Decline of Science in U.S.

BBC article on Bush administration hostitliy to science, slashdotted 8/24/05. Bush Robert Samuelson (Newsweek, Feb. 24, 2006) thinks fears of U.S. decline are exaggerated.

Gift ideas

ThinkGeek catalog; Cool watches from Skagen. Harmony catalog has some nice things, like composters, but they're not cheap, and not exactly appropriate for birthdays.

Japanese

2005-02-26
Japan Times Book Club

2005-09-17
Yamasa Language Institute: fees for short intensive language acquisition courses. Teaching Japanese through music. JLTN (Japanese Language Teachers Network) Quarterly. National Council of Japanese Language Teachers, see esp. links page.

12/02/04
Handed out during LL: est. 14 hours to fill out conjugation practice sheet that will count for 20 percent of final exam.

Yahoo Japan during lab: Video News

10/14/04: JPN100 language lab. Not using Lab Recorder. Instead, playing with Web Subject Contents, or something. Practicing verbs. Genki CD set costs 18,000 yen (ca. $180). Later in the session we're encouraged to practice kanji here. Another good practice site, which actually seems a part of genki, is this.Reproduction in Modern JapanBeginning Japanese (J115) is to be taught at Yale by Michiaki Murata (in charge), Mari Stever, and staff. I need to email Murata-sensei to see if I may audit. There's an email directory on the East Asian Languages and Literatures website Here's the information: EMAIL: michiaki.murata@yale.edu SPECIALTIES: Japanese Language; Japanese History. PHONE: 2-8609 OFFICE: 432 Temple Rm. 302. HOURS: Mon & Tues 3-4. One can apply to be a Yale Special Student, and gain course credit, but then each course costs around $7,000. Maybe worth reconsidering the program at Southern even though they say the intro class is already filled beyond capacity. There's a bit more information in the course catalog. [Aug. 13, 2004:]Wait for email confirmation, then check back with Registrar Page to enter user ID and password for online registration. My SCSU is modified version of "Pipeline," and allows certain kinds of transactions to take place online (emailing professors, etc.). I can't seem to find any mention of what textbook to purchase. Also, I have no idea where the class is supposed to meet. Here's the website for SCSU's Dept. of Foreign Languages. Maybe I'll find some clues there. SCSU Audio Online will become important once sensei has the materials finished. Yoshikawa-sensei recommends kanachart in the mean time. Also recommends Hiroko Sato's Japanese page at Rice University website. Jerry Anne suggested I check Yale's Digital Audio Website to see what kind of Japanese language resources might be available there.

Green Card

[20060131]

I-797C Checklist

• Interview Notice and your Government issued photo identification.
  


• Completed medical examination(Form I-693) and vacination supplement in a sealed envelope (unless already submitted).
  
• Completed Affidavit(s) of Support (Form I-864) with all required evidence, including the following, for each of your sponsors (unless already submitted):

• Federal Income Tax returns and W-2s, or certified IRS printouts, for the past 3 years

• Letters from each current employer, verying current rate of pay and average weekly hours, and pay stubs for the past 2 months;

• Evidence of your sponsor's and/or co-sponsor's United States Citizenship or Lawful Permanent Resident status.
  

• All documentation establishing your eligibility for lawful Permanent Resident status.

• Any immigration-related documentation ever issued to you, including any Employment Authorization Document (EAD) and any Authorization for Advance Parole
  

• All travel documents used to enter the US including passports, Advance Parole docs (I-512) and I-94s (Arrival/Departure Document)
  


• Your Birth Certificate.
  

• Your petitioner's Birth Certificate and your pertitioner's evidence of United States Citizenship or Lawful Permanent Resident status.
  

• If you have children ...
  

• If your eligibility is based on your marriage, in addition to your spouse coming to the interview with you, bring:

• A certified copy of your Marriage Document issued by the appropraite civil authority.
  

• Your spouse's Birth Certificate and your spouse's evidence of United States Citizenship or Lawful Permanent Resident status;

• If either you or your spouse were ever married before, all divorce decrees-death certicates for each prior marriage/former spouse;
  

• Birth Certifcates for all children of this marriage, and custody papers for your children and for your spouse's children not living with you;
  


• Supporting evidence of your relationship, such as copies of any documentation regarding joint assets or liabilities you and your spouse may have together. This may include: tax returns, bank statements, insurance documents (car, life, health), property documents (car, house, etc.), rental agreements, utility bills, credit cards, contracts, leases, photos, correspondence and/or any other documents you feel may substantiate your relationship.
  

• Original and copy of each supporting document that you submitted with your application. Otherwise, we may keep your originals for our records.
  

• If you have ever been arrested ...

• A certified English translation for each foreign language document. The translator must certify that s/he is fluent in both languages, and that the translation in its entirely is complete and accurate.
  

[20050326]
Complete list of forms and fees direct from source: Some, e.g. G-325A (Biography data), can be filled-out electronically. Most of the others (for us, all of the others), must be filled out by hand: I-130 Petition for Alien Relative and I-864 Affadavit of Support and I-485 Petition to Adjust Status.

[2005-03-14]
Per shusterman.com, G-325 Biographical Information to be filed along with I-485 Green Card application. See also official list of service fees.

[2004 10 03]
Jacqui Bucar is an immigration attorney and a partner at Tyler Cooper & Alcorn. New Haven office is at 205 Church Street, a.k.a. the First Union Building. (8/31/04)

Important to have physical examination by INS-approved physician, e.g., Dr. Racuglia at 2 Church St. in New Haven.

Good information is available on Yale Office for International Students and Scholars

Need to make fingerprints.

Sarasota

Staying at the Jamaica Royale in Sarasota, Florida.

Continuing problems with United Airlines, which seems to change flight schedules once per week.

Now they've eliminated our final flight from Chicago to Newark. I specifically told them only to change the piece from Tampa to Chicago, for which we paid $220. Here's the latest itinerary from Travelocity:


UA649 18FEB DEPARTS NEWARK AT 245P ARRIVES CHICAGO OHARE AT 410P

UA1568 18FEB DEPARTS CHICAGO OHARE AT 710P ARRIVES TAMPA AT 1046P

UA1423 25FEB DEPARTS TAMPA AT 811A ARRIVES CHICAGO OHARE AT 1000A

Still, better I think to call United (1-800-864-8331) than Travelocity (888-709-5983, trip ID: 767490767780), since they're the ones I spoke with. United gives only busy signal, though, due to snowstorm possibly. Trying Travelocity now, left on hold for very long time. Pick up after about 10 minutes, told by agent to call again tomorrow afternoon, after things calm down. She understands problem and will look into it in the mean time.

XML, MODS, etc.

Random notes on applying XSLT to XML docs...


[2006-01-07]

Install Saxon in C. saxon8.jar is principle file and should be placed in XPath (cf. Web Logic or better Dynamic Apps): "The class path is normally represented by an environment variable named CLASSPATH: see your Java documentation for details. Note that the JAR file itself (not the directory that contains it) should be named on the class path." (from installation notes).

Save xml and xsl files in "data" folder under SAXON, then point Firefox to the xml and the processing takes place automatically. Tryiing to use Saxon itself though is a problem. Its author Michael Kay wrote the book (see below) but also some articles for IBM DeveloperWorks. One is called "What Kind of Language is XSLT" and the other is "Saxon: Anatomy of an XSLT Processor"

[2006-01-06]

Having a real hard time retracing the steps from Patrick Yott's XML class. Some files missing. Try replacing with samples from Rutgers page. I think the key challenges are these: (1) Save MARC data file in program readable/parsable format; (2) Convert MARC to MARCXML or MODS using Terry Reese's MARCedit or some other mapping tool; (3) Apply stylesheet to convert XML to HTML.

Voyager can save bibs as .mrc files to desktop: Voyager--Options--Preferences--Folders/Files--Save to Local File--File--:\documents and settings\dlovins\desktop\avantgarde\export.mrc

Terry Reese's MARCedit program can do things like convert MARC files (with .mrc extension) into MARCXML): http://oregonstate.edu/~reeset/marcedit/html/index.html

W3C's XML page; note XSL working group page, and then the bit on XSL transformations might be worth reading more closely.


[2005-08-26]
Here's XML course home page courtesy, I think, of Brown University Library Center for Digital Initiatives (CDI) This is distillation of 5-day ARL workshop, including CML, XSLT, PERL, and Web architecture. Contact: patrick_yott@brown.edu. Yott is librarian, head of CDI, heavily invested in XML (insufficient funds to purchase Encompass). Recomends getting rid of OPAC, build our own simple version via xml, thinks we'll be getting there eventually. Get rid of III.

Further reading: xml.org; Michael Kay's book XSLT 2.0 Programmer's Reference; ask Patrick for style sheets. visit coverpages.org. Subscribe xml4lib. zend.org ("has fabulous tutorials"). Pat teaches ARL-sponsored course, 3 days intensive and far more expensive.

Worth checking LC Standards page on regular basis, e.g., XML MARC instance, with which one could, as Brown digital library , could take MARC record out from OPAC, run through style sheets to convert MARCXML to MODS

XSLT: Extensible Stylesheet Language [for] Transformations. Handled through stylesheet engine, takes source xml file, with xslt file, and spits out html browser readable files. This class to use SAXON stylesheet engine, obtained through sourceforge, written by Michael Kay, worth buying his book on XSLT ("only book I keep on my desk"). At Brown, since we're PHP based, we use someting called Sablatron, also free, from gingerall.com. Can be compiled into PHP on Webserver or command line.

XML not good tool for all tasks, e.g., OED takes gigabyte of XML. But for smaller docs it's good. What Yale does for EAD database is just put html bitstreams on their own servers keeping original xml files in 'vault'. Otherwise one could creat HTML on the fly through stylesheet engine, so permanent HTML doesn't really exist. Problem with OED example is that it forces user's browser to do heavy lifting.

Class example: pie.xml is called 'source tree', while HTML documents are instances of 'results tree'.

Today's goal is to get handle on rudiments of XSLT documents.

Every XML doc has one thing in common: root element, i.e., the only element with no parent. It can have any number of children. Grandchildren are called 'descendents'. Going the other direction you get 'ancestors'. There are siblings but no cousins. Paradoxically, attributes (circles in Venn diagram) are not 'children' of attached element; but elemenet *is* parent of attached attribute.
Use "Wonkavator".

Imaginary node behind root element called "root node", which is it's parent. This is truly the one thing that all xml docs have in common, since it doesn't really exist, little box with diagonal lines. In Unix, root node is represented by slash. Two dots and a slash .. / are the way to go up a level in the directory tree. X-path: go up, go up, and from here, down into title [../../title].

Style sheet always begins (though not required) with search for root node. Stylesheet is based on templates. Says: look for root node and apply template. My template for root node might be: 'print out 'hi mom''. Or a template can invoke other templates, or activate "Wonkavator". Default rules (keep going through the tree) only apply to elements, finally ending with text. Attributes are not elements, so only a specific rule would allow attribute text to be printed. Otherwise, text is default child of its element.

Templates are children of stylesheets, never children of other templates.

For "Run XSLT Transformation" clip, don't use extensions, since system-supplied. HTML file name is arbitrary. In current example, browser output is "blivet", everything smooshed together. Only spaces to appear are those that are embedded in pc-data. Templates over-ride default rules; but default rules can come in handy.

"Wonkavator knows every node in the source tree"

"The Heart of the University" (David McCullough)

Amanda Patrick writes on yullib: "For any of you who missed the David McCullough lecture on October 21st and are interested in seeing it, you are now able to view it on line at http://library.yale.edu/75th/1021gallery/index.htm along with some photographs of both the lecture and reception."

Categories: SML

XCOPY notes

frbr


Categories: Lovins

Vanessa

2006-06-03
Recently working as consultant with Cambridge Hill Partners, and on documentary on religious diversity in health care.


Plowshares Invited to Assist with Aceh Peace Initiative

Hartford Seminary

Programming Ruby: The Pragmatic Programmer's Guide

Cruxus comments on Slashdot regarding newly published book: Programming Ruby: The Pragmatic Programmer's Guide : "Ruby's Quite Nice, Really. I can understand why he noted Ruby as a primary contender with Java. I've been learning it from an online primer [rubycentral.com], and it seems quite flexible and elegant. Java, on the other hand, is much too bloated. "

Border Crossings: Reflections on a Decade of Metadata Consensus Building

Border Crossings: Reflections on a Decade of Metadata Consensus Building

OAIster Home

OAIster Home

Blogarithm.com - Refreshing Connections

Blogarithm.com - Refreshing Connections

Will Durst columns

Will Durst columns

California Trip 2006

Checking in with Pat at Mercury Travel

Grand Canyon Tours of the Grand Canyon National Park with American Dream Tours