For the last few years I've been lurking on a mailing list run by the Taxonomic Databases Working Group. It's a low volume list used by scientists interested in capturing and marking up taxonomies. That's taxonomy in the Linnaean sense not the semantic web sense. I've been lurking there since I wrote this paper a … Continue reading iSpecies and taxonomy (no, not that kind)
Category: Science and Technology
Information Aesthetics
I don't normally do link blogging, but the information aesthetics blog is too cool not to share, where else can you read about an augmented reality kitchen, the gori node garden, or street clocks? No attribution as I can't remember where I discovered it. Quite possibly via oishii! which is often a source of my … Continue reading Information Aesthetics
Konfabulator
Via Catalogablog I've just learnt that Konfabulator is available for windows. Looked interesting, so I installed it. I'm in love. Looking forward to seeing this del.icio.us based widget.
Working In A Small World
Stumbled over these musings on how small world theory applies to company organization. They've been languishing in my personal wiki for many months, thought I might as well post them as is. Whilst reading the first few chapters of "Small World" by Mark Buchanan, I was fascinated by the work of Granovetter (see "The Strength … Continue reading Working In A Small World
Champernowne’s Constant
Whilst reading von Baeyers 'Information' recently, I came across the following fun mathematical tidbit which I thought was worth sharing. Mainly because I couldn't find many references to it elsewhere on the 'net. In the chapter on "Randomness", von Baeyer introduces several definitions of the term "random", iteratively showing how each is slightly flawed. Considering … Continue reading Champernowne’s Constant
Searching Small Worlds
Interesting "small world" article in New Scientist this week ("Know Thy Neighbour", January 17 2004, Mark Buchanan), this time discussing how people and information can be located within a small world network. The essay discusses Milgram's famous experiment in which he asked people to attempt to route a letter, via their contacts, to a given … Continue reading Searching Small Worlds
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. I've only just recently heard of the concept of a light cone, one of many interesting facts I've learnt whilst reading Impossibility by John Barrow. You can visualise it as a … Continue reading My Light Cone
The Hardiman
Flipping through New Scientist again this week I came across a short piece describing the WL-16 robotic walking chair, which is apparently all the rage in robotics at the moment. You can read more about it here, but the WL-16 isn't a particularly exciting robot in my book: the first version suffers from the "Dalek … Continue reading The Hardiman
Who will write our electronic history?
This post was originally published as an article on the "Write The Web" blog. Ironically its no longer on the site, but there is a copy in the Wayback Machine. A major branch of current historical research involves collating biographical material on important figures of public interest in a particular period. Now imagine you're an … Continue reading Who will write our electronic history?
Lost Boy 