Month: December 2002

Categories
RDF Writing

Practical RDF Book Cover

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Todd Mezzulo from O’Reilly, the person responsible for marketing the Practical RDF book sent me a copy of the cover, which I’ve embedded below. Now, the book isn’t going to be on the streets until Spring, so contain your excitement…a little.

(To be honest, I’m really excited about this book. Really, really.)

The bird pictured is a Secretary Bird, a predator bird originally from South Africa. The Secretary Bird is known for it’s prowess in killing snakes, having the nickname of “serpent eater”.

It grabs the snake with its strong toes and beats it to death on the ground, while protecting itself from bites with its large wings. Finally, it seizes its prey and hurls it into the air several times to stun it.

I found this particularly humorous because my last sole-author book for O’Reilly was Developing ASP Components, featuring none other than a serpent on the cover. I joked with Todd that the choice of critter for the Practical RDF book is especially appropriate because once I made the decision to go with RDF for my next subject, I never looked back at COM+ and ASP. RDF figuratively ‘killed’ ASP for me; I just didn’t pick it up by the tail and throw it around. Much.

But all this isn’t why the cover design folks at O’Reilly picked the Secretary Bird. I think they just liked the long tail.


Cover for Practical RDF book
Hey! Don’t mess with the Burningbird — Serpent Killer!

Categories
Weblogging

Black holes, two towers, and blogsprogs

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

I don’t know why I get these little feverish blogging spurts on Friday afternoons. After all, Friday afternoon is the Weblogging Dead Zone — the black hole for weblog posts not read.

Still, someone has to keep weblogs.com rolling.

Speaking of rolling, the next Hobbit movie, Twin Towers opens next week. I know that Dorothea and David are looking forward to it. However, I’m not sure they match the anticipation of Ben and Tempe Vierck. Ben posted a link to a photo of Tempe in advanced stages of pregnancy, and in the comments to the posting at Tempe’s weblog, she wrote:

She is head down. You’ll have to talk to her about the dropping part. I would rather she hold off until after two towers. (Emphasis mine.)

That’s fan dedication. BTW, I was the first weblogger to correctly guess the sex of Ben and Tempe’s upcoming baby, based on a sly hint of Ben’s. But I’m not telling. Neener, neener.

Four weblogging couples expecting babies within the next month. Going to be exciting around here.

Categories
RDF Weblogging

When doors are open

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

It started with Ben Hammersley getting an idea:

So here’s what I’d like. Movable Type blogs now automatically create trackbacks when they can. These trackbacks contain RDF, denoting the category the MT blog has that category within. MT produces RDF indexes too (in the flavour of RSS 1.0). So, what I want is a little app that takes the trackback. Follows it back to the originating site, find the RDF snippet, takes the index.rdf, and gives back all the entries within the index.rdf that are on the same subject as the trackback one.

A little chit chat occurs among a few people, all of whom invited themselves into Ben’s conversation via comments, trackbacks, and through cross-posts (here, here, here to list a few).

Today, less two days later, Ben Trott posts a solution. I download it. I run it with my entry Elitist only need apply?. I get the following:

Examining http://www.irelan.net/becoming/archives/000745.html
Category: Technology
Found RSS http://www.irelan.net/becoming/index.rdf
Examining http://esigler.2nw.net/blog/archives/000032.html
Category: Play
Found RSS http://esigler.2nw.net/blog/index.rdf
Examining http://www.seabury.edu/MT/akma/000363.html
Examining http://WWW.onepotmeal.com/blog/archives/001070.html

More Like This From Others:
Young at Heart, Bitter in Mind
Technology
http://www.irelan.net/becoming/archives/000745.shtml

For the people, by the people
Technology
http://www.irelan.net/becoming/archives/000744.shtml

Permahome
Technology
http://www.irelan.net/becoming/archives/000736.shtml

Conferences…
Play
http://esigler.2nw.net/blog/archives/000032.html

Beatings will continue until grades improve…
Play
http://esigler.2nw.net/blog/archives/000031.html

A smattering of assorted thoughts.
Play
http://esigler.2nw.net/blog/archives/000027.html

Doh!
Play
http://esigler.2nw.net/blog/archives/000018.html

Want to know what the future holds for social software? You just saw it in action, boys and girls.

Categories
Weblogging

_____ Conference

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Work continues apace on the weblogging conference. It looks now like the location will be North Carolina. See Ed Cone’s weblog for continued discussion. Additionally, we also found out that an European weblog conference has been planned for Vienna, Austria in May, 2003.

Vienna, Austria. I want to go to the European conference.

Hopefully a weblog for the North American webloggers conference will be forthcoming. I also hope, strongly, that something other than ‘meatspace’ will be used for it’s name. That term is not one I’m overly fond of. I like to think of myself as more than walking shish kabob.

Categories
Environment

Beautiful poison

I haven’t been to Powder Valley in a time so went for a walk this morning. I needed the fresh air, and it was a beautiful day — clear skies, cool winds, and warm sunshine.

Since the leaves are off all the trees now, I could see details of the forest not previously seen. One small valley had about 30 different bird species flying about, looking for food, singing. You forget how blue a true bluebird can be until you see one next to the dry rust brown of the trees. Or how loud woodpeckers can be without the muffling of the leaves.

In and around the trees was life of a different kind: feathery bushes with bright red berries and fallen trees providing home for mushrooms and other fungi. The mushrooms were all of a kind — fan shaped, thin, and delicate, sprouting out in orderly lines, like so many rows of shy maidens.

“Red berries will make you sick. Never touch”

“Never eat a mushroom you find in the forest.”

When we were kids we were told not to pick the pretty red berries, or the tempting mushrooms. However, it was okay to eat the plain purple/black berries, and to gather the hard shelled, inedible looking nuts from the forest floor.

Purple/black, okay to eat. Red, not. Leave the mushroom shapes alone. Don’t you wish people had these outward markings of bad and good? Then you could tell when to touch, and when not to touch.