Happy Diwali

शुभ दीपावली

दिवाळीच्या शुभेछा

ਹੈਪੀ ਦੀਵਾਲੀ

દિવાલી મુબારક

শুভো দীপাবলী

தீபாவலிளி நல்வாழ்த்துகக்ள்

Recommendation times three

XForms 1.0 (Third Edition) is now a W3C Recommendation.

Looking ahead, the roadmap is here.

Gameroom

The nets on the tennis courts at work are doing down, golf is on the downturn. Good thing the gameroom is in shape.

Great Donic tables, and a full house of devoted ping-pong fans two nights a week. A new Tornado foosball table, with comfortable, forgiving grips. Doesn't look like any of us will pull an Ortwin soon.

Latest board game additions include a few carroms, and that seems to be catching on (unlike to touch rugby league, that was just World Cup mania ;-). The pool table could be in better health.

Of leopards and foxes

... and wily schemes. One week left.

Overheard on the radio

Nick heard Raman on the radio. Having worked closely with TV for more than a year, I trust accessible search at Google is in good hands. And to echo Nick, it is about time.

LovePerfectChange

Watched the off broadway "I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change" last weekend, which was better than anticipated.

The details are at (beware, site has a sound track ;-) www.loveperfectchange.com

Detour

Being in Minneapolis last weekend, had to take the 35W detour a few times. Having lived blocks from the bridge for a few years, it more than ever drove home the feeling of a personal loss.

Lemon squeeze

Spent some time at Mohonk. There is 85-odd miles of hiking, with a variety of trails. I'd say the trail leading up to the lemon squeeze is worth the squeeze.

They have decent golf, tennis, boating, horseback riding. They even have a croquet court :-)

Guess what I changed, for 500

I had the opportunity to use Google docs, in a truly collaborative fashion. I'll say its better than many things I've tried.

It auto-saves, which is good. Some of those saves trigger revisions, had to get used to the notion that a revision isn't necessarily anyone's conscious choice of a publishable delta. Top that with wiki-style diffs, whitespace and cross-browser quirks, it can be hard to follow changes.



Some revisions just state "no text added". Fun.

Riding the bike around town

We'll be out in numbers again on October 14th. Join us. nycmsbiketour.org has details.

For first-timers, I'd recommend the 30 mile route. Its all along the water, down the west-side highway and up the FDR.

Dos and donts

Singapore has signs. Many signs. And enforced fines. It also has a low crime rate. I heard claims there is a correlation. Perhaps.

Pillar

I feel asleep under the stars for a couple of hours, the live music coming from the Selona lounge (source of light) was soothing, and so was the Nusa Dua cooler.

Endless ocean

Until Australia or Antartica, depending on the heading. I prefer the natural shade.

Dinner on the beach

At Tao. Good desserts.

Saving gas

At the Taro elephant safari. Pushpa sure can trumpet.

Colors of Bali

Been there

Cloudy

Lens on the glass of the cable car to Sentosa, a bird's eye view of a portion of the second busiest port and the downtown Singapore skyline.

The first round

Saturday morning turned out to be nicer than anticipated (59F) for the first round of golf this year. Here's to many more such rounds this season ...

चुकली दिशा तरीही

विंदांची ही कविता वाचायला मिळाली, फार खोल आहे खरी ...

चुकली दिशा तरीही हुकलें न श्रेय सारें;
वेड्या मुसाफिराला सामील सर्व तारे.

...

चुकली दिशा तरीही आकाश एक आहे,
हें जाणतो तयाला वाटेल तेथ न्यारे.

आशा तशी निराशा, हें श्रेय सावधांचे;
बेसावधास कैसे डसणार हे निखारे.

इती विंदा करंदीकर.

A working alpha

The alphaWorks project related to State Chart XML tools was posted today.

It includes a RSA (Rational Software Architect) plugin for transforming UML state chart and activity diagrams into SCXML.




It also contains a Mozilla extension allowing the execution of event-based controllers within XHTML documents.



Surely the bits are subject to improvement, minor tweaks et al, and theres currently a need for JNI while we wait for a C++ SCXML interpreter in the public domain.

But we can now draw UML charts, transform them to SCXML and execute them. Quite useful.

In addition, given examples of server-side usecases like these, and the Mozilla extension, the network boundary for the application controller just became a whole lot more fluid. And thats quite useful too.

Okemo

Hasn't let us down this season, decent place. Suggest rounding up a crew, if at all possible. The good cabin rentals hold around 25.

My top three places in town, apart from the obvious destinations:

3. Tilted Tavern
2. Wicked Good Pizza
1. Waffle Haus on the lower mountain trail

फ़िटे अंधाराचे जाळे

बर्‍याच दिवसाने हे गाणे ऐकले, दोन-तीन वेळा।

"मनं मनास उम्गत नाही, आधार कसा शोधावा ...
दुबंळ्या गळक्या झोळीतं हा सुर्य कसा झेलावा ..."

अप्रतिम!

WD++

The third Working Draft of State Chart XML has been published.

There is a possibility that I will take some time to bring Commons SCXML upto speed.

I often get asked about the lifecycle of W3C specifications in this context. Here is the state machine (some edge cases skipped for brevity):

The plan, usually, is to end up on the bottom right.

SISR goes PR

Acronym soup aside, Semantic Interpretation for Speech Recognition is now a Proposed Recommendation. Here.

If you've ever developed speech applications (haven't we all), you're probably aware that the grammars are crucial. Whats more, the semantic interpretation pieces often need to be rewritten across platforms. And thats generally OK, until its time to switch or support more (voice) browsers.

So this could be good. GRXML or ABNF camp welcome.

And along with some alignment to web applications as we know them, à la Reusable Dialog Components (RDC) tag library (at Jakarta), speech application authoring might even start coming up everyone's alley.

Hard questions

These are trying times; the nephew has mastered speed-dialing. And he wants to know.

After a brief hi, I am required to state my favorite animal. I try to get out of it by saying there isn't one in particular. That earns me three chances. After barely making that one, I'm expected to provide reasons for all three, all of which promptly undergo severe scrutiny. It never gets easier.

As I hang up, I'm left wondering about all the answers I've forgotten over the years.

The world isn't flat

• The W3C publishes the first Working Draft of SCXML (July 05)
• Apache Jakarta releases an implementation, Commons SCXML v0.5 (July 06)
• Apache Shale releases a dialog manager implementation using the Commons library (Jan 07)
• The subsequent W3C Working Draft adds a Shale example as an informative appendix (Feb 07)

रंजिशे सही ...

... दिलही दुखाने के लिये आ,
आ फिरसे मुझे छोडके जाने के लिये आ.

The Ghazals in the concert this Sunday made the drive worthwhile, this one remains my favorite. Serious word play ensues.