The short-form week of 7–13 Jun 2010

14 Jun 2010; last modified 13 Mar 2011

The week in review, 140 characters at a time. This week, 41 messages in 38 conversations. (With 1 favorite.)

This document was created automatically from my archive of my Twitter stream. Due to limitations in the Twitter API and occasional glitches in my archiving system, it may not be 100% complete.

In a conversation that started on Monday at 08:33am

search and reuse DITA content through Office http://ditalabs.com/ & where can i find DocBooklabs? :)—@peteaven
@peteaven DocBook V5.1, out as soon as I can scrape together the time, will include lots of topic-oriented authoring goodness.—@ndw

In a conversation that started on Monday at 08:48am

Utterly delighted with my epub reader built on #marklogic server and my W3C QT specification-to-epub converter.—@ndw
@ndw can ordinary mortals see this uber-epub reader in action?—@jirkakosek
@jirkakosek I hope to make it run on the free Community Edition of #MarkLogic server after the 4.2 release. (It uses XSLT so needs 4.2.)—@ndw
@ndw oh, you sly dog, you! Very cool!—@JeanKaplansky

In a conversation that started on Monday at 10:30am

Does anyone seriously believe the BP oil spill will be cleaned up by Autumn?—@shelleypowers
@shelleypowers Autumn of 2020, maybe.—@ndw
@ndw I hope not, but I don't think that's outside the ream of possibility.—@shelleypowers

In a conversation that started on Monday at 03:49pm

My W3C spec to epub converter has proven to be way more robust than I imagined. #XProc FTW!—@ndw
@ndw Is that available generally? Would like to see how that does giving me W3C specs on my iPad?—@kendall
@kendall I'll write up an essay about it and publish the one's I've converted so far. I can publish pipe too, but has custom steps.—@ndw
@ndw W3C shld just pub these on the site, IMO.—@kendall
@kendall Sure. And assuming I haven't utterly botched something, I'm happy to have that happen.—@ndw
@ndw can you point me to any tips on using docbook xsl-ns dbtoepub stuff? Getting odd formatting for monospaced fonts.—@bphogan

In a conversation that started on Monday at 05:59pm

Take first 3 space-separated words in 30 random para in a big corpus. Do the same thing for the para before and after. Any dupes, @ndw?—@abdelazer
@abdelazer Uhhhh. Huh?—@ndw
@ndw if I still had a big corpus in Marklogic... The goal is to test a uniquess algo. How many intial words from 3 adjacent paras for uniq—@abdelazer
@abdelazer Only for 3 *adjacent* paras? What about paras with less than 3 words?—@ndw
@ndw and I thought it might be a fun way for you to show off :-)—@abdelazer

Monday at 06:03pm

RT @ndw My #W3C spec to #epub converter has proven to be way more robust than I imagined. #XProc FTW!—@jschneider

Tuesday at 03:07am

Our hacker friend Tim couldn't sleep in a motel with AC that kept turning off and on.He downloaded the service manual and reprogrammed it.—@MrTeller

In a conversation that started on Tuesday at 09:21am

Trying to set up Fedora after using Ubuntu is painful. I'll take Ubutu's pragmatism over Fedora's fundamentalism any day. #opensource—@jpcs
@jpcs I gave up. Actually, I had a network card that Ubuntu recognized and Fedora didn't. Ubuntu works just fine for the server.—@ndw

Tuesday at 09:54am

No, Apple. If updating Safari means I have to reboot then you can keep your damn update.—@ndw

Tuesday at 10:08am

@ndw i agree. What's up with needing to reboot to upgrade your browser?—@gabrielsaldana

Tuesday at 11:15am

My W3C spec to epub converter has proven to be way more robust than I imagined. #XProc FTW! (via @ndw)—@xmluser

In a conversation that started on Tuesday at 05:34pm

A selection W3C XML specs (and a couple of OASIS ones) in ePUB. http://norman.walsh.name/2010/06/07/epub—@ndw
@ndw Are you taking requests for other W3C specs to epub'ify? ;>—@kendall
@kendall Not exactly, but it can't hurt to ask.—@ndw
@ndw Looking forward to an ePUB version of the XForms 1.1 spec ;)—@ebruchez
@ebruchez You got it.—@ndw
@ndw Cool! BTW any ePUB viewer you recommend on the Mac?—@ebruchez
@ebruchez No. I wrote my own on top of MarkLogic Server because I couldn't find any that seemed halfway decent. Which seems odd to me.—@ndw
@ndw Just tried a few of the ePUBs in my N900. Very useful and extremely cool!—@sgmlguru
@ndw And where are my manners? I forgot to say thanks! :)—@sgmlguru

Tuesday at 05:42pm

RT @ndw A selection W3C XML specs (and a couple of OASIS ones) in ePUB. http://norman.walsh.name/2010/06/07/epub http://bit.ly/brd4tq—@abcoates

In a conversation that started on Tuesday at 05:44pm

Note to self: really should track the ePUB working group more closely and help out if I can.—@ndw
@ndw note to you and me both...—@grechaw
@grechaw your rep is @adamwitwer please prepare him with your comments—@abdelazer
@ndw can you be in new york next tues and wed?—@andrewsavikas
@andrewsavikas Probably not both days, but perhaps one of them. What's in NY next Tue and Wed?—@ndw
@ndw EPUB 2.1 Working Group Face to Face kicks of our work—@abdelazer
@ndw start of latest ePub working group. mark logic is IDPF member, right? anyhow, will ping chair and get back to you today—@andrewsavikas

Tuesday at 06:10pm

Classic structured info win RT @ndw: A selection W3C XML specs (and couple of OASIS ones) in ePUB. http://norman.walsh.name/2010/06/07/epub—@jsuttor

In a conversation that started on Tuesday at 06:14pm

You + @liza = superhero markup team! RT @ndw: Note to self: really should track the ePUB working group more closely and help out if I can.—@jsuttor
@jsuttor @ndw I think that's the nicest thing anyone's ever said to me.—@liza

Tuesday at 06:40pm

Check out the screenshots RT @ndw: A selection W3C XML specs (and a couple of OASIS ones) in ePUB. http://norman.walsh.name/2010/06/07/epub—@fgeorges

Tuesday at 10:20pm

RT @ndw A selection W3C XML specs (and a couple of OASIS ones) in ePUB. http://norman.walsh.name/2010/06/07/epub—@peteaven

In a conversation that started on Wednesday at 01:47am

Gonna fire up my new Lightroom 3 and import/beautify some pix. Mmmm—@timbray
@timbray Oooh! Hey! When'd that come out of beta? #lightroom3—@ndw

In a conversation that started on Wednesday at 06:41am

More specs and spec2epub tools, http://norman.walsh.name/—@ndw
@ndw thanks for posting. Would you like write access to the epub-tools project on Google Code so they're publicly hosted?—@abdelazer
@abdelazer Sure, thanks. And since .epub files don't seem to be plain vanilla .zip files, what's the best tool to build them with?—@ndw
@ndw They are ZIP files, but are finicky about that first record. We use Python 2.6 zipfile and just shell out to 'zip' http://bit.ly/aichvE—@abdelazer
@ndw @abdelazer I addressed some of the finickiness of epub as zip files and how I dealt with it at http://bit.ly/1FSxCN—@bobdc
@bobdc just the recipe I was looking for, thanks!—@ndw

In a conversation that started on Wednesday at 07:56am

I wish the #DSDL specs were available in HTML.—@ndw
@ndw it is indeed ridiculous that JTC 1 standards are only available electronically as PDF #jtc1 #sc34 #reform—@al3xbrown

Wednesday at 08:14am

RT @ndw More specs and spec2epub tools, http://norman.walsh.name/—@peteaven

In a conversation that started on Wednesday at 12:35pm

Nice trick using Lynx (remember that) to extract text from web page. @hmason in Making Data Work online conference—@mikeloukides
@mikeloukides I think you'll find that 'elinks' does a more capable job, but the technique is definitely sound. So is using Readability.—@ndw

In a conversation that started on Wednesday at 03:52pm

If Time Machine fails, is a more technical description of what went wrong logged anywhere? "Try again later, or repair disk" is not useful.—@ndw
@ndw I don't know, have you looked in the Console to see if it writes anything there?—@robinberjon
@robinberjon Nothing useful on the console. :-(—@ndw

Wednesday at 06:20pm

My epub conversions are a little broken around the edges, struggling to fix some hairy little relative URI issues.—@ndw

In a conversation that started on Thursday at 12:05am

@ndw I had some time to waste, did covers for your XML conversion: http://bit.ly/bJ9yat all of them zipped http://bit.ly/dri4Vl—@projeturbain
@projeturbain That's exceedingly cool. Did you do them all by hand, or do you have a script that does it?—@ndw
@ndw done by hand right now in ps, i've read it can be done in XHTML, might be look into that way of doing them—@projeturbain

In a conversation that started on Thursday at 07:12am

Everytime I leave a mode attribute off a template, I think we should have done modes with a mode grouping element.—@ndw
@ndw @michaelhkay recently this proposed to XSLT WG but some people were against. If you will express your concerns it can be done in 2.1—@jirkakosek
@ndw mode grouping: shades of Omnimark :)—@docum3nt

In a conversation that started on Thursday at 01:21pm

Rethinking DITA decision and reverting back to Docbook! I think I will hear an "I told you so" from @ndw. Editors dislike DITA.—@harveybetty
@harveybetty It gives me a warm glow, but I'll bite my tongue. Hopefully topic-oriented features of 5.1 will be best of both worlds.—@ndw

In a conversation that started on Thursday at 02:36pm

Here's a weird one. Doing an HTTP GET from Java is causing a modal popup for the briefest fraction of a second. How can I read it?—@ndw
@ndw with some camera tomfoolery?—@al3xbrown
@al3xbrown Maybe. It'd require incredible luck to catch it though.—@ndw
@ndw have you got a video camera?—@al3xbrown

Thursday at 03:17pm

@ndw Screencasting software might work, if the frame rate is sufficiently high, or adjustable.—@larsga

In a conversation that started on Thursday at 03:37pm

Anyone got suggestions for high-frame-rate screen casting software for OSX?—@ndw
@ndw I am a huge fan of screenflow.—@bphogan
@ndw I just purchased Camtasia for Mac. Seems to work pretty well, but I'm new at it.—@evanlenz
@ndw I use ScreenFlow all the time. An excellent app. With ScreenFlow, Screen shots are so yesterday!—@avernet

Thursday at 03:38pm

@ndw - ishowu is free—@anthonyallen

In a conversation that started on Thursday at 03:41pm

@ndw quicktime didn't work out for you?—@gabrielsaldana
@gabrielsaldana Dunno. Didn't know it did that. I'm trying to catch a popup that lasts a tiny fraction of a second.—@ndw

In a conversation that started on Thursday at 03:59pm

Got it! The culprit was "Do you want the application "java" to accept incoming network connections?" Now where's the knob to turn that off?—@ndw
@ndw System Preferences | Security | Firewall (I guess)—@abcoates
@abcoates Yeah. But clearly I'm going to have to do the right thing in there. I'm going to go make dinner instead :-)—@ndw

In a conversation that started on Thursday at 06:38pm

@ndw [mode grouping element] I proposed it recently, I was surprised by the negative reaction in the WG.—@michaelhkay
@michaelhkay probably the best compromise is <xsl:import with-mode="..."/> #xslt—@innovimax
@michaelhkay Time for me to rejoin the WG :-)—@ndw
@ndw Welcome !!—@innovimax

In a conversation that started on Friday at 06:40am

Spec ePUB files updated, tools improved: http://norman.walsh.name/2010/06/10/epubredux—@ndw
@ndw About your ePUB formater, any source available?—@fgeorges

In a conversation that started on Saturday at 02:58pm

This "whirled cup" of which you speak is some sort of sports thing, right? Might ignore twitter until it's over. How long does it take?—@ndw
@ndw About a month. Nambu has a "mute hashtag" function, which is quite nice ...—@larsga
@ndw Yep, me too. I should also consider to relocate for a while. My London house mates are big fans, hard to ignore this thing :-/—@fgeorges
@ndw Long, very long...—@vojtechtoman
@ndw forever. recommend you investigate TweetDeck for its global filter function. ;)—@TheRepoRat

Sunday at 01:45pm

Bah humbug. Team dinner in Boston on Wednesday and I have plans to be in New York. #scheduleconflict #needteleporter #ipdf #epub #marklogic—@ndw