{nule.org}

The BBC has to me always been a pillar of unbiased and thorough reporting of the news, but no more. In a recent series of stories the have made the fallacious claim that they’ve captured the birth of a rhinoceros for the first time on a web cam. Well, that’s just malarkey.

Way back in August of 2000, the company I was working for at the time (now defunct) installed a web cam at the Cleveland Zoo and captured the birth of the white rhino Azizi from mother Inge and father Spike. It was a test of the software we had written to allow recording and playback of video from cameras via the web – cutting edge stuff in 2000. It certainly wasn’t of the quality of the BBC’s presentation of the event, but then again we didn’t have the resources that the BBC has nor did we have the benefit of the seven years of rapid development of web technologies that the BBC can draw upon.

Now, I’m partially amused by the fact that the BBC is touting this development as a major event, despite the fact that a dinky little company beat them to it (welcome to seven years ago, BBC!). I am also, however, a bit annoyed that repeated letters to their editors and attempts to leave comments on their site have been entirely ignored, with no updates to the articles. I’m sure they’re busy and field thousands of message a day, but I still think they have an obligation to report factually on the news. In this case it seems they’re ignoring the truth because they are the news, and that’s a bit worrying. Anyway, on to the links to the BBC, and with some luck they’ll notice my dinky little blog and note the accomplishments of a dinky little company seven years ago that really paved the way for what sites like them are accomplishing today.

UK Devon site for the rhino cam:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/devon/content/articles/2007/01/02/rhino_birth_launch_feature.shtml

BBC News site for the erroneous article:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/devon/6421549.stm

Press release for the Cleveland rhino birth, which annoyingly makes no mention of our involvement:
http://www.clemetzoo.com/whats_new/rhino/1_baby.asp

P.S. If you’re bored, leave them a comment and express your outrage with me. Feel free to point them to this page: http://nule.org/wp/?p=117

The first of a few updates planned for the Light HL7 Library for this year is complete. Please have a look at the page right here. There are considerable improvements to the ability to create and modify HL7 messages and more tests.

We (thanks to my new collaborator, Andrew) have plans to add a method for dealing with messages containing grouped segments, and to perform message structure validation. He’s also working on an XSLT based translation capability, but I may need to get him to help explain.

Thanks also to everybody that’s written lately with ideas and other help.

The most astute of my dedicated readership (you are dedicated, aren’t you?) will notice that the times, they are a-changing, here at nule.org. I guess I’ve realized that I’ve been a whiny brat when it comes to my HL7 software and that honestly, you deserve better. I like to help those that are into open-source software and work within integration and health-care integration in particular. I don’t mean peter j. analyst, that guys an idiot (and no, I don’t mean all analysts in particular, many are great and essential for what they do); who I’m referring to is the coder in the trenches. The dude or chick that knows there’s a better way to do it, and knows that blowing a million a year on Sun’s integration software is wasteful and just bilking the industry from finding more productive ways of doing things.

Of course there’s always going to be the shops that must use Microsoft .NET and Oracle and all that over-priced and often unreliable stuff to do their work. We’ll just have to continue to feel bad for them and in the meantime chuckle while we go about doing our thing. Yes, people are being successful integrating that remote office with their datacenter using my HL7 Comm software, and I find that fact both immensely satisfying and slightly horrifying. But you can be sure that this knowledge is going to keep me improving what I have to offer her and adding the things that you want to the software you’re using.

So with that in mind I’m making some announcements. First off, the site in general is getting another overhaul. It’ll stay mostly in its current format, but will have some new additions and some particularly useful sections will be enhanced. Look for more detail, particularly with the HL7 Comm software and it’s ancillary projects. I’m overhauling the community section of the site and will be providing dedicated nule.org forums for the community. Who’s the community? It’s anybody that’s looking to solve their integration needs and sees the value of open source. I hope that it’ll no longer be you asking questions of just me, I’d like to see a number of you smart folks out there (and I know you’re there because you email me) hop on and we’ll all make each other do our work better.

Next we’re moving forward with the software that’s available here. Recent discussions with close colleagues have shown that there’s a lot of potential with what the Light HL7 Library can do. Expect a more full-featured library soon. Also, there’ll be an HL7 Comm version 0.8 out and I have a lot of exciting ideas about how I can make it both easier to use and more capable. Version 0.7 was a big improvement, but I realize that it’s most powerful functionality was also fairly inaccessible. We’ll keep it simple yet give those power users the chance they deserve to shine. (Also, I’m likely start supporting Java 1.4 again. Too many people just can’t upgrade to 1.5 (or 6!).)

Lastly, and this is a minor detail, but you may have noticed that I’ve started providing advertising on this site. I do pay quite a bit for hosting each year and the advertising looks so far like it’s sufficient to help offset this. With luck that’ll provide this site with more reliability in the future and keep me motivated to keep things updated. I certainly am not going to get rich with it, but it’s nice not to have to worry about paying the hundreds of dollars necessary to keep nule.org and it’s parent site thot.us running.

By the way, we only charge $25 a year for basic hosting and email – that includes wordpress blogs, and photo gallery software. Look here for more information and tell them that Nule sent you for a discount. Tossing your web page on thot.us hosting does help me cover the bills for nule.org, so it’s much appreciated.

I’m not nearly the open-source, freedom loving zealot I used to be, but the crap that’s in Vista is astounding. Before I would advise people to buy Windows computers only if necessary for a business or other technical function, but now be ware that your own computer can turn against you.

That’s not overblown hyperbole, read some more about it here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6319845.stm

Anyway, go buy a mac, they’re better value for your money and the DRM isn’t so noxious. They actually listen to customers when there are concerns about what’s in the EULA and they update it. If you want to save some money, buy a “white-box” computer and install Ubuntu, or find one of the many that come preloaded. Other Linux’s aren’t so bad, but Ubuntu is the easiest to manage and probably the friendliest to use.