Merry Christmas 2007

Dear Family and Friends,

This year we're trying something a little different. We're sending out Christmas Cards without the traditional letter and directing people here to do our part in "being green".

We've had a great year! Here's an update from each of the family members:

Dawn - I'm still busy with homeschooling the kids, which I enjoy more and more as the kids get older and we start talking and learning about really interesting things like the science of creation or the effect of Christianity in Rome or the foundations and beliefs of the United States. It's great fun! This year was extra chaotic as I directed our church's summer VBS program, hosted my Grandma's 80th Birthday and am currently co-directing the Christmas play. The word 'No' is still a concept beyond me. Scott and I did manage to spend some quality time in NYC for our 11th anniversary where my wonderful husband took me to "Mary Poppins" and "The Lion King" on Broadway. I loved every second of it and then and there determined to bring the kids to "The Little Mermaid" which was being held in Denver for pre-Broadway shows in August. We had a magical time. Oh, and we went back to Disneyland with our adopted family Mo and Alex Gulas in September. I know, it's an addiction but one not likely to end any time soon. Overall, God is good everyday and has blessed us with a fabulous year!

Scott - I'm now in my 3rd year as a consultant, and I've spoken at 3 conferences and have a technical book out with an interested publisher! I've been fortunate to only work with one major client this year, and that work has taken me to New York City, San Francisco and Oxford, England! Oxford was a particular treat, since I took a little extra time (on Mother's Day nonetheless, which Dawn continues to point out...) to go on the C.S. Lewis tour and experience this incredible city! Dawn and I have been able to travel quite a bit together this year, including New York City, San Diego (twice), and our favorite: Disneyland! It was great to spend the day with Brandon and getting to meet Carina! We also got to see the Red Bull Air Races in San Diego on that trip (very cool!). I was also blessed to take Collin to a Broncos game, and Connor to Game 3 of the World Series! Caileigh and I have a special engagement in December, too. This year, I also took the MSF safety course and now have my motorcycle endorsement, and am saving patiently for a good commuter bike. Life continues to be busy, but fun, and blessed with good family (including a new nephew, Garrin!) and friends.

Connor - I am 9 years old and in 5th grade, and learning Spanish, Latin and started a new math program from Singapore (Singapore Math). In June I went to a Bible camp by myself for the first time, called Maranatha. I went with my best friend, Austin. I played basketball last January, and I learned about a new programming language called Scratch! I continue to learn piano and compose my own songs, too! I really liked going on California Screamin' at Disneyland and getting soaked at Sea World. I got to meet Dusty Baker at the World Series, which was AWESOME!

Caileigh - I am 6 years old and in 2nd grade. I have a really fun math and I like to do art the most. I had swim lessons and went to Soccer Camp this summer, which I really loved. The new Nemo ride at Disneyland was really fun. I liked the roller coasters too. I also went to Sea World and saw the dolphins which I really liked. I got to talk to a dolphin trainer, too. I had a great time seeing Little Mermaid before it went to Broadway! I really studied hard and got a really big part in the Christmas Play; the character's name is Holly. Merry Christmas!

Collin - I am 6 years old and in 2nd grade. This year I went to Disneyland and my favorite was getting Miss Mo on Tower of Terror, since I had to go on Pirates (I was scared and didn't like it)! I went to Soccer Camp with coach Poncho and I loved it. I've been in soccer for a long time. I also went to Grammy's house with my favorite cousin, Jadin. I also went to the Children's Museum with my friends Carly and DiDi. I loved going to a Broadway show, too. It was very special and I didn't have to wear a tuxedo! I went to the Broncos game and had Dippin Dots (yum)!

We hope you enjoy this special time of year as we celebrate the birth of God's son! Merry Christmas!

DITA Learning Content accepted for DITA 1.2

More big news in the standards world today! The DITA 1.2 feature proposal #12058, "Design and language specification for DITA learning and training content," submitted by the DITA Learning and Training Content sub-committee was approved at today's DITA TC meeting.

Congratulations to John Hunt and all the members of the DITA Learning Content SC! The specification and sample plugins are all publicly available. Next steps for us is to work on our Best Practices for Implementation and create some sample processing for the DITA OT. This effort will continue into the first quarter of 2008.

DocBook v5.0 now an official Committee Draft!

I was on the road last week and didn't have a chance to post the GREAT news!

At the DocBook TC meeting on November 7, 2007, DocBook V5.0 was approved as a Committee Draft! This draft was a result of several years of hard design work, especially by Norm Walsh, who created 9 Beta Releases and 7 Candidate Releases since October of 2005.

The most exciting feature, IMO, that this standard is based on RelaxNG rather than DTD. DTD and XSD are still supported/provided, but the canonical format is now RelaxNG (RNC). Vendors, start your engines and add support for RelaxNG validation! Actually, several vendors are already "ahead of the game" with RelaxNG support: oXygen XML Editor, XML Mind XXE, Editix, Emacs nXML, Cladonia Exchanger XML Editor. Conspicuously missing: PTC Arbortext Editor and XMetal. [NUDGE: C'mon big guys!]

The other exciting result of DocBook v5 and RelaxNG, is that it makes customization layers EXTREMELY easy to manage. The DocBook Subcommittee for Publishers proposed a new modularization of the RNC schemas for DocBook v5 to create Core DocBook and additional schema modules, which have now been incorporated into the v5 source. As a result, we've also been able to produce an initial draft of an official DocBook Publishers customization very easily!

This is great news for the entire DocBook TC and community!

Spacecraft Spotting

Thanks to http://www.heavens-above.com/, I was able to figure out when to wake up this morning to see BOTH the International Space Station and the STS-120 Space Shuttle Discovery!

I wish I had a digital camera or video camera with me, because it was really very cool! They passed right over Colorado moving from Southwest to Northeast. The whole thing was over in about 5 minutes, so I really didn't want to run in and wake up the whole house trying to find my equipment.

I should prepare a little better next time. Still, it was a really cool site to see!

I'm an Uncle, again!

Congratulations to my sister, Heather, and my brother-in-law JC on the birth of their 3rd! Baby boy, Garrin, was born around 2:30pm. His name means "Guardian".

Glad everything went well, and look forward to meeting my new nephew soon!

13949712720901ForOSX

What does the title of this post mean? APPLE, GIVE US JAVA 6 IN LEOPARD OS X!

For more details, see:

• http://weblogs.goshaky.com/weblogs/lars/entry/apple_give_us_java_6
• http://blogs.sun.com/bblfish/entry/vote_for_java6_on_leopard
• http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2007/10/30/No-Leopard

DITA Learning Content specialization open for review!

The OASIS DITA Learning and Training Content Specialization Subcommittee is proud to announce the availability of our specification for DITA Learning Content for public review.

The design and language specification for the DITA learning and training content is available here, and the DITA Open Toolkit plugin with working DTD, XSD, DITA content samples, and documentation is available here.

The goal of the subcommittee is to develop a general top-level design for structured, intent-based authoring of learning content with good learning architecture, following DITA principles and best practices.

This specification was formally submitted to the full OASIS DITA Technical Committee today, after we completed the designs, samples, and language specifications for the learning topic types, the learning map domain, the learning interaction domain, and IEEE LOM learning metadata. The intention is to have this specification approved by the TC for inclusion in DITA 1.2, though most of this work is built on the existing DITA 1.1 infrastructure.

Please send any review comments via the public comment facility.

Hometown Heroes and the World Series

I just wanted to provide an update to the World Series ticket fiasco and issue a few public Thank Yous. As you may have read in my previous post, the ticket system hung when I was about to submit my credit card info to complete the purchase. This is not a unique situation, and affected hundreds of other native Colorado Rockies fans. I just wanted to take my son to the World Series - a once in a lifetime opportunity, since it was the Rockies FIRST appearance in the World Series ever!

I sent emails to the Rockies ticket sales, VP Jay Alves, and several local Denver TV stations. I also mentioned my quandary to a guy in my office. He happened to get through with tickets and was willing to sell me 2 tickets AT FACE VALUE, because as he said, "baseball is about taking your kids to the ballpark". Jon didn't have to sell me any tickets at all, and he could have scalped them (like the jerks on StubHub) for up to $2,000 each! Jon is truly a Hometown Hero in my eyes!

I also need to throw out kudos to the Colorado Rockies organization, as they did call me back on Friday morning and wanted to make sure I was able to take my son to the game. I turned down the offer of additional tickets, since Jon was kind enough to sell them to me.

Yes, I could have gotten more tickets myself, but I wanted to give the same opportunity I had to others that might have been in my situation. Hopefully they were able to attend the game, and not get greedy and scalp the tickets themselves.

Even though the Rockies didn't win any games in the Series, it was still an awesome opportunity and a lot of fun. Connor even got to meet baseball legend, Dusty Baker!

More pics are here: http://picasaweb.google.com/shudson310/WorldSeries

Major League Fiasco!

Unbelievable. The Rocks and the Sox are going to be playing in Denver!

I was one of the frustrated fans to experience the Monday ticket fiasco (supposedly a Denial of Service attack), to then run into the SAME problem on Tuesday! I actually got in about 12:15, selected 2 tickets for my son and I, and then have the site crash when I went to register and put in my credit card info! My son and I should be sitting in Game 4, Section 401, Row 6, Seats 1-2.

I took a print screen of the page just in case, and am still hoping the Rockies will honor the transaction. Given how this whole mess has gone, I'm not expecting anything. This is really disappointing, and a shame that it makes the Rockies look bad, when we should be supporting the team and the fans!

I wrote to the Rockies, the VP Jay Alves and Call7forHelp. Don't know if they can do anything about my plight. Keep those fingers crossed...

At least I got to see Spamalot when it was in town. Not all ticket experiences are bad in Denver.

GO ROCKIES! Beat those Beantown Baddies!

Got R done!

Way to go Rockies! The Colorado Rockies have now won the last 21 of 22 games, and swept BOTH the Phillies and the Diamondbacks! Next stop, World Series!

The Rockies have come a long way since I saw them lose to the KC Royals earlier this season. Tulo should get Rookie of the Year for sure. Big kudos to the entire team, though!

There are enough divas in baseball, so it has been very refreshing to see just how much this group of players truly focus on the TEAM. I also appreciate their strong faith.

It was a pain that TBS took all the broadcast rights for the playoffs. I think that's bad for baseball -- it's hard enough to get the country interested in watching, and even more so if you take it away from the local stations! Thankfully Fox has the rights for the World Series. I like listening on 850 KOA, but I'd sure like to be able to watch the Series.

I haven't seen crowds this big since the games I saw back at old Mile High stadium when the Rocks were first getting started. I have many sets of inaugural baseball cards, but nothing from this season. Might have to remedy that...

Go Rockies!

Doc Standards Interoperability Framework whitepaper now available!

Jim Earley and I have presented about the Doc Standards Interoperability Framework at XML 2006, DITA West 2007, Open Publish 2007, OASIS Symposium 2007 and DITA West 2007.

The whitepaper is now available at:
http://www.flatironssolutions.com/downloads/Interoperability_Framework.pdf.
This whitepaper contains greater detail on the business case for interoperability, as well as specifics on the framework. If you are interested in exchanging content between DocBook, DITA, ODF and/or other document standards, you should definitely check it out!

We are still working on the charter for the proposed OASIS Doc Standards Interoperability TC. Hopefully we can get that finished soon to form the TC before year-end.

Motorcycle safety: Star Wars style!

One of the key aspects of motorcycle safety is VISIBILITY. If you've been reading my blog, you know I recently completed the Basic Rider Course (certified by the Motorcycle Safety Foundation) from Thunder Mountain Harley in Loveland, CO. After taking this course, I have a keen understanding of the need for safe riding skills and proper riding attire.

After I got my motorcycle endorsement on my license, I bought a Scorpion EXO400 full-face helmet so I could begin test riding bikes and figure out which bike to buy. I wanted to make sure I would be visible to other motorists, but also wanted to demonstrate my affinity for Star Wars!

Above is the result. Compared to Boba Fett's helmet, I think I'll be much more visible! For Fett, visibility would be bad, but for a motorcyclist, visibility is paramount.

First, I picked out a pattern thanks to the Boba Fett Fan Club. Next, I found some high reflectivity tape (though a 6x6 sheet would have been easier). I lined up the tape on the back of a printout of the logo, and then used an Exacto knife to trace the paper pattern onto the tape. I carefully cut the design out with scissors and laid out the pieces.

I placed the pattern on my helmet first, to make sure it fit (should probably have done this first!), and then carefully placed the tape on the helmet, lining up each piece to minimize error.

This just goes to show, you can still make a visible statement while being safe! You don't have to just put on boring squares of tape to be visible. Pick out a pattern and make a statement! I also chose the helmet, because it will be the highest location for motorist headlights to see. Because of the large (and skull-like) pattern, I think I can guarantee that I'll be noticed!

For more information on reflective tape and safety through visibility, see:

• http://www.streetglo.net/reflective.tape/
• http://www.streetglo.net/boat-names.html
• http://www.streetglo.net/bicycle-reflective-decals-stickers.html
• http://www.streetglo.net/reflective.motorcycle.frame.kit.html
• http://www.streetglo.net/streetglo_files/helmet.flame.decal.htm
• http://www.streetglo.net/

A powerful ally, this Padawan...

Impressive. Most impressive.

Connor faced Darth Maul in The Trials and successfully completed his training at the Jedi Training Academy!

Red Bull Air Race in San Diego!

We happened to be on vacation in California the week of the Red Bull Air Race in San Diego. Thankfully, our itinerary already included 2 days in San Diego, and the entire family was interested in seeing the race instead of going to the Wild Animal Park.

We even got to see it for free! You could buy tickets to watch it from the Embarcadero, but we went to Seaport Village and found a spot near a fountain where we could see the entire course! It was absolutely incredible. These guys fly at 300+ MPH and have to do very tight maneuvering in a timed course.

We could only see the Pre-Qualifying runs, since we had to start driving back the next day, but it was one of the best, cheapest events of our vacation!

UPDATE: I've made a public album of race pics here.

Ready to RIDE!

I have never ridden a motorcycle before this weekend, but thanks to high gas prices and a gas-guzzling V8 Dodge Dakota, I was highly motivated and even got the nod from my wife to go ahead!

This weekend I took the Basic Rider Course (certified by the Motorcycle Safety Foundation) from Thunder Mountain Harley in Loveland, CO.

It was an AWESOME experience! The instructors, Jeff, Tom and Betty were outstanding. I feel quite prepared for riding a motorcycle safely and responsibly. Here are a few pics:

We rode Buell Blast cycles, and I was the only one in my class to score 100% on the written exam! I did get docked 5 points for going too slow negotiating a curve during the riding evaluation, though. In all, a complete success and I can get my motorcycle endorsement on my drivers license!

Next on the agenda: save up for a bike!

UPDATE: Got my license today, so now I just need gear and that bike!

David Megginson's cool new Airport website

David blogged about an issue with Google maps and their use of a mercator projection (a problem if you want to use Google maps in aviation). His post, which was very interesting, also pointed me to a new website he has created: http://www.ourairports.com/.

This is a very cool website for many reasons:

• You can plot where you have been in the world (via aircraft) and get a KML file of it quickly and easily
• You can get search on any airport and get aviation info, accident history, photos and many other facts!
• You can read comments from other members who have visited these airports

Thanks for creating such a useful service/site, David! I plan to use it for all of my trip planning and tracking! Also, if you are interested, you can see all the airports I've been to here:
http://www.ourairports.com/members/shudson310/

Legacy

Legacy, originally uploaded by shudson310.

I wanted to be able to create a calendar of all my Star Wars motivators, and had 11 completed. I needed one more, and realized I had not created any entries for my favorite character, Jango Fett. Although this is the most sad part of the film for me, I thought this was a very poignant statement and tribute. It's also a little humorous, in that what Jango really left behind was his head...

The question is still quite valid: What will you leave behind?

Now I'm Lijit!

Saw an interesting news item from Bloglines that referred to wanderingstan and Lijit. I went to high school with Stan, but had sort of been out of touch with him. Looks like when he wasn't wandering, he kept pretty busy!

I checked out the company he founded, Lijit, and it's a very cool web service! Check it out and you can be Lijit, too!

Plaxo now uses OpenID

The folks at Plaxo (http://www.plaxo.com) have done a really nice job with their 3.0 beta. I like the new calendar sync features, and the ability to sync across multiple services (Yahoo, Outlook, Gmail, etc.)

I also like the fact that they are now using OpenID! Life is starting to get easier, now that all of these cool services are coming together!

Flatirons Solutions presenting at DITA East

Flatirons Solutions will be presenting at the DITA East conference on October 5-6.

Publishing Technical Documentation with Bookmap and DITA 1.1
An overview of the new Bookmap specialization standardized as part of the OASIS DITA 1.1 release. Details about what is contained in the Bookmap DTD, and ways to think about structuring your data for maximum benefit when producing “printed” (PDF) format technical documentation, as well as on-line format documents. Features examples of how to produce high quality printed representations using Arbortext Publishing Engine.

Tying a Bow on It: A Case Study of a Successful Conversion to a CMS Based DITA Implementation
A case study of the challenges, methodologies, and successful techniques used by a project that was designed to convert the existing documents of an engineering technical publishing group from Framemaker into DITA using the soon to be finalized Bookmap standard, and store them in a CMS repository designed for content reuse. The end to end implementation included migration of the documents into a Documentum CMS, use of Arbortext Editor and Publishing Engine and the DITA-OT to modify and render the content back into its current PDF and JavaHelp “published” form, and packaging the technical content as DITA XML files for exchange with other vendors.

Doc Standards Interoperability Framework
Interoperability is critical when sharing information with partners, OEMs or even groups within the same company. It is especially critical if the parties involved are using different content standards. The presentation will describe an approach to defining a Doc Standards Interoperability Framework, including: current support for interoperability, mappings between DocBook, DITA and ODF, preserving migrated semantics, base classes and structure of the interchange format, stylesheet transforms, and an example of interoperable content.

Come check it out!