It’s the first day of Balisage (I missed the pre-conference symposium, sadly), and it’s a lot like a markup holiday. It’s great meeting old friends and new, and the two talks so far promise another great conference.
Balisage 2015
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Ubuntu
I reverted back to Ubuntu after testing Mint 17.2 and deciding that while it looks good, I actually do prefer Unity these days. I really thought I would stick with Mint, you know.
New Laptop, New Linux Distro
Having returned to running my own company, I decided it was time to retire my 5-yo MacBook Pro and get something modern to run Linux in. After careful consideration I decided on a Dell Precision M3800 since it’s actually being sold by Dell with Ubuntu 14.04 pre-installed. The M3800 is thin and light, in spite of the 15.6″ screen, robustly built and includes a 4k screen. Simply put, it is gorgeous.
I didn’t order the Ubuntu version, though, partly since I actually need Windows every now and then, but mostly because there’s the “free” Windows 10 upgrade once it becomes available, and I’m curious. Instead, I added a second hard disk for the Linux install. The extra disk can be fitted if opting for a smaller battery, and the installation didn’t void the warranty, since Dell actually accepts that people will want to tinker with their machines (beat that, Apple!).
After careful consideration, a few live USB sticks and one test install of Ubuntu, I have now set up Linux Mint 17.2 as my primary OS. It handles the HiDPI 4k screen beautifully, except for some older apps with hard-coded font sizes and such (shame on you, Skype!) and most Java-based programmes I have tried so far. oXygen is pretty much the only Java app I really need, so for now I’ve doubled every font size in the preferences, which makes oXygen usable. The toolbars are still tiny, but I am now able to work.
All in all, I’m really pleased.
John Nash Killed in Crash
The American mathematician and Nobel Prize for Economics winner John Nash was killed in a car crash yesterday. Most people probably know the name from Ron Howard’s 2001 film A Beautiful Mind, but those of us with an interest in mathematics are more likely to remember him as one of the foremost minds in game theory.
Today is a sad day.
Mr Smith Goes to Washington
My paper submission to this year’s Balisage conference was accepted. It’s about an eXist implementation I did for the Swedish Federation of Farmers (LRF), and while I may not be completely objective, I think the system is very cool. From the conference blurb:
The Federation of Swedish Farmers (LRF) provides its 170,000 members with a web-based service to check compliance with state and EU farming regulations. These checklists are also produced nightly both as generic checklists with more than 130 pages and as individualised checklists for registered members. The system consists of an eXist database coupled with oXygen Author. The checklists and their related contents are edited, stored, and processed, published as PDFs, and exported to the SQL database which stores member registration, feeds the website, and does various other tasks. The system uses XQuery, XSLT, XInclude modularization, an extended XLink linkbase, and other markup technologies. It currently handles more than 40,000 PDF documents a year and many more than that in the web-based forms.
This is the second version of the LRF system. The first, presented at XML Prague in 2013, was XProc-based and represented my somewhat naive trust in the state of XProc in eXist, The new one I rewrote in XQuery, having tested (and failed miserably at using) the XProc module that is now available. XProc in eXist, sadly, is not yet ready for prime time.
Be as it may, I’m really pleased about both the system and my paper. and hope to see you there.
Home
Miss it.
LinkedIn Spam
LinkedIn seems to be testing new ways to make money after their recent revenue forecast cuts. My inbox had a “sponsored message”, something I don’t recall having seen before.
Sorry, LinkedIn, but you’ll have to come up with something else. I’d rather delete my account.
In the UK
I’m currently in the UK, spending a month on site to get to know my new client, LexisNexis UK. Legal publishing is a new field for me, I must confess, but they are using pretty much every XML technology there is and I’m a bit like a 5-yo in a toy store. It doesn’t hurt that the people I’m working with are both nice and knowledgeable, either.
oXygen XML Editor
My friends at Syncro Soft, the makers of oXygen XML Editor, very kindly provided me with an oXygen license to replace the one I used while at Condesign. As oXygen is my tool of choice and the one I use daily, as necessary for me as a C compiler is for Linux kernel programmers, I remain in absolute awe of both the product and the kind and generous human beings that make it.
Consider this post as my heartfelt thank you.
Changes
I’ll be going back to running my own company, Creative Words, again. In short, I got an offer that I simply couldn’t refuse (no, not that kind of offer), and so here I am. It is exciting and fun, but also a little scary.
I’ll update this page when it’s time.