Tag Archives: Personal

Is LinkedData really more important than the Large Hadron Collider?

Posted on by

I’ve just read Daniel‘s recent post entitled Linked Data is more important than the Large Hadron Collider. Like Daniel I am also a passionate advocate of Linked Data and am currently working on deploying number of real world Linked Data applications along with my colleagues at Talis. Sadly though I have to confess that I found myself cringing whilst reading his piece.

Like many other scientific endeavors the Large Hadron Collider project attempts to provide scientists with huge quantities of data that might help them answer questions about the origin of the universe. As a project in it’s own right it is massive, combining the efforts of thousands of scientists from around the world.

To dismiss it, as Daniel has done, because it’s “too expensive”, or because “it wont find the cure to cancer, or HIV”, or question its relevance because “we’re still going to be here whether or not the Large Hadron Collider was successful”, is bad enough but to then use those rather specious arguments as a prop to advocate Linked Data is absolutely ridiculous.

Worse is that it overlooks the rather obvious rebuttal which is that Linked Data wont cure cancer, it wont cure HIV, and we’ll all still be here whether we have Linked Data or not :-). Even more importantly though … should anyone in our Community and by that I mean the Linked Data community really be questioning the value of any project that’s sole purpose it generate data? To then say this …

Just imagine a world where you can easily browse through the history of the atom, and then delve into the science found on the atom, and then go deeper into the subatomic level, and then browse back out into the historic realm, finding out about experiments that happened and whether it had any impact on society.

… completely misses the following point: the data to do this exists, not because of you and I Daniel, but because of the fact that since man appeared on this planet his thirst for knowledge is what has driven him forward to the point where people like you and I can sit here and say … “if you format your data like this, and give everything a dereferncible uri – that’ll be really useful!”. I’m serious … Linked Data is not a radical technology change, nor is the Semantic Web, both represent a paradigm shift, a new understanding, a new way of doing things but the fact is that the technology has been around for ages, we are only now understanding the importance of being more open, of having common vocabularies to describe things, and the importance of linking concepts together in this web of data.

The absolute last thing we want to do is to start saying to scientists, not matter how obscure ther field of research is, or how relevant we consider that research to be (personally), that it’s somehow less important than what we, as a community, are doing … because it absolutely isn’t. Are you really sure you want to be asking people to believe that answers about the origin of the universe and our existence in it are less important than an “interesting browsing experience?”

Touché – An open source multi-touch framework

Posted on by

Touché is an open-source multi-touch tracking environment for Leopard. It has been designed and written specifically for MacOS X Leopard and uses many of its core technologies, such as QuickTime, Core Animation, Core Image and the Accelerate framework.

The Touché environment consists of two parts: A standalone tracking application written in Cocoa, that comes with lots of configuration options as well as calibration and test tools, and a Cocoa framework that can be embedded into custom applications in order to receive tracking data from the tracking application. This way, you can easily experiment with MacOS X technologies such as Core Animation or Quartz Composer on your FTIR multitouch table.


Touché Multitouch Framework – Simple Demo Apps from Georg Kaindl on Vimeo.


Touché Multitouch Framework – Introduction from Georg Kaindl on Vimeo.

It’s pretty impressive stuff, but is dependent on a FTIR screen which it looks like you have to build yourself unless you can find someone to do it for you. However this might be an excellent 10% project at work for me, some of the modes of interaction I’ve been experimenting with for navigating large graphs of data would be more intuitive with a multi-touch interface … wow … *me has a cunning plan*.

Pear Tree Cottage

Posted on by

Me, Richard, Cliff and Simon recently represented Kings Norton Traditional Archers in the 2008 South West Challenge, which took place in Devon and Somerset, with two shoots in each county. We opted against camping given the weather wasn’t going to be particularly good and we had a lot of equipment to take care of. Richard did some research and found Pear Tree Cottage in Stapely, which was situated almost in the middle of all four locations, in fact it was no more than 45 minutes drive to any of them.

It’s a lovely thatched cottage in a beautifully picturesque surrounding. The cottage has several acres of land which you are free to roam around and is about as far away as you can get from the hustle and bustle and noise of city life. I took a number of photo’s all of which are available on my flickr acount here.

On arrival at the cottage we were greeted by our host Colvin who welcomed us and showed us to our rooms and informed us of all those important things we needed to know like watch out for low hanging beams – something I wish I had remembered a couple of days later *ouch* 🙂 . Colvin and his wife Pam live in the cottage and rent several rooms out to guests. They were wonderful hosts who really took care of us and ensured our stay was as comfortable as possible. Pam cooked a wonderful full english breakfast every morning and even catered for my dietary prejudices with a wonderful smile that makes you instantly warm to her. She is a remarkable lady who kept us entertained with her stories about the local area and her views about the government which were amusing but also deeply touching as she related the plight of the country side. Her comments did make me reflect and I couldn’t help but feel that there is something deeply wrong with the world when we neglect the countryside and the heritage and culture that the small isolated communities that live out here are trying so hard keep alive. What was inspiring though was hearing Pam describe how the people living in this these communities do everything possible to support each other.


I’ll describe the challenge itself in another post, but I wanted to emphasise just what a wonderful place the cottage is, and relate just how wonderful Colvin and Pam are. If any of you are looking a nice, quiet, place to escape to I thoroughly recommend Pear Tree Cottage. To Colvin and Pam, I’d like to say thank you 🙂 and I really look forward to seeing you again for next years shoot.

Batman : The Dark Knight

Posted on by

I went to watch the new Batman film earlier in the week with Amanda. I have to admit I was somewhat skeptical as to whether it would live up to all the hype in the media. few movies rarely live up to these kinds of expectations and can sadly leave you feeling rather disappointed. Batman:The Dark Knight, however, does not disappoint. It is an amazing movie. They seem to have really gone back to the origin’s of the character in the original comics – Christian Bale plays an intense, brooding Batman, and truly succeeds in capturing the characters stark duality. But whilst Batman might be the star of the show, it’s Heath Ledger’s performance as the Joker that really lifts this movie. Heath Ledger’s Joker is mesmerizing – he succeeds in reinventing the character as a twitching, macabre, brutally evil psychopath who is smothered in gruesome, smeared make-up. His Joker wreaks bloody havoc across Gotham City with no apparent aim, it’s a spine-chilling character study from Ledger.

I thoroughly recommend this film!

On a seperate, related note, I also watched the new Batman: Gotham Knight, animated movie last night. It’s very much done in the same vain as the “Animatrix” movie, in that it this 80 minute movie is a collection of six short stories all masterfully animated using six very different styles that fills the timeline between Batman Begins, and Batman: The Dark Knight, and introduces some of the characters that appear in the sequel. If you’re an anime fan, definitely check this out.

truly inspiring …

Posted on by

Chris Abani tells stories of people: People standing up to soldiers. People being compassionate. People being human and reclaiming their humanity. It’s “ubuntu,” he says: the only way for me to be human is for you to reflect my humanity back at me.

This is one of the most touching Ted Talks I have ever seen. With just a few simple, and unbelievably powerful stories, Chris Abani delivers messages of hope, human compassion and what I think he sees as the essential goodness within each of us.

Every day, all of us here, are building gods that have gone rampant.
And it's time we started knocking them down.
And forgetting their names.

Archery: Forest of Arden

Posted on by

Had another great shoot this weekend, and arguably the hardest shoot I have had so far. The Forest of Arden shoot is actually just outside Birmingham so it was a doddle to get to for us, the entire club was represented and we split up into two groups. I shot with Simon, John and Tony; Richard shot with Phil, Alex, Cliff and Andrew. It was a difficult shoot … Forty 3D targets over some pretty long distances at wildly different elevations, plus no lunch break – we started at 10:30 and finished at around 5pm, so yeah by the end of it we were all shattered.


Alex doesn’t seem to like Bambi!

The shoot itself was really well laid out and spread throughout the forest, it’s the first time I’ve ever taken part in an event that featured only 3D targets, in other words no 2D pictures! The targets themselves varied in size and shape, from Lions to tiny crocodiles. What made this so challenging though was that a) the targets were generally much further away than on any other shoot I’ve competed in and b) the elevation of the targets also varied. Some were at the top of a hill, others you had to shoot down at from the top of a 30 ft hill. This meant there were no easy shots, particularly if you are shooting with longbow or in the HT category where you have to compensate for elevation and distance far more than archers who use compound bows.

Although I think I did very very well I did loose in inordinate amount of arrows, some were lost in the undergrowth which was very dense, and with some of my others the points came off rendering them useless 🙁 I even ended up having to borrow a couple of arrows from Richard and John to complete the shoot, but because these were much heavier than my normal arrows it was far more difficult to shoot with them over these distances. .


Simon lining up a shot.

I still think I did really well though, at one point I went through a 6 target spree, scoring a kill / inner kill with my first arrow on each which is a great feeling especially when you having to judge distances with just your instincts. It’s all great preparation for the Southwest Challenge in Devon from the 1st -8th of August, which I’m taking part in this year, and am really looking forward to.

As always I’ve uploaded some pictures to my flickr account …. here.

Love’s Secret

Posted on by 
     Love's Secret

Never seek to tell thy love,
Love that never told can be;
For the gentle wind doth move
Silently, invisibly.

I told my love, I told my love,
I told her all my heart,
Trembling, cold, in ghastly fears.
Ah! she did depart!

Soon after she was gone from me,
A traveller came by,
Silently, invisibly:
He took her with a sigh.

   by William Blake

Archery: Audley Bowman

Posted on by

Had fun last weekend on what was my first NFAS field shoot in a couple of months, wasn’t too sure how i’d get on, but we did practise during the week leading up to the shoot at Audley Bowman’s near Stoke. We also decided that since I’m competing in the Great Devon Challenge on the 1st August, which is an 8 day shoot, I needed to switch to slightly more powerful bow. The Audley shoot was the first time I had ever shot with it and I have to confess it was not easy, I struggled to draw the bow at first, but during the course of the day I became used to it. So much so that I scored one of my highest scores ever, 484, and actually managed to outscore all the the members of our club.

It was a slightly unusual shoot from my perspective because it was divided into two separate courses, each of 18 targets. The two courses were set up in a field and in a wood about a half a mile away so it might have been a little disconcerting for the locals to see a hundred or so archers wandering through their village. It was also a very wet day, hence a lack of photos, but it was thoroughly enjoyable.

It was also the first shoot in which every member of the club took part – so KNTA was well represented on the day, it was me, Richard, Cliff, Simon, John, Tony, Phil and Alex. I was competing in the mens HT along with Simon, whilst Phil was competing in the Junior HT. Everyone else was shooting longbow on the day. Tony, Phil and Alex all won medals on the day in their individual categories which was great for them and for the club.

It was a great day, as usual all my pictures are on flickr here.