Updates and recommendations

Right, so here's where I'm up to these days ;

I'm working for a local (but fairly large) health care provider as their intranet guy (building an empire from scratch, and may well include Topic Maps) both in design, implementation, usability, and process management, a role that is being expanded crazily with every day as we discover new territories to conquer and submit to our new reign of knowledge management. So yes, I'm actually enjoying it, even though the challenges are sky-high and densely packed.

I'm writing a book tentatively (and probably) called "The well-tempered monkey" (with some fancy sub-title, I'm sure), and it's about evolution, baroque music, the IT industry, software development, human psychology and cognition, category theories, philosophy, geeks, procreation and laser-guns! I'm roughly 1/4 finished with the first draft, and it contains heavily edited blog posts, lots of new writing and thinking, and my own pictures and designs. (Can an eBook embed music? If yes, I'll put some of my music in as well for good measure) Looking for tips, but think I'll make it a eBook-friendly PDF with a donate button at this point, unless you have a better way.

A good friend and librarian / cataloger Saskia has started a new blog called "All things cataloged", and she is well-versed in the black art of Topic Maps and identity management. You should check it out, it's good stuff.

Today I stumbled upon a Dutch version of a Norwegian classic by Sigrid Undset on a lonely bookshelf in the corridors of a health care facility in Albion Park, Illawarra. Man, that was a seriously crazy moment!

I'm closing in on xSiteable RESTful event-driven resource-oriented PHP framework for enterprise application development with embedded Topic Maps / identity management. I've started documenting the thing, and I'll release it soon-ish, I think. It also feature a funky Topic Maps-based XSLT dynamic GUI templating framework that I think should be a project all by itself, but hey, I'll throw it in for good value.

I've created a number of upper and core ontologies that I might release at some point, some of them obviously designed for more fuzzy Intranet stuff, but I'm increasingly getting all representialist on my arse, outing basic category theory and generally thrashing the good name of entites everywhere. I feel a long blog coming on.

Did I mention that all enterprise knowledge management software friggin' sucks? Like, sucks balls? All of them. I've tried them all, extensively, and they all just fail the one simple rule I've got; make KM easy for people. Confluence, Atrium, Documentum, SharePoint, SocialText, LifeRay, all the portal apps and associated server technologies, Vignette, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, Sun (hehe), I could go on and on, they all SUCKS BALLS! They are technologists solutions to human problems, and failing basic compassion and respect for the generic user! Usability is not about pretty friggin' colors and cute graphics! I'm disgusted with the state of affairs as the usability of these things have not improved much or at all in the last 20 years I've worked in this field. (And yes, I'll friggin' make my own, I'm sick of this ...)

Anyway, on that happy note, life isn't so bad, and I'm eagerly awaiting the next crazy chapter in my life. We'll talk soon.