Biography
Blog
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August 02 2009
I'll be heading to Montréal for Balisage: The Markup Conference in a little over a week. As usual it will feature some of the most traveled folks in XML and related technologies. read moreData chef: SPSS Tripe Consommé
May 01 2009
The data chef discusses translation of data from SPSS format, for those who don't have a licensed copy at hand. read moreCharacter-length restrictions, RPC, and choosing FriendFeed over Twitter
April 19 2009
Database field-length silliness has haunted me throughout my career as an data/information architect, and I've never liked it. "VARCHAR(255)? What? Because in the lifetime of that data, which by the way you'd better be planning to exceed the lifetime of this miserable application, you're never going to need more than… read moreA RESTful wrapper for MoinMoin
February 04 2009
I've always loved the MoinMoin wiki, and lately I've been using it for more and more, at work and at home. I've pined for a REST wrapper for a while, and I finally bit the bullet and wrote one, as part of the open-source Akara project, which among other things… read moreRecovering text areas from Firefox session information
January 13 2009
A small Python utility to extract saved text area content from Firefox session files. read moreNovember 13 2008
Spring Python is an offshoot of the Java-based Spring Framework and Spring Security for Python. Version 0.8.0 is out and, and it builds on my favorite FLOSS project, Amara. read moreDocument-driven data architecture in practice
April 21 2008
I've been working at Sun since 2001 as close architectural consultant on various pioneering uses of XML, SOA and Semantic technologies in a couple of divisions, first through Fourthought and now through Zepheira. Sun has been the practical landing pad... read moreMarch 18 2008
The 4Suite.org projects are moving from CVS to Mercurial. I'm still quite happy with Mercurial having used it for several newer projects. One last test I anted was to convert the bigger projects from CVS to see how smooth the transition might... read moreOctober 12 2007
I finally created a FOAF file for myself. I exported my LinkedIn contacts (that link should work for you if you've recently logged into LinkedIn) to "vCard (.VCF file)". I then imported the vCard into FOAFgen. Result is here. I... read moreOctober 07 2007
So my paper was accepted at XML 2007. I look forward to seeing some of you folks there. The schedule looks interesting not just because I see topics that I enjoy, and some about which I want to learn, but... read moreSeptember 11 2007
I was working with some XUL that was eventually to be part of a Firefox extension, but at the time loading the XUL directly into Firefox. Didn’t take long until I stumbled into the infamous “Error: uncaught exception: Permission denied to create wrapper for object of class UnnamedClass”. Time to… read moreWhat's the attraction to URLs in content?
September 04 2007
Rarely do I review XML design without seeing something like: <spam> <link>http://example.com</link> </spam> Putting URLs in element content seems to come naturally to people, regardless of the age-old convention from HTML: <p> <a href="http://example.com"/> </p> I've always disliked this, as... read moreDipping my toes into Mercurial, on Mac
August 24 2007
I’m a long-time CVS head, and I recognize CVS is quite showing is age, but I’ve never had much of a taste for the pundit’s heir apparent Subversion. I could go on about why, but I think it all boils down to SVN’s not fitting my head. I’ve been thinking… read moreFinally is all starting to look like plumbing in XML
August 22 2007
I've heard it 1000 times since '97. "XML, it's just plumbing". Maybe, but it hasn't really felt that way in past years. Too much was still unsettled, and and there were too many people who were not interested in letting... read moreMacBookPro bug: reboot on closing the lid
August 17 2007
One reason I'm looking forward to Tiger is that unfortunately I'm a victim of the bug where my MacBook Pro 17" occasionally reboots when I close the lid. Most of the time things are OK, but once a month or... read moreRecent Posts | All Posts
