January 10, 2008
Contract Developer Needs: Moodle, Arbortext Editor
Two colleagues of mine are looking for some medium- to long-term help on projects.
One needs a Moodle developer. They would like to find someone to first do some quick consultation on whether their project is feasible to build with Moodle, and if so, they will then need help with creating the necessary extensions. The company is in greater Boston, and they would like the developer to be available to visit the office from time to time as the project progresses.
The other needs a developer who has experience customizing Arbortext Editor--developing DTDs or schemas, developing stylesheets, and supporting the overall implementation.
If you are experienced in either of these areas, please email me.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 6:15 PM
January 8, 2008
They're Watching
Another Christmas gift--figurines of great writers. I arranged them on my desk, facing me as I work. Twain, Joyce, Woolf, Shakespeare, Poe. I think they are bored to tears already
Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:28 AM | Comments (1)
January 7, 2008
Fun with Google Street View
I was playing around with Google Street View. They added greater Boston recently, so I've been hunting down my house, the house I grew up in, and a few other spots. I was prowling downtown Boston and came across a bit of an oddity in and around the Big Dig. To see it, go here and then click on the arrow to go north. Voila! You are in the Big Dig tunnel. Click north again, and you are back up on the street.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 1:50 PM | Comments (1)
January 6, 2008
Garmin Schmarmin
So my wife was nice enough to get me a GPS for Christmas. This was a really welcome gift, as I have a terrible sense of direction and get lost readily. I also travel a fair bit, and have this long, involved ritual of researching and printing out the directions to every drive I will have to make on my trip. From the airport to the hotel, from the hotel to my client's building, from my client's building to the hotel, and so on. So I was thrilled to get a GPS, a Garmin c530.
Two days after Christmas, I took it on some local errands and then used it on a drive out to my brother's house a few towns away. I was looking forward to the drive home, when I would let the Garmin guide me instead of taking the same, somewhat roundabout way I have always taken to and from his home. Back in the car, I plugged in the Garmin and... nothing. I checked to make sure the power adapter was correctly plugged in. I let it sit for a while. Tried it again. Nothing. I got home, read the manual, tried a few more things. Nothing.
So I plug "Garmin c530 failure" into Google and look what the very first post, in a forum on Amazon, tells me:
Santa brought this unit for my wife. Worked excellant (sic) for a few hours, then died. Acted like the battery went dead and charger wasn't working. Fuse checked OK. Returned unit to Amazon and the problem was handled quickly and painlessly. Amazon shipped a new unit immediately. This new unit worked one month and died. Acted just like the frst failure. Amazon has advised that the problem is more wide spread than first thought and has offered a full refund.
Oy vey.
As if this review isn't damning enough, check out the date--Feb 5, 2007(!).
So this was a widespread problem almost a year ago, and the company is still shipping these turkeys? How is that even possible?
We took it back to Sears. They were great, provided an immediate refund, and we got a TomTom One XL. So far, I am really pleased with it.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 8:30 PM
January 3, 2008
The Kindle Digital Text Platform
I was rooting around on Amazon the other day, seeing what other kind of (non-book) content was available for the Kindle when I discovered the Digital Text Platform Amazon has made available for publishing content in Kindle format. "DTP" is listed as Beta, but I found it functional and easy to use. Basically you create all the metadata for the title, including pricing information, and then upload the content for conversion to the Kindle format. To test it, I created an eBook out of a series of articles I have written on content management and XML. They seem to want HTML ("The preferred format for uploading content is as a single HTML file"), but I got impatient when I then read you needed to assemble linked images in a zip file using special instructions. So I went with a single Word .doc file ("standard .doc files will often convert without a hitch"). For the most part, it did convert without a hitch, though it did a woefully bad job with a small number of very simple tables. To work around that, I simplified a couple of the tables and deleted the others. In fairness to Amazon, I worked quickly, and could have experimented with HTML tables.
If you're a Kindle owner and happen to buy the title, I would love to hear from you about the experience. Since I don't own a Kindle yet, I had to rely on the preview capability in DTP, which basically gives you an HTML view of the content.
From the introduction to the eBook:
The following articles, white papers, and blog entries were written between 2000 and 2006. They appeared in one of several publications: The Gilbane Report, eContent Magazine, E-DOC Magazine, or Transform Magazine. Some appeared in my blog, www.billtrippe.com, or its predecessor blog, Ideas in Technology and Publishing. I undertook this compilation as an experiment in working with the beta version of Amazon.com's Digital Text Platform for creating content for the Kindle eBook reader.
I only edited the material lightly, so the articles are showing their age in places. Some links are likely out of date, some product references may be to versions of products that have since been superseded, and at least one product, XMetaL, has changed corporate ownership at least once since first written about in one or more of these articles. However, I chose these articles from many, many others I could have chosen because the material is evergreen and still useful, I think. I stand by what has been written here, especially for the price!
Posted by Bill Trippe at 8:56 AM
