DocBook Publishing – Output to HTML

June 6th, 2008 at 23:24 · Filed Under At Work, Documentation, Linux, Software Development · 3 Comments 

I learned about DocBook last year and found it a great tool for technical documentation. It is a XML based semantic markup language. The DocBook is originally intended for computer hardware and software documentation but it is great for other documentation purposes.

I have been working on some documentation, new and converting existing from Lyx to DocBook. With DocBook, I am able to publish the contents easily to many formats, namely TEX, text, pdf or HTML. I had been trying to output some of my DocBook documentation to HTML.

This afternoon, I have finally succeeded to publish to HTML. I installed some DocBook packages on Ubuntu. Here are the packages you need to get DocBook going:

  1. docbook
  2. docbook-xsl
  3. docbook-xsl-doc
  4. docbook-xsl-doc-html
  5. docbook-xsl-doc-pdf
  6. docbook-xsl-doc-text
  7. xsltproc
  8. and optional xalan and fop

To output your DocBook document to HTML, simply this:


$ xsltproc --output paper.html \
/usr/share/xml/docbook/stylesheet/nwalsh/xhtml/docbook.xsl\
paper.xml

You can turn on chapter and section numbering by setting chapter.autolabel to 1 and section.autolabel to 1. To include the chapter number in every sections, set section.label.includes.component.label to 1.


$ xsltproc --output paper.html \
--stringparam section.autolabel 1 \
--stringparam section.label.includes.component.label 1 \
/usr/share/xml/docbook/stylesheet/nwalsh/xhtml/docbook.xsl \
paper.xml

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Abrupt price hike of fuel

June 6th, 2008 at 10:53 · Filed Under Blogging, Politics, Social · 2 Comments 

One day after the price increased, there are many fingers pointing to our PM Pak Lah. Many people including politicians and the honorable retired ex-PM, Mahatir are blaming the Pak Lah and his administration. Politicians are taking this opportunity to tarnish Pak Lah image and hopefully to quickly impede him.

IMHO, the abrupt increased of fuel prices has good reason that we should consider and support. The sudden increase of prices by as much as 40% will force citizens to be more thrifty. Malaysians have been pampered with low fuel prices for so long. As you can notice (if you really pay attention), many people go to grocery shops which are very near their home by cars. These shops are in within walking distance. This is just one of the example.

By forcing Malaysians to be thrifty and less travel unnecessarily, we can save more precious natural resources and emit less pollutants. The change of lifestyle is going to take place sooner or later as we know our oil production is going to cease in 2014. That is just 6 years away.

The people from our neighboring countries such as Singapore has been benefited by the fuel subsidy. It is the time to stop benefit them. The subsidy is to be enjoyed by our citizens but not others. It is very messy to handle this issue.

One day before the increase, there had been news about the price hike. But people treated it as rumor because there was no announcement on TV news channels. But Sharir said in the TV interview that things would change tomorrow. That’s the indication from the government. Again, IMHO, I think Pak Lah and his administration are quite smart in handling this situation. First, they sanction the sales of petrol. No sales to foreign vehicles within 50KM radius from the border. Kedah responded with a full ban on entire state. The ban was to deter foreign vehicles to fill up their tanks before the price hike. Smart strategy.

The government has sent enough signals to every citizens but no one took it seriously. Another indication is that one or two days prior the announcement, fuel tankers were busy refilling petrol kiosks. Did anyone notice that?

Although most of the Malaysians dislike Pak Lah and his administration, but we need more intelligence to address and to helm through this crisis. The fingers pointing is just another dirty strategy by some politicians trying to out throw Pak Lah.

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Are we having another economy crisis?

June 5th, 2008 at 23:42 · Filed Under Blogging · Comment 

Do you remember 1997 world economy crisis when currencies were speculated? Now, we have another round of economy crisis. Only this time, foods are speculated after oil. If we look back in the history, we can easily spot a pattern of this crisis. Almost every 10 years, we will face one round of crisis.

It is quite interesting to look at these facts and start speculating what will be the next thing be speculated in another 10 years to come.

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Food prices are going up

June 5th, 2008 at 23:16 · Filed Under At Home, Blogging, Days in My Life · 1 Comment 

Today, I could notice traffic volume had decreased quite substantially at some busy junctions. Tonight, when we were out to grab some groceries, we noticed the streets were quieter than usual. Guess this is the after effect of fuel price hike.

M has been advising us to stock up some food items with long shelf life. After reading news and considering Wall Street has begun to speculate on food prices, we decided to start stocking up some food items especially rice. I made some analysis based on Geography. The south-western monsoon season is approaching. The rice planting and harvesting season will end soon when the monsoon comes. Looking at the situation in Myanmar that was hit by typhoon Nagis, the future for rice supplies does not look optimistic to me. In addition, the price hike of diesel (RM1 per liter) has prompted transportation company to increase their transportation cost by 38%! This cascading effects will cause food prices to increase again very soon.

Just now, I grabbed 8 bags (80kg) of rice. That will last us for 16 months. Tomorrow, I am going to grab some more rice again for my mom.

Another good reason to stock up essential food items will be reducing the trips to hypermarket thus saving petrol.

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Best Wishes to Michal and Monika

June 4th, 2008 at 23:54 · Filed Under Blogging, Days in My Life, Family, Friends · Comment 

Today, my best pal from Poland, Michal got married with Monika. We received their invitation to their wedding party on a plane flying from Poznan to Kornik. We regretted that we couldn’t join their ceremony and party. Here is our best wishes to Michal and Monika.

Congratulations!

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Gas Rush!

June 4th, 2008 at 23:30 · Filed Under Blogging, Shopping, Social · Comment 

Our government announced this evening that the petrol price will hike up 78 cents per litter by midnight. After midnight the petrol price per litter will be RM2.70. This is a drastic announcement after the government decides to cut fuel subsidies when the world crude oil price soared above US$120 per barrel. This will definitely add more burdens after the hike of food prices due to worldwide food shortage.

We went to the hypermarket to see if we can grab something for stocking. On the way, we saw many cars queuing up a petrol kiosks causing massive traffic jam. Thank God I have filled up the tank last night.

Expect to see more crimes after the price hike.

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Patched a security hole in KazeServer

June 4th, 2008 at 14:46 · Filed Under Ada, At Work, Software Development, Web · Comment 

While I was at Honda waiting for the technician to reprogram the ECU, I found a security hole in the authentication part of KazeServer. An unrecognized user id with a null password would grant access to KazeServer but without any significant usability but posed a potential risk.

I quickly identified the cause and rectified the problematic logic in the program design. One down and many to do. One of the other critical problem is that KazeServer will get over with initialization and execute even without the MySQL server is running. A serious bug though.

Another 3 more days to release Alpha RC1 and yet so many problems and unfinished parts. I feel the release will have to be postponed then.

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ECU corrupted

June 4th, 2008 at 14:14 · Filed Under Autos, Blogging · 2 Comments 

I had been hearing some knocking sound during acceleration of my Honda City for weeks. Recently the sound had become more audible and the engine power decreased quite much. I sent it to the Honda workshop for inspection.

A very experience technician look at my car and he said my ECU unit had been somehow corrupted or messed up and needed reprogramming. There were many cars waiting for repairing or servicing and the technician told me I had to wait until 2 or 3 pm to have my car fixed. I negotiated with him that I could wait for 2-3 hours because I brought my MacBook so that I could work there while waiting.

He really did it in about 2.5 hours. Programming the ECU wouldn’t take much time but they had too many cars waiting in line. Thanked him for a quick service.

The programming cost me RM60 plus 5% tax. What a good pay for a simple job. To program the ECU is simple. Just plug in the cable to the ECU interface port beneath the dashboard and connect to a notebook computer with Honda’s software. The job will be completed in less than 5 minutes or so with a few clicks.

After the ECU has been reprogrammed, no more knocking sound and the car is more powerful again.

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Pre-Alpha RC1

June 2nd, 2008 at 22:46 · Filed Under Ada, At Work, Blogging, Days in My Life, Software Development, Web · Comment 

I am in the midst of getting the KazeServer to roll out. During this pre-Alpha RC1 stage, works have been a little pressured especially cleaning up parts of the codes to make it neater and more efficient. A number of factors are also affecting during pre-Alpha stage.

One of them is the gnat Ada compiler issue on Ubuntu Hardy Heron or 8.04. Hardy comes with gnat-4.1 with a number of packages not added. Without these packages, I can’t build AWS-2.3. So, I have to roll out Alpha RC1 on Mac OS X until Ubuntu Intrepid or 8.10 with gnat-4.3 is released (hopefully with gnat-4.3 by October). I have another option which is I have to move to Debian Etch with gnat-4.1 but including the libaws-2.2.

libaws-2.2 is a pre-built library for AWS on Debian Etch. I am developing using gnat-4.4 and AWS-2.3 on Mac OS X. Moving to Debian Etch means I am downgrading the version of gnat and AWS and I feel a little skeptical about it. This is one thing I hate most, version inconsistency among the Linux distro.

After talking to my friends on this matter, it looks like I have few choices but to target on Mac OS X for the moment considering the tasks of installing and get the Debian Etch up and a whole lot of uncertainties in gnat-4.1 and AWS-2.2.

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Air purifier

June 2nd, 2008 at 22:25 · Filed Under Blogging, Business, Environment, Health, Marketing · Comment 

The use of air purifier at home can improve the air we breathe. An air purifier with asthma air filter will help to improve condition by reducing allergens in the air. Although it cannot 100% removed the dust or allergens, it decreases the chances of developing asthma in children. Learn about the different type of air filters including HEPA, ultraviolet and ionic.

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Entering Alpha stage

June 1st, 2008 at 22:35 · Filed Under Ada, At Work, Days in My Life, Software Development, Web · 1 Comment 

Finally, after weeks of experimental development, KazeServer is entering Alpha development stage. I expect to roll out Alpha RC1, hopefully before this weekend.

KazeServer is a web-enabled membership management system that allows registered members of an organization to login to review their membership data and other membership related transactions or records. KazeServer is developed 100% with Ada and AWS (Ada Web Server). The application itself is a web server. No web server, e.g. Apache, is needed to run KazeServer. It is a totally stand-alone independent application with a built-in web server (AWS).

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Let your modeling dream comes through

June 1st, 2008 at 12:38 · Filed Under Blogging, Business, Fashion, Marketing · Comment 


If you think you have got the look and dreamed of becoming a model working in Milan, New York or Paris; now you have got the chance to realize your dream. Look of The Year is seeking beautiful people from all over the world to join. Send in your best pictures to become the next model working in Milan, New York or Paris. Plus you can win a US$10,000 price. So, what are you waiting for? Visit http://www.lookoftheyear.com for more information.

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