If you’ve seen MarkMail before, you may be pleased to know that a new version launched last week, including new features (like saved search sets) for power users. If you haven’t seen MarkMail before, what are you waiting for? -m

P.S. If you could use something like this behind your firewall, ping me.

Busy week ahead. Minimal posting. -m

My friend and XForms conspirator T.V. Raman was written up in the New York Times. (Link) [If the link happens to not work because of NYT's stupid content policy, access the article via a search on Raman's name on Google News.] Raman has done all kinds of great accessibility work that benefits everyone, photon-dependent or not.

Great picture too–love the closed laptop. -m

After a delay, the code to my RDFa parser in XQuery is now available under an Apache license. Go get it. This is some of the earliest XQuery code I ever wrote, so go easy on me. It follows the earlier work on a functional definition of RDFa. And feel free to send in patches. -m

I’ve heard not a peep about this before, but here it is: XForms for HTML. Let’s read this together. Feel free to drop any comments or observations below. -m

I’m off to XML 2008 in Arlington, VA. One thing I’ll be seeking is a top-tier QA candidate for XML technologies. If you are that person, look me up. :-)

-m

To celebrate the unlamented demise of Valleywag, use as many of the ten insulting words you should know (along with any other appropriate words) as you can in a single short paragraph. Post in the comments below. This site is for geeks of all ages, so keep things PG. All right, PG-13. My favorite will be announced later.

More collected Geek Thoughts at http://geekthoughts.info.

I’ve successfully completed the National Novel Writing Month challenge–to write 50,000 words during the month of November–for three years running, and now I have three draft novels sitting around. At some point, racking up mere drafts gets to be pathetic, so this November I’m picking one to dig into with a heavy editing pass. I’m stocked up on red pens and ready to go, and maybe a third of the way through at this moment. Other writing efforts, like say this blog, get back-burnered for a few weeks.

The key to editing long works, by the way, is momentum. If you get stuck in one place, you quickly get burned out on it, like melting celluloid in an old-skool movie projector. Onward. -m

Another mead class is scheduled for November 15th in Los Altos. Come join me!

Mead, honey wine, “the nectar of the gods”. Whatever you call it MoreFlavor Los Altos is sponsoring a class to help you learn more about this wonderful fermented beverage and equip you to brew your own.

Saturday, Nov. 15, 2008 2:00 – 4:00 pm
MoreFlavor
991 N. San Antonio Road
Los Altos, CA 94022

Learn about:

Different types of meads
Brewing techniques
How boiling affects mead
The three most important factors in mead brewing
How to taste and evaluate mead

Light food and drink are included in the class materials fee of $10. Seating is limited. Email Micah at mdubinko@yahoo.com to reserve a spot today.

Haven’t mentioned here that RDFa is a W3C Recommendation. I’m thrilled that something that I’ve been thinking about for a while is ready for prime time.

Also, as of this writing the first page of results at Google still prominently links to a terribly outdated draft of the spec. The first page of results at Yahoo! nails it. Just sayin’.

-m

This weekend I’ll be judging organic homebrew at the Seven Bridges Cooperative in San Jose. Yes, not only is this beer carbon-based, it’s certified. :-) If you’ll be there too, be sure to look me up. -m

I’m upgrading to a bigger and better internet service plan. Some possible downtime in the near future… -m

I know what it’s like to be laid off, I’ve been through it twice. If you need help connecting up with a new gig, whether at MarkLogic or a hand-off to one of the zillion headhunters that constantly harry me, let me know. Send me email and I’ll do what I can. -m

Cringely writes that a mandatory ban on incandescent lighting would cut U.S. electricity consumption by 18% within a year. What else could have a big impact?

The Onion Radio News reported on a new eco-friendly Hummer that kills its owners. (aired Aug 7, 2008) That’s not bad, but a tax on SUVs of one dollar per pound per year would be fine too.

On a more serious note, telecommuting could significantly reduce energy usage. Twenty percent of person-days should be doable within a year, averaged across all industries and workers. I wonder what percentage of petroleum usage that would represent?…

-m

Levy a $24,000, one-time tax, payable in installments over 10 years, against anyone who took out an interest-only mortgage (or various other high-risk instruments) during the previous 10 years, using the full nasty power of the IRS to collect (garnishing wages, etc.)

Take the proceeds and give it to homeowners who did NOT engage in high-risk activities as a tax refund.

Since taxpayers will be bailing out wall street anyway, why not move the blame closer to where it belongs? -m

Going away for a week (so possibly minimal posting here). What am I bringing to read?

• The Watchmen
• Analog magazine (Nov 2008 issue featuring Robert Sawyer)
• Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive
• Make magazine (issue 15, DIY music)

Check some of these out. What do you like to read when travelling? -m

Mur Lafferty’s new superhero novel is making the rounds. She’s encouraging everyone to buy a printed copy on August 25 (buy it here) to make a nice impression in the bestseller lists. I’m a sucker for these kinds of promotions. The full text also recently appeared on the Escape Pod feed, under a Creative Commons license. It’s a whopping 35 megabytes, including illustrated comic book covers…a nice touch.

It would be really nice to have this with me to read during spare moments without the bulk of the printed book. Hmm.

My question is: how I can read it on an iPhone? Ebook support isn’t that great so far, especially for the PDF format. I know about the data:url trick, but it doesn’t work with 35 megs. Has anyone successfully set up an iPhone to read this book? What software and/or conversions did you use? Comment below. -m

This post will be continuously updated to contain the most recent details about an XQuery 1.0 RDFa parser I wrote for Mark Logic. It follows the Functional RDFa pattern.

At present there is little to say, but eventually code and more will be available. Stay tuned.

-m

By now you’ve likely noticed the Geek Thoughts postings here. This is an experiment on a few different levels.

What makes comics special? To what extent are pictures, often little more than stick figures, a critical part of the web comic experience? Can a web comic still be funny and thought-provoking with only words?

Specifically with regard to yesterday’s posting, an homage to Garfield minus Garfield, and slightly-more-than-homage to xkcd: what does taking away the seeming-essential part reveal? Is it of the same or different nature as before? On the plus side, don’t worry about this blog becoming an xkcd transciption service–that’s not the point. Thinking (and maybe laughing) is.

It’s also an experiment in zero-overhead publishing. Setting up a dedicated blog, separate site, separate comment moderation, all that jazz…would be hard. Lower friction is the difference between a smooth running engine and a smoking heap of metal, and the same goes in life. If Geek Thoughts develops a huge following, maybe some day there will be all of that and T-Shirts too. But for now, it’s easy enough that I can actually do it, which is what matters in the beginning.

If this line of argument seems faintly familiar, it’s because I’ve used it before, with my (still sporadically updated) Patternalia series, inspired by Christopher Alexander’s works.

If you appreciate any of this, the best way to show it is with a link. Thanks! -m

My traditional mead, the one that took years to make took the gold in the 24B (Traditional, semi-sweet) category at the mead-only Arizona Mead Cup. (results) This one goes back before the Great Hard Drive Crash, where (combined with a freak that-directory-didn’t-get-backed-up-bug) my early meadmaking records were lost. But there are a few hints left online.

Here it is, in Jan 2006, almost through fermentation. How nice and clear it looks. It was started in November of 2005 with some of the clearest orange blossom honey I’ve ever seen, from Pam the honey lady at the Mountain View Farmer’s Market. I literally lost an entire night of sleep over this batch, when I incorrectly added some runoff from oak chips.

Seriously, this was about my 4th batch of mead ever. I also bottled it way too soon. It carbonated up in the bottles, and had an unbalanced sweetness to it (called “insipid” in the tasting lingo). I had to un-bottle it, put it back in a fermenter, and add a carefully-measured dose of wine tannin, giving it just that bit of bite that balances the sweetness. It also darkened the color noticeably, which I wasn’t too happy about. Can’t argue with results, though.

The only other problem: There are only 6 bottles of this left in the world. -m

Through the weekend I put most of the final touches on an implementation of RDFa in XQuery. The implementation is based on the functional specification of RDFa, an offshoot of the excellent work coming out of the W3C task force.

The spec contains a procedural description of the parsing algorithm, and several have successfully followed it to arrive at a conforming implementation. But you would have tough times explaining RDFa to someone that way. The functional description sort of fell out of the way I described RDFa to people.

“When you see an element with XXXX, you generate a triple, using SSSS as the subject, PPPP as the predicate, and OOOO as the object.”

Which arguably is the more natural way to express the algorithm for functional languages like XQuery or XSLT. Fill in the right blanks and you pretty much have it. In practice, it’s somewhat more complicated, but not nearly so much as with other W3C specs.

I hope to make the code available soon. You’ll hear about it first here.

I’ll write more when I’m not exhausted. :-) -m

Looks like a reasonably-sized revision. The first public working draft seems downright thin, in fact, relative to all the SHOULDs and MAYs in the requirements document. In particular, I’d like to see progress on 2.3.16 Higher order functions. (Then do we get a book XQuery: The Good Parts? …kidding..)

-m

My next Meade Classe will be on Saturday, August 2nd, which happens to be Mead Day. Come learn…and taste. Full details:

Mead brewing and appreciation class

Mead, honey wine, “the nectar of the gods”. Whatever you call it MoreFlavor Los Altos is sponsoring a class to help you learn more about this wonderful fermented beverage and equip you to brew your own.

Saturday, August 2, 2008 2:00 – 4:00 pm
MoreFlavor
991 N. San Antonio Road
Los Altos, CA 94022

Taught by an award-winning meadmaker: Learn about

• Different types of meads
• Brewing techniques
• How boiling affects mead
• The three most important factors in mead brewing
• How to taste and evaluate mead

Food and drink are included in the class materials fee of $10. Seating is limited. Email me at mdubinko@yahoo.com to reserve a spot today. -m

I’ll be up in San Francisco the rest of this week at the Mark Logic User Conference. If you’ll be there too, be sure to look me up. -m

From the Yahoo! Developer blog, new search keywords you can use to hone in on indexed microformats.

For example, to see every hAtom-bearing page that mentions ‘dubinko’ use the query [searchmonkeyid:com.yahoo.uf.hatom dubinko]. Works similarly for hCard, hCalendar, hReview, and XFN. I’m sure more are coming soon too. -m

I registered ‘xfv’ on Google App Engine. Too bad there doesn’t appear to be any significant XML libraries supported. I have XPath covered by my pure-python WebPath, but what about Relax NG? Anyone know of anything in pure python? -m

In my about page, I’ve written my CV in two lines. Why don’t you try it, then link back to here?

I’ve been known to use this as an interview question, and it’s quite a bit harder than it looks. A clever candidate will turn the paper sideways giving themselves more room to write “two lines”, but that’s not the point. This exercise forces one to really think about their qualifications, skills, and experience; one’s “unique selling proposition”.

Writing short, as opposed to rambling on, is notoriously difficult. Someone who can do that with their own CV is off to a good start in my book. -m

P. S. Mark Logic is looking for some high-caliber XML and web folks. Contact me offline if you know anyone looking…

You probably noticed the byline on my recent Yahoo! developer network posting. It, and a few more posts still in the pipe, list me as a “SearchMonkey Team Alumnus”. So yeah, it’s official, I’ve hung up my exclamation point and moved on to something else.

Specifically, Mark Logic, where a group of impressively talented people reside, recently including Norm Walsh. My first day there is tomorrow, so I don’t fully know what I’ll be working on, though it does involve
the core server, and taking it from it current state of awesome raw bare-metal power into something more akin to a application development platform.

Mark Logic strikes me like this: think back 10 years or so to all the hype and introductory articles around this new thing called XML–how it would enable whole new kinds of applications though the miraculous abilities of “markup” and perform realtime structured search over the results. It turns out that all these dreams were missing one critical piece, a way to do all the fancy indexing and repository management needed to make that happen. And the MarkLogic Server, to a very good approximation, IS that piece.

So what do I think of SearchMonkey at this point? No change, really. Good riddance to the ten-blue-links result pages. It’s breaking new ground in search, and Google will have a hard time stomaching an equally radical (and potentially revenue-impacting) change. SearchMonkey is really good news for the lowercase semantic web, including microformats and RDFa. It’s doing all the right things for the right reasons. The project will do fine without me. :-)

I had a good run at Yahoo! and I’m proud to have accomplished all I did there. Onward. -m

Yeah, more than ever before. See my article on Yahoo! developer net. The stuff I talk about here is currently live in the indexer. -m

you can spot me in this pic. Have you tried out SearchMonkey yet? -m