W3C Team

On “Where is XML Going?”

2007-03-03T13:30:00+10:00

A few days ago Kurt Cagle posted a blog entitled “Where is XML Going”. He lists a number technologies and trends of interest in the XML development community. There is nothing in his post I would disagree with (well… I am always a bit cautious when RDF is presented as part of XML; this is [...]

Shivkumar Sharma

2007-02-25T23:08:00+10:00

Back from India today. By luck, I met there a former colleague who lives now in Bangalore. He and his friend gave me some Indian music. If you do not know this type of music, or if you know only the name of Ravi Shankar (which is usually the case of my generation…), remember another [...]

Semantic Web and Digital Libraries Conference

2007-02-25T20:42:00+10:00

I just came back from a conference on Semantic Web and Digital Libraries (ICSD 2007) in Bangalore, India. Incidentally, this was also the first international event on Semantic Web in India altogether. The idea of bringing together two communities that so clearly have things to say to one another is great. Obviously, it is also difficult; [...]

Dublin Core abstract model

2007-02-13T15:09:00+10:00

The DCMI has published a draft for public review for an updated version of Dublin Core Abstract Model. From a Semantic Web point of view, the most important point about the new version is to have a clear association to RDF and RDFS terms as well as an alignment of the two models. For a [...]

Yahoo! pipes and visualization…

2007-02-09T19:43:00+10:00

There has been a whole series of blogs lately on a new system published by Yahoo!, called Yahoo! pipes. Tim O’Reilly called it a “milestone in the history of the Internet” (which I find a little bit overdriven, but that may be only me). The system gives the user a cute interface whereby users can [...]

9 Feb 2007

2007-02-09T08:10:04+10:00

Social standards and coding fugues

I got Cryptonomicon for Christmas; chalk one up for Amazon wish-lists. It walks the line between geek culture and popular culture in a way that makes me want people close to me to read it so they'll understand me a little better. This bit from p. 819 struck a chord...

"Who framed me, then?" Randy asks, kind of rhetorically. He was just in the middle of doing some pretty cool C++ coding when he got yanked out of his cell to have this surprise encounter with the Dentist, and is surprising himself with just how bored and irritated he is. He has reverted, in other words, back into a pure balls-to-the-wall nerdisim rivaled only by his early game-coding days back in Seattle. The sheer depth and involution of the current nerdism binge would be hard to convey to anyone. Intellectually, he is juggling half a dozen lit torches, Ming vases, live puppies, and running chainsaws. In this frame of mind he cannot bring himself to give a shit about the fact that this incredibly powerful billionaire has gone to a lot of trouble to come and F2F with him. And so he asks the above question as nothing more than a perfunctory guesture, the subtext being I wish you would go away but minimal standards of social decency dictate that I should say something.

In other news, Advogato does foaf, the Semantic Web social networking standard. Rock on, robogato!

How I geotag my photos

2007-02-06T17:09:55+10:00

Several times recently I’ve needed to explain how I add gps information to my photos. I thought it would help to document it here. I’m not saying this is the best way to do things, but it seems to work reasonably well. If your browser window isn’t wide enough to show the right side of [...]

A design for web content labels built from GRDDL and rules

2007-01-25T23:35:27+10:00

In #swig discussion, Tim mentioned he did some writing on labels and rules and OWL which prompted me to flesh out some related ideas I had. The result is a Makefile and four tests with example labels. One of them is:

All resources on example.com are accessible for all users and meet WAI AA guidelines except those on visual.example.com which are not suitable for users with impaired vision.

I picked an XML syntax out of the air and wrote visaa.lbl:

<label
    xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2007/01/lbl22/label"
    xmlns:mobilebp="http://www.w3.org/2007/01/lbl22/mobilebp@@#"
    xmlns:wai="http://www.w3.org/2007/01/lbl22/wai@@#"
    >
  <scope>
    <domain>example.com</domain>
    <except>
      <domain>visual.example.com</domain>
    </except>
  </scope>
  <audience>
    <wai:AAuser />
  </audience>
</label>

And then in testdata.ttl we have:

<http://example.com/pg1simple> a webarch:InformationResource.
 <http://visual.example.com/pg2needsVision> a
webarch:InformationResource.
 :charlene a wai:AAuser.

Then we run the test thusly...

$ make visaa_test.ttl
xsltproc --output visaa.rdf label2rdf.xsl visaa.lbl
python ../../../2000/10/swap/cwm.py visaa.rdf lblrules.n3 owlAx.n3
testdata.ttl \
                --think --filter=findlabels.n3 --n3 >visaa_test.ttl

and indeed, it concludes:

    <http://example.com/pg1simple>     lt:suitableFor :charlene .

but doesn't conclude that pg2needsVision is OK for charlene.

The .lbl syntax is RDF data via GRDDL and label2rdf.xsl. Then owlAx.n3 is rules that derive from the RDFS and OWL specs; i.e. stuff that's already standard. As Tim wrote, A label is a fairly direct use of OWL restrictions. This is very much the sort of thing OWL is designed for. Only the lblrules.n3 bit goes beyond what's standardized, and it's written in the N3 Rules subset of N3, which, assuming a few built-ins, maps pretty neatly to recent RIF designs.

A recent item from Bijan notes a SPARQL-rules design by Axel; I wonder if these rules fit in that design too. I hope to take a look soonish.

Integrating Wikipedia and SW

2007-01-24T22:05:00+10:00

Chris Bizer and friends have recently announced their dbpedia site, which provides a mapping of the structural content of Wikipedia in RDF. For example, the categorization data of the Wikipedia entry on the Indian writer Amitav Ghosh can be seen as: raw RDF/XML, via a Sparql interface via a simple HTML dump of the same data, or [...]

Agnes, 17:06

2007-01-14T13:06:12+10:00

Roman photo, sur les traces d'Agnes.

BibTeX in RDF

2007-01-13T15:53:00+10:00

I just blogged elsewhere on BibSonomy, an alternative to del.icio.us that also includes bibliographical references. The core terminology used by the system (for bibliographical information) is based on BibTeX but entries can also be dumped to other formats. See, for example, a portion of my references in BibTeX or RDF. However… which RDF terminology for [...]

BibSonomy

2007-01-13T15:10:00+10:00

I colleague in the SWEO group (I think it was Paul Miller, I am not sure) drew my attention to the BibSonomy service. The service is pretty much along the same lines as del.icio.us. One can have bookmarks, share it with others, add tags, etc, etc. So why bother? Well, the nice feature of BibSonomy is [...]

BibSonomy

2007-01-13T15:10:00+10:00

New ESW page: Converters to RDF

2007-01-09T16:15:00+10:00

A new page has just been added to ESW Wiki: list of converters to RDF. Clearly necessary and useful… and having it on the Wiki makes it possible to keep it up-to-date more easily! B.t.w., the SWEO group will create a separate task force on Resource Gathering which will look at pages like this one. Still [...]

Changing to WordPress

2007-01-07T19:51:00+10:00

I used blosxom for a long time as a blogging software. It was quite all right but, I must admit, I got a little bit bored to keep it up myself if I had to do any change. So I decided to become lazy and switch to WordPress… I tried to do my best to [...]

2006 - Year in review

2007-01-05T21:48:10+10:00

A review of my life in 2006, or at least the bits that I want to share.

Job of the Year

(or, the thing I do to get paid so I can have a life)

My summary would be that work generally sucked in 2006. Since I don't write about work I can now remember the plenty of fun non-work things that happened during the year.

Travel

(or, how lucky I am to get paid to visit all these nice places)

I spent more nights away from home this year than any other, including a 5 week trip and a 7 week trip. There was a 12 week period where I was travelling for 9 of the 12 weeks.

Having said that, I probably travelled less distance than the last few years, but still enough to make me feel incredibly guilty about carbon emissions. I went on less trips, and spent more time in the places I visited. Great Circle Mapper has a diagram of the 258,880km I flew.

I added four new countries to my visited list: Morocco, China, The Netherlands and the Czech Republic. Five if you cheat and count Scotland.

Beijing was a stand out. I loved everything, from the sites like the Great Wall and the Forbidden City to just being amongst millions of people. Kids would stare and ask to take a photograph with you. I assume this was because they were visiting Beijing from somewhere more remote and it was the first time they'd seen foreigners. Or it could be that I'm a freak and they collect photos of freaks.

Morocco was also great - the most exotic place I've been to. I was annoyed to not have a camera, but that meant I spent time experiencing the place rather than taking photos of the experiences. I got terrible food poisoning and fell down a flight of stairs in a carpet shop but neither spoilt the trip in any way.

Movies of the Year

(or, how I can bore you by rambling on about films)

Warning: there might be some spoilers in here.

Overall I was very disappointed with movies of 2006. I didn't see anything that I would call brilliant. The highlights of the year for me were comedies:

Borat was the funniest movie I've ever seen, even though it was quite repetitive and not as funny as watching a DVD with highlights from "Da Ali G show". I was confused by the arguments and discussion about the movie being a comment on society. To me it was just a straightforward, but excellent, comedy. I didn't suspect Sascha Baron Cohen of anything other than trying to make people laugh by saying/doing the unexpected (and that's really what comedy is).

Plain and simple, Talledega Nights wakes up in the morning and pisses excellence. I was so impressed by how fast the movie started, with rapid-fire laughs for at least 30 minutes. The highlight was the dinner scene with Ricky saying grace (to the omnipotent Christmas baby Jesus) while his sons abuse their grandfather and his friend is complimenting his wife's physical assets. And Sascha Baron Cohen was fantastic as Jean Girard from "Formula uuhnn". Shake and bake!

Other good comedies: Little Miss Sunshine and Kenny (although I'm not sure it would be as amusing to a non-Aussie).

I had a great time with the singing and dancing penguins of Happy Feet. The story itself wasn't great, and I was very annoyed to hear Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman use American accents. I also got the impression that Animal Logic were showing off some fancy digital effects when they were not really required for the story, something I don't notice Pixar doing. But the dancing penguins made up for everything, and the soundtrack rocked.

The blockbusters of 2006 were fairly disappointing. MI3 was just average (and had an overly cheesy ending). Pirates of the Caribbean was fun but ridiculous. Superman Returns was painfully boring and lacked anyone with charisma (even Kevin Spacey bombed). XMen 3 was nowhere near as good as the excellent XMen 2. Poseidon was as bad as I expected it to be (the wave roared!!).

I spent some time thinking about The Illusionist and The Prestige, another case of two movies with very similar subjects releasing in the same year. While I enjoyed them both, I was ultimately disappointed by The Prestige. Where The Illusionist created a world which seemed to contain real magic until you discovered it was all a trick, The Prestige created a world where everything was trick until you discovered there was real magic. I'm always going to find it easier to get involved in a movie that is believable rather than one that relies on the impossible (and, in this case, ridiculous). I guess the novel's author had a good reason for this, and the filmmakers can't predict such a similar movie being released within months. I'm not really complaining here - both films where very enjoyable, looked fantastic and were well acted.

(FYI: I used the word "tricks" instead of "illusions" because I didn't want to confuse it with the title of the film. I know that Gob says tricks are what a whore does for candy. I expect a call from the magicians' alliance).

Casino Royale was my pleasant surprise for the year. I had concluded that Bond movies were going to continue being increasingly pathetic, but this one broke many of the traditions:

Bond was vulnerable, both physically and emotionally.
No terrible wisecracks or puns, but still a good dose of humour.
No unbelievable arch-villan who is trying to destroy the world using a giant laser cannon from a hollowed-out volcano.
Bond was mean and tough - killing enemies with his bare hands.
Bond didn't sleep with the woman. (Yeah, he ended up sleeping with Vesper, but only once he fell in love with her. He'd had chances before then)
Mostly believable action (the accident with the car flipping was especially impressive)

When the movie ended I immediately wanted to see more. I wanted to know what happens to Bond from that point on. I hope they continue the series in the same manner. I'm a little worried that this movie, as a prequel, was supposed to create the Bond we knew from previous films (and it does set it up that way) but it would be a terrible shame to destroy such an interesting character.

Lastly, here's the films from 2006 that I suggest were crap: Firewall and Flightplan (both examples of criminals going using insanely complicated methods to carry out quite straight-forward crimes), the remake of the Pink Panther (why? why? was it attempting to be Zoolander-style funny) and The Chronicles of Narnia.

Music of the Year

(or, stuff I listened to that I thought was better than the other stuff I listened to)

A pretty mainstream selection of favourite music this year:

Snow Patrol - Eyes Open
Gnarls Barkley - Gnarls Barkley
Lily Allen - Alright Still
Basement Jaxx - Crazy Itch Radio
Thom Yorke - The Eraser

Just so I'm not being completely boring, here's an album that isn't popular with the in-crowd: Justine Clarke - I like to sing. It's meant for kids (Justine is from Play School) and it is great for singing along.

Wii of the Year

(or, I'd love to be a teenager again)

While I do own a Nintendo DS to keep me entertained while travelling, I thought my gamer days were well behind me. I have never been interested in getting an XBox or Playstation and I haven't played a real computer game in many years.

But then came the Wii. It just looked so fun - I couldn't resist. I loved that it was being promoted to non-gamers and that it wasn't trying to compete in the bigger, better, faster world of Sony and Microsoft. As the Wii sold out immediately and I hadn't pre-ordered, I was very lucky to find one a few days after release under the counter at Big W.

I'm enjoying it so much I can't believe it.

I'm even playing Zelda! Yes, I'm pretending to be a elf-like boy warrior who is saving the world from the powers of darkness, and supposedly winning the Princess's heart in the process. It has been a blast. Games are so much more impressive nowadays in terms of story and complexity. Sure, the graphics get better but that's mostly fluff. These games are becoming more like immersive books that stretch your brain muscles.

The entire branding of the Wii is perfect. Everything looks beautiful, from the accessories and their packaging to the actual screen interface. It's almost so good that you don't notice it - everything just feels right. You don't usually get such a completely uniform design aesthetic outside of Apple.

Television of the Year

(or, it turns out you won't get square eyes if you watch too much)

I relapsed into TV addiction in 2006. I'm not quite as bad as I was in school, but I did watch a lot. There are two main reasons:

I can control what I watch and when I watch it. I haven't watched live TV in at least 6 months. Instead I get everything off DVD or the internet (no advertisements). I can watch when I'm travelling. I can watch a whole season at once. I don't need to be in front of the TV at any particular time.
The quality of TV programs is always improving. There might be just as much crap TV out there, but the good shows are getting better all the time (and there is more of them). Many TV shows are better produced than films. Where a movie typically gives you a 2 hour view onto a particular event, there is something comforting about spending a year following the lives of a TV character. It means the writers usually have to have a medium or long-term plan (although I'm starting to think that there isn't a plan for Lost).

I use those two reasons to justify not trying to cure the addiction.

I've been planning to write about my favourite TV shows for a while, so I'll just mention the good shows I discovered in 2006.

Veronica Mars is my favourite show at the moment. It's a high-school drama done right with a fantastically sassy and intelligent lead character. It's not pretending to be anything more than it is, just lots of fun. I caught up on the first two seasons early in the year and am enjoying the third season that is in progress now. A special pleasure has been the consistent references to The Big Lebowski throughout the season.

House is similar. It's been around for a while but I only found it in 2006. He's by far the best character on television, and I'm almost decided on making Greg House my personal hero. I wish I could be him (or at least as smart, arrogant, funny and unfriendly).

Dog of the Year

(or, yet another addition to the Doolittle family)

My home welcomed Chase in 2006. He was born on the 6th of the 6th in 2006 and thus narrowly avoided being called Damien. Instead, he's named after a character from the TV show House.

NooNoo and Bess quickly sorted the little doofus out, but poor Snow gets constantly harassed for play by Chase (Snow is his half-sister). Chase's simple puppy brain hasn't yet learnt the lesson from Pounce about who is the boss of the animals.

Podcasts of the Year

(or, if I didn't have these I'd have to watch the in-flight movies)

My favourite podcasts where mostly from NPR, with the highlight being "Wait Wait, Don't Tell Me". I guess some people might call these time-shifted radio rather than podcasts.

My best "real" podcast was the Daily Podcast from Slate by Andy Bowers. With the exception of the political gabfests I found every topic interesting.

Other favourites: Ebert and Roeper, lots of Radio National, Enough Rope with Andrew Denton and the Ruby on Rails podcasts (nerd alert).

I tried to listen to some less-polished podcasts but everywhere I went I found morons rambling on or filling the space with annoying music tracks. I wanted information, not some fool trying to be funny. And if I wanted music I'd listen to my music, given that the device I'm using is a music player. I've nearly given up on everything but the more professional podcasts. End of rant.

Fruit of the Year

(or, essential eating)

Easy: the banana. Due to the shortage in Australia bananas became yellow gold. I didn't realise how much I would miss my daily banana. Luckily the end of the year saw prices return to normal.

Gadget Purchase of the Year

(or, me wasting money again)

The 8G second generation black iPod nano, lovingly called Voldepod.

Sporting Moment of the Year

(or, me being proud of my country while watching a silly sport that I've never played)

I got completely swept up in the football World Cup, especially the performance of Australia, who hadn't been to the finals since they used a cow's stomach for a ball. For a game where nothing much happens 90% of the time it can be extremely nerve-wracking to watch. I might be the only person in Australia who thought that the penalty Italy were awarded in the last minute of the match was actually a penalty, but I still think Australia deserved to win.

What's fantastic is the whole tournament will be remembered for one thing, and it didn't involve any skill with a ball.

Holidays of the Year

(or, get me out of here!)

I spent a couple of weeks near the beach in Tilba and then the Christmas period on a friends farm in the middle of nowhere. (It wasn't really nowhere, but it felt like it to me). I loved both.

Lowlights of the Year

(or, bugger!)

Having my digital camera and 60G fourth generation iPod stolen from my luggage. I travelled through Morocco, Prague and parts of Spain without a camera. Bummer.

Lastly, I feature myself as a lowlight. While I spent a lot of time with my work-related friends I was a failure with my non-work friends, especially Tom, Craig and Rachel ("hi" if you read this). It's crazy to see people on the other side of the world more often than people 10 minutes away. I hope to change this in 2007.

5 Jan 2007

2007-01-05T20:30:30+10:00

18:98992cbff4fd 2007-01-04 work around MS Exchange attachment bug

Exchange 2000 Server requires a file name in the Content-type header. Q12: How does Exchange handle attachments? Microsoft Article 836555

I bet you can guess the rest of the story, but I hope to write it up later today.

#swig notes

She's a witch and I have the proof (in N3)

2007-01-03T08:28:22+10:00

A while back, somebody turned the Monty Python Burn the Witch sketch into an example resolution proof. Bijan and Kendall had some fun turning it into OWL.

I'm still finding bugs pretty regularly, but the cwm/n3 proof stuff is starting to mature; it works for a few PAW demo scenarios. Ralph asked me to characterize the set of problems it works for. I don't have a good handle on that, but this witch example seems to be in the set.

Transcribing the example resolution FOL KB to N3 is pretty straightforward; the original is preserved in the comments:


@prefix : <witch#>.
@keywords is, of, a.

#[1] 	BURNS(x) /\ WOMAN(x)	 	=>	WITCH(x)

{ ?x a BURNS. ?x a WOMAN } => { ?x a WITCH }.

#[2]	WOMAN(GIRL)
GIRL a WOMAN.

#[3]	\forall x, ISMADEOFWOOD(x)	=>	BURNS(x)
{ ?x a ISMADEOFWOOD. } => { ?x a BURNS. }.

#[4]	\forall x, FLOATS(x) 		=>	ISMADEOFWOOD(x)
{ ?x a FLOATS } => { ?x a ISMADEOFWOOD }.

#[5]	FLOATS(DUCK)

DUCK a FLOATS.

#[6]	\forall x,y FLOATS(x) /\ SAMEWEIGHT(x,y) =>	FLOATS(y)

{ ?x a FLOATS. ?x SAMEWEIGHT ?y } => { ?y a FLOATS }.

# and, by experiment
# [7]	SAMEWEIGHT(DUCK,GIRL)

DUCK SAMEWEIGHT GIRL.

Then we run cwm to generate the proof and then run the proof checker in report mode:

$ cwm.py witch.n3  --think --filter=witch-goal.n3  --why >witch-pf.n3
$ check.py --report witch-pf.n3 >witch-pf.txt

The report is plain text; I'll enrich it just a bit here. Note that in the N3 proof format, some formulas are elided. It makes some sense not to repeat the whole formula you get by parsing an input file, but I'm not sure why cwm elides results of rule application. It seems to give the relevant formula on the next line, at least:

...
[by parsing <witch.n3>]
:GIRL a :WOMAN .
[by erasure from step 1]
:DUCK :SAMEWEIGHT :GIRL .
[by erasure from step 1]
:DUCK a :FLOATS .
[by erasure from step 1]
@forAll :x, :y . { :x a wit:FLOATS; wit:SAMEWEIGHT :y . } log:implies {:y a wit:FLOATS . } .
[by erasure from step 1]
...
[by rule from step 5 applied to steps [3, 4]
with bindings {'y': '<witch#GIRL>', 'x': '<witch#DUCK>'}]
:GIRL a :FLOATS .
[by erasure from step 6]
@forAll :x . { :x a wit:FLOATS . } log:implies {:x a wit:ISMADEOFWOOD . } .
[by erasure from step 1]
...
[by rule from step 8 applied to steps [7]
with bindings {'x': '<witch#GIRL>'}]
:GIRL a :ISMADEOFWOOD .
[by erasure from step 9]
@forAll :x . { :x a wit:ISMADEOFWOOD . } log:implies {:x a wit:BURNS . } .
[by erasure from step 1]
...
[by rule from step 11 applied to steps [10]
with bindings {'x': '<witch#GIRL>'}]
:GIRL a :BURNS .
[by erasure from step 12]
@forAll witch:x . { witch:x a :BURNS, :WOMAN . } log:implies {witch:x a :WITCH . } .
[by erasure from step 1]
...
[by rule from step 14 applied to steps [2, 13]
with bindings {'x': '<witch#GIRL>'}]
:GIRL a :WITCH .
[by erasure from step 15]

All the files are in the swap/test/reason directory: witch.n3, witch-goal.n3, witch-pf.n3, witch-pf.txt. Enjoy.

Merci Infiniment !

2006-12-31T06:00:00+10:00

12 avril 2000 - 31 décembre 2006, carnet Web Karl

Vous pouvez enlever le feed de vos agrégateur, il ne sera plus mis à jour. Merci de m'avoir lu jusque là. Les archives restent en lignes.

Du bonheur bleuté

2006-12-30T06:00:00+10:00

Il y a quelques années, le 11 décembre 2000, dans un billet « HTML et les premiers navigateurs » sur Karl & Cow - The Boring Weblog qui était assez mal écrit sur les technologies Web et le HTML, j'insistais sur les conséquences de nos toutes premières décisions. Et je concluais par « Les premières fois sont très importantes. »

代官山, 日本

Il y a toujours ce magnifique sentiment lorsque l'on explore de nouveaux territoires, cette excitation de chaque instant, cette envie permanente et folle de créer. C'est une belle aventure, un parfum de chèvrefeuille invitant à la libre pensée. La trajectoire du papillon, le bonheur unique du plaisir, le sourire au bout des doigts, les mots sont naïfs, les phrases sont jeunes.

Les choses se raffinent, se patinent et prennent le charme de l'ancien. C'est un vieux fauteuil écossais en cuir au coin du feu, c'est un chemin qui nous fait sourire car on y trouve du confort, c'est le parfum d'une table en bois couverte de cire d'abeille. La maturité nous apporte son lot de rides, son assurance tranquille et la tendresse de la maîtrise. Qu'il est doux cet instant de sérénité.

Être ébloui, s'extasier du quotidien, vivre passionnément le banal est le feu qui m'illumine. L'exploration des horizons lointains jamais ne cesse. La découverte est une invitation.

Du bonheur qui n'est que de l'anxiété différée. Du bonheur bleuté, d'une insubordination admirable, qui s'élance du plaisir, pulvérise le présent et toutes ses instances.

Feuillets d'Hypnos, 145, René Char

恵比寿, 日本

rêverie