October 2009

Its another rainy day in Boston. Medford isn't looking too hot either. Looking out the window at the wet deck - rain drops falling. I'm hoping it will clear by afternoon so I can run out and get some groceries.

Today is a cleaning day - need to wash the floors, clean the surfaces and bathroom. My parents are coming to town & of course I'll be wanting to give them a good impression of our new home. I'll be posting pictures after their visit!

The parental units were down this weekend for an incredible first Thanksgiving weekend at our new home in Medford.  We had a few eventful days!  For one, we are now the proud owners of our very own TV!  Doesn't seem like a big deal - but to go from a 17" old box set in Ireland - to a large sized flat screen (with better resolution than my computer screen), is a big deal!  We also obtained countless minor necessities from the likes of Ikea, Kmart, & Sears.  I have a rice cooker again! The house is back to being quiet and empty except for Maya and me...

In the first one I look like I'm very intensely concentrating on understanding the french.. ;)

[flickr-photo:id=4021653929,size=m] [flickr-photo:id=4021654613,size=m] [flickr-photo:id=4022414910,size=m] [flickr-photo:id=4021655131,size=m]

BTW, Picture credit goes to Christian Roy! (SORRY!)

Several BOFs were carried out last night enroute to Boston with Lisa, Susan, Jeannie, Travis, and myself. Incidentally we also got held up in customs due to yours-truly and I am greatly thankful for their patience (and nonchalance) at having to wait an extra 1.5 hours to cross the border. ;)

That said, I'm officially a glorified house-wife with a CAPITAL H-4! :) I still qualify for the TN and customs were happy to reassure me that I could return once I have a job offer suiting my credentials. PHEW!

The Cumulus Module in Drupal creates the funky flash(?) driven animated tag cloud that you see on my page. The instructions were pretty simple - to download the module and also download a cumulus.js file to the cumulus directory. 

Thereafter, the really tricky bit was to find the 'number' of my tags vocabulary.  When you're on your taxonomy page roll your mouse over 'edit vocabulary' for your desired vocab - in my case 'Tags' to find out which number it is (in this case #4).

I've recently purchased the Gentle Leader Headcollar for Maya.  I stopped on the way back from Petsmart and did a quick read of the instructions before installing it on her head. 

So the story behind Maya's origins remains a mystery - but that said - she was originally adopted from the Worcester Animal Rescue League and she came to the US via the Save a Sato project.  They have an informative video on their website as well as before & after shots of the rescue dogs.  It's hard to think of Maya starved with three puppies having been dumped at a church being rescued by a vet and then given to the shelter.  I think that only one of her puppies survived and has also been ad

Its not the easiest thing to be in a new town without the company of your nearest and dearest. Steph is off in Washington at the 8th Int. Semantic Web Conference (ISWC2009).  I'm very proud of his work and support him as I can.  The coolest thing is that RDFa is now a part of Drupal7 core - which makes Drupal that much more competitive in the market at large as it takes its first steps into the next generation of the web. 

So Stéphane Corlosquet, Renaud Delbru, Tim Clark, Axel Polleres, & Stefan Decker bagged an award in recognition of their paper titled "Produce and Consume Linked Data with Drupal!" for Best Semantic Web in use Paper at the recent 8th International Semantic Web Conference (29 October 2009).