Group sessions are ahead

Tomorrow is a big day in the seminar: it’s the day the groups (3 in total) all have separate, semi-individual while in a group, sessions with our professor. Here, we have to lay out our strategy to tackle the problem posed in the first part of the class: How to translate an XBRL-document into an OWL-document.

We’ve been reading a lot, and our team-strategy is to individually read all available matter, come up with our own interpretation of it and combine our thoughts during a meeting scheduled tomorrow before our class. We’ve got about an hour to discuss the way we will tackle the problem, which might just be enough. Due to crammed schedules tomorrow it couldn’t be done any other way so it’ll be like this.

I’m pretty anxious to see how my teammates dealt with it, and I’m also curious about how the other groups plan to do the proposed conversion. We as a group have at least established quite a lot of knowledge about XBRL, OWL and so on which will probably and hopefully make us stand out in some way; that’s always a question whether it actually will. However, I’m feeling pretty confident about tomorrow, we’ll see.

For now, I’m logging off, I’ll put a post up here if anything comes up.

Making my life easier

While computers themselves are meant to make life easier for us humans, they also create a lot of extra problems, including some luxury-problems.

Today, I was having at least one of the last category: I wanted to add an image to a post. In WordPress (this blogsoftware) it can be done, but is far from easy. No thumbnails could be created, nor could an image easily be linked to a (different) url. As of today this has changed as I’ve upgraded my blog with two extra plugins: Flexible Upload and WordPress LightBox. The first enables me to upload an image and create thumbnails at the same time, while the other makes for a fancy WEB 2.0 like presentation of the image.

Thanks guys, I really appreciate your work there, I’m a fan.

Going final

As I mentioned in a few posts, both earlier, I was and still am about to release the documents we created during our seminar.

This day, it is just that time!

XML Guide – Basics for understanding XBRL – v1.0
The Definitive XBRL Guide v1.0
OWL Guide – A complete overview v0.5

Note that, in an attempt to re-enact total paranoia, I’ve encrypted and restricted access to the PDF’s. The reader is able to read the document, but unable to copy anything from it. Printing however, is permitted.

Enjoy your reading and I’d like to thank my coworkers for letting me publish it this way.

Drawing an early conclusion

Wow, that was quick!
Only a few short hours after I sent the email I mentioned to E&Y, I already got an answer: I was the first one to notice the lacking of some pages.

They immediately sent me (in PDF) the concerned chapters and I’m feeling happy with my (now complete) XBRL book.
Thanks for the swift reply E&Y!

Do not look a gift horse in the mouth

I know it’s inappropriate to have comments on something that was supplied without any charge, but I’d very much like to make an exception here. Remember my gift? Turns out it’s incomplete.

Being for free it should be complete, or at least nearly complete, but out of the 100 pages, there’s a staggering 16 missing:

  • 10 t/m 15
  • 20 t/m 21
  • 64 t/m 66
  • 68 t/m 71
  • 94
  • 98

Kind as I am, I’ve sent a reply to E&Y requesting the missing pages and all I can do now is to wait and see whether they are willing to supply the final 16 pages of the book.
I was super-enthusiastic about the swift and good responses but it is slightly tempered by the book being incomplete. Well, we’ll see what the outcome is. I’ll definitely come back to this.

Now some more information on the release of some documents being created by us during the seminar: I’ve been discussing the release with Diderik (check the right for his URL) and he was very positive about it. I’ve sent my other teammates an email, and here I also have to play the waiting game, although I’m feeling confident.
Please be gentle on me, it’ll come in the near future I guess.

Then again; it might just not…