Zac Bowling’s Blog

Got a job. Yeppie. More to come…

Joseph Hill and I both registered to speak at DallasCodeCamp on Mono on the 24th. Come out and see us.

Location and hours of the event:

Code Camp will take place at the Microsoft Building LC1 in Las Colinas, located at:

7000 State Highway 161
Irving, Tx. 75039

Doors will open at 8:30 AM. Don’t forget to visit the site and RSVP and get your parking pass. Its free and there will be food.

HR-XML
Was working on resume this morning when I ran across something cool called the Human Resource XML Consortium. This is one of the best uses of web services and XML standardization outside use specifically in the tech realm.

You see, my resume is really written in XML. I did that about 4 years ago so that I could write a few XSLT sheets to export the real resume. My experience crosses so many areas, so its really hard to show specifically to the human resource officer who is going to get my resume I know exactly what they need, simply because many of them don’t understand the technology as well as the developers I would be working for in most cases. With this method I can filter and sort specific areas and use different versions of the text so I can match to each specific case as best as possible. All I have to do is tweak a few sorts and xpath queries in the xslt and out comes a specific resume for someone. The other main goal was to be able to export my resume to different formats like XHTML, Text, and an XML schema for converting to PDF (and even someday Word XML and OpenDoc).

What is of interest to me is that the HR-XML guys have come up with a standardized XML scheme for resumes (which happens to be fairly similar to my resume). Though, once its in that format, it conforms to everything published by the HR-XML and when everyone starts using all the HR interchange formats (which from the sponsors might already be true), then I’ll be slightly over the curve. That is if it the general public picks up on it, which I can’t see why not

I’ll release the code that makes this possible later. I think that HR-XML has really got something here.

Update:
“greencrab” (with a nasa.gov ip even :-P) else emailed me about http://xmlresume.sourceforge.net/. It’s got Debian packages on apt-get even. Pretty neat stuff.

FlyVideo3000 Support
I wrote a patch for the Linux kernel to support the $18 FlyVideo3000 NTSC video capture card for video4linux. Nothing big but its my first kernel patch I got to send in so I’m excited. Really there isn’t any code, just adding a definition but still, got to start somewhere. See it here: http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=115011638432595&w=2

Mono turns 5 years old!
It’s simply amazing how far Mono has evolved over the years. From its early days in 2001 when the annoucments of what the guys over at Ximian became public knowledge, its simply amazing to see how many people have joined in. This project is massive now. Well over 3 millions lines of code.

Here are some interesting links in Mono history:

• The old “Mono Internet Server” “MIS” to test sockets and IO back in early 2002:
  http://primates.ximian.com/~miguel/dick-mis-server.png
• GTK# Hello world app from 2002 back in Gnome 1.0: http://gtk-sharp.sourceforge.net/gtk-hello-world.png
• The nearly famous email from Miguel speaking to the gnome-hackers community on the relationship of gnome and mono. This is required reading for everyone: http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-hackers/2002-February/msg00031.html

libmozebmed coming along
libmozembed is working! I’m in the middle of attacking a nasty memory leak (which isn’t easy since valgrind and mozilla mixed in Mono makes things just a wee-bit interesting). If it’s not in my ported code of the profile service for mozilla, then its safe to say that I will have something in the svn tonight

I need a job!
Just about that time. It’s been about two months since I left Match.com. I worked there for a little bit less then a year and a half before I left. It was an awesome and very challenging job, however I never took any vacation time and I also worked many weekends. It took a bunch out of me and burned me out a bit, so I’ve been on a bit of a sabbatical since then catching up on some things. Mostly spending my time lately working on Mono, re-sharpening my skills and specialities that I didn’t get to use at Match, doing a few little contracts, and relaxing by the pool. Its been nice not having to worry about deadlines and getting to work on I want and at my own pace.

However, its time to get back to work again…

If anyone is looking for a Mono/.NET, C/C++, or Java software engineer with over 7 years experience in the north Dallas/Plano area, can get in with contact me here:

zac@zacbowling.com or
P:(972)437-6272

Google is in court sticking up for our rights where others wouldn’t. I’ve been keeping tabs on what is going on I think its awesome that they don’t give in on their principles.

But then after today’s court battle, Google’s CEO spoke with reporters recently, and publicly conceded and said that he believes that Google might of sacrificed its values by working with the Chinese government in its decision to filter there. It’s getting some press play this morning.

He came out and said specifically:

“We felt that perhaps we could compromise our principles but provide ultimately more information for the Chinese and be a more effective service and perhaps make more of a difference. … Perhaps now the principled approach makes more sense.”

Simply just saying that, openly talking about its values as a company, and having the guts concede something like that, wow! Google aims to loose a large chunk of money if they choose to pull out of china or perhaps pressure the Chinese government to lessen up some its filters or even just talking about it in the first place. However coming out saying that their values might be more important, wow. Google has my total respect for that one. Google just upped its value in my portfolio

In other news, my gecko webcontrol (the MWF version) should be ready for testing soon. Mozilla’s profile service gave me some unexpected hickups that I’m just finishing up on overcomming. Stay tuned…

Miguel is looking for a Zombo invite, so if anyone has one, they should send him one. I’m still waiting on getting a Obmoz invite.

PS: ZOMBO LIES