Mirage
The hope I dreamed of was a dream,
Was but a dream; and now I wake,
Exceeding comfortless, and worn, and old,
For a dream's sake.
I hang my harp upon a tree,
A weeping willow in a lake;
I hang my silent harp there, wrung and snapped
For a dream's sake.
Lie still, lie still, my breaking heart;
My silent heart, lie still and break:
Life, and the world, and mine own self, are changed
For a dream's sake.
by Christina Georgina Rossetti
Monthly Archives: March 2008
Automated Testing Patterns and Smells
Wonderful tech talk by Gerard Meszaros who is a consultant specialising in agile development processes. In this particular presentation Gerard describes a number of common problems encountered when writing and running automated unit and functional tests. He describes these problems as “test smells”, and talks about their root causes. He also suggests possible solutions which he expresses as design patterns for testing. While many of the practices he talks about are directly actionable by developers or testers, it’s important to realise that many also require action from a supportive manager and/or system architect in order to be really achievable.
We use many flavours of xUnit test frameworks in our development group at Talis, and we generally follow a Test First development approach, I found this talk beneficial because many of the issues that Gerard talks about are problems we have encountered and I don’t doubt every development group out there, including ours, can benefit from the insight’s he provides.
The material he uses in his talk and many of the examples are from his book xUnit Test Patterns: Refactoring Test Code, which I’m certainly going to order.
On the verge of creating synthetic life
Craig Venter made headlines back in 2001 for sequencing the human genome, then he went on to trying to map the oceans biodiversity, and currently he’s working on a project to create the first synthetic lifeforms – micro-organisms that can produce alternative fuels, and according to this presentation … hes very very close to achieving that!
The talk covers the details of creating brand new chromosones using digital technologies. What makes this so amazing is that this technology has the potential to change the world, it would allow humans to create Synthetic Bacteria that are engineered to perform specific reactions: produce fossil fuels, make medicines, combat global warming1 etc.
In a recent interview with New Scientist Venter described how this technology would hopefully reduce our dependency on fossil fuels2:
Over the next 20 years, synthetic genomics is going to become the standard for making anything. The chemical industry will depend on it. Hopefully, a large part of the energy industry will depend on it. We really need to find an alternative to taking carbon out of the ground, burning it, and putting it into the atmosphere. That is the single biggest contribution I could make.
Not everyone seem’s too happy with this, with accusations that Venter is trying to play God. How much you subscribe to that view depends on one’s own religious perspective. I was encouraged to come across a wonderful critique that addresses this question from a Muslim perspective, which is well worth reading3, the author offers a conclusion of sorts:
I approached Dr Venter after the lecture and asked him whether any religious groups had raised objections about his work (I do wonder what he thought of a hijab-clad woman asking him such a question). He replied in the negative, reminding me that his work did not begin until the project had been subjected to a 1.5 year ethical review. He in turn asked me: “Why? Should there be [any objection]?â€. After hearing the facts, and mulling it over, the only answer that came to my mind was: “Noâ€, and upon further reflection, I still stand by my answer – and Allah knows best.
If Venter succeeds the implications specifically for the Pharmaceutical and Chemical Industries as well as the world at large are profound.
- http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/06/08/nbiofuel108.xml[back]
- New Scientist, Issue 2626 page 57[back]
- MuslimMatters.org, Craig Venter Playing God[back]
Seven Samurai and Samurai7
Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai is not only one of the greatest films of all time it also happens to be one of my favourites. It’s one of those movies I tend to go back and watch more often than I probably ought to. It’s one of those films that for some strange reasons I take great comfort in, the sort of thing that I kind find inspiration in when I need it, or loose myself in when I don’t really want to think about something else, like today.
For those who aren’t familiar with it the plot revolves around a small villages struggle to stave off a group of marauding bandits. In order to do this they recruit Seven samurai to defend them, but because the village is so poor the samurai will be paid only the rice they eat. The film is over three hours long, in fact over an hour of the film is dedicated to the villagers struggle to find and recruit a number of samurai willing to fight for them, for so little reward.
The movie is very emotive,particularly in the opening half hour the plight of the farmers is almost unbearable to watch such is their suffering. The task of hiring samurai seems impossible especially when all they have to offer is rice. What makes this such a classic movie though is the depth of detail and characterisation Kurasawa provides, and the painstaking effort he makes in creating a sense of 16th century Japanese society. The interactions and tensions between the samurai and the villagers are frequent and often awkward, each group having its reasons to mistrust the other. The samurai could oppress the villagers as much as the bandits.
Call me a romantic but for me what makes the movie truly magical lies in how the heroism of the seven emerges in their willingness to do what is right, no matter the outcome, and to help those who need it without making judgements about their fallabilities or their occasional immorality. Even the end of the film is striking with the battle won the villagers celebrate their victory but ignore the samurai for whom they no lnger have any use, leaving the surviving samurai to reflect on the relationship between the warrior and farming classes.
Kurasawa’s movie was one of the first to use, the now common, plot device of recruiting and gathering a group of heroes into a team to accomplish and impossible mission. Another of my favourite movies The Magnificent Seven, is a recreation of this. In fact this movie served as the inspiration for a swathe of others, and there are many, like me, who subscribe to the view that Kurasawa’s classic pioneered the modern action movie. The final rain soaked battle scene is without a doubt one of the most stunningly filmed sequences ever. If you have never seen this movie you must watch it , you will not be disappointed!
On the back of this I’ve recently finished watching the complete series of Samurai 7. This anime series is based on Kurasawa’s classic but sets the story in a bleak future where the bandits, or Nobesari, are plundering villages all over the land. These men are former Samurai’s who have abandoned their code of honour and adapted technology to their bodies until they no longer resemble humans.
The series is made up of 26 half hour episodes, and much in the same way Kurasawa dedicated so much of his film to detailed characterisation so too does this series. The quality of the animation and sound is absolutely superb. I thoroughly recommend it, but only after you have seen Kurasawa’s classic!
VMWare Fusion – wonderful!
I’ve been running VMWare Fusion on my MacBook Pro since I got it. Last week I finally got round to installing a Windows XP Professional virtual machine. The virtual machine runs beautifully and feels as though I’m running it natively such is it’s responsiveness. Almost as soon as I had the VM installed and running I immediately installed Windows Liver Writer lol. But then I noticed the Unity Icon, what this basically does is minimise the VM Window and allow you to run applications inside the VM directly on your Mac Desktop, here’s my desktop running Windows Liver Writer, Paint and a Windows Command Prompt (click to enlarge):
What makes this truly wonderful is that I can place windows applications directly into the dock in order to launch the applications. Here’s the neat bit, even if the VM isn’t running when I try to launch and app, Fusion starts up the VM and switches into Unity automatically.
Superb!
User generated content vs The Experts
Came across this article in Newsweek, entitled Revenge of the Experts, that suggest that the era of user generated content is going to change in favour of a more traditional approach based around fact checking and rigorous standards. This notion isn’t new and it’s been argued for, quite vociferously, by the likes of Andrew Keen in his book The Cult of the Amateur, which I’ve talked about before. According to the article:
the expert is back. The revival comes amid mounting demand for a more reliable, bankable Web. "People are beginning to recognize that the world is too dangerous a place for faulty information,"
Whist I understand the need for authoritative information, we have seen that the wisdom of the crowds does work – the most notable example of which is Wikipedia, which has over 75,000 people from around the world collaborating together to generate over 9 million articles in 250 different languages. A feat that I believe could not have been accomplished through any traditional publishing model.
It’s interesting that in the article we are told that two of the contributory factors leading to creating a "perfect storm of demand for expert information" are choice fatigue and fear of bad advice. I’m not actually convinced by either. I think the real reason for this resurgent push towards this "Revenge of the Experts" is largely based on economics, and a type of intellectual elitism that requires the masses to believe that they can only trust the opinions of experts. I really struggle with this – it offends my sense of right. . I don’t doubt that there are many subject matter experts writing articles in Wikipedia, they might identify themselves or they might hide behind assumed pseudonyms and the anonymity of the web, and I’m sure many of the contributors are hobbyists or individuals particularly passionate about a subject: I wouldn’t wish to discount their insight simply because they aren’t rubber stamped by an Institute somewhere. If the community is engaged and self regulating then it definitely does work.
It strikes me as a form of intellectual elitism; the expert is always right? – and yet research carried out seems to suggest that Wikipedia is almost as accurate as the Encyclopedia Britannica. Which seems to suggest that this model can work?
"The wisdom of the crowds has peaked … Web 3.0 is taking what we’ve built in Web 2.0—the wisdom of the crowds—and putting an editorial layer on it of truly talented, compensated people to make the product more trusted and refined."
I think economics does have a lot to do with it. Google has incentivised Knol, it’s Wikipedia-like alternative, by sharing ad revenue with the "authoritative" sources that are generating the content of the service. But frankly I don’t believe that this or other similar initiatives really spell the death knell for the kind of community generated content that has gained traction …
…while the tide of investment seems to be shifting somewhat, the nature of the Internet suggests that Web 2.0 populism will never be thrown out entirely.
I guess time will tell.
Sir Tim Berners-Lee Talks with Talis about the Semantic Web
Sir Tim Berners-Lee, often credited as the inventor of the World Wide Web and also Director of the World Wide Web Consortium, recently chatted with my colleague Paul Miller as part of our Talking with Talis Podcast Series.
You can listen to the podcast here, or download the mp3 from here. Alternatively you can read the full transcript here.
It’s a excellent podcast which I’ll recommend to anyone who is interested in understanding the Semantic Web. It’s a far ranging discussion in which Tim talks about a number of issues ranging from the importance of Linked Data to the perceived Readiness of the Semantic Web and it’s mainstream adoption.
I thoroughly enjoyed listening to the podcast and in some ways it felt good to get the sense that as an organisation we are actually building the sorts of technologies that will help bring Tim’s vision to life.
I think… we’ve got all the pieces to be able to go ahead and do pretty much everything… you should be able to implement a huge amount of the dream, we should be able to get huge benefits from interoperability using what we’ve got. So, people are realizing it’s time to just go do it.
I totally agree with Tim, at Talis we have done exactly that, we have invested a lot of time and effort into building our Semantic Web Platform which is currently underpinning many of our next generation products. And allowing us to collaborate with others on some pretty interesting projects. The Semantic Web is fast becoming a reality and it feels pretty awesome riding this particular wave at the moment.
I’m also pretty excited at the moment Rob, Tom, Paul, Me and Chris will all be attending the LinkedData Workshop at WWW2008 next month in Beijing. Rob and I will be presenting our paper – which should be great fun.
So if any of you are out there and want to find out more about us and what we are doing come along and have a chat!
The definition of Love
The Definition of Love
My love is of a birth as rare
As 'tis for object strange and high:
It was begotten by Despair
Upon Impossibility.
Magnanimous Despair alone
Could show me so divine a thing,
Where feeble Hope could ne'er have flown
But vainly flapped its tinsel wing.
And yet I quickly might arrive
Where my extended soul is fixed,
But Fate does iron wedges drive,
And always crowds itself betwixt.
For Fate with jealous eye does see
Two perfect loves; nor lets them close:
Their union would her ruin be,
And her tyrannic pow'r depose.
And therefore her decrees of steel
Us and the distant poles have placed
(Though Love's whole world on us doth wheel)
Not by themselves to be embraced.
Unless the giddy heaven fall,
And earth some new convulsion tear;
And, us to join, the world should all
Be cramped into a planishpere.
As lines so loves oblique may well
Themselves in every angle greet:
But ours so truly parallel,
Though infinite can never meet.
Therefore the love which us doth bind,
But Fate so enviously debars,
Is the conjunction of the mind,
And opposition of the stars.
by Andrew Marvell
Code4Lib 2008
Rob, Ross and Richard were all at Code4Lib last week. Rob has written a summary of the conference over on our Panlibus blog. Rob also did a wonderful job presenting a piece based on our paper on mining MARC data for relationships. The video’s of presentations should be appearing here soon.
WorldWide Telescope
This is a jaw dropping talk that shows off Microsoft’s WorldWide Telescope – a technology that combines feeds from satellites and telescopes all over the world and the heavens, and weaves them together holistically to build a comprehensive view of our universe.