July 26, 2004
History, Schmistory
My 124-year old house has yielded precious few archaeological finds, something that I find disappointing. When we bought the house 12 years ago, I imagined more. I nervously joked for several weeks when we first moved in that the house was haunted, but so far nothing--no floating heads, unexplained cold breezes, or unexplained noises.
We bought the house from a young guy who only owned it for a couple of years. Prior to him had been a colorful (read:crazy) owner, and prior to that an artist. By the time we moved in, there was little to find. We did find an old milk bottle once when we were putting an addition on the back of the house; it bore the name of a local but now defunct farm, but the bottle somehow didn't survive the construction. We have a few scraps of china, old nails, and a small nondescript bottle, but that is almost it.
This beautiful old house had a bizarre feature when we moved in. One of the owners--I believe the crazy one--had sealed off the small older closets in several of the bedrooms and had instead built these shoddy, wall-length closets from 2 by 4's and paneling. Over the paneling he had tacked dark-green velour. The result is even uglier than you could imagine.
We have tackled one major project after another in this house. Most recently, we finally opened up the last long-sealed-off closet. Amid great expectation, it yielded precisely one thing: a bland black and white photo of what looks like a laboratory, circa 1960. It's so dull as to not even be worth scanning for this blog.
We then tackled the last remaining ubercloset. We will actually be keeping the frame of it intact, but dismantling the rest of it has been several days of work. Imagine my delight, then, when my wife told me of a find during this process. A 1913 Buffalo nickel. I am not truly a coin collector, though I have some. Buffalo nickels have always had a place in my heart though. There is something in that man's look, something I understood better as a child than I seem to now.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 12:03 PM
July 21, 2004
I Suppose This is a Good Thing
No surprise to anyone but me perhaps, but there is an official site for the WIFFLE ball. They even have a simple graphic to show you how to throw the basic pitches. However, what they show to be a slider works like a screwball for me.
A far better site seems to be Tom's Wiffle Ball Page hosted by the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, of all places. Boston has a preciously short wiffle ball season as it is, so I can imagine how Minnesotans value their summer nights.
Only as an adult have I mastered a few wiffle ball pitches. My sons, at 11 and 12, have it all over me. My younger son is a wiffle artiste, throwing a bewildering assortment of curves, screwballs, knucklers, and sliders. Plus he works at it. He will practice a pitch dozens of times in a row. My arm is sore from trying to keep up with him the other evening. A 45-year-old arm doesn't rebound like it used to.
Which reminds me: Is Jesse Orosco still pitching? Apparently not, though he could be in the minors or in one of the independent leagues. He was one of the few players left in the major leagues who is older than me. Julio Franco is almost a year older than me, and still playing pretty well.
I have wondered (read: obsessed) over the past 12 or so years when middle age begins. Maybe it begins when I am finally older than all the players in major league baseball. I will have to give this some more thought. In the meantime, let's hope for good health and good at bats for Julio.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:01 PM
July 16, 2004
Guilty Pleasures
According to Andy's Anagram Solver, "Bill Trippe" is an anagram for "Triple Blip."
Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:23 PM | Comments (1)
SAP Enters the Content Management Market
My colleauge Mark Walter called my attention to SAP's acquisition of privately held catalog vendor A2i, Inc. The press release has additional detail, but the subheading pretty much says it all, "Strategic Acquisition Integrates Enterprise-Wide Product Content Management and Data Aggregation Capabilities into SAP NetWeaver Platform; Solution to Deliver Global Data Synchronization for Consumer Products and Retail Industries."
In other words, all NetWeaver, all the time.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:09 PM
July 9, 2004
A Poem
For a Friend Widowed Young, Bringing the News to his Children
Nothing, I'm sure, prepared you
for this moment.
Not that brilliant fall afternoon
you collected my long clearing pass.
Your legs churning, blonde hair
flashing over the green.
Nor that warm summer night we picked up
the two prettiest girls in town.
I have this picture of you--
young, handsome, reverent--
candle in hand--
tending to some school ceremony.
And another, more wistful, displaying
some carefully wrought
drawing for the camera.
You had it all,
and I was thrilled you were my friend.
As you walk now into your quiet house
to greet your daughters,
how much I want all your gifts
to come together in this fragile moment.
For their little faces to look up at you
and hear some perfect words come from your mouth.
-- Bill Trippe
Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:49 PM
July 8, 2004
More on Authoring XML in Word
My colleague Lisa Bos weighed in on the use of Microsoft Word in structured editing applications. Lisa is Vice President and Chief Architect at content management consulting firm Really Strategies and has a wealth of experience in XML implementations. Taking a step back from the specific question of Microsoft Word, Lisa offered the following useful overview of the kinds of XML editing tools one can consider. She puts a special emphasis on the integration of editorial tools with a content management system.
There are several broad categories of choices for XML editing:
1 - Commericial XML editors intended for use by editorial and production users. The major players in this category are XMetaL and Epic. These are also the only editors that have an integration with Documentum that allows XML documents to be appropriately processed (chunked) on check in and check out. (While Documentum allows the use of Word as an editor, special customizations would be needed to integrate Word as an XML editor.)
2 - Commercial or shareware/freeware XML editors mostly intended for use by software developers but also an option for editorial teams who can't afford more or who have very simple content. Products in this space range from XML Spy (expensive developer's tool) to a wide variety of free/inexpensive tools that work like glorified text editors (I don't mean to disparage these - their XML capabilities can be really great - but the view to the user is "geeky," not the word processing view available in XMetaL or Epic).
3 - Non-XML editors in combination with custom scripting/programs to convert content to and from XML. Even though it does have some new XML capabilities, MS Word still falls into this category. Whether you use its XML capabilities or not, you must still write scripts to transform your content to the needed DTD after you close a document in Word, and to transform the content into a form that Word can use when you open a document. This can work extremely well for content like news that does not have a high level of nesting in its DTD, but is expensive to maintain for complex content (it's difficult to script for all the myriad of things people can do to content in Word). For complex content, it ultimately requires more custom programming and maintenance to make Word into an XML editor than it does to add some nice word processing features to a native XML editor. Using Word or another word processor also has other negative side effects. In particular, it results in your editing and production staff not really understanding XML or your DTD.
It is true that there is a learning curve and cultural change required for staff to become familiar with XML and with using an XML editor versus a word processor. This change always involves some discomfort but also comes along with lessons that are highly valuable to a business. The two primary lessons are (1) a clearer understanding of the purpose of each person's role (e.g., my job is to add value to content, not to worry about how it *looks* in various outputs) and their ability to focus more clearly on their individual goals and (2) a broader understanding of the big picture - how what they do in content affects all outputs (all re-uses and all media). Yes, the transition to XML requires cultural change, but it is beneficial change. Yes, an XML editor constrains users, but it constrains them with a purpose. In the end the benefits of an XML editor outweigh the negatives significantly.
All that said, it is still possible for the *way* in which an XML editor is implemented to cause problems or be unnecessarily complicated for users, but that is a topic for another time.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:29 PM
Forgive Me
More on the major league baseball All Food Team:
Pepper Martin and Spud David were teammates on the 1928 St. Louis Cardinals.
For those lovers of game, the starting shortstop on that team was Rabbit Maranville.
In an odd twist, the 1927 Cardinals only had Rabbit, but had a number of All Music Team members, including Hi and Les Bell and Jimmy Ring.
(Another idea... unfortunate names for pitchers. Bob Walk. Eric Plunk. Is that it?)
Posted by Bill Trippe at 1:10 AM
July 7, 2004
Internet Explorer Security: Microsoft's Achilles Heel?
I recently gave up on trying to make my home computer safe from browser hijackers taking over Internet Explorer. Instead, I disabled IE and loaded Netscape. Problem solved, for now.
(And, yes, I disabled IE rather then removed it. This particular home computer still runs Windows 98. Now I know why that judge in the federal Microsoft antitrust case ordered Microsoft to make it easier to uninstall IE.)
This was after I spent substantial time trying many Adware killers and finally buying one. All to no avail. I simply could not eliminate spurious hijackings.
I am a big advocate for a better user experience through the browser and other Internet-aware clients. Thus my focus on tools like SVG, XForms, and other eForms technologies. Will Internet Explorer fade from use even faster because of these security problems? Will InfoPath suffer a similar fate?
Posted by Bill Trippe at 6:05 PM
July 6, 2004
Little Things Mean Alot
I was parsing a DTD yesterday using a commercial editing tool and ended up with a syntax error. Pretty typical problem, but I was really surprised by the difference in error messages I received between the original editor I was using and another one I tried after a frustrating hour. The second product did a much better job of isolating the problem (it proved to be two problems). It isolated the first error to the line number and the type of problem, and then isolated the second problem to the line number. The first one essentially gave up, saying little more than "this structure doesn't belong here," and even pointing to the wrong place in the file.
I haven't looked at this in detail yet, but I have long held that XML parsing tools can be incredibly unhelpful in error reporting. As more and more people use XML, are they getting accustomed to this kind of painful troubleshooting, or are the products getting better?
Posted by Bill Trippe at 12:51 PM
July 2, 2004
Am I a Cruel Father?
For turning my boys into Red Sox fans? They found a whole new hellish way to lose tonight, dropping the final game of a three-game series in which the Yankees swept them. The Sox are now 8 1/2 games behind the Yankees.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 12:50 AM
