Entries in Life

mah@everybody.org — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 04:13:10 GMT

(Today, I took my camera with me on my ride. 30miles at 30degrees. Click the photo for a couple more.)

After flirting with Google's Picasa for Linux for managing my photos, I'm back to using f-spot.

I like the timeline and that it doesn't ask me to give a single "folder" for all the pictures I'm importing, but, instead, creates a directory structure so that my photos are sorted by date. Interestingly enough, it is actually better than Picasa for importing. Picasa won't automatically rotate images when importing them from the camera where f-spot will.

I still use Picasa for uploading pictures to be printed out (F-spot doesn't support uploading to Wal-Mart), and I love the online Picasa's ability to help recognise and tag people in photographs -- 7000 faces in 10,000 photos are no fun to do by themselves, but when Google picks out the faces and suggests names, it becomes a little game to see how good it gets and to see which person Google thinks looks like each of my kids.

(Yeah, I'm probably helping them improve their facial recognition software and they'll end up selling that to the TSA, but ... oh well.)

Wintery Mix

mah@everybody.org — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 13:26:00 GMT

Yesterday was a horrible day for riding. I thought of taking an hour at lunch on my beater bike, but I never managed to do more than think about it.

This morning, though, I was up and out of the house, biking down 272 towards Lancaster at 6:00 AM. I'm falling behind on my goal. Today I should be able to catch up some.

Small movies

mah@everybody.org — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 16:12:28 GMT

Last year, I was excited about two documentaries: The Singing Revolution and As We Forgive. Both of these movies offer alternative ways to see the world.

The Singing Revolution is a revolution unimaginable to most Americans. Most of us cannot imagine freedom without blood. Especially as we're in the midst of a war, surrounded by "Support Our Troops" bumper stickers, revolution without bloodshed seems, well, crazy. Crazy enough that a small documentary about one has done pretty well in theatres this past year and managed a place on the marquee amongst larger studios blockbusters. You may not have heard of it, but that isn't because it didn't come to a theatre near you.

Likewise, As We Forgive is an alternative path to justice. The movie tells the path some Rwandans chose after Genocide, after Gacaca courts, after the system had done everything it could. It tells the story of genocideers working to rebuild homes of their victims. The can't bring back the families they killed, but they can ask forgivess. Sometimes, the victims can even forgive. This stands in stark contrast to most American's sense of justice, where we can only imagine victim families giving victim impact statements in a court room, never living in a house built by, and next door to, their husband's murderer.

And as a new year starts, I discovered a new documentary project that I can get excited about. God's Garden is a documentary about the one man's discovery of genuine African Christianity. Not "white man's religion", but a Christianity that came to Africa before Europeans even knew it existed. An Ethiopian priest introduces him to St Moses and it changes his life.

I love documentaries like this. They challenge our view of the world and suggest that, yes, there is another way, a way of peace, forgiveness, change, and love. This is a good reminder when the way we so often choose is with violence, retribution, stasis, and resentment.

Winter night cycling and getting old

mah@everybody.org — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 18:53:44 GMT

It's probably time for me to get some riding glasses. I can still see well enough, but I really should be wearing glasses when I ride. Things tend to be a little blurry and, at night, light from cars tends to starburst.

I'm making good progress on my goal, but then, it is only the first week. I need to average 120 miles a week, but that means I have to start now. And, unless I decide to take long lunches, that means riding in the dark.

Last night, I rode. I was halfway through with my ride when I felt light-headed -- like my blood sugar was low. I should have stopped and gotten something to eat but I kept on. (Note to self: this is very dangerous, don't do it again.) Last night, I spent some time scaring myself -- imagining that I had passed out coming down a hill with a car behind me.

As if that weren't enough, my front light got lost. I was trying to adjust it and the whole thing fell apart on the rode. Finding a light in the dark? Good luck!

Oh well, I know the road and I had enough presense of mind to watch oncoming traffic. My back light was flashing away, still, and I wear some reflective clothing so it wasn't as if I was completely invisible.

But the ride cost me a day. I am recovering from some sore muscles and thinking about riding without dizziness.

(Oh, and winter cycling clothes. Others have more experience, but a balaclava, some thermal underwear and that cycling jersey are great even into the 20s.)

notify.el -- pop-up notifications from emacs using dbus

mah@everybody.org — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 04:20:52 GMT

Since emacs on Linux can use DBus calls now, I wrote a short notify.el as a demonstration to myself and to save myself from forking notify-send (because, uh, forking is bad) whenever someone mentions my nick in IRC.

There is a delay built into it so that your "friends" on IRC can't DDOS you with notifications.

Oh, the really nifty thing about this is the function keywords-to-properties. elisp keywords (:example) allow you to fake named parameters in function calls. This is done a couple of different places in Emacs, the most visible being defcustom. But there isn't any universal way that I could find to parse the keyword-value pairs into something usable. So I cribbed from defcustom and wrote something that I hope will be useful to others.

mediawiki.el - Emacs mode for editting MediaWiki pages

mah@everybody.org — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 04:01:30 GMT

I seem to be spending an inordinate amount of time editting MediaWiki wikis, so I've had some time to put together a better MediaWiki mode for emacs. In the process, I wrote some code that many people (myself included) seem to think Emacs needs.

HTTP POSTing in native elisp is too hard right now, so a http-post-simple.el was written. The original mediawiki.el required this library, but it wasn't included. I refactored the dependency away and now I have some form parsing functions in elisp that I can contribute back to the Emacs core.

Anyway, if you use Emacs and edit MediaWiki pages, check out mediawiki.el and let me know what you think. I'm especially interested in bug reports from anyone.

Wordpress users: CACHE!

mah@everybody.org — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 02:24:46 GMT

For all my friends out there running WordPress weblogs, please consider installing the Super Cache plugin. A friend of mine runs a very popular website -- 1000s of unique visitors a day -- and on part of the site he has a WordPress weblog. Traffic hitting the front page was bringing the server to its knees. There were 50 Apache processes waiting on MySQL to do something.

I tried changing the query cache size in MySQL and adding caching headers in Apache, plus random other things. Nothing seemed to help.

Then I installed Super Cache. Even before I made it though the multi-step process to fully enable it, the server was recovering. Super Cache created a static copy of the front page for Apache to serve and that made all the difference.

Makes me wonder why WordPress doesn't create a static cache in the first place.

2009 Goals

mah@everybody.org — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 06:51:40 GMT

There is a first for everything. This year, for the first time, I'm going to announce some goals I have for 2009.

Before this, if I set any goals for myself, I kept them to myself. This year, I think these goals are reasonably achievable and announcing them will give me more incentive to actually do them.

Ride at least 6000 miles: Last year I road 3000 miles. I started in late April and took a month or three off after that. This year, I can do better. I doubt you should expect more than 6000 in 2010, but anything is possible.

Lose another 20lbs: One year ago, I weighed myself at 212lbs. At my height, that is "obese" according to BMI. Before that I had been up to around 220lbs. I'm down around 190lbs now and hit a low of 180 this year. I'd like to lose another 15 to 20lbs and end up around 170. And while exercise, like all that cycling I've been doing, is healthy, I actually lost most of the weight before I began biking. My secret? The Hacker's Diet. Essentially: your body is a machine that consumes calories and burns them off or stores them as fat. If you want to lose fat, consume fewer calories.

Become a Debian Developer: I use Ubuntu and Debian on almost all the machines I set up. I recently got a couple of packages sponsored into Debian -- and have already fielded the first bug report. At work, I help develop and package open source software. I think I can make some great contributions to Debian and Debian Medical in particular. (I wrote more about this on the work blog.)

Start teaching my children to program: I wrote about this two years ago but never did it. Part of it was a lack of preparation and material on my part and a lack of interest on theirs. My son just turned 10 and has begun to show an interest in the work I do. My oldest daughter is almost 12 and should know some basics. And I should take some time out to focus on this sort of activity with them. I've been going over the problems on Project Euler and I think some of those problems are simple enough to start with. As an added bonus, they'll learn some math concepts. I think I'll set up Squeak on their laptops to teach them.

Go the whole year without buying a TV: My wife threw out the TV last month. It was probably inevitable anyway since we were completely analog and don't even have basic cable -- in February we would have been stuck with the DVDs we had sitting around. This doesn't mean we're without video entertainment -- laptops and a DVD system in the minivan take care of that -- but it does mean that no one is asking to turn on the TV or play the PlayStation. When she first threw out the TV, there wasn't even any moaning from the kids. TV was nice to have, but no one needed it. My wife even said she felt less stressed without the TV around.

That seems like a good way to start off the new year. What are your goals?

mah@everybody.org — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 03:48:59 GMT

Via the inimitable Leonnard and the Random Recipe Generato that he found, I give you this recipe for Battered Vinigar:

Battered Vinegar
Serves 4
You will need:

* 50g mince
* 20ml vinegar
* 120g soft cheese
* 60ml cod liver oil
* 60ml soy sauce

Instructions:

1. whisk the mince
2. saute the mince
3. microwave the vinegar
4. stir the vinegar
5. defrost the soy sauce
6. saute the soy sauce
7. microwave the soy sauce
8. stir the mince
9. blend with the vinegar
10. heat the soy sauce
11. heat the vinegar
12. add one tablespoon of the soy sauce
13. grind the mince
14. flip the vinegar
15. rinse the soft cheese
16. whisk the cod liver oil
17. throw it all away

mah@everybody.org — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 18:40:52 GMT

Nikki » Blog Archive » taika:

How about charging a cent per kcal for ready-made food? A 300kcal item would be three dollars. Two cents maybe?

That way, I wouldn’t accidentally consume 2000 kcal from a milkshake.

Obama's Economic Test

mah@everybody.org — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 13:54:32 GMT

Obama is now president-elect. He won, in large part, because of the economic crisis that we're now seeing world-wide. The timing was almost perfect, but McCain's economic ignorance and his identification with the party in power cemented the deal. All Obama had to do was maintain his cool, something he seems to have no problem with, and talk about change.

Now, though, as the Onion put it, a Black man has been given the nation's worst job. Assuming we begin recovering from this crisis in three years, though, he should be a shoe-in for re-election. The president has some influence over the economy, but e we usually give him more credit than he deserves when things go wrong.

No, the thing Obama will have more control over is the deficit. The question is, what will he do? Can he do what Clinton did after Bush Sr's excesses?

Will he be a borrow and spend conservative or a tax and spend liberal?

Additionally, he starts out with a clear majority of Democrats in Congress. Will they live up to the worst fiscal fears propagated by Republicans -- that they won't be able to resist pigging out at the taxpayer trough?

Or will they show Clintonian fiscal restraint?

We'll know shortly. I can't wait!

I feel great!

mah@everybody.org — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 14:15:31 GMT

Yesterday, I jumped on my bike at 7:00AM (after fixing a flat), planning to do 30 miles. I got in five miles before I realized I had a dentist appointment. I rushed home, brushed my teeth and verified that I had time to bike to the dentist. 45 minutes, plenty of time.

After the teeth cleaning (No Cavities! Whoopee!), I dropped by Panera to work. At lunch, I biked home, bringing my total for the day to 40 miles.

I realized it, as I rode home in the 45 degree weather. "I feel great!" I told dvfmama, "I just finished 40 miles in the almost-freezing cold and I feel great!" There are other signs, too. Like the work I've been doing to replace the bathroom sink and finish painting the trim. That's stuff that usually annoys me (even though it annoys me that it sits there, undone), but now I was finally doing it — even finding places where each of my children, including the 3 year old, could help out.

I feel great.

So, last night dvfmama was asking me why I haven't written anything on my weblog lately. "I don't have anything to write"

"Sure you do," she said. "You feel great."

And now you know.

mah@everybody.org — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 13:05:22 GMT

A Christian perspective on what’s wrong with the G.O.P.:

The reality is that voting Conservative does not guarantee that your values will be applied to your country. It guarantees that the candidate who claims to share those values will get to leverage his claimed moral high ground to back his decisions in the press, and on the world stage…

i knew I wasn't the only one who thought this way.

I'm not fond of his pragmatist approach ("Isn’t it better, then, to vote for someone who will put into place a process which will result in your values being applied?") because I don't think the application of values is the goal. This is a possible side-effect of the goal (unity with God), but it is not the goal.

Just spotted another example of Christian pragmatism in what he wrote: "God gave us His Word because it contains the best plan for His kids. Everything He asks of us makes sense."

Ok, so I think he's coming from the wrong place, but I like this point of view.

The Good War

mah@everybody.org — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 19:38:39 GMT

I've never been in the military, but this quote sums up my feelings several conversations I have going on.

"We won the war, therefore we must have deserved to win."

My crucial memory, and the memory that really starts all of my other memories about the war is waking up in this pine forest my first morning in the war. It was still dark, but just barely getting light and as it got light, I was astonished to see within 3 or 4 feet of me, several bodies, dead bodies, of German boys who had been killed, I think, the day before by the unit we were relieving.

These boys were just exactly like me. And they were killed, their eyes were open, and their faces were as white as marble, greenish-white.

And at that moment, when I saw what I was involved in, actually, for the first time -- my training had never told me this -- many of my adolescent illusions about reason, the governance of the world by reason, and common sense, and the idea of progress fell away all at once.

And I realized, in that one moment, that I would never be again in that world of childhood innocence, where the world is run by reason and events contain a certain amount of justice. I knew now that I was enmeshed in a world of injustice and unreason. That I would have to learn how to survive in that world, or how to make sense of it, later on.

Paul Fussell
Infantryman in US Army
1944-1945

Why I'm voting for Obama

mah@everybody.org — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 19:16:11 GMT

I just got back from a 30 mile ride -- which makes 110 miles so far for my first (hopefully) 200+ mile week. As you can imagine, spending time alone on the bike gives me quite a bit of time to think. I use the time to pray, plan my day or just think. This past week, politics have been on my mind quite a bit.

It all started at my grandfather's funeral. His death was not unexpected. He had suffered a stroke the weekend before and died peacefully in his sleep during the week. Still, as an impromptu reunion of my (fairly conservative) extended family during the final days leading up to a presidential election, we had some interesting conversations.

Since they all know I worked on a campaign for a Democratic nominee for president when Bush was up for re-election, one of the first questions I'm asked is: "Who are you voting for?" I've stepped out of the Protestant, Republican straight jacket, so I'm not quite as predictable politically. (I get the feeling that I experienced a smidgen of what William F. Buckley's son went through.)

Just to be clear: back in 2000, I was rooting for McCain. He was (is?) a man who stood up for what he believed in. I was no fan of Gore and thought McCain was the best of the Republican lot. But no matter. That was during my "I don't vote" phase.

However, in the past eight years, I got to know McCain better. And it seemed like McCain changed. A former victim of torture, he went soft on torture. In the debates, he specifically listed veteran's benefits and war spending as one of the programs exempt from his idiotic "spending freeze". If we're going to freeze spending, why exempt those? It seems like blatant pandering to vets. His ambition to be president is consuming him.

And, in the past couple of weeks, it looked like his campaign ran away from him. When he had previously said he would run a clean campaign, his running mate started accusing Obama of "pallin' around with terrorists". And that's another thing: while I think Palin was a smart choice to shore up the "base" of voters and make McCain 50 times more appealing to Evangelicals (my bother admitted McCain didn't interest him until Palin was selected because she seems to be a devout member of the Assemblies of God church), I don't think she is qualified. She does look, as one person reported, "shockingly amateurish".

So those are reasons to vote against McCain. I'm sure that if I wanted to (because, to be frank, I knew I was going to vote for Obama before many of these reasons came out) I could find just as many damning statements to make against Obama. But that is part of what I don't like about the campaign against Obama. Much of it ("Nobama", "Barack Hussain Obama") seems childish and stupid. Sure, that sort of stuff works for some people. But it isn't attractive to me. And just to be clear, if I was going to let someone's associates scare me away (Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers, ACORN), I wouldn't have anyone to vote for (Keating Five, ACORN, William Timmons).

What about the issues? There was one consistent reason my family gave for voting against Obama: Abortion. Make no mistake: I do not like Obama's position. But, suppose I thought I had to vote my concience on this issue alone. Suppose I thought that I must vote for a pro-life candidate.

Neither party, the Republicans nor the Democrats, has given me that choice. McCain is not pro-life. But he'll appoint conservative judges! Doubtful. McCain isn't that conservative. And trying to get a clearly pro-life judge through a Democratically controlled senate just isn't going to happen, even if that was what McCain wanted to do.

From my point of view, there isn't much else to consider. The economy? McCain is flailing around on the economy and doesn't seem to have any ideas. He admitted long ago that he doesn't know anything about the economy. Not that Obama is much better here. Since the economy tanked under the Republicans, the Democratic nominee gets all the political benefit without any work.

In the end, it does come down to personality. Obama has more control over his temper. He can inspire people. He can think big while still being aware of budgetary constraints. I doubt he'll be able to cut taxes as much as he says on those making less than $250,000, but at least he is honest about saying that we do have to pay for programs by raising money somewhere.

Other people can push their candidate better than I can. I'm not looking for a savior in the political arena. I'm not even looking for the person who best represents what I believe. I'm not keeping track of promises, since, from a politician who has to push most of his ideas through two houses of congress, they're meaningless.

I'm looking for someone who can lead. Someone who can inspire people. Someone who can deal with people respectfully. Someone with an actual chance of being elected.

For now, that person appears to be Obama.

mah@everybody.org — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 22:11:14 GMT

Out There: People Who Live Without TV:

"I interviewed one guy who was 31, single, an artist living in Boston, who saw himself as countercultural," Krcmar told LiveScience. "The next day I had an interview with a religious woman with ten children who lived in the Midwest. These people seem like they would disagree about almost everything, but if you ask them about television the things that came out of their mouths were almost identical."
[...]
"It's sort of counter-intuitive, because people think their kids would drive them nuts without TV," Krcmar said. "But parents found that kids became very good at entertaining themselves and didn't need to be entertained all the time by something that was lively and active. They didn’t complain about being bored.

Oh how I wish I didn't have one (sometimes).

(Just realized: I got this from Dan Lyke.)

Bikes to Rwanda: A charity that combines my two loves

mah@everybody.org — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 15:53:41 GMT

Bikes to Rwanda « je vais où?:

These people are doing good things… if you like coffee you should definitely give this video a look.

I love a good cup of coffee. And I love bikes. Bikes to Rwanda combines this with my personal interest in the welfare of Rwanda to help support coffee growers there with inexpensive utility bikes. That's a charity that I can really get behind.

Gorilla fighters in the Congo

mah@everybody.org — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 15:36:51 GMT

Renewed fighting threatens Congo gorillas:

"The army had also stationed a tank on the main road that borders Rwanda, with the gun pointing at the Rwandan hills."

That explains the armed escort we had. Though, I wouldn't expect the escort to help much against a tank.

mah@everybody.org — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 15:18:32 GMT

“Next time, we won’t leave”:

But if the enduring image of Gustav is a U.S. soldier with an M-16 denying a citizen the right to return to his home, then you can pretty much write off the next “mandatory” evacuation.

Looks like, as is typical of New Orleans and the feds, they're mishandling the situation.

I'm very glad that Gustav didn't hurt people like Katrina did. The authorities need to recognize this and let people get back to normal as soon as possible.

If you're looking for some first-hand accounts of Gustav, I would point you to a few Twitterers GambitWeekly, NOLAnotes, and MarkMayhew. You should also check out Mark's photostream on flickr especially Cafe du Monde as you've never seen her: empty.

Twitter has a lot of problems, but the one thing it is really good at it getting people's thoughts and impressions published as quickly and easily as possible. In a situation like Gustav where people don't have time to compose blog entries or even full sentances, the stream-of-conciousness that Twitter enables really gives you a feeling for what is happening on the ground.

While I did check out a couple of news sites, most of my information about Gustav came from Twitter via TwitterBerry.

mah@everybody.org — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 03:55:10 GMT

winterspeak.com:

Traffic accidents are predominantly caused by people being inattentive. Increase the feeling of risk, and you increase the attention.

(emphasis mine)

mah@everybody.org — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 03:53:21 GMT

Do you know any programmers that exhibit these personality traits…?:

Do you know any programmers that exhibit these personality traits…?

I’ve been observing an unusual programmer friend of mine for some time now. (Yeah… a “friend”, that’s it….) He has such a strange combination of potential and incompetence that its hard to tell if he is just lazy or [...]

Why Create? and how to avoid the black hole of "productivity"

mah@everybody.org — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 03:48:38 GMT

When I first came across _why's tweet on PerlBuzz, I thought it was so profound (by which I mean, anti-consumeristic), that I told dvfmama right away.

when you don't create things, you become defined by your tastes rather than ability. your tastes only narrow & exclude people. so create.

This is why I would rather listen to my three-year-old belt out show tunes than watching American Idol.
This is why I would much rather see my daughter practice standing on her head than watching America's Got Talent.
This is why I can only zone for so long while I idle away hour after hour in solitary web surfing or late night TV watching.
This is why I was so happy to give the Ugandan Ministry of Health something that they would use.

I hate being a consumer. I fall into the "entertain me" trap more often than I want to confess, but I hate seeing myself there. I hate the thought that my children will be passive participants in culture rather than creative, engaged people.

This doesn't mean that I want them to go out and get a degree in the Humanities. (dvfmama wouldn't allow it anyway.) So I'm probably already diverging somewhat from what _why originally meant. But who cares? Do not wait for other people. Get out there, do things, be engaged, and tell others about it. (By the way, my co-worker-at-a-distance, Shannon picked up on the Why Create? theme.)

But that last bit ("tell others about it") is a key I've been missing for some time. And, for someone who spends 90% of his time working 400 miles away from his co-workers, this is a real shame and, worse, a real impediment to good work.

I'm good communicator when I need to be, but till recently, I haven't been in the habit of communicating regularly with other people that I'm working with. Sure, a lot of this was the physical distance, the lack of face-to-face time — the fact that I abhor teleconferences. But a lot of the problem (and the problem shows up even when I'm working down the hall from people) can be fixed by just sending out a regular email, making sure that everyone who might be concerned knows what I'm doing. Sure, a lot of times it'll get filed in the bit-bucket, but (and I've begun to realize this and put it into practice more since my trip to Uganda) communication isn't optional, it isn't overhead; it's a necessary habit.

Of course, it was really helpful that I had this epiphany about communication and started putting it into practice in the past couple of weeks. Today, I met with some IT auditors here in Chapel Hill and told them what my role was in the organization. Before this, I probably would have been much more resentful of the very idea. But for now, at least, I'm feel like I'm on top of the world and I'm happy to tell them what it is I do.

mah@everybody.org — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 02:09:56 GMT

Where have all the real men gone? - Times Online:

As long as men feel marginalised by the women whose favours and approval they seek; as long as they are alienated from their children and treated as criminals by family courts; as long as they are disrespected by a culture that no longer values masculinity tied to honour; and as long as boys are bereft of strong fathers and our young men and women wage sexual war, then we risk cultural suicide.

Wrecked

mah@everybody.org — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 15:46:21 GMT

It has been a while since I had any kind of injury from cycling. Today I made up for some of that lost time.

Excited to have my bike back, I went out this morning for the first time to ride. And I learned an important lesson: after you've been off it for a while, it is best to check your gear before expecting to ride like you were before.

It rained some last night and the roads were still wet. On the first good downhill run, I tried to put on the brakes and they didn't respond the way I expected them to. Down I went, sliding along the road for a good 10 feet.

Apart from a bruised and swollen leg and road rash on various parts of my body, I'm alive. The same can't be said for my shorts which were shredded. I took a few minutes to lay on the side of the road and recover a bit from the shock. Then I limped back home.

I'm just disappointed that I won't be putting in any miles for a few days.

Success in Uganda

mah@everybody.org — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 13:17:02 GMT

This week I start working on a project to help gather medical information in villages throughout Rwanda, so the project I've been working on for the past couple of months is officially over. I've written my postmortem and had a chance to recuperate from the travel (including the airline losing my baggage in London and a screaming three year old on an eight hour flight — horror stories best only hinted at).

But this last project looks as if it was about as successful as I could hope for, so indulge me a few moments while I tell you what we did.

While medical information is gathered throughout Uganda, reports are regularly written, and analysis is frequently done, sharing information between health care workers and officials is problematic. Until now, there was only one small central library at the Ministry of Health which held only a single stand-alone PC for accessing and reading electronic documents.

To make matters worse, the proprietary software for storing and accessing the electronic documents only accepted PDFs, so anything a doctor wrote in, say, Microsoft Word had to be converted before it could be used in the system.

With the help of the Knowledge Management (KM) team at IntraHealth, a few of us on the Informatics team put together a Joomla+KnowledgeTree combination that would allow health care workers and officials to upload any Office document, collaborate around them, and easily access them from any networked computer.

My work centered on the integration and initial set up of the software — putting it all together in a way that made the KM people happy. And, frankly, much of that work isn't any different than what I could be doing in almost any Tech Shop or corporate environment. And for a while, it was like any software project, full of frustrations and delays. While KnowledgeTree was an obviously mature piece of software, I found some of its idiosyncrasies irritating and some of its capabilities anemic.

The real difference — the real satisfaction — came when I was finally able to sit down with the librarian at the Ministry of Health in Uganda and I heard him say “This is great, it is so much better and easier to than our current system! And we don't have convert all our files to PDF first!”

It was a relief to hear those words. Until then, doubt still lingered. But after that meeting, while there was still a lot of work to be done and a lot of work that I wouldn't be able to complete, now I knew that we had a successful, even worthwhile, product.

Even better, the technical people I worked with and trained as well as the Ministry workers all understood the usefulness and had the same goal in mind: fostering adoption of the new “electronic library” throughout Uganda.

Now, back to the work. Hopefully I'll have another success story in a few months.