Diary of a lazy boy

Related link: http://www.xmlbelux.be/events/index.html

May is quite eventful for me.

At the beginning of the month, I released another VST virtual synthesizer as shareware. CS-80R implements the architecture Yamaha used in the 70s, notably in the CS-80 (as used by Garth Hudson). I am pretty happy with it. Early user response was pretty good, and I updated with some extra features (rewritten ring modulator, extra "blat" and pitch-dependent "blip", not to get technical.)

I used it to make a couple of remixes for Nick Carr's Non-Zero records. I am working on a review of Adobe Audition which the OReilly Digital Media site may pick up. I like Audition, but it has taken months of use to figure out how to make the dynamics processor not crappy: Audition's meters are too high compared to analog tape, so you have to keep levels down by about 6 to 24 db to get the processor to work well. Nice to be actually playing again!

Much of the month has been spent adding custom menus to a military Adobe FrameMaker application: SGML of course. And also supervising our new releases. Making ISO Greek4 work with non-Unicode applications makes me love Unicode more.

Some nice guys from one of the largest companies came over and we may do something with Schematron: spent a little time organizing systems tests at a lab later this month. We need to have transaction rate tests for Schematron for validating messages. At the other end of the spectrum, we had a request for validating 52 Gig documents (yes, Gig, and they do one each day): this would be job for Schematron with STX (streaming transformations for XML) as its query language binding.

Today my company Topologi released new versions of all its utilities and some new products: about ten new distros. The low-end product line is starting to look pretty solid now. We are saving the big gun, our collaborative schema authoring and documentation tool, for Amsterdam.

Next week I am on a working holiday in Belgium. While in Belgium I'll be backpacking in Brugge, and hopefully having a totally non-electronic birthday. My present to myself is the wonderful CD "The Ultimate Staple Singers" which has material from all their career: I would have preferred more "Great Day" period tracks, but it includes "You gonna make me cry" and "I wish I had answered" so I have no complaints.<smiley>

In Louvain in Belgium I am giving two day-long seminars in Belgium, sponsored by Paul Hermanns and the kind people at BeLux XML users group: one on "Expressing Business and Publishing Rules in Schematron" and one "XML Quality Assurance". Probably we will offer the same courses back in Australia.

Then to Amsterdam for a week. There is an ISO meeting at the start of the week, probably talking about schema pipelines which I am not passionate about. The Schematron draft has about three months to go now before it is due to become an ISO standard, but that requires no particular effort from anyone (except for Ken Holman and Martin Bryan who have the administrative burden) so I need to stop being lazy and finally get my ISO Schematron implementation out: it has been sitting on the shelf. It compatible with the current framework implementation.

I'll be giving a paper at XML 2005 on our TreeWorld browser and trying to flog some products. I believe I am chairing the session that Murata Makoto san has a paper: he really is an admirable champion for awareness of Japanese activity.

Over a blood test (I always get the wonderful butterfly needle) to see whether I was infected with something horrible by a madman last month (apparantly not, thank God), my sweet doctor recommended an Indonesian restaurant in Amsterdam, Kantjil & de Tigre: not pricy and excellent food. Sounds great. I am having a lot of Indonesian recently: so far from Western ideals of tenderness; fat Rick says he always find Rendang made by Malaysians richer and more addictive than Rendang made by Indonesians, wonderful enough as that is...thin Rick says "No don't dwell on it!". Anyway, everyone concerned about potential HIV infection should know about PEP. I was horrified to discover that Americans pay over US$600 for drugs that cost patients US$40 here in Australia. Making prevention too expensive for poor people is a puzzling way to stop an epidemic. Insane or evil, actually.

Then back home at the beginning of June. If you are interested in any of the seminars or the paper, or just want to chat to me about anything, please come to one of the events or collar me over coffee or beer (or waffles and herring?)