Google AdSense ads, but could cover more personal topics, without toeing the corporate blog line.

Stay tuned. I'll be moving a lot of my old posts over, and adding new content shortly.

See also: General

Mystery of the Technorati Tags solved

Dave Levy mentioned in his blog that the Technorati Tags weren't working for him.

I, too, had added Technorati Tags to my blog (check out the "See also:" links at the bottom of each post!), but when I clicked on the links, Technorati said no posts were available for that tag!

Here's the fix: I went into my del.ico.us bookmarks, and made sure my tag names matched those on my blog. Originally, I had all my del.icio.us bookmark tags in lowercase. On the blog, however, they were mixed or init cap. I like the way they are on my blog, so I changed the tag names for my del.ico.us bookmarks and voila! The tags and entries now work on Technorati!

See also: General

DocBook v4.4 is out the door!

The OASIS DocBook TC approved the release of DocBook v4.4 as a Committee Draft this week!

The next step is to go for OASIS Standard, but I imagine that process will take longer than the Committee releasing DocBook v5.0...

You can see the specifics on Norm's blog: http://norman.walsh.name/2005/01/28/docbook44 , read the specification at: http://www.docbook.org/specs/cd-docbook-docbook-4.4.html and get the schemas at: http://www.docbook.org.

Enjoy!

See also: DocBook

OpenOffice to DocBook released under free license

Laurent Godard announced on the docbook-apps list about the freely-available ooo2dbk tool to transform OpenOffice.org documents to DocBook:

ooo2dbk is a tool allowing the transformation of OpenOffice.org documents to docbook. Based on Eric Bellot's work, it has been widely extended and allow enhanced export

http://indesko.com/sites/en/downloads/ooo2dbk___generating/view

Supporting XML docBook V4.3, it allows to generate both article and book documents A lot of features are available such as handling preface and appendix elements, metadatas as OOo user fields also

ooo2dbk is an independant script allowing then batch processing of OpenOffice.org documents

I contributed some code to the xmerge project a few years ago, but haven't had time to play with it for a while. It would be interesting to see where the filter is at now, and contrast it with the ooo2dbk tool...

See also: DocBook

Sampling some Cider

Norm Walsh has published a new DocBook NG release: "Hard Cider"

DocBook NG is a preview of DocBook V5.0 using the RelaxNG schema.

Details are available at http://norman.walsh.name/2005/01/18/hardcider and the schema is available at http://docbook.org/docbook-ng/hardcider/index.html.

Norm has also created a DTD version so folks with DTD-based validating editors can try it out.

From Norm's post:

In addition to the DTD, there are a number user-visible changes in the “Hard Cider” release:

• Allow <colophon> at the end of an <article>, RFE #1070458.

• Allow navigation components (<index>, <glossary>, etc.) at the end of sections.

• Allow xml:space (with the value “preserve”) on verbatim environments.

• Make <revnumber> optional in <revision>, RFE #1055480.

• Added “protocol” to the list of class values on <systemitem>.

• Add <citation> and <citetitle> to <attribution>.

• Added <alt> and <annotation>.

• Added rowheader to <table> and <informaltable>.

• Made <title> required on <preface>. It always should have been.

• Added <contractsponsor>, <contractnum>, and <mediaobject> to the content of <info>.

• Allow text where a proper date used to be required (<pubdate> and friends).

• Allow endterm on <link>.

• Allow <refsection> as a “start” element.

• Allow <initializer> in <paramdef>.

Most of these changes make DocBook NG more compatible with DocBook V4.x.

The Simplified DocBook NG release is still at the "Bourbon" version. I mentioned to Norm at XML 2004 that I'd like to take a stab at updating it, so I'll try to get some spare time to go and sample some Cider!

I'm very excited with the direction of DocBook v5.0 since it's using RelaxNG. The hard part is getting Relax NG adopted and supported out there. The best editor I've used with Relax NG support is Oxygen. Most of the projects I'm on are also "standardized" on W3C schema, so getting Relax NG accepted is a tough battle...

See also: DocBook

The Time Patrol

After several months of reading (hey, I've got a lot of hobbies...), I finally finished "The Time Patrol" by Poul Anderson.

It's a compilation of short stories that I got when I joined the Science Fiction Book Club.

The story chronicles the efforts of Time Patrol agent Manse Everard to restore timelines that have been damaged by evil time travellers.

Though it was graphic in a few spots, the majority of the stories were very well detailed, and an interesting read. I'd recommend it, especially if you like historical fiction as well as science fiction.

See also: Sci-Fi

Care for some delicious bookmarks?

For those interested, I've converted my blog bookmarks (and some additional entries) into del.icio.us bookmarks at: http://del.icio.us/shudson310/

If you haven't heard about del.icio.us, it's a very interesting social bookmark manager. You can add create a personal collection of links, categorize those links with keywords, and share those categories and links with others!

You can also view the links collected by others, see who else bookmarked the same sites, and subscribe to other people's link collections.

In some ways, I see this very akin to a Topic Map, where you are mapping Topics to Occurences and the del.icio.us service creates the Associations between the Topics and the collection lists.

I think it would be very cool if the site provided the data, expressed in a Topic Map as an additional service...

See also: TopicMaps

A really Big Idea!

Our family LOVES Veggie Tales. We have all of the videos, and the Jonah movie, and have attended several of the new video launch parties. The 3-2-1 Penguins videos are also some of our favorites.

If you've never heard of Veggie Tales or 3-2-1 Penguins, they are created by Big Idea Productions. They are very family friendly, and teach values: something severely lacking in much of today's entertainment programming. As their tagline says, "Sunday morning values, Saturday morning fun!"

There's a new service available where you can get personalized Veggie Tales music CDs and adventure books! They actually have recorded your child's name for the audio, and insert your child's name and other information into the story for the books.

For those of you in the Denver area, go to Flatirons Crossing and look for the booth, or visit: http://www.justmemusic.us/ndenver/index.php. If you see Curt, tell him Scotty from Sun sent you! :-)

For those of you elsewhere, check out: http://www.justmemusic.com

See also: General

USS Enterprise in bricks

One of my favorite Christmas presents this year: the USS Enterprise NCC-1701 D from MegaBlocks!

I'm really hoping they come out with a Klingon Bird of Prey next!

One of the other MegaBlocks sets I've been really impressed with is the USAF A-10 Thunderbolt (it's in my office at work...)

And now, what you've been waiting for, the pics:

See also: Lego

Hi Eve!

I had the pleasure of dining with Eve and some of my Sun colleagues at the XML 2004 conference this year.

Not only is Eve the author of Developing SGML DTDs, but she helped create XML and DocBook! She's also the curator for the Art Show at the XML Conference, which you can view at: http://www.snee.com/xml/xml2004art/index.htm

Check out her blog, Pushing String at: http://www.xmlgrrl.com/blog/

See also: XML

More Episode III Lego sets!

Happy New Year!

Some more Lego sets leaked on http://www.theforce.net!

Clone Turbo Tank (7261)

Wookiee Catamaran (7260)

ARC-170 Fighter (7259)

Wookiee Attack (7258)

Ultimate Lightsaber Duel (7257)

Jedi Starfighter and Vulture Droid (7256)

You might also want to check out my earlier post: http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/shudson310/20041221#episode_iii_lego_preview

And for fun, here are some Christmas & Holiday themed wallpapers: http://www.theforce.net/latestnews/story/christmas_holiday_themed_star_wars_wallpapers_88573.asp

See also: Lego

Songs of the Season

Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas! Here's what we were listening to (transformed using my playlist stylesheets:):

Christmas Favorites

Track Title	Artist	Album	Genre
What Are You Doing New Year's Eve?	Harry Connick, Jr.	When My Heart Finds Christmas	Holiday
White Christmas	Bing Crosby	Merry Christmas	Holiday
I'll Be Home For Christmas (If Only In My Dreams)	Bing Crosby	Merry Christmas	Holiday
Santa Claus Is Comin' To Town	Bing Crosby	Merry Christmas	Holiday
It's Beginning To Look Like Christmas	Bing Crosby	Merry Christmas	Holiday
Walking in a Winter Wonderland			Holiday
Let it snow			Holiday
Sleigh Ride			Holiday
Deck The Halls	Mannheim Steamroller	Christmas	Holiday
God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen	Mannheim Steamroller	Christmas	Holiday
Faeries (From 'The Nutcracker')	Mannheim Steamroller	Christmas Extraordinaire	Holiday
Do You Hear What I Hear	Mannheim Steamroller	Christmas Extraordinaire	Holiday
O Tannenbaum	Mannheim Steamroller	Christmas Extraordinaire	Holiday
It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year	Andy Williams	The Most Wonderful Time of the Year	Holiday
The Christmas Song (Chestnuts)			Holiday
Have a Holly Jolly Christmas			Holiday
Christmas Is Coming	Vince Guaraldi Trio	Peanuts Christmas	Holiday
Linus & Lucy	Vince Guaraldi Trio	Peanuts Christmas	Holiday
Hark! The Herald Angels Sing/The Music Of Christmas	Steven Curtis Chapman	Music Of Christmas	Holiday
Christmas Is All In The Heart	Steven Curtis Chapman	Music Of Christmas	Holiday

See also: Music

Favorite Gifts from Christmas Past

Thanks to my friend Kirk for finding this link: http://tv.cream.org/extras/toys/index.html

I don't remember some of those, but here are some I actually got for Christmas!

#97 Weebles Ranch
#93 Rubik's Cube
#92 Zoids! I had a huge brontosaurus, a swimming frog, and a dodo (bird that didn't fly)
#91 Electronic Kit
#81 Okay, my sister actually got the Merlin, but I played with it a lot.
#79 Who didn't have a ViewMaster?
#35 Spirograph!
#31 Run Yourself Ragged!
#20 One of my favorites! I still have my StarBird and the original box!
#7 My cousin Brandon had a grey BigTrak. I was always enthralled by it.

Such fond memories. My other favorites, not on the list:

• the Millenium Falcon
• Batcycle Big Wheel
• CHiPs Big Wheel
• TinkerToy
• Legos
• Emergency! Fireman's Hat
• GI Joe/Cobra Rattler Jet and the Hiss Tank

Thanks Mom and Dad! I don't know how you managed it, but you sacrificed to give us things we wanted, even if we didn't need them.

Merry Christmas everyone!

See also: General

McNealy's Christmas Dream

Check out this absolutely hilarious article posted on The Register: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/12/23/mcnealys_xmas_dream/

Along with Scott's wishes, I'd also like to wish Sun's customers, employees, partners and shareholders a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

See also: General

'Twas five days before Christmas

I got this from Familyman Weekly yesterday. It cracked me up, so I had to share:

It was five days before Christmas, and the house was a disaster.
We tried to keep up, but the kids were just faster.
The tree was dried up, and the lights were burned out.
If it got any worse, I was going to shout.

With my wife in her pj’s, and I in my shorts,
We had fallen asleep with grumbles and snorts.
The children were tangled in covers and sheets
While Lego's and dress-up lay in great heaps.

When all of sudden, I heard a loud gurgle
I rolled out of bed as quick as a turtle.
I walked down the hallway and into his room
And I knew what was happening in spite of the gloom.

The stench in the room arose from his bed.
He was covered in vomit from toe to his head.
He heaved once or twice with cries in between;
In all of my life, this was as bad as I’d seen.

I pulled off his clothes as chunks fell on the floor
They tickled my feet and splattered the door.
I patted his back and said I love you;
He smiled but once and then started to spew.

Like lightning I grabbed a small pail by his bed;
His neck was all sweaty and his face was all red.
He coughed and sputtered until the last drop,
Then the last little chunk fell with a plop.

My wife who stood in the hall with a bag
Wanted to help but started to gag.
I shooed her away with a jerk of my head;
I was doing my job, she had nothing to dread.

In no time at all, I had mopped up the spew
And tucked him in bed with the bucket in view.
He smiled a tired smile, and I felt so in love
Like the very first Christmas he was a gift from above.

As I lay in my bed with the stench on my knees,
I was thankful to God for times just like these.
I was doing what fathers were created to do,
And I love being a dad...in spite of the spew.

See also: General

Episode III lego preview

Check out these new Star Wars legos!

From http://www.fbtb.net, Darth Vader with a light up lightsaber coming in February:

And from RebelScum.com a Clone Walker coming in April:

Update:Another preview on rebelscum! Here's one of Darth Vader's Transformation.

Update:Another preview on rebelscum! Here's one of the Droid Trifighter.

Can't wait for Episode III and the accompanying Lego sets!

See also: Lego

XInclude 1.0 now a W3C recommendation

The W3C made XInclude 1.0 a full recommendation yesterday!

Full details are available at: http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-xinclude-20041220/.

XIncludes will make merging XML documents a reality. Here's a simple syntax example from the W3C site:

<?xml version='1.0'?>
<document xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude">
  <p>120 Mz is adequate for an average home user.</p>
  <xi:include href="disclaimer.xml"/>
</document>

See also: XML

New Saxon release!

I made the switch to use Saxon exclusively for XSLT about 2 years ago. In that time, Michael Kay has made quite a few enhancements, including support for XSLT 2.0.

I kept running into memory problems with Xalan, and the had to use the endorsed standards override mechanism to get past the problems with the ancient version of Xalan that was bundled with Java.Saxon solved all of my problems.

I was fortunate enough to attend a full-day tutorial on XSLT 2.0 with Michael Kay at XML 2004, and will start creating my stylesheets with XSLT 2.0 and use Saxon to transform them.

Michael Kay has just released Saxon 8.2 (both commercial and open source versions) at: http://saxon.sourceforge.net/.

This new version implements XSLT 2.0 and XPath 2.0, and XQuery 1.0. This version reflects the syntax of the XSLT 2.0 Working Draft of 6 November 2004 and the XQuery 1.0 and XPath 2.0 Working Drafts of 27 October 2004.

Thanks for the early Christmas present, Dr. Kay!

See also: XSLT

NORAD's 50th Season Tracking Santa

My son happens to be one of my more faithful blog readers (Hi Connor!), and needed a letter to Santa sent Priority Mail last week.

You may or may not know, that the North American Aerospace Defense Command tracks Santa every year!

I was fortunate enough to tour NORAD back when I was an Air Force ROTC cadet, and can confirm that they track millions of objects in both air and space, including Santa.

Still skeptical? Check out their dedicated tracking site at: http://www.noradsanta.org/

Merry Christmas!

See also: General

Supercharged!

Congratulations to the San Diego Chargers, winners of the 2004 AFC West Division title!

From the Official San Diego Chargers site:

The Chargers clinched their first AFC West title since 1994 after the Denver Broncos’ 45-17 loss to the Kansas City Chiefs Sunday. Meanwhile, the Bolts beat the Cleveland Browns 21-0 in the snow at Cleveland Browns Stadium for their 11th win of the season.

I've lived in Colorado all of my life, but I've always liked the San Diego Chargers in football, the Los Angeles Dodgers in baseball, and the Los Angeles Lakers in basketball.

Mind you, I do like the Denver Broncos, the Colorado Rockies, and the Colorado Avalanche, but they have never topped my list.

We've only been to San Diego once, but we loved it! We went to Seaworld, Qualcomm Stadium, Seau's Restaurant, and most importantly, Legoland! We definitely need to go back.

Okay, the real reason I've always liked the Chargers: the lightning bolt on their helmets. Hey, I've always been a weather nut, what other reason do I need!?!

See also: General

Happy (Belated) Birthday Handbook!

Got a little busy last week, but wanted to extend a very happy 4th birthday to the Sun System Handbook as of December 15!

Here are some highlights in Handbook history:

• Initial internal & partner version release: 12/15/00
• Initial customer version release date: 11/01/01
• Lifetime page views (December 15, 2000 - November 30, 2004): 97,638,687 !!!

The Handbook should achieve 100 million lifetime page views by the end of December or very early in January 2005 !!

Congratulations to all of those who have worked on and been involved with this project during the last 4 years.

See also: SysHandbook

Speaking of the Vizigator...

Looks like I posted my last article too soon! Ontopia released version 2.1 of the Ontopia Knowledge Suite (OKS) today.

I hope those of you who attended XML 2004 saw the Vizigator demo. It's incredibly powerful and easy to use. And here's a challenge to all of you RDF/OWL pundits: show me a tool like this for RDF that's as easy to use!

Here's a sample visualization of a topic map:

For those of you not at XML 2004, have no fear! You can download a free demo copy of the Omnigator 8 (which includes the Vizigator, as well as an RDF2TM plugin!) at: http://www.ontopia.net/download/freedownload.html.

As always, if you have no idea what topic maps are, please read Steve Pepper's excellent work: TAO of Topic Maps: Finding the Way in the Age of Infoglut

See also: TopicMaps

New TM4J Release!

Kal Ahmed and Christoph Fröhlich have released version 0.9.8 of the TM4J project from sourceforge (https://sourceforge.net/projects/tm4j/).

If you've played with Ontopia's Omnigator and topic maps, the TM4J project is definitely worth trying. The tmnav visual representation of topic maps is really cool.

Steve Pepper gave me a demo of the "Vizigator" at XML 2004 that will be coming out from Ontopia soon, but the tmnav viewer has already been around for a year or so with similar functionality.

See also: TopicMaps

Lego Star Wars game review/release date

According to http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/12/13/1329205&from=rss and http://ps2.gamespy.com/playstation-2/lego-star-wars/, the Lego Star Wars game will be released in April 2005 for PlayStation2, Xbox, PC and GBA. The game is being developed by Traveller's Tales, and distributed by Eidos.

Reviews with screenshots can be found at:

• http://www.gamespot.com/ps2/action/legostarwars/preview_6114511.html
• http://ps2.gamespy.com/playstation-2/lego-star-wars/571474p1.html
• http://www.pcgameworld.com/story.php/id/4607

I'm glad it's being released on multiple platforms, most importantly the PS2. My kids and I will have a blast playing in cooperative mode!

See also: Lego

dbdoclet 0.62.0 released

Michael Fuchs posted the following announcement to the docbook-apps list:

The DocBook Doclet creates DocBook SGML or XML from Java source documentation or HTML files. It is helpful if you want to print reference handbooks of your API. Normally it is used with the Javadoc tool but it can also be used as a standalone application to convert HTML to DocBook. Additionally it comes with a Swing application to manage documentation projects and to transform the resulting DocBook files to PDF, Postscript, HTML and JavaHelp.

Changes:

• Generation of a XMI file, which can be used with Umbrello.
• Improvement of the strict DocBook style flavour.
• Support for DocBook 4.3 and 4.2
• Sorting of fields and methods.
• New synopsis section for public static methods.
• Many minor fixes and improvements.

dbdoclet can be obtained at http://www.dbdoclet.org

I've used dbdoclet in the past on some documentation projects. It works very well. Check it out!

See also: DocBook

DocBook is safe!

If the article posted at: http://khason.biz/blog/2004/12/why-microsoft-can-blow-off-with-c.html has any truth, I think DocBook is safe:

My wife won't let me grow a beard, so I guess I won't try to invent any programming languages... :-)

See also: DocBook

Happy Wx Hacking!

I posted on this subject several months ago, but it looks like Wired has picked up the story: Weather Data for the Masses

Unfortunately, I haven't had enough time to play with the web service, though I keep trying to find a way to make it a job task to learn web services. :-)

More information on the National Digital Forecast Database XML Web Service is available at: http://www.nws.noaa.gov/forecasts/xml/.

More information on the Digital Weather Markup Language Specification is available at: http://www.nws.noaa.gov/mdl/XML/Design/MDL_XML_Design.doc.

Happy Wx hacking!

See also: Weather

So far behind...

Yikes! I've really dug myself a pretty deep hole for blog updates. With my week out for my grandad's funeral, the week at XML 2004, and the week at Thanksgiving, I've not been around enough to squeeze in my updates.

Here's a list of many DocBook updates I've not been able to announce at web speed:

• New DocBook Stylesheets available! Version 1.67.2 fixes a table bug introduced in the 1.67.1 release. It's available from http://sourceforge.net/projects/docbook/.
• Great DocBook Dinner at XML2004. Norm Walsh, Jirka Kosek, Mark Johnson, Derek Dees, Bob DuCharme, Eduardo Gutentag, (and I think I'm leaving someone out... Gary Cornelius?) met at the Lebanese Taverna for dinner. Great food and a great time had by all!
• DocBook NG release: Gin. Just before the XML 2004 conference, Norm Walsh released the 7th DocBook NG release! Details at: http://norman.walsh.name/2004/11/11/gin.
• Firefox DocBook-Outliner extension. David Holroyd posted a quick extension to Firefox that provides a TOC-like navigation sidebar while viewing DocBook XML documents. Details available at: http://www.badgers-in-foil.co.uk/projects/docbook-css/outliner/
• DocBook DSSSL 1.79 released. Peter Eisentraut posted a number of bug fixes and updated translations as part of this release. Details available at: http://sourceforge.net/projects/docbook/.

I hope to be much more consistent with DocBook updates now that I'm home for a while... I'd will also post some of the more interesting findings from the XML 2004 conference. Stay tuned!

See also: DocBook

Happy Thanksgiving!

Today I give thanks to God for the blessings of good family and friends, a good job to provide for my family, and the freedom and liberty protected in our wonderful United States of America.

Spending the last week in Washington, D.C. provided some great perspective and interesting experiences on why this is truly the greatest nation in the world. I am also very thankful that our democracy works, and that the people have spoken in support of our President George W. Bush. Many disagree, but they are a very vocal minority. The election this year had a record turnout, so I think the results truly indicate the voice of the people.

For a history of thanksgiving, take a look at Bill Petro's articles:

• History of Thanksgiving
• Squanto
• First Thanksgiving Proclamation, 1676
• George Washington's Thanksgiving Proclamation, 1789
• Abraham Lincoln's Thanksgiving Proclamation, 1863

Happy Thanksgiving, and may God continue to bless America!

See also: General

Congratulations: 2 new arrivals!

Congratulations to my best friend, Don and Heather Morgan, proud new parents of Cora Posey Morgan. Born on November 18, 2004 at 2:23 in the afternoon, Cora weighed 6 pounds, 6 1/2 ounces, was 18 1/4 inches long, and already has quite a head of hair! She arrived about a month earlier than expected, too.

Congratulations also goes out to my friend, Zarella Rendon, with the arrival of Ryan James Goatcher. Born November 19, 2004 at 12:21 pm, he weighed 8 lbs. 8 oz. and was 20 inches long! We missed Zarella at the XML 2004 conference, but I'm glad she had the baby at the hospital, instead of during a conference session!

See also: General

XML as Artwork

As Frank Lloyd Wright said,

"Simplicity and repose are the qualities that measure the true value of any work of art"

Hopefully my blog contains both. I'm exhibiting my blog design as an artwork piece at the XML 2004 conference in Washington, D.C. next week!

Samples from last year can be viewed at: http://www.xmlconference.org/xmlusa/2003/artworkpics.asp

And for my caption card:

<TITLE>Scotty's Engineering Log</TITLE>
<ARTIST>Scott C. Hudson</ARTIST>
<YEAR_CREATED>2004</YEAR_CREATED>
<COMMENTS>The blog covers a variety of topics, including: XML, Music,Weather/Storm Chasing, Sun System Handbook,DocBook, Astronomy/Space Program, Science Fiction, Legos and TopicMaps. Each topic entry is displayed as if wrapped in XML tags, using CSS styling.This piece is frequently updated as new entries are posted. Visit today at http://blogs.sun.com/shudson310</COMMENTS>

See also: XML

Frank Edwin Mason

It's been a week since I lost my "Papa", Frank Edwin Mason. He fought cancer for three years, and passed away Thursday, October 28, 2004 during emergency heart surgery. He was the last of my grandparents, and the one I was closest to. I miss him terribly.

He served our country in the U.S. Navy during World War II, and later inherited and ran the Mason Candy Company in Trinidad, Colorado.

More of his history, in his own words, can be read at: http://www.trinidadco.com/101Families/Families/MasonFrank.asp.
He also wrote histories of my great grandfather Abe at: http://www.trinidadco.com/101Families/Families/MasonAbraham.asp and my great, great grandfather, George, at: http://www.trinidadco.com/101Families/Families/MasonGeorge.asp.

I'll be posting more of his experiences in future posts. He always looked to help and encourage others. He touched the lives of many people, and will truly be missed.

See also: General