Bryce Benton just posted to rdfweb-dev pointing out the arrival of XFN (XHTML Friends Network) and in particular a document from CSS-guru Eric Meyer constrasting XFN and FOAF. Thought I’d post a few thoughts and (hopefully) constructive comments.
Lost Boy
The blog of @ldodds
Monthly Archives: December 2003
RDF Syntax: Profiling and Styling
Dorothea recently wrote a rant about the RDF syntax in which she rails against the suggestion from some RDF advocates that the syntax is unimportant: it’s the model that counts.
Dorothea notes that: …only a few people actually create models
Nice Big Graphs
My first interesting find via Minding the Planet which I added to my aggregator today courtesy of Dave Beckett is The Opte Project, “mapping the internet in a single day”. No doubt everyone and their uncle have already seen this, but it’s new to me.
My Light Cone
I just noticed on Interconnected that Matt Web has created a little utility to generate your own personal light cone as an RSS feed.
FOAF-a-Matic in Korean; Fun With Statistics
Thanks to the kind efforts of Minsu Jang the FOAF-a-Matic is now available in Korean. I’m really pleased.
With the tool now available in ten languages I thought it might be fun to estimate what the potential user base might now be.
Enchanted Wood 2003
Westonbirt Arboretum is rapidly becoming one of my favourite places for a family outing. I love walking in a wood and with the diverse range of tree in their collection there is plenty to appreciate throughout the year.
Around Xmas time every year they rope off a section of the Old Arboretum to make a one mile long illuminated trail — The Enchanted Wood.
Martha
I suddenly realised I’ve not really posted any pictures of Martha. So here’s one to be going on with.
Pining For University
Every year come October I get this overwhelming urge to go back into education again. I loved being at university as both an undergraduate studying Biology and as a postgraduate studying Computing, and freely admit to pining for the mental stimulation that full-time education brings. And yes, the lazy mornings and impromptu mid-week drinking sessions, but that’s another story…
So, come October I always wonder what I might have done if I’d continued on with my education. I’m still adamant that one day I’ll take a crack at a Ph.D; perhaps when the kids are older and I can get them cleaning chimneys to bring in a few more shiny pennies.
Unit Testing PL/SQL
For my sins I’ve been writing a bit of PL/SQL recently. It’s been nearly 4 years since I had to do that in anger and predictably I’ve forgotten way more than I remember. At the time I was responsible for redesigning the database for a Laboratory Information Management System used by researchers at Pfizer looking for new drugs. After redesigning the data model I had to write code to port from one to the other. That was a lot of code, and required a lot of testing. Fun project though, and an interesting application.
Of course now I know all about test driven development and the first thing that occured to me was: “how do I test this stuff?”.
Connect The Dots
Let’s see…
- Whilst pointing out a few cool things Edd mentions Planet Gnome and Monologue. Both of these are community sites formed from aggregating GNOME and Mono developers blogs;
- James Strachan announces the new hausmates feeds. Java Blogs we already know about, and similarly the blogs on Java.net;
- Simon Willison notes a move to build a PHP community site and ponders whether such as site might be similarly beneficial to Python folk;
- And then there goes Sam Ruby pointing XML USA attendees at a blogroll page
What’s the connection between all these things?
