TermInfo Discussion at HL7 WGM Atlanta 2013 (SIM&A)

Okay, HL7's RIMBAA Working Group hasn't changed their name to SIM&A yet ("Simba"), but it looks like that is the name that is going to stick to reflect the group's broadened scope.

One issue that this and other working groups are determined to put to bed is that of negation, particularly with TermInfo vocabulary sets like SNOMED CT. The problem is that not all vocabulary sets support negation implicitly, by providing vocabulary terms that are already negated. SNOMED CT does. The big question then is, should you always use the implied negation in the vocabulary set if it is available; or should you sometimes, or never use it.

The alternative, for HL7 v3 at least, is to use a negation indicator, messaged as a negationInd attribute on the element in question... so this is effectively metadata, and the problem with metadata is that there is no guarantee that the receiver interprets it correctly, if at all. For many use cases, this probably doesn't matter much, but for clinical diagnosis and decision making, for allergies, for drug interactions, and even in the context of non-health applications like Corrections and Defense, Person-of-Interest queries need to properly take into account null flavours and negations; so there is a strong Public Health and Public Safety aspect to this discussion as well.

So it is an important concept, and people need to reach agreement on the correct way to do this; however, this issue goes back a number of years, so I'm curious to see where it goes. My own thoughts are that a better way to do this from the start would have been to use a tri-state negation indicator, which indicates "positive", "requires negation", or "implictly negated"... but it's too late for that now, and it always has been.

Here are the details from the RIMBAA forum (via Rob Hausum, MD, Hausum Consulting):

The TermInfo negation discussion at the Atlanta WGM will be held in Q1 Tuesday (tomorrow).  Following a brief introduction, we intend to devote the remainder of the quarter to this topic.  We would like to come away from the quarter with a concrete plan to create and provide guidance on this important topic.  That may involve a focused TermInfo ballot on negation, but the specific form and scope is still open for discussion.

For those who aren't in Atlanta, we expect to have remote participation capability via GoToMeeting (details below).  Please join the discussion, or, if you are unable to attend either in person or remotely, feel free to pass along any comments/questions/concerns.

Rob

GTM details:

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Loose boats and gliders

loose boats and gliders
children floating
away over rocks
under supervision still
throwing stones at the
waves over time
here they come; there they go
turn and they play
face down the ocean
now overconfident
perhaps, tiny creatures
intertidal safety zones
safe in untidy interzones
carrying with them
nets and shrimp
pockets and stones

Great interview with John Resig, discussing jQuery, Khan Academy, and the ubiquity of Selectors API.

http://net.tutsplus.com/articles/where-in-the-world-is-john-resig/

This is really quite perceptive...

BriteSnow - The Five Software Architecture Generations: From Mainframe to Mobile Apps to HTML5

My Review of JavaScript Enlightenment

Originally submitted at O'Reilly

From Library User to JavaScript Developer

JavaScript Enlightenment

Absolutely essential reading

By Piers Hollott from Victoria, BC on 3/24/2013

 

5out of 5

Pros: Helpful examples, Well-written

Best Uses: Intermediate, Expert

Describe Yourself: Developer

If you work with JavaScript, maybe you love it, maybe you hate it. Cody's book is a constant reminder for me why I love working with JavaScript. It's a unique language, and this is a unique book. As soon as I finished, I went back to the beginning and started again.

(legalese)

I mean, it's almost with sadness that I am uninstalling Opera, but something happened a while back, and all political arguments aside, I'm just as happy with Firefox. You see, I really liked Opera Unite, which embedded a web server inside the Opera browser. All sorts of potential in that idea, although realistically, this allows you to operate an intermittent file server. For testing purposes, however, it meant I didn't need to run a separate web server. Anyway, water under the bridge, Opera is no longer supporting this feature.

At a time when people appear to be switching back to Firefox from Chrome because newer builds of Chrome are apparently slower... I might start running the Aurora stable nightly builds of Firefox. I have a love/hate relationship with Firefox. At the moment, because Firefox is providing the only decent SVG support for mobile devices, I love it again, even though the only mobile device I have is Android, and I like Chrome for Android a lot. I just have no room for Opera.

Firefox OS and Mobile Health

I have to say, I am very excited about Mozilla's Firefox OS, formerly Boot to Gecko, a Mobile OS built on web standards like HTML5, CSS and JavaScript, powered by a small Linux kernel. The OS is going to target less expensive phones, without requiring the power that Android or iOS do. If you were thinking PhoneGap, a Firefox OS app is much simpler than that. Why am I embedding in WebKit when I can boot to Gecko?

So the downside will be market penetration. In Canada or the States, or the UK. In Brazil, in Mexico, in eastern Europe, these phones could hit a sweet spot and build a strong developer community.

And this is why I'm excited. The real strength of mobile health is not going to be iPhone apps for American Doctors; it's going to be useful tools for areas that aren't already serviced by Epic or Meditech... In LMIC countries, a suite of mobile medical tools, and particularly one you might modify or extend yourself, that will be invaluable.

The developer phones are cool and orange as well.

Android FaceDetection

How could a book application interact with facial detection?

If Harry Potter has taught me anything, it is that any book can conceal a rotten core of evil, or a path to enlightenment. And yes, your typical book will not communicate by talking, or bleeding...

On the other hand, I've been experimenting with the FaceDetection capabilities which Android ICS introduced. A front facing camera can take a snapshot, say, each time you advance a page while you are reading. FaceDetection can do several things; for instance, count faces, track eyes and mouthes to see who is smiling, and register when a reader is new.

So the book can recognize the audience, as a proxy for the author. Consider this: as you are reading a book, it could refuse to go to the next page until you shared the text with another set of eyes. Perhaps more useful, a book app could track progress for a number of readers, based on their faces.

Wheels within wheels - well we're at it, the more I work with Firefox OS and Gaia, the more I want to use it as a platform to build a more interactive ePub reader, leveraging the Web Activity model. See below. Think books which can talk to each other using Web Activity sharing.

The thing is, FacialDetection may be easily fooled by a photograph... Might not be as secure as exchanging secure tokens, but once an application has authenticated that token, it can remain authenticated until the status of the detected face or faces changes, based on periodic snapshots.

Once authenticated with a single face, an app could drop authentication when this face goes away or a face is added. As long as your face is associated with a secure token, and your face does not change, this should be satisfactory to maintain authentication.

What are some ways a book app could interact differently if it could recognize its audience?

Tom Riddle me this.

Android orientation observations

I really really enjoy my Nexus 7, and I'm excited about the prospect of a 10" Android tablet from Google. At first blush, the tablet appears to be a personal device, but I have to say, it's so easy to share... I can hand it to you and say, "look at this": shared. I can sit down on the couch with one of my children on each side and we can watch cooking videos together: shared.

This is not OLPC... this is One Tablet per Couch, and I think that's a really important distinction, until the tablet supports local development, which I don't think it ever will.

I like the portrait-centred form factor, and I am frustrated by applications that flop around when I lay the tablet flat. I've talked about this before; when I look at the tablet I see a perfect place to prototype and play board games, for which you need to lay the tablet flat. A Monopoly board doesn't have portrait or landscape orientation. People sit around it and interact with it equally. This should also be true of a table when it is laid flat, and it can never be true of a mouse-driven device. Never. That's the power of touch.

At this point, I see the tablet having 3 basic modes, and I hope application design moves in this direction: portrait mode is for typical operation, like reading books or web pages, etc; certain types of content (video, text annotation, high quality images) break out into landscape automatically - I'll re-orient the device and share with the people around me when this happens; and laid flat, any other orientation is inconsequential - it's a free for all.

Please comment... this makes absolute sense to me, but maybe differs from other people's tablet experience.

My other quibble at this point, coming from a board game lover: SVG support in Ice Cream Sandwich and Jellybean is good, but not great. I would love to see an Android OS that provides better support for SVG filters and SVG DOM manipulation using WG XPath - but that's a subject for another day.

HL7: Open Standard

Monumental news this morning - the HL7 standard for healthcare messaging is becoming a much more free and open standard, providing standards and IP at no cost to implementers. I started to suspect this was in the works when Graham Grieve negotiated with HL7 to make the HL7 FHIR standard available at no cost for the draft edition, and then "we'll see about the normative edition". The discussions to make this happen go back at least two years, but of course this has been a common complaint about HL7, that cost of IP may be an impediment to implementation.

Not entirely sure I agree with that, since I see evidence suggesting this has not happened; however, for new initiatives like FHIR to gain traction on smaller local projects, and in particular in the growing area of mobile health, any such impediments need to be lowered.

I love working with HL7 and I love working with the members of both HL7 International and HL7 Canada/ Canada Health Infoway, and I have to say, this is truly fantastic news.

Keith Boone's post

The real honeypot is in the Google Docs link...

Piers Hollott shared Keith Boone's post with you. Wow! This is some radical transparency... Including Meaningful Use Common Data Sets

Keith Boone The real honeypot is in the Google Docs link... Healthcare Standards: Stage2 Final Rule Crosswalk from MeaningfulUse Objectives to Standards Last time around, I put together a crosswalk from Objectives to Certification, and from Certification to Standards. This time, it's all in one spreadsheet. Sorry for the tiny type, it's quite a bit of... View or comment on Piers Hollott's post »

My Review of Learning PHP, MySQL, JavaScript, and CSS, 2nd Edition

Originally submitted at O'Reilly

A Step-by-Step Guide to Creating Dynamic Websites

Learning PHP, MySQL, JavaScript, and CSS, 2nd Edition

Great intro to key web technologies

By phollott from Vancouver Island, BC on 9/1/2012

4out of 5

Pros: Easy to understand, Clear
Best Uses: Intermediate
Describe Yourself: Developer

I recently read two books from O'Reilly Books dealing with JavaScript: "Learning PHP, MySQL, JavaScript, and CSS" and "Learning JavaScript Design Patterns" by Addy Osmani. The first book is a great introduction to four often essential technologies for getting things done on the web - I only wish this book covered managing XSLT using Sablotron in PHP 5.0 in more depth, but this is due to personal bias - in a past life, I built some cool things using these 5 technologies.

The design patterns book was also a very good read, though, I used it more of a refresher of design patterns in general - the patterns in this book were for the most part based on the standard Java design patterns, covering some of the nuances of classical vs. prototypal inheritance.

But let's face it, Object-based Development using JavaScript is obscure subject matter, and Osmani's book has some really indispensable advice: see how these patterns are applied within the JQuery library, which contains the best application of JavaScript Design Patterns you will find. This is truly great advice.

Which brings me circuitously to JQuery creator John Resig, for whom I have immense respect; and his latest foray into simplifying JavaScript to make it easier to use as a readily available first language, which I endorse completely. One thing I appreciated in "Learning PHP, MySQL, JavaScript, and CSS"... no semicolons!

Heresy!

But really, as long as you put separate statements on separate lines, there are virtually no situations where semicolons are essential. And in fact, I found the example code in Robin Nixon's book Much easier to read than the example code in Osmani's book. I may just have been converted to the darkside.

I highly recommend both of these books.

(legalese)

JavaScript: Your New Overlord

Piers Hollott shared J. Albert Bowden's post with you. Shared due to presence of Crockford #javascript

J. Albert Bowden JavaScript: Your New Overlord Javascript: Your New Overlord In this keynote presentation at JAXConf 2012, Douglas "The JavaScript Guy" Crockford asserts that JavaScript has become the most important programming langua... View or comment on Piers Hollott's post » Google+ makes sharing on the web more like sharing in real life. Learn more. Join Google+

You have received this message because Piers Hollott Unsubscribe from these emails. You can't reply to this email. View the post to add a comment.

Yet another odd idea

Here's an idea, combining the Intent-based event model in Android with Infinite Jest style hyperfiction. What if you wrote a short novel, or rather series of short novels, and instead of using ePub or PDF or whatever, you used an Android application, targeting people's Android devices. Each novella would be say, 15,000 words long, but they would communicate with each other using intents to create footnotes out of a shared index, distributed over multiple texts. So you install one book and you get a 15,000 word novel. You install two books, and you get two 15,000 word novel, each of which has 5,000 words worth of footnotes. You install a third book and you get three 15,000 word novels, each with 10,000 words worth of footnotes.

Would you have to write all 4 concurrently, though?

HL7 FHIR Aggregation

Really good explanations recently on Grahame Grieve's weblog recently describing HL7 FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources) from the perspective of v2, CDA and v3 implementation.


FHIR for v3 and CDA implementers
FHIR for v2 implementers

One thing I am still trying to understand is the issue of aggregation, which is accomplished using Atom feeds, which in itself makes a lot of sense, and may have all sorts of side benefits, though it is a little frustrating if your browser (ie Opera) tries to handle the aggregation as though it were a blog feed... but there are two kinds of aggregation we must consider here one when we aggregate a number of like resources, for instance as the result of a non-deterministic search, and the other when multiple types of resource are aggregation into a Message (for v3) or Document (for CDA) Resource.

I find this confusing because it appears that position is used within the Atom syndication to determine which Resource to use as the transport wrapper. Still trying to wrap my head around this. Should prove to get interesting very quickly.

My Review of Mobile JavaScript Application Development

Originally submitted at O'Reilly

Bringing Web Programming to Mobile Devices

Mobile JavaScript Application Development

Mobile JavaScript Hybridization

By Piers Hollott from Victoria, BC on 7/10/2012

 

4out of 5

Pros: Well-written, Easy to understand

Best Uses: Intermediate

Describe Yourself: Developer

I have just finished reading a review copy of Adrian Kosmaczewski's book on Mobile Development using JavaScript, and I highly recommend it, particularly if you are faced with a decision about mobile development frameworks and you have a team which is already familiar with hybridized JavaScript approaches like JQuery or GWT.

After dealing with some basic groundwork, Kosmaczewski devotes a solid chapter to each of the prevailing uses of JavaScript in the mobile arena: HTML5 with JavaScript, JQuery Mobile, Sencha Touch, and PhoneGap. While there are advantages to all of these approaches, the prevailing wind seems to indicate use of JQuery Mobile if you are already invested in JQuery, and Sencha Touch if you are building an enterprise-size solution.

Either of these approaches - actually, all of these approaches - will allow you to deploy to multiple platforms, which is a key component of JavaScript hybridization: ubiquity. The difficulty I have personally encountered is the flip side of the ubiquity coin, flexibility. JavaScript may be everywhere, but can also become everything, and this can lead to paralysis.

An example of this: I have recently been working on some development in with mobile SVG, which is becoming more and better supported on various mobile platforms. SVG is not hard to work with, and rolling your own application to do exciting things is enjoyable if you like that sort of thing; however... do you use HTML with embedded SVG? HTML5? Just SVG with E4X/EcmaScript (which is just JavaScript, really)? or Raphael.js, or Sencha Touch, which encapsulates it?

At some point, you just need to stick your paddle in the water and see which way the current takes you. And Kosmaczewski's book is a good starting point.

(legalese)

Promoting health? It's all in the game | ...

I really want to see this sort of technology succeed, in part because it demonstrates so much the principle of  "genius of the and" - gamification of health not involves the patient more with his own diagnosis and care, it can also provide his healthcare team with better, more regular check in points, as well as an access point for delivery of timely information. For healthcare to be successful, it needs to follow a pattern like this. Okay, I'm a techie, and I can't help thinking on that level... this approach to delivery of information follows an, albeit loose, Model View Control (MVC) pattern - identifying what information is required to trace healthcare needs, then coordinating between patients' and practitioners' ability to view this information and respond to it, and formalizing a channel of communication between patient and practitioner, outside office hours.

Bertalan Meskó, MD Promoting health? It's all in the game | Reuters LONDON (Reuters) - Meet Roxxi - a feisty and fully-armed virtual nanobot. Billed as medicine's mightiest warrior, she's fighting an epic battle deep inside the human body where she launches rapid-fire...

3,001 THINGS YOU DIDN'T KNOW!!!

I firmly believe that most internet memes are quite silly, but the bit about Windows and "Con" is kind of spooky.

3,001 THINGS YOU DIDN'T KNOW!!! - 1) The moon smells like gunpowder. 2) The creator of the Nike Swoosh symbol (Caroline Davidson) was paid only $35 for the design. 3) You can't create a folder called "Con" in Microsoft Windows. 4) The formula for Coca-Cola has never been patented. 5) Al Capone once said, I am like any other man, all I do is supply a demand. 6) There are five states in United States with no sales tax. They are Alaska, Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire, and Oregon. 7) Calcium in bones absorbs X-Rays the most, so bones look white on the radiograph. Fat and other soft tissues absorb less, and look gray. 8) Bruce Lee was the Hong Kong 'cha cha' dance champion in 1958. 9) Erotica is sexually oriented material that is not considered "pornographic" to the viewer. 10) Elvis Presley was a black belt in karate. 11) Amphetamines are similar to cocaine, the main difference being that they are synthetic, longer acting, and cheaper to buy. 12) A DVD has an about 100 year life span. 13) Every person, including identical twins, has a unique eye and tongue print along with their finger print. 14) It takes six months to build a Rolls Royce, and 13 hours to build a Toyota. 15) The words "naked" and "nude" are not the same thing. Naked implies unprotected. Nude means unclothed. 16) James Bond's creator, Ian Fleming, was a real spy for the British Navy during the World War II. 17) You're born with 300 bones, but when you get to be an adult, you only have 206, why? Because they fusion one to another. 18) A shrimp's heart is in its head. 19) All the numbers on a roulette wheel add up to 666. 20) A lump of pure gold, the size of a matchbox, can be flattened into a sheet the size of a tennis court. 21) Ernest Vincent Wright wrote a novel with over 50,000 words, none of which containing the letter "E". 22) Birds are largely unaffected by spicy things, like chilies, as they are not sensitive to capsaicin, the hot stuff in chilies. 23) The Bible devotes some 500 verses on prayer, less than 500 verses on faith, but over 2000 verses on money and possessions. 24) Rubber bands last longer when refrigerated. 25) Americans, on average, eat 18 acres of pizza every day. 26) The White House has 35 bathrooms, 3 elevators, 132 rooms, and 412 doors in it. 27) The ashes of the average cremated person weigh 9 pounds. 28) Identify a fake: The second hand on an authentic Rolex watch doesn't tick, it moves smoothly. 29) Pluto is no longer considered a planet, it is now known as a 'Dwarf Planet'. 30) Months that begin on a Sunday will always have a "Friday the 13th." 31) The Leaning Tower of Pisa has never been straight. 32) Alcohol can be detected in the blood as quickly as 40 minutes after your 1st drink. 33) The Olympic gold medal must contain at least six grams of gold. 34) Breasts contain no muscle tissue, so there's no exercise that can change their shape. 35) A Boeing 747 airliner contains 6,000,000 parts. 36) U.S. bills are 2.61 inches wide, 6.14 inches long, and are .0043 inches thick and weigh 1 gram. 37) The microwave was invented after a researcher walked by a radar tube and a chocolate bar melted in his pocket. 38) Apples are more effective at keeping people awake in the morning than caffeine. 39) Believe it or not but during the average human life, you will consume 70 assorted bugs as well as 10 spiders as you sleep. 40) Al Capone's business card said he was a used furniture dealer. 41) Cellulitis is a bacterial infection of the deepest layer of your skin. 42) Warm up before exercise. Cold, stiff muscles and ligaments are more susceptible to injury. 43) Footprints of the astronauts who landed on the moon should last at least 10 million years since the moon has no atmosphere. 44) Alfred Hitchcock had no belly button as it was eliminated during surgery. 45) The Titanic was the first ship to use the S.O.S signal. 46) It cost $7 million dollars to build the Titanic, and $200 million to make a film about it. 47) Every day 200 million couples make love, 400,000 babies are born, and 140,000 people die. 48) In 1980, a Las Vegas hospital suspended workers for betting on when patients would die. 49) Antarctica is the only land on our planet that is not owned by any country. 50) Jewelers Tiffany & Co., based in New York, is responsible for making the Super Bowl trophy. 51) The first credit card was issued by American Express in 1951. 52) Prince Charles and Prince William never travel on the same airplane as a precaution. 53) Paraskavedekatriaphobia is the fear of Friday the 13th. 54) The Mona Lisa has no eyebrows. It was the fashion in Renaissance Florence to shave them off. 55) It takes glass one million years to decompose, which means it never wears out and can be recycled an infinite amount of times. 56) One ragweed plant can release as many as one billion grains of pollen. 57) Heavy marijuana use lowers men's testosterone levels and sperm count and quality. Pot could decrease libido and fertility in some heavy smoking men. 58) Dogs...

PSAs from Canada Health Infoway

I keep seeing these PSAs from Canada Health Infoway. They're kind of compelling. Electronic Health Records TV AD - Emergency room.wmv youtube.com - this is another one I saw View or comment on Piers Hollott's post » Google+ makes sharing on the web more like sharing in real life. Learn more. Join Google+

Sears.com and mortuary refrigerators

Quoted for #refrigerator...

Sears: Online department store featuring appliances, tools, fitness equipment and more Find everything you need to make your house a home at Sears.com. From Craftsman tools to Kenmore appliances, fitness equipment to lawn and garden supplies, with our easy online shopping, the things yo...

Siri and Wolfram Alpha

I don't use Siri, and it really goes against my nature... I have a screen in front of me all day, so why add impedance mismatch through speech? What Wolfram Alpha offers, though, is the ability to share mathematical proof through a URL, and to a math geek, that's pretty cool.

"Siri accounts for about a quarter of the queries fielded by Wolfram Alpha"-Steve Lohr http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/07/technology/wolfram-a-search-engine-finds-answers-within-itself.html #bigdata Wolfram, a Search Engine, Finds Answers Within Itself Wolfram Alpha Pro's creator wants his "computational knowledge engine" to appeal to more than math and science enthusiasts. View or comment on Piers Hollott's post »

Neat. Mindwheel port for Windows posted by developer

Neat. Mindwheel was an impressive interactive fiction created by Synapse/Broderbund back in 1984, authored by former Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky. I am currently reading Pinsky's translation of Dante's Inferno, and it is interesting how lyrical, and yet claustrophobic and in places even creepy Mindwheel can be, much like Pinsky's Inferno. This download is a Windows port, and what's really cool is it has been made available by Steve Hales, the lead developer for the project, and apparently also designed the audio sub-system in the ultra cool T-Mobile SideKick. From his about page: "If anyone remembers: Fort Apocalypse , Slime, Dimension X, I coded and designed them with Ihor Wolosenko. I also coded and co-designed Mindwheel with Robert Pinksy, the famed poet and author. Working with Robert changed the way I read and write words forever. He was writing History of my Heart during the development of Mindwheel, so they have familiar themes. You can even get a deeper meaning behind Mindwheel, by reading this book. Although, he claims, they are not connected." Cool. Mindwheel | Igor's Software Laboratories Created in 1983, 1984. This was a mind blowing experience. My first experience with many computer science concepts that are commonplace now. Object oriented programming, Virtual Machines, AI, language...

Hot processing!

Great story from Ken Holman, quoted for coolness and also for #refrigerator... Hot processing! So I'm standing here at my desk preparing my UBL 2.1 PRD3 D1 package and I have two very long XSLT transformations to run. One takes 98 minutes and the other takes 124 minutes, running in Java in BSD on my Unibody MacBook 2.66GHz I7 (dual core; quad process). Input file 10Mb; output files total 183Mb. I used to run these two tasks sequentially, but I today checked out "Activity Monitor" and discovered that while each transformation starts off using about 250% CPU time (sharing processors while building the memory structures), they quickly become single processor 100% (±2%) only (while traversing the memory structures). So I decided to run them simultaneously instead of sequentially, saving me (theoretically) close to 98 minutes since most of the time appears to be at 100% and when they are both running Activity Monitor says they are both running at 100%. So far so good ... but within minutes the fans on my machine get too noisy to talk over! I check the status bar and, sure enough, both fans are running >6000rpm. My fans so very rarely make any noise, so this is very noticeable and annoying. My very wise wife suggests I go to the kitchen and get the flat-bottomed aluminum frying pan to place under my machine, upside down so the flat part of the pan is full on the bottom of the Mac. Maybe two minutes later the fans are running <4000rpm and we can talk without raising my voice over the fan. Well, now as I'm typing this Google+ post the frying pan is getting hot! The fans are up to 4800rpm again and slowly rising. So, I've just gone to the kitchen, brought out a second aluminum frying pan, put that one under the Mac, and put the first frying pan into the refrigerator to cool down for the next swap. Within a minute the fan is back down <4000rpm. My review and editing of the above takes five or 10 minutes. Already this pan is heating up as it isn't as substantial as the first pan ... fan speed up to 4400rpm ... but the first pan will be cold by the time I need to swap again. Such a simple improvement! Wish I'd thought of it. View or comment on Piers Hollott's post »

Tim Bray on dynamic typing, Android, Java

See, this is why I respect Tim Bray's opinions so much; because he is a tireless member of my post-SGML/functional programming tribe. For instance, see this post on static vs. dynamic typing, and why it's not such a big deal with mobile Java for Android. I particularly like this comment, though: "From: Tim Converse (Dec 29 2011, at 10:32) "The Java language in particular suffers from excessive ceremony and boilerplate. Also it lacks important constructs such as closures, first-class functions, and functional-programming support." This is a very concise version of the case for Scala over Java." Bingo. ongoing by Tim Bray · Type-System Criteria Starting some time around 2005, under the influence of Perl, Python, Erlang, and Ruby, I became convinced that application programs should be written in dynamically-typed languages. You get it built f...

Embassytown

Embassytown by China Miéville
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

"Embassytown is a fully achieved work of art." High praise from Ursula LeGuin (in her Guardian review), one of the writers who have really driven the potential for Science Fiction as artform. Best book I have read so far this year, for what that's worth, Embassytown is a maverick read, setting out a subtle but profound agenda, and then carrying it through to a stunning conclusion, much like Suzette Haden-Elgin's Native Tongue or Anthony Burgess's Clockwork Orange. If you have read it already, read the first few chapters again - it's amazing the detail employed to carefully inch the story forward, play it backward, then when all the pieces are in place, unleash it.

Miéville is known for his disapproval of the high fantasy genre, and this is the complete opposite of that, dealing with language not as a way of identifying class and race, but undermining this notion, as in the works of Burgess, Burroughs or Lessing, demonstrating how language creates class, language creates race, language creates culture, and then, going on to demonstrate, quite graphically, how language is also, to quote Burroughs, "a virus sent from space" - a destructive addiction.

China Miéville has always been a deep and deeply intelligent writer. Embassytown shows that he is, simply, a great writer who should not be ignored.

View all my reviews


Embassytown by China Miéville – review

XML Prague 2012 conference sessions

XML Prague 2012 conference sessions: Opening Keynote - Jeni Tennison  The eX Markup Language? - Eric Van der Vlist XML and HTML Cross-Pollination: A Bridge Too Far? Robin Berjon and Norman Walsh What XML can learn from HTML; also known as XML5 - Anne Van Kesteren Panel discussion on HTML/XML convergence - Norman Walsh XProc: Beyond application/xml - Vojtch Toman Understanding NVDL - the Anatomy of an Open SourceXProc/XSLT implementation of NVDL - George Bina JSONiq: XQuery for JSON, JSON for XQuery - Jonathan Robie, Matthias Brantner, Daniela Florescu, Ghislain Fourny and Til Westmann Corona: Managing and querying XML and JSON via REST Jason Hunter Treating JSON as a subset of XML: Using XForms toread and submit JSON - Steven Pemberton RESTful XQuery - Standardised XQuery 3.0 Annotations for REST - Adam Retter Compiling XQuery code into Javascript instructionsusing XSLT - Alain Couthures Implementing an XQuery/XSLT hybrid - Evan Lenz Transform.XQ: A Transformation Library for XQuery 3.0 - John Snelson Building Bridges from Java to XQuery- CharlesFoster My first XSLT editor - Tony Graham A Wiki-based System for Schema and Data Evolution - Lorenzo Bossi and Alberto Trombetta Standards update XPath/XSLT/XQuery 3.0 - Michael Kay and Jonathan Robie Closing keynote - Michael Sperberg-McQueen

Cool technology of the week...

Pretty amazing... the Lytro is coming out next april, at a 400-500$ price tag.... It is a "light-field" camera, which means basically the camera takes in all light which falls within its field, and you can focus the picture after you have taken it. Depth of field is digitally constructed. Of course, one result of this is that your picture files are very dense and very large. The form factor is based on the optics required, but also looks nice. Lytro: The Biggest Thing to Happen to Photography Since Digital The Lytro is the world's first consumer light-field camera. Here's the backstory of how it's made and why it's so different from other cameras on the shelf.

For those Football Fans who remember...Happy...

Quoted for #refrigerator... When I was a kid, I thought William "Refrigerator" Perry was cool because he had his own GI Joe. In retrospect, that was pretty cool.

For those Football Fans who remember...Happy 49th to William Refrigerator Perry...Great DT who played for the Bears and Eagles...I think he was one great Defensive Lineman

Tuesday+

Several years ago, an acquaintance of mine started a project called "Topic Tag Tuesday". This was back when we were both spending more time on Twitter, and it was great entertainment. In order to hone my own writing, I would like to do something similar on Google+ to see if the entertainment value still holds up.

I am curious if the a Google+ Circle will lend itself to this sort of project, so I'm creating a new Circle, called Story ("Story Circle," see?). On Tuesdays, I'll post a blurb in the Public stream asking for topics. Comment on the blurb with a topic, and I'll add you to my Story Circle. Later that day, I'll write a short story incorporating one of the topics and post it back to the Story Circle, completing the loop.

If you're interested in this idea, follow me on Google+.

Quoted for #refrigerator... this xkcd comic is truly a masterstroke of overdetermination.

Money: refrigerator / if I had a million dollars...

Hour long, but really good

This is kind of a follow up to the Zizek piece from the Guardian below. What can be done to reform the Republic for which it stands. This video is an hour or so, and you should watch it. @Google: Lawrence Lessig: Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress—and a Plan to Stop It youtube.com - In an era when special interests funnel huge amounts of money into our government-driven by shifts in campaign-finance rules and brought to new levels by the Supreme Court in Citizens United v. Federal...

Waking the Moon by Elizabeth Hand
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Rereading this book... read it when it was first out in the early nineties after loving Hand's earlier Winterlong trilogy. Didn't like this as much at the time because it couldn't compete with the overabundance of wow that were Liz Hand's science fiction - including Mars Hill, I suppose.

In retrospect: I have two favorite writers, Liz Hand and Guy Kay. Kay's novel Tigana features this crazy Benandanti vignette based on Carlo Ginzburg's historical writing in Night Battles, and the Benandanti in Waking the Moon offer a great companion to this. If I was going to recommend a first book to read by Hand, I would suggest Glimmering or Mortal Love because both of these are steeped in wow. Or Winterlong, which still ranks in my 5 or so favorite books.

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Grahame Grieve on National Projects and Standards

From his Health Intersections site, this is Grahame Grieve on National Projects and Standards, and the tension between the two. I'm a standards geek, and I live for this sort of discussion. In this very concise article, Grieve discusses why projects at the national level rely on international standards groups, and how this introduces stress factors into these projects. I also appreciate Lloyd McKenzie's comment about the interoperability across borders. This is one of the promises of using international standards, but in reality, it rarely comes up, and comes with it's own host of issues. Interoperability between two sibling releases of a standard can be trying enough, let alone between two nations localization to the same standard. But that is what makes the work exciting. National Projects and Standards « Health Intersections Pty Ltd   There's a difference between the goals of the national project, and the value proposition of using standards, and this difference can create considerable tension...

Right to bear arms meets right to ride bears

Artist Jason Heuser Creates Alternate Bad-Ass United States History The illustrated artwork of Jason Heuser creates an alternate historical reality where famous figures in United States history are total bad-asses. Limited prints of his illustrations are available ....

Slavoj Žižek: Occupy first. Demands come later.

I love Žižek's writing - he always extends just beyond the obvious triad: discontent-protest-demands, in this case, to ask what absence really underlies the presence of the event, what really is at stake. Worth reading twice. (via Guardian) Occupy first. Demands come later Slavoj Žižek: Critics say the Occupy cause is nebulous. Protesters will need to address what comes next – but beware a debate on enemy turf

Health Documents v. Health Messages or Elements

Useful breakdown of same key factors in the use of Health Documents v. Health Messages by John Moehrke: Healthcare Security/Privacy: Critical aspects of Documents vs Messages or Elements Healthcare Security/Privacy. Discussions of Privacy and Security in Healthcare by John Moehrke. Topics: Consent, Access Control, Audit Control, Accounting of Disclosures, Identity, Authorization, Auth...

Michael Geist on Canada's National Digital Strategy

Canada's National Digital Strategy: Hidden in Plain Sight Earlier this month, I had the pleasure of delivering a keynote address at the Cybera Summit in Banff, Alberta. The conference focused on a wide range of cutting edge technology and network issues. My opening keynote discussed Canada digital economy legal strategy. While the formal digital strategy has yet to be revealed, I argued that the digital economy legal strategy is largely set with legislative plans touching on lawful access, privacy, online marketing, and copyright. Michael Geist Cybera Summit 2011 youtube.com - 2011 Cybera Summit introductory keynote by Michael Geist, Law Professor and Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law at the University of Ottawa.

How powerful is Diwali ? This is what India...

How powerful is Diwali ? This is what India looks like on Diwali night :) Picture from NASA

Electrolux Bio Robot Refrigerator

Electrolux Bio Robot Refrigerator works on biopolymer gel the Electrolux Bio Robot Refrigerator is a concept where the Bio Robot cools biopolymer gel through luminescence. A non-sticky gel surrounds the food item when shoved into the biopolymer gel, creating separate pods. The design features no doors or drawers, and the food items are individually cooled at their optimal temperature thanks to the robot. And since it can take any orientation (hung vertically, horizontally, and even on the ceiling), and can be modified in size, you can fit it in any apartment. Designer: Yuriy Dmitriev Electrolux Bio Robot Refrigerator (7 photos)

Curate something!

So, here's an idea: curate something. Anything. In my case, due to an odd concatenation of circumstances, I have taken it upon myself to curate stories about people and their refrigerators. This activity consists of periodically querying Google+ and Twitter and the www at large for a single word, and republishing anything particularly exciting or funny this turns up. A single word. That's all. I suppose I label the post for posterity as well. Try it. Curate something.

Originally posted on Google+ by Adam J. Cohen:

I spent the late afternoon refrigerator shopping because our fridge suddenly stopped cooling. It smelled like the coil might be burning out and this fridge is old, possibly over 20 years old. Just for fun I thought I'd take a look and see if I could find a problem. The coils on the fridge were getting way too hot. On closer inspection, I found a mouse that had stopped the fan from cooling the coils. I removed the mouse (he was beyond repair). Now that the fan is moving again, the fridge is working. Cost of new fridge between $1100 - $1500. Cost of repair, $0.00. Lesson learned, look for some obvious problems before dropping a bunch of money on something.

Haha! Defiantly so!

via +Joseph Lee, via +Wil Wheaton on Google+ We all know Oreos are delicious, but did you know they make a great canvas for cameos? Dating as far back as 332 BC, cameos are defined by contrast, usually with a raised light relief against a dark intaglio, which serves as a dark backdrop. With that in mind, Oreo's most defiantly fit the bill and is another example of food too good to eat. Check out Judith G. Klausner's page for more examples of her art! #Oreo Cameo http://jgklausner.com/work/oreo-cameo

Goodreads: recommended reading by Northrop Frye

The Bush Garden: Essays on the Canadian Imagination by Northrop Frye
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I read this book quite a long time ago as part of a course on CanLit and poetry. I love the way Frye uses language to express ideas, and ideas to create/curate identity... and rereading this book makes me want to go back and reread Anatomy of Criticism and Fearful Symmetry, as well as works by Atwood, McLuhan, Innis, Lampman, Birney etc etc... if you are Canadian and you like poetry, you should read this book because it might introduce you to a previous generation of Canadian romanticism or a previous previous generation of Canadian classicism.

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Ada Lovelace Day 2011

Ada Lovelace day: in my little XML corner of the world, I have learned more than I could possibly mention from +Eve Maler , +Jeni Tennison , Priscilla Walmsley and +Lauren Wood. Many thanks to all!

This animated presentation by Dan Pink is...

This animated presentation by Dan Pink is easily the coolest thing I have seen so far today (via +John Moehrke) on the nature of work, purpose and incentive. Healthcare Security/Privacy: Standards work is motivating because it gets used and improves lives Healthcare Security/Privacy. Discussions of Privacy and Security in Healthcare by John Moehrke. Topics: Consent, Access Control, Audit Control, Accounting of Disclosures, Identity, Authorization, Auth...

Neal Stephenson - Innovation Starvation

Neal Stephenson on society's failure to mobilize to "get big stuff done":

"Today's belief in ineluctable certainty is the true innovation-killer of our age."

Or in other words, blame Google, since a quick search for a solution to a problem demonstrates either, apparently, that it can't be solved, or that it already has been solved, occluding the possibility that it may not have been solved adequately, and it may not have been solved recently.

Innovation Starvation | World Policy Institute

By Neal Stephenson

Structured Product Labeling...

I am currently reading about SPL (Structured Product Labeling), an XML-based standard used in the pharmaceutical industry, engineered to reduce pharmaceutical error. The SPL Standard, DailyMed, and the Consumer – DCLnews Blog By DCL's Vincent B. Donadio, Editorial Contributions from DCL's Howard Shatz In 2005, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) implemented an XML-based standard for drug labeling (among other thi...