Dorkish Deliberations

I just attended a webinar given by Kurt Cagle on the XRX architecture.  (That's Xquery, REST, Xforms) .  I am all a-quiver with geekish excitement.  Not only was it a good presentation, but the stuff is way cool. Oddly, the thing I like best about it is that Mr. Cagle, the main editor of the XML.com website and a well respected name in the industry, used D&D characters as the records for his demo, and everyone in the audience knew exactly  what he was talking about.  There were big names in the xml circles in attendence and they all had role played, especially D&D. This validates my mis-spent youth and current not-so-secret past time.   See cool kids!?!  Successful people can roleplay!  HA!  Any second now, the funk music will play and the other Tri-Lambs will come in and make the Alpha Betas pay.  Eat that AlBundyNeighbor guy that I never remember the name of!!!

I had to take a break from my amazing project  to feed my little girl.  I have four beautiful girls and a wife (also beautiful). Because my wife would kill me if I put anything up on the web that could actually identify "her" children, let me introduce my baby daughter, who I shall call "Albert".  Albert is a cute little button.  She is 57 years old. Well, Albert was hungry, so I had to feed her, since my wife was away.  I figured I'd give her some cereal. First off, that stuff is nasty. I mixed formula with it until it was the correct consistancy ( wet spackling ).  I got her set up in her little seat and started to feed her. Now, my little Albert is a little .... well dopey.  She's a baby and doesn't understand that she can do more than one thing at a time.  For example, it's sort of funny to watch her open her mouth, wait, close her mouth, and then jam her thumb at her face.  The look is classic, trust me. So imagine my suprise when the little pri...

I have the DITA-OT downloaded onto my machine, which contains a version of the DITA schemas and DTDs.   First, I downloaded DITA OT 1.4.2.1 from sourceforge and selected the file called DITA-OT1.4.2.1_full_easy_install_bin.zip.  I unzipped it to a project home directory on my machine. Looking in the newly created directory "DITA-OT1.4.2.1", I notice two licences, the Common Public License - v 1.0  and the Apache License - Version 2.0 .  Both are pretty permissive, and allow me to do more or less what I want.  I am not redistributing the code, or packaging it in any way, but if I did, I'd have to also include copies of the licences with the source.  Since I'm just using, there doesn't seem to be any conflict with what I want to do.  I do so love free stuff. The only problem is it doesn't work right away.   I tried to build the samples, but the DOTA-OT requires a Java Archive (.jar) called tools.jar and complains bitterly because I don't have it.  It take...

I was considering a new project at work, but couldn' t seem to get funding, so I'll try it at home, and perhaps blog about it (in addition to my rants).   It strikes me that creating XML documentation in a topic based architecture is almost exactly like a software development project:  You have source files that you need to control (XML source instead of code source), you have binaries to link in (images instead of libraries), and you must run the source through a process (stylesheet instead of compiler) to create your executable file(s).  In this case, it's a document or web instead of an actual program file.  Since I'm not creating something for work, I'll make something I like better.  Something for one of my geekier hobbies...  Yes, I'm one of those freaky Dungeons and Dragons players.  Since I'm running a campaign, maybe I'll try to create a world encyclopedia or adventure notes using this project. So, let's start at the beginning.  Source.   I...