Grandpa Ham – Grandpa Can do IT!

• 5 hour rainstorm – no baseball – even though the week end was beautiful after wards. You would think they could fix the fields. but no…. #
• A tweeter asked "What is the opposite of time?" Answer: Time off. Time lasts forever. Time off is gone in a flash. #
• Working from the cafeteria at Walter Reed Hospital. Between Routine appointments. With today's cell broadband you can work anywhere..Darn!! #
• @Podkeyne Fresh live mussels and shrimp boiled in coconut milk with ginger, peppers, and mustard greens. in reply to Podkeyne #
• @Podkeyne they were alive when theyhit the coconut milk. in reply to Podkeyne #

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I wrote a poller for DM-OPEN that posts alerts received in DM-OPEN to the prototype Unified Incident Command and Decision Support System (UICDS).  This gives posters of Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) alerts the option of using DM-OPEN as a mechanism for also posting to UICDS for use by systems connected to that capability.  Two successful demonstrations to date: a month or so ago at the Virginia Department of Emergency Management and today in McClean, Virginia for some folks from DHS.  We posted alerts from NC4’s E-Team, CellCast’s Eagle, MyStateUSA, and DMIS Tools (also a DM offering) to UICDS where the alerts were provided to to a UICDS RSS feed and plotted on maps using Alert Sense (where proper locations were identified in the input CAP message).

The message:  DM-OPEN can be a “connection multiplier” for its interoperability partners.  In this case a single connection yielded 4 new partners (and possibly many more in the future).

It is always nice to know that you web services are up and running strong.  Since Twitter is the current rage, I though I would see if it could actually be useful. I set up a new Twitter account, wrote a poller to DM-OPEN that pings it on a regular basis and sends me a direct message to my grandpaham Twitter account upon the first instance of a successful ping,  the first instance of a failure following a series of successful pings, and the first instance of a successful ping after one or more failures.  Failures do not happen often, but now I will be the first to know if they do. Cool.

• Harrisburg PA , quiet campground, son is coaching tomorrow, he’s 25 and I am still number one in his fan club #
• Harrisburg PA, quiet rainy campground. Was supposed to be baseball tournament. Hope they have lots of turfus(sp?). #

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• DMOPEN Alert1 test of a twitter headline extraction frim DM-OPEN #
• DMOPEN Alert2 test of a twitter headline extraction frim DM-OPEN #
• DMOPEN Alert3rd test of a twitter headline extraction frim DM-OPEN #
• DMOPEN Alert4th test of a twitter headline extraction frim DM-OPEN #
• DMOPEN Alert5th test of a twitter headline extraction frim DM-OPEN #
• DMOPEN AlertTweety Bird captured by Puddy Tat #
• DMOPEN Alert 6th test of a twitter headline extraction frim DM-OPEN #
• DMOPEN Alert EQ 3.9 False Pass, AK – PRELIMINARY REPORT #
• DMOPEN Alert EQ 4.9 Jumla, Nepal – PRELIMINARY REPORT #
• DMOPEN Alert EQ 4.3 Mingaora, Pakistan – PRELIMINARY REPORT #
• DMOPEN Alert EQ 4.6 Namche Bazar, Nepal – PRELIMINARY REPORT #
• DMOPEN Alert EQ 4.9 Santo (Luganville), Vanuatu – PRELIMINARY REPORT #
• DMOPEN Alert EQ 4.5 Roatán, Islas de la Bahía, Honduras – PRELIMINARY REPORT #
• DMOPEN Alert EQ 5.1 Raba, Sumbawa, Indonesia – PRELIMINARY REPORT #
• DMOPEN Alert EQ 5.3 False Pass, AK – PRELIMINARY REPORT #
• DMOPEN Alert EQ 4.2 False Pass, AK – PRELIMINARY REPORT #
• DMOPEN Alert EQ 4.6 Patras, Greece – PRELIMINARY REPORT #
• DMOPEN Alert EQ 4.7 Patras, Greece – PRELIMINARY REPORT #
• DMOPEN Alert EQ 5.0 Vanimo, New Guinea, PNG – PRELIMINARY REPORT #
• DMOPEN Alert EQ 3.2 Higüey, La Altagracia, Dominican Republic – PRELIMINARY REPORT #
• DMOPEN Alert EQ 5.6 NUKU’ALOFA, Tonga – PRELIMINARY REPORT #
• DMOPEN Alert EQ 5.4 NUKU’ALOFA, Tonga – PRELIMINARY REPORT #
• DMOPEN Alert EQ 4.9 Vanimo, New Guinea, PNG – PRELIMINARY REPORT #
• DMOPEN Alert EQ 4.5 Nikolski, AK – PRELIMINARY REPORT #
• DMOPEN Alert EQ 4.9 PORT-VILA, Vanuatu – PRELIMINARY REPORT #
• DMOPEN Alert EQ 4.8 Usulután, Usulután, El Salvador – PRELIMINARY REPORT #
• DMOPEN Alert EQ 5.1 PORT-VILA, Vanuatu – PRELIMINARY REPORT #
• DMOPEN Alert EQ 4.1 Ussuriysk, Russia – PRELIMINARY REPORT #
• DMOPEN Alert EQ 3.4 Settlement, Anegada, British Virgin Islands – PRELIMINARY REPORT #
• DMOPEN Alert EQ 5.3 Venustiano Carranza, Chiapas, Mexico – PRELIMINARY REPORT #
• DMOPEN Alert #
• Twitter says I Tweet to much, but does not process my Tweets. I think Some of the tweets may be using keywords so twitter gets confused. #
• atest 8th test of a twitter headline extraction from DM-OPEN #
• atest CellCast TestAlert to Twitter via DM-OPEN #
• atest MySteteUSA TestAlert to Twitter via DM-OPEN #
• atest #
• atest 9th test of a twitter headline extraction from DM-OPEN #
• Yes you can Tweet too much, unless they grant you special permission, there is a limit per hour. Not sure the exact amount though. #
• I exceeded the tweet limit yesterday experimenting with turning an earthquake feed into tweets. #
• atest ETEAM POSTED A TEST ALERT THROUGH DM-OPEN. TWITTERED FROM GRANDPAHAM AT 36000 FEET. #
• atest MyStateUSA posted a test alert through DM-OPEN. Twittered from grandpaham at 36000 feet. #
• atest CellCast posted a test alert through DM-OPEN. Twittered from grandpaham at 36000 feet. #
• Just passed in to Colorado. Bumby flight. But the internet is working well. #
• atest #
• atest DMIS Posted a test alert through DM-OPEN. Twittered from GrandPaham at 36000 #
• @Podkeyne Twitter has no knowledge of CAP it just wants under 140 character strings, but it does not want too many at once, I fear. in reply to Podkeyne #
• Riding Light Rail (1.75) to CalTrain (6.00) to BART (1.50) to get to SFO from Santa Clara. $9.25 vs $50 for a van trip or $120 for a taxi. #
• And the train is more fun too. But takes about 40 minutes longer. #

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It works — Mostly.  I had one of my team members working with me on Disaster Management Interoperability Services post OASIS Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) Alerts to a test organization (aka COG for collaborative Operations Group) from 4 very different tools (E-Team, CellCast, MyStateUSA, and DMIS Toolset). He made these posts while I was traveling to California at 36000 feet on a commercial airline that offers wi-fi internet access.  At the same time I was running an application on my laptop inside the airplane that I wrote last week that that polls the DM-OPEN COG which my team member was posting to.  This polling software picked up each of the Alerts and posted them as tweets to my Twitter account (grandpaham). This blog (grandpaham.com) also picks up my tweets in a plug-in on its sidebar from Twitter.   There was one anomaly.  I know that all four of my tweets reached Twitter successfully, because my blog picked them all up successfully. However, one of the Tweets (DMIS  Toolset) did not show on my direct Twitter page.

?????????? My blog retrieved the headline from Twitter, so I know it got there. But my Twitter page did not show it.  So, I have an unanswered question, for sure. Why did Twitter not display the last tweet?

Nothing special about this post except that it is being done from 36,000 feet in a Virgin America Flight from Dulles to San Francisco.  Ain’t Technology great?

If your really think about it, the world has not changed a whole lot since 1964.   Here is how I thought about it back then: The Caves

I recently added “tweeting” to my prototyping code base.  I can now poll the DM-OPEN Server for an organization and tweet any new alerts to followers of a given Twitter member.  You can see the results by following “grandpaham” on Twitter.  In fact, you can see it live if you have access to any Emergency Management Software that is compatible with DM-OPE’s CAP alert interface.   If you post an alert to the Interoperability COG, it should show up as a “grandpaham” twitter.  Kudos to the folks who developed twitter4j. The code and examples work as advertised.  Using Twitter can act as a DM-OPEN notification service.

I wrote a little ditty that explains the value of what FEMA’s Disaster management program offers to vendors, open source developers and even contract developers in the Emergency Management and Public Warning Domains. It is a question that users of such software might ask their vendors. Take a look.
See my Contact Info if you would like some help getting started

Are you OPEN? [1]

Can you connect using standards?
Are you open to all?
Or are you a silo?
Using “standards” to stall?

Our open web service
Connects all kinds of apps.
A middleware instance
To share more than “CAPs.”[2]

We have a web service
Based on EDXL [3]
That helps apps connect
Yet encapsulate well.

Hard wired integration
Is not what we do.
You connect via service
As captured by you.

You decide layout
And your design form
But connect to all others
Using standards as norm.

We make it straightforward.
Your connection is clean.
The boundaries work well.
You control what is seen.

You have the power.
We provide pipes,
For transferring data
Of all defined types.

With data described
Using DE [4]
So intelligent routing
Can come to be.

We provide access.
You set the rules
In the tags that you set
In the DE through your tools.

We then connect others
As desired by you.
And they get your data
As you want them to.

They can format the layout
In their own way.
Connected, yet separate
With their own say

Into how to display
And how to reuse
And so can all others
Unless you refuse.

You can work independent,
Yet use standards to share.
The best choice to ensure
Service to all; everywhere.

Gary A. Ham – May 14, 2009

[1] FEMA – Disaster Management Program – Open Platform for Emergency Networks
[2] OASIS Common Alerting Protocol
[3] OASIS Emergency Data Exchange Language
[4] OASIS EDXL Distribution Element