Ionrock Dot Org

This past week I was out of town to train a client. It was my first time training and overall it went very well. One glaring issue was the UI issues that were brought up. These sorts of problems are always subjective, but there were also some solid criticism that was very good.

Besides working I didn't do much else other than sit around watching TV and eating alone. I am not a fan of business traveling. I did have a chance to eat a nice dinner with my parents while listening to early nineties music from the nearby piano bar. Nirvana as played on a grand piano is still pretty good in a weird and silly way.

Next week I will have to travel again and I am not looking forward to it. I don't mind the actual training piece, but the plane ride, lonely dinners and my in ability to sleep is something of a bother.

Update: So, I have had a few folks mention that this blog entry is pretty sad. Really, I don't mind travelling that much. The hardest thing is not having Lauren around. I must admit that I do enjoy staying at nice hotels. It beats the crappy motels we have to stay at on tour (notice the 'm' there). I think I am going to work on having a bit more fun on business trips.

So I am on some mailing list right? I made a comment on a non-technical list saying, "DITA is just XML".

No big deal, so this *other* guy says, "Uh, like duh"!

So, I was all, "No, seriously, this is important because most people don't try to use XML as effectively as they could. They make an assumption that XML should be processed once (even though this processing can include many stages or pipelines). A better approach is to transform XML using a stack of sorts with specified intermediary formats and interfaces. Think of a tree of transformations that has customization points along the way, providing an infinite amount of possibilities to meet integration requirements. XML systems often fail becuase they require each system to take care of this stack on their own. This is like a web develop having to write network card drivers to serve up HTML. A better strategy is to use a separate thirdparty tool as a stack for transforming XML between systems."

Man, people can be so lame sometimes!

Recently at work there have been folks asking about supporting different devices. The answer is always, "it depends on the viewer." This always seems to be the question of the day. A document type reflects a content creator and content viewer. IBM mentioned they would be supporting the ODF format in Lotus in hopes of spreading the standard. In this case, they are pushing for consistent viewers. The DITA format is having trouble with adoption because the editors are not very usable. This case is a content creation issue. This all points to the fact that standards are always going to be tough in computing because the apparent ease at which things can be customized.

On the positive side of data interoperability is XML. When I was in school, I was told XML allowed language creation. A program could write in a language and give another program the schema and like magic, the two could talk like old friends using XML. The problem is schemas are a pain to mess with and there is a huge gap between "reading" and "understanding". This is especially true with complex XML such as OWL.

I think in the long run the real power in XML is the ability to transform it. Through XSLT and friends, someone can take any document and transform it to be useful in a system. Take a look at the TCP/IP stack and I would argue that the uses of general XML are moving toward this model. What this means is that many intermediary formats can help data to move around in the stack. A client program keeps its specialized XML format, but when it gets sent to another system, it is wrapped. The next system to touch it breaks it down to its intermediary format and sends it along to the next stage. At each stage the XML is transformed to its own format and in doing so, allows new information to be created or passed along.

The major difference between this model and the current use is that systems try to send XML back and forth without an intermediary. This is akin to placing tons of business login in the UI, with the UI being the interface the applications experience. To clean up the UI for applications, there can be toolkits that are used simply for translating XML to appropriate formats as needed. This is essentially what our application does/can do. When considering this within the context of goverment required XML formats and million dollar content management systems, it makes quite a bit of sense.

I read an article today about how lactic acid is actually used as a fuel my muscles. Since I had to take a general fitness course in college not too long ago, I thought it was pretty interesting because they told us how lactic acid was waste produced by muscles.

Check out the article.

First off, I started playing around with CakePHP. CakePHP is yet another framework that I have started to play with. It is written in PHP of course and has been pretty easy to use. It is very simple and feels very similar to my past attempts to create a framework. Where I failed, it seems that CakePHP has succeeded. With my hopeful move to a new host for the Ume site and the unknown Python availability, I wanted a backup plan for some fun programming. CakePHP has fit the bill so far.

In addition to my constant addiction web frameworks, I have started using Visual Studio for debugging XSL within ePublisher. This has been a blessing and a curse. When it works, it has made things extremely helpful because I can search through available node sets and see what my needed XPath will have to be. On the downside, it has frozen up my system over three times. At this point, I am pretty sure I just need to adjust how I work within the debugging environment but who knows at this point.

Lastly, I can officially say that I have "shows". What this means is that there are a selection of TV shows that I really just can't miss during the week. 24, for example, is one show that I cannot seem to miss, although I am ready for it to be over. American Idol is another that has caught me off guard. My actual favorite though is the Office. Everyone says that the BBC version is the best. It is very good but there is a soft spot in my heart for Steve Carrel (spelling?). The season finale was absolutely amazing.

I was looking at this post from Dare Obasanjo and what struck me as interesting was a sentence that read:

These are all issues the Windows Live QnA folks are aware of and are looking at innovative ways to tackle.

The QnA refers to a system where people can try to find answers to specific questions. Of course if Windows Live can manage to do what others have failed to do (create a free QnA system), then more power to them. The problem is there is no way they can succeed.

The reason they are in trouble is that solving problems that involve changes in human activity are almost impossible with technology. A slick interface or innovative algorithm does little to convince people to do things they have no internal desire to do. Making a feature "findable" or more available does not mean that people will want to use it, even if it really is a helpful feature. A person can train themselves to use a service, but this is different. When you look at something like calendaring, people do use calendaring systems because it is required and has been proven to be helpful outside the digital world. Solving the QnA problem is a very hard problem that I don't believe needs to be solved.

Today I am working on a RFP (Response For Proposal). The world is full of masochists.

The biggest pain when working with an RFP is there is no conversation. There is no discussion of how a solution would really work within an organization and this makes extremely hard to make a good decision on either end of a deal. The organization needing a solution has to become pseudo experts before writing the RFP or else the vobaulary is off. Often times organizations don't really understand what will help their situation. You can't blame them for this of course, because if they knew exactly what they needed, there wouldn't be an RFP.

For those having to implement the proposal, it is a shot in the dark that the system will work. And when I say "work", I mean function appropriately for the organization that requested it. This is never easy and never cheap, so it is a wonder that large systems (such as the proposal I am looking at now) ever succeed. Of course, a few must or else everyone would never try to implement huge systems.

It is also reasonable to assume that these large systems never really do succeed. The folks who said they needed some huge application or system want it to work. I am sure that after a few million dollars and months of migration, when things are finally done, anyone would be happy to raise a glass to praise the new systems merits. Unfortunately, no one sticks around to see mumblings after toast from those who actually use the system every day.

I should mention that this is my own hypothesis that has absolutely no research behind it. I could be wrong that these systems don't work and in fact I hope I am. What does shine a little light on the entire situation is that I get to work on making the systems work together instead of creating the actual systems. I get to see all the cool features and technology of different systems while making it easier for folks to get real work done. Sure, I may not have created some insane new technology or changed the way computers work. But having the chance to make other products and smart people gets me pretty excited about my work nonetheless.

I am working on how I can write for both of my blogs at the same time. I know this seems trivial but it actually has been something of a pain. I know that could hack something together but it doesn't interest me enough to do it.

I am currently trying out the performancing extension to firefox. So far it has allowed me to add two blogs, which is better than nothing.

At work we set up an internal install of Wordpress MU to see about getting folks blogging. In the past I have found no real value (in the cold hard cash sense of the word) in companies blogging, but I do believe it is helpful. One aspect of blogging that I find to be very helpful is the opportunity to write ideas. Typing is just slow enough to force the mind to really see all the details. In general, it seems to help one become a better thinker.

I truly doubt there will ever be a time where blogging will be a source of income for most companies. It seems obvious though that companies should utlize blogging as a means of self improvement for knowledge workers.