VIVO Harvester 1.0

The VIVO Harvester went live as 1.0 yesterday! Its been a long process going from a simple concept of ETL into a library of tools for moving data from various formats into a RDF data store. We still have a long way to go and many tasks on the table: integration into the VIVO GUI, inclusion of more National data sources, better disambiguation algorithms. Check out the release announcement.

The VIVO Harvester team is pleased to announce the availability of release 1.0 of the VIVO Harvester. The release is the result of alot of hard work on the behalf of our wonderful testers and contributors. Many thanks is given to all of your for help. This release brings a major rework and upgrade from the 0.7 series of the harvester. See the included changelog inside the package for full details. There is a growing set of documentation to be found on the sourceforge wiki. A great place to start learning more about the harvester can be found here:

http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/vivo/index.php?title=VIVO_Harvester
http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/vivo/index.php?title=Harvester_User_Guide

You can find the tarball and debian package on sourceforge here; http://sourceforge.net/projects/vivo/files/VIVO%20Harvester/harvester-1.0.deb/download
http://sourceforge.net/projects/vivo/files/VIVO%20Harvester/harvester-1.0.tar.gz/download

As always, the team is available for questions and feedback via this list or IRC -- http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=VIVO&uio=Mj10cnVlJjQ9dHJ1ZSY5PXRydWUmMTE9MjM2JjEyPXRydWUe5y

Finally, if your curious about testing VIVO or the harvester without the hassle of setting up a new server, the updated version of the Virtual Appliance is now available. It contains both VIVO 1.2 and the VIVO Harvester 1.0.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/vivo/files/VIVO%20Virtual%20Appliances/VIVO-v1.2-VirtualBox-Standard.tar.gz/download

Fitness and Stress Loss (Part 1)

Since my shoulder surgery and physical therapy I've begun to go to the gym in the mornings. No one should see the side of 6am I've been seeing, but if it reduces my weight, increases blood flow, reduces stress and overall makes work more bearable; I'll do it.

I've been out for a couple weeks due to the Cornell/Indiana visit and the cold I've been percolating. Monday I start back again and I thought it time to begin to document my progress. Documentation can be reinforcing and enlightening as I try to reach my goals. So today I take my weight, and throughout the weeks, each day I'll blog about my attempts at increasing my activity while fixing my diet (not dieting, two seperate concepts). Every so often I'll check the scale and see if there has been progress.

Today's starting weight: *cough*272*cough*

UDS-N +2

Its sunday after UDS-N and I thought I'd take the day to sum up the resources that were identified to me this past week in Orlando.

I found out about communication in the ubuntu community

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DeveloperCommunication

like the IRC groups

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/InternetRelayChat

The mailing lists

https://lists.ubuntu.com/

and the BeginnersTeam

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BeginnersTeam/

Probably the most helpful session was one on Ubuntu and the Community On Ramp, http://pad.ubuntu-uk.org/tGmNOVtxk5. They talked there how to better explain how someone can become involved with Ubuntu and how to explain all the opportunities that are present. Some of the most helpful documents from that session was a couple sites that the community and Jono had been putting together. The first is the unity involvement site,

http://unity.ubuntu.com/getinvolved/.

It has a nice layout and resources that I've yet to review but look like they will be very helpful. The second was a site that I believe Jono was working on,

http://developer.recreantview.org/.

This site had recommended tools, tutorials, and a path to getting involved. It needed some work (the center graphic starts with develop, the matching links top and bottom start with create) but so far has been fairly helpful.

The another helpful session I went to was on PaperCuts, https://blueprints.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/other-design-n-papercuts. Every cycle/release the community picks 100 items that are small usability errors that are typically considered trivial. There was alot of great information about getting the beginners team involved.

I needed to leave early to get back to Gainesville so my wife and I could drive to a wedding. I happen to see a session about Launchpad and Bzr and I commented on it to Chris. By chance I made my comment while Chris was sitting next to someone from OpenStack. They have a tutorial on LaunchPad and Bzr on thier site at

http://wiki.openstack.org/LifeWithBzrAndLaunchpad

Products of UDS-N

First post in my blog for a long time. Lets be honest this was a place for me to try out blogging, nothing more. However, I have a new mission for my blog. To capture my attempt to begin helping and developing in the Ubuntu community. UDS has inspired me to become apart of this really amazing community. During one session about developer resources it was suggested that I write about my experience and tell people about it. I'm putting this little post in to remind me of my commitment and hopefully over the next few weeks I'll post about getting started.

RIP David Eddings

Early this week one of the greatest Fantasy Writers of our time passed away. You brought us Belgarion and Sparhawk and Athulus. You will be truly missed.

Glee

Being married means I watch shows that I wouldn't usually watch, but end up enjoying. We watched the preview for Glee and the concept of the show sounds like Sister Act as a serial TV show, where a teacher both instructs his students and learns himself in the process. I had hope, that it would be something I could enjoy. I still have some hope, but it starting out very predictable.

The most obvious plot point, is the drama with his controlling wife, who may or may not be pregnant, and the quirky fellow teacher who swoons whenever he is around. Its very similar to Jim and Pam from the office or one of a hundred other TV romances. We also have the jock whose tender and loves to sing, any may or may not have a triangle with the female lead and his current cheerleader girlfriend.

I have hope that it will break away from the TV stereotypes and return with a show where the drama is in the struggles of the teacher and students, and not in their love life's, but after Greys Anatomy and Smallville and House, I don't have a lot of hope for TV left.

Penny Arcade Game - On the Rain Slick Precipice of Darkness Episode 1

Attempting to be shorter, this game is a beautiful combination of the online comic world and video games. The art work is like walking through one of Gabe and Tycho's comics. The dialog while often a bit wordy is still as funny as ever. It reminds me a bit of playing a final fantasy version of psychonauts. The only bad thing I can say ... its too short. Good thing the second one is out already.