Trevor’s Bike Shed

Job hunting isn’t easy. Even in this technological age, the simple task of applying for a job online can be a time-killing chore. Companies often require applicants to apply via their website, and the process usually goes something like this:

1. Type your first name
2. Go to the next field
3. Type your last name
4. Go to the next field
5. Type your street address
6. Go to the next field

And so on and so on until you’ve painstakingly entered all the little bits of data from your résumé: employment history, references, skill set, and more. And that’s only for one company. If you want to apply somewhere else, you have to go through the process all over again!

It shouldn’t be this difficult. Just about everyone stores their résumé in an electronic format these days, so why can’t we simply upload the file to our potential employer? That would certainly make life easier for applicants, but employers would rather not have to support a dozen different file formats. Microsoft Word, for instance, comes in several different flavors, and when Word 2007 comes out next year, yet another file format will have to be dealt with.

One way to handle this issue is to require applicants to use a standard, open file format such as HTML or PDF. But that still doesn’t solve everything: Even with a standard file format, applicants make hundreds of different cosmetic choices for their résumés: Some put their education history near the beginning; others put it at the very end. Some might say they have a “Master of Science” degree while others just say they have an “MS”.

Human beings can handle these variations, but computers have a tough time processing them. And companies love to use computers to find applicants. They want to make queries like, “Show me all applicants with a master’s degree” or “How many applicants can write Java software?” But with all those variations, computers can easily get confused. They might think “MS” means “Mississippi” or that a person who was born on an island in Indonesia is actually skilled in a certain programming language.

What we really need, then, is some kind of special file format. Something that strips away all the layout and formatting of a résumé, leaving only the raw content. Each piece of data in the résumé could then be tagged with its meaning. A computer examining the data would be able to say, “Ah-ha, this is a graduation date,” or “I see, this is the name of a reference,” without even breaking a sweat. (Yes, I know computers don’t sweat. I like to anthropomorphize, okay?)

Luckily, this special file format already exists. It’s called HR-XML. Based on the popular XML format, it’s designed so that human resources departments have a common standard for storing and exchanging information about applicants.

But it’s not just for HR departments. Applicants can benefit, too. Instead of keeping track of different versions of the same résumé (say, an HTML version for posting to the web, a plain text one for sending via email, and perhaps a Word version for printing), you can store everything in a single “master” copy in HR-XML format. You can then let the computer automatically generate the version you want. And although HR-XML loses all of the beautiful fonts and formatting you may have created for your résumé, you can tell the computer how to add the cosmetic stuff when it generates an HTML or PDF version for you.

So…how does one accomplish all these tricks? One way is with the HR-XSL project, a collection of open-source software that helps job applicants take advantage of the HR-XML format. It was started on SourceForge back in 2002, but the original developer never quite got the project off the ground and abandoned it in 2003. I took over as administrator of HR-XSL a couple of months ago and did almost a complete rewrite of the code, releasing a new version yesterday with tons of new features and improvements on old ones. Check it out and let me know what you think.

Today, HR-XML is popular with human resources departments, but so far it hasn’t really caught on anywhere else. There are no major companies or job sites that accept résumés in the HR-XML format. Hopefully, with help from projects like HR-XSL, this will soon change.

Disc images are a fairly common packaging standard for large software programs. If you want to try out a new Linux distribution, for example, chances are you’ll need to download a disc image in ISO format and burn it to a blank CD-ROM or DVD.

But ever since I began using Mac OS X, I’ve been perpetually confused about how to burn ISO images. I’m used to disc burning utilities that have an obvious, explicit command like “Burn ISO Image to CD”. To make life even more confusing, OS X’s Disk Utility does have a Burn command, but it becomes disabled when you click on a disc you want to burn to.

The problem here is that most Mac disc utilities, including the built-in Disk Utility, take a different approach when it comes to image burning. Instead of telling the program you want to burn an image, then choosing the file, you’re supposed to do the reverse: You choose the file, then tell the program you want to burn it.

So, to burn an ISO image to disc, here’s what to do:

1. Insert a blank disc.
2. Start Disk Utility.
3. From the File menu, choose Open Disk Image and select the ISO to be burned.
4. In the list of volumes, you will now see an item representing the ISO file. Select it.
5. Click the Burn button and follow the instructions.

That’s it! Sure, it may seem simple enough, but when you’ve been using Linux and Windows utilities for years, these steps can be a little perplexing and hard to remember.

UPDATE (6/22): This tip has been published on Mac OS X Hints.

Another slightly mystifying scenario is when you want to make a backup of a disc. Games, for instance, often require you to keep the original disc in your computer as a form of copy protection. Unfortunately, getting the disc out of its case every time you want to play can scratch it up. And of course, it’s simply inconvenient.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could copy an image of the disc to your hard drive, then somehow trick the game into thinking that the disc is inserted when it isn’t? Well, OS X can do that for you, but the steps aren’t obvious. Disk Utility requires you to make a number of choices: Do you copy from the CD volume, its session, or the drive itself? Do you create a “CD/DVD master” or a “read/write” image?

To clear things up, here are the exact steps to create a perfect image of a disc:

1. Insert the disc.
2. Start Disk Utility.
3. You will see that three items have appeared in the list of volumes: The drive itself, one or more sessions, and the contents of the CD. Select one of the sessions.
4. Click the New Image button.
5. For Image Format, make sure “Compressed” is selected. Leave Encryption as “none”. Click Save.

Disk Utility will then create a Disk Image (DMG) file for you. When the process is finished, you can eject the disc, then mount the image by double-clicking it. Ta-da! All programs will now think the image is the real McCoy, and you can put the true disc into storage for safekeeping.