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My time has come.
I have thoroughly enjoyed my 8+ years at Sun - both in Ireland and Canada, and I appreciate having had the opportunity to work with you all. Sun has been very kind to me.
I can be reached at
mickmon@gmail.com.
or
http://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelmonaghan
Thanks again,
~mm
This post follows on from Language Support On Docs.sun.com
Docs.sun.com hosts a vast amount of documentation in many languages.
However, the localized content has not always been easy to access. - The docs.sun site just doesn't make it easy to ascertain if a particular English book is available in your language.
Typically you have to re-navigate the product tree in your chosen language, just to see if the book has been translated. This at best, could be described as tedious.
So now, we've implemented translation linking [similar to what we did on the BigAdmin last year]. That is, every book automatically cross-links to the translations of that book.
This should significantly improve the 'findability' of our translated content.
This effort took quite some time, since the data that mapped the translations to each other, was scattered in many places, in many formats.
Examples:
http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/819-1337?l=es
http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/817-0544?l=en
Note - we can only link from book to book; we cannot link from page to page. This is because of the way docs.sun.com dynamically serves content at runtime - with sometimes unpredictable URLs.
We have found that most of our users have some proficiency in English, though obviously still prefer to read the content in their native language.
Unfortunately translation is not a lossless process - something meaning is often skewed, or even lost. It is often useful to be able to refer back to the source.
For a while now, we have been cross-linking the various language versions of a page. Now however, we are enabling users to view the source and translated material in a side-by-side way [beta version].
We believe this will improve the usability of, and confidence in our translated content.
This feature is available from every translated page. It is currently called 'Compare Translations' - though that name will likely change.
See the following examples:
http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/hubs/multilingual/japanese/content/flash_archive.jsp
http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/hubs/multilingual/trad_chinese/content/sunmcnew/sunmcnew.jsp
The docs.sun.com team, of which I'm a member, have launched a new blog.
Hopefully this will open up more dialogue with the user community.
The Irish Canada Chamber of Commerce, Toronto Chapter [icccto.com] run a quiz night every year, aka 'beer and questions' night.
It's a fun, semi-competitive evening. This year's event took place last week.
Anyway, below are the questions, and answers. Bear in mind that some of the questions have a Toronto, Canadian or Irish dimension. There were 27 teams of four. Top score was 54 out of a possible 80.
2. What is the last letter of greek alphabet? Answer
3. Whose record did Barry Bonds break? Answer
4. What is the Brazilian currency? Answer
5. By what name was Marion Robert Morrison better known as? Answer
6. Within the Muslim faith, there is a sect called the 'Shia Imami Ismaili' Muslims. Who is their spiritual leader? Answer
7. What is the 8th month in the Roman calendar? Answer
8. Which less than attractive town is the US version of "The Office" set in? Answer
9. In 1993 Eritrea separated from which other country? Answer
10. Roger Federer has the been mens #1 for the most number of consecutive weeks. - about 200 at this point. Who held the record before him? Answer
2. What coveted title did American Joey Chestnut win on July 4th this year? Answer
3. The US hockey Hall of fame located in which state? Answer
4. If I have correctly completed a 9x9 Sudoku puzzle, what is the sum of all the numbers? Answer
5. In baseball, how many warm-up throws is the pitcher allowed? Answer
6. Name the former 1980's US Teenage Tennis star who is now an Anglican nun. Reached world number 2 in the early 80's. Answer
7. Harpo Productions is most associated with which US celebrity? Answer
8. Name the celebrity chef whose father was a senior UK politician? Answer
9. A horse's height is traditionally measured in what unit? Answer
10. Name one of Stephen Harpers kids - [one that he had with his current wife anyway]. Answer
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2. Who is the current Russian PM? Answer
3. Name the Judge in the trial of Conrad Black? Answer
4. Most Goals scored by a Toronto Maple Leaf in a season? Answer
5. What strait separates Newfoundland from Labrador? Answer
6. Name the female lead in the unauthorised 2005 movie, 'A Night In Paris'. Answer
7. The collective noun for a group of owls is? Answer
8. Who is the current Canadian ambassador to Ireland? Answer
9. What product traces its roots back to a potion for treating certain physical & mental disorders created by Atlanta pharamcist, John Stith Pemberton, in late 1800s? Answer
10. Name of the worlds oldest psychiatric hospital located in London England has entered the vernacular as a synonym for mayhem or confusion? Answer
2. How many gold medals did Canada win at the 1976 Montreal Olympics? Answer
3. The Greek God of Dreams is? Answer
4. What is the name of Mr & Mrs Tiger Wood's baby? Answer
5. Who shot Bobby Kennedy? Answer
6. Who was the original Beatle bassist? Answer
7. How many wives did King Henry VIII have? Answer
8. Who was the last Brit to win the Formula 1 driver's championship? Answer
9. Jian Ghomeshi, a CBC radio host, first came to public attention as a member of which band? Answer
10. What is the capital of Estonia? Answer
2. In mathematics, what is the value of '5!'? Answer
3. Who was the last Irishman to win the British Open (before Padraig Harrington)? Answer
4. Which famous explorer died on South Georgia Island in 1922? Answer
5. What does one call a resident of Halifax? Answer
6. Who scored 1st competitve goal for Toronto FC? Answer
7. Oscars - who won best director in 2007? Answer
8. Who penned the lyrics:
Now I've heard there was a secret chord
That David played, and it pleased the Lord
But you don't really care for music, do you? Answer
9. Prohibition in the US ended in 1933. What year did it begin? Answer
10. Which North American city sits on the river Thames? Answer
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2. Who was the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic? Answer
3. What is the first name of Nicolas Sarkozy's ex-wife? Answer
4. In the 2006 Liberal Leadership Convention, won by Stephane Dion, who was placed 5th? Answer
5. Who won this year's Women's New York Marathon? Answer
6. What was the name of Pinochio's Dad? Answer
7. Most densely populated state in USA? Answer
8. What event dominated the Canadian news on December 16th , 1917? Answer
9. Name Keifer Sutherland's famous political Grandfather? Answer
10. Three Irish people have won the Booker prize. Ann Enright, and Roddy Doyle are two. Who is the third? Answer
It's been about 3 years since I last tried to install Solaris on an x86 laptop.
After considerable therapy, I regained the strength and resolve to try it again last week. This time with Solaris Express Developer Edition.
An abundantly pleasant experience! Gone are the 10,000 questions that earlier versions asked during the install ...
I installed it on a MacBook Pro - using VMware Fusion, with absolutely no problems.
Also, Sun will mail you the install DVD - for free!
I got mine within 5 days of filling out the form - shockingly efficient. [I'm in Canada, the DVD is mailed from California].
Now that I'm using it - it works beautifully.
Docs are available in 简体中文, 繁體中文,Français, Deutsch, Italiano, 한국어, Português (Brasil), русском, Español .
A nice new feature on the BigAdmin is automatic translation linking.
So long as we tag our content correctly, the AJAX component will spit out the links to any available translations.
This should considerably improve the findability of localized articles. - The usability too - since users will be able to easily refer back to the source.
See the example on this page: http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/hubs/multilingual/japanese/content/device_driver_install.jsp
Thanks to Robert Weeks for his work on this.
I don't do a whole lot of traveling - either business or personal. However, the occasional time that I do, it always irks me that every transportation hub I go to - airports, train stations etc., all bilk me for wi-fi. Plus it's usually just hassle - getting the credit card etc.. I just want it to work dammit, for free.
Enter Shannon Airport - in the west of Ireland. Free wi-fi. Thank you Shannon!
Hopefully others will follow suit.
docs.sun.com is Sun's main documentation site. There have been a spate of positive postings recently about docs.sun.com.
It's been a long time coming, but in the past 6 weeks or so, the hosting infrastructure has changed - so it's much faster.
We also migrated to a new search.
Russian and Brazilian Portuguese versions of the UI.
| Before | After |
 |
Better definition of the Japanese characters. |
accept-charset header. This has been found, and will soon be removed - so everything will get served as UTF-8 - whether you like it or not 
It turns out that our PDFs [most in v1.3] had no metadata. Indexing of these files was done purely on the basis of their main body content. We had a database containing all this metadata - and decided to apply the data to all the existing PDFs, since our new search handles the presentation of PDF results slightly differently.
This was straightforward for ASCII text. A perl script using the PDF::API2 module did all the work.
However it failed for non-ASCII text.
From reading the PDF 1.3 Reference Guide , it's clear that all non-ASCII [or at least non western European] metadata should be UTF-16BE encoded. We had been passing in UTF-8 strings, and didn't really know what PDF::API2 was doing with them. Well, my colleague Phil Hooper figured it out, and fixed the PDF::API2 module in the process. I believe his fix will be in release 0.62 of the module. Nice work Phil.
It irks me that we have million$$ worth of translations on docs.sun.com - but there's no easy way to find out which books are actually available in a particular language. Or if I navigate to an English book, is it available in Korean?
Having to navigate the product tree for each language is more than a little cumbersome.
I think I've found an internal database that maps the relationship between English part numbers and translations. Armed with this, and provided the mappings are accurate, it should be quite straightforward to add a widget that automatically lists the available translations for a page/book/part number.
Here's a very alpha prototype of Translation Finder.
If the Translation Finder widget works, then there's no reason why it couldn't be extended to search results. That is, for each search result, you're provided with links to the translations, if available. Something like below, where the flag icons depict the available translations:
I'm mainly concerned with internationalization/localization features, but I'll advocate for any other general feature requests/improvements.
Great atmosphere, even though Beckham couldn't play. A wonderfully partisan crowd in the nicest possible way. [Becks, Posh - we really didn't mean all those things that we shouted].
Good first half, Toronto dominated, but couldn't score. Galaxy competed well in the second half. Nicely officiated by Mauricio Navarro.
On behalf of my mis-behaved friends, I'd like to apologize to the lady [Arianne? Adrianne?] below, middle.
At half time one of the stewards threw tightly rolled jerseys into the crowd - near us; predictably enough a complete mêlée ensued. I emerged victorious, but there was a casualty. The aforementioned lady got covered with Troy's beer. All for a good cause.
On the way out of the stadium Vernon Wells [MLB player at Toronto] accosted us, and insisted on having his photo taken with us. At first I declined,
but eventually relented, once the lighting was right -
[Ken 'for all your marketing requirements' Tracey, Troy, Vernon & some clown in a bike helmet]
What larks.
I've been a soccer fan all my life.
I've been following the U-20 World Cup in Canada, where last night, in Toronto [where I live] Argentina and Chile battled it out in the semi-final. Later the Chilean squad battled it out with the police.
Argentina demonstrated what's beautiful about the beautiful game, and what's not. Their first goal was an absolute peach. Wonderful work by their mid-fielder who delivered a perfect pass behind the defence, and excellently finshed by Di Maria.
For me, that was all Argentina showed. After that they dived, feigned injury etc. etc. Two Chilean players were sent off - though I missed the second incident. It was so disheartening to watch. How could any self-respecting coach, or parent for that matter, condone such duplicitous behaviour?
Of course none of this acting would have been of any use, were it not for the completely gullible referee, Wolfgang Stark. I did some research on him today - turns out he has a newly updated Wikipedia entry, and it's not at all flattering, though it is diplomatic.
I don't condone Chile's post match antics, but I really can't blame them. Wolfgang Stark should not referee again.
As for the Argentinians - where's the joy in winning a game in that manner?
We've translated some targeted sys-admin type docs into Simplified Chinese & Japanese.
Hopefully this will make it easier for some of our customers to use our products.
Right now we've published these translations to the Multilingual BigAdmin hub, but going forward we're considering trying to more properly internationalize the BigAdmin portal itself, as opposed to confining this to a hub.
I'll post more here, as that effort progresses.
http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/hubs/multilingual/
Just a word of thanks to the user Suleyman who contributed a whole bunch of Turkish translations to the Multilingual Technology Glossary - an OpenSolaris project.
Suleyman has provided the translations for both many terms and definitions.
Nice work!
No, not those sort of routines.
First day back at work actually feels good. Routine.
After 10 days of gluttony, I think we all needed some routine. The oldest nipper [kid] is gone to a camp, the other two are back with the minder. School doesn't start back until next week.
My younger brother was visiting from Ireland for Christmas. There was a time when he was more sensible than I. No longer. He's repatriating today.
It's good to laugh. Out loud. Kids looking at me like I'm possessed ...
I'm about half way through the series of books based on the fictional character - Ross O'Carroll-Kelly. Hilarious. Completely. Possibly the funniest things I've ever read. The humor is at times outrageous, and as politically incorrect as you can get. All part of the appeal. No disadvantaged demographic is safe from Rosser.
I'm Irish, living in Toronto, Canada for over 3 years now. I've tried sharing these books with some born & bred Canadians. For the most part, it just doesn't work. [Maybe it's just Canadians]. Unless you're Irish, or have spent some time in Ireland, then the humor is probably wasted. Though the Wikipedia RO'C-K entry does explain a few terms.
This is where glossaries come in. The author, Paul Howard, could make these books more accessible by providing one.
Which brings me to work... We recently launched the Multilingual Glossary project on OpenSolaris.org. The glossary itself is actually hosted here. The glossary consists of about 1,400 quality, researched terms and definitions. Many of the original terms have been translated from English into up to ~10 languages. Wanna translate some definitions? Register.
OT ....
btw - I link to Wikipedia a few times above. I was getting really bored of all the bad press that places like The Register were giving it. Generally I find Wikipedia to be a fine resource. Good to see someone defending it for once. [ok, twice].
This blog copyright 2009 by MickM
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