Year: 2002

Categories
RDF Technology

Nextware Conference 2002

Recovered from the Wayback Machine. I was signed up to do two sessions, but had to cancel. I was broke and had to move out of San Francisco in June. Back then, conferences didn’t pay travel expenses.

I received a brochure from the Nextware conference being held in Baltimore in May. The conference will cover an interesting mix of topics such as Web Services, XML, open source, wireless, and a host of other topics all related to a common theme of the next generation of software. The effort is being organized by Ken North, managed by Penton Communications, and yours truly will be giving two presentations.

We’re seeing a new trend in conferences this year — different technology topics, usually related to some common theme, combined into one offering in order to cut costs and increase attendance. I think it’s an idea whose time has come. In the last few years, we were seeing too many conferences being held by too many organizations on too many separate topics. That was back when there was money to burn and people could afford to attend 3-4 conferences in a year. Today, conference organizers have to assume that each person reading their brochures is going to one and only one conference — competition will be fierce. End result: Conferences with a lot to offer.

Now, if you’re thinking about attending a conference this year — HINT HINT — I’ll be speaking about Bringing RDF out of the Lab and The .NET Free Zone, covering .NET technology alternatives. Baltimore in the spring time, right next to Washington DC in the spring time. Cherry Blossoms and me speaking on .NET and RDF — what more could you want?

Categories
Technology Weblogging

Moving off Blogger

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

If you blinked, you missed my test case of a new look for the Burningbird weblog. It looked much better on the drawing board…but purple, I don’t know, I don’t feel like a purple person. What do you think? Am I a purple person?

Back to the CSS style editor. I hate web site design as much as I like server-side development. And as you can see, I’m still on Blogger, still playing with other blogging tools (Greymatter and Movable Type).

I’m also working on post-content information system method for handling pulled or moved information. In chi-chi clever biztalk terms, a Post-CMS (and doesn’t that sound like a hormonal condition?) The system is using an RDF-XML vocabulary that’s a combination of my own RDF vocabulary and the Dublin Core. The RDF provides the information used by the system to display pages that are,hopefully, more useful than “404 Page Not Found” when a page is pulled from the site.

If you’re curious, you can try out the Perl/CGI prototype that’s currently in use (I’m working on a Java/Jena/JSP open source version). Any of the following will trigger the system:

http://www.yasd.com/dynatech/tutorial.htm
http://www.yasd.com/samples/scripting/TYPEOF.HTM
http://www.yasd.com/samples/scripting/
http://www.yasd.com/rumbles

Don’t expect a razzle dazzle Flash show or anything like that — this is an information system. Information applications inform, educate, and enlighten; they don’t light up sparklers and tap dance with red sequined shoes in a little pink net tutu.

-earlier-

Unfortunately, Blogger is pretty much unusable at this point. I’m finally going to have to get off my butt and move to blogging software I host at my server. I have Greymatter installed, but am looking at Movable Type.

I feel a bit guilty leaving Blogger while it’s having problems. However, I realize that it’s multi-posters like myself that are part of the problem, so I consider that I’m doing Blogger a favor by pulling my blog from the servers.

While I’m at it, I’ll most likely change the look of the weblog, something to match the rest of my web sites. You know: plain and readable. I’m a verbal not a visual person, and my site designs tend to reflect this. Sorry.

Until I make my move, I won’t be posting too frequently, if at all.

Categories
Web

National Park System break in

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

No rain for at least five days. Five Whole Days! It must be MacWorld — Apple brought us a break in the rain. (Well, they sure didn’t bring us anything exciting technologically).

Tomorrow I hit one of my favorite walks — Golden Gate to Presidio to Crissy to Embarcadero.

Speaking of walks and the great outdoors, this one was sure missed. The National Park Service web site is offline because of a court order. Why? Because a hacker was able to break into the system.

Now, breaking into the National Park System isn’t that big a deal; after all the FBI, the CIA, the White House and several other sites have been broken into. Many times. However, the same agency that controls the NPS — The US Department of the Interior — also controls a multi-billion dollar Native American Trust Fund. And the US Department of the Interior is currently involved in a lawsuit brought by several Native American Tribes over said handling of the trust fund. And the court reviewing this case was the one who sanctioned the hacker to break into the system (and into the trust fund itself) to show that it’s vulnerable, and therefore could be a security risk to said trust fund. So because the NPS web site was cracked, it was ordered pulled indefinitely until security can be assured for the site. And we all know how we can guarantee web server security, don’t we?

End result: yours truly — in an effort to achieve peace, calm, and enlightment through a lovely walk — goes out to my favorite NPS web site to get a map of the paths of the Presidio and finds that the site is down, thereby leading to a search to find the reason, thereby finding the only reference to this event at SF Gate, thereby beginning to burn yet again.

If this continues, your favorite bird that burns is going to be extra crispy.

More on this:

FOXNews

Updated: 1/12/02 You can find several articles on this story by doing a Google with Alan+Balaran+hacker as the search term.

Categories
Weblogging

Blogger Lexicon 2

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Karl Martino of Paradox1x sent me an email with a new Lexicon entry he found at Dangerousmeta:

Flowbe:

    •  a weblog site that “sucks you in and then chops you into little pieces”

Thanks a lot Karl! I agree with you, it is a good addition to the Lexicon. We’ll use it until we get sued. In the meantime, go have a Blogsticker, on me!

Categories
Writing

Doubletree hotel

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

One more quick blurb. My apologies to my readers for my sexist comment earlier in the day. Even though it felt REAL GOOD to say it at the time, I shouldn’t have. It was an inappropriate comment. And no, I don’t really mean it. As I said, there is guts and glory in BOTH sexes within the weblogging world.

I was bad. My Irish temper got the better of me. I screwed the pooch with this one.

I’m a bad, bad, bad girl. Naughty.

Want to spank me?

-earlier-

Thanks to Justin, we’ve found a standing link to the PPT presentation. Copy it now, it’ll probably be pulled soon.

Here tis http://www.hyperorg.com/misc/DoubleTreeShow_files/frame.html#slide0001.html

Also, Dave — yes my comment was sexist. Very. Monumentally so. Hugely. Astronomically sexist…

…and it worked.

Snideness aside, I do appreciate you reposting your blurb.

-earlier-

Dave posted a permanent link back to his original posting about the infamous PowerPoint presentation of a very bad hotel. His reason for pulling the posting is because he believes the manager has got the point.

Nah. Dave. Disagree. Read the email he sent to Cory today. Today!

Did he get it? Or did he just suck up to the USA Today people?

Cory has it right — the guy is clueless. You do not have to have permission to reference a person’s name or company on the web. You could be in danger of liable, perhaps — but not in violation of any copyright law. Particularly if you’re not making a profit off the name.

Read this person’s communications to Cory. Then read the USA Story. I don’t think Mike the Night Clerk was the one that needed the retraining.

If Crosby had left well enough alone, this whole thing would be over with the USA article. Another web legend with old links and occasional references to “Remember that PPT about the hotel?”.

I can take clueless. And I can take arrogant. But I can’t take arrogant cluelessness.

-earlier-

Dammit all, Dave! You pulled your posting!

Now my link in the last blog blurb is going to some bullshit Apple thing.

Don’t do that! Take a chance! Pull the phone number if that caused the problem — but leave the posting!

Sometimes I think the only people with any balls in weblogging are women (until I read Cam or Chris and am reassured that guts and glory live on in both genders).

-earlier-

I don’t necessarily agree with Dave’s calling the hotel, but I do agree with the point — who is Joseph Crosby to say when we can or cannot discuss a story. Who does Mr Joseph Crosby of the DoubleTree Club Hotel in Houston think he is?

Well, duckie, you pissed off the wrong crew with this one. Let’s take this sucker to the top of the Daypop 40. Everyone link to the Craphound story at http://www.craphound.com/misc/doubletree.htm. And be sure to say a big Hi and Hello to Mr. Joseph Crosby at the DoubleTree Club Hotel in Houston while you’re at it.