Month: July 2003

John Robb’s new location

Post author By Shelley Powers
Post date July 22, 2003

I’m not what you would call one of John Robb’s biggest fans. However, when a person’s weblog is summarily yanked, as if to make this person vanish from the ether, then I’ll do everything in my power to help him resurface.

John Robb, in his new weblog location, wrote:

NEVER (under any circumstances) publish a weblog to a domain that you don’t control.

Considering that the majority of webloggers publish to domains they don’t control (i.e. blogspot, Bloghorn, Live Journal, JournURL, AOL, and even John’s new effort at Mindplex), this might be a bit difficult for most folks to follow. Difficult, but not impossible, if a few rules were agreed to by weblogging tool builders and hosts:

1. Hosted services support domain pointers.

If your service can support something like yourweblog.blogspot.com (or yourweblog.typepad.com), it can support a unique domain name for the weblog. They might need to charge a small fee for this service, but it’s doable. If your host can’t support this effort, run for your life and find a different service.

If they do support this service, then get a domain – you’ll be happy eventually that you did. Just ask any number of people who have moved recently what a pain in the butt it is trying to deal with mega-broken linkdom.

2. Hosted services and all weblog tools support the same permalink format, or allow the person to set the permalink format.

It doesn’t help that Blogger using some kind of algorithm to set permalinks, and MT uses a unique identifier (though this can be changed) – there is no compatibility between any of the products when it comes to permalink format. Either the tools need to allow you to specify a format of your own choosing, or the builders and hosting services need to get together and agree on one.

3. Keep a backup of your weblog entries. All weblogging tools, hosted or not, should provide a backup mechanism whereby you can download your material periodically. If they do, backup your material at least weekly.

If all three of these can be met, problems involved with moving between tools and hosts are solved. If the tools can’t meet these three rules – ask the toolmaker, why not?

In the meantime, John Robb’s new weblog address is above. I would also add a corollary to Robb’s Law of posting:

No one service, no one government or organization, and especially no one person should have the power to arbitrarily make another person’s writing, weblog or otherwise, disappear.

RDF

Lots of FOAF

Post author By Shelley Powers
Post date July 22, 2003

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

There seems to be a great deal of activity about FOAF lately, as pointed out by Danny Ayers:

The FOAF (“friend-of-a-friend”) page on the project Wiki is growing into a great link collection, so presumably there’s a fair bit of cross-project interest.

The FOAF project now has a new home page, a weblog, a Wiki and IRC channel (#foaf on irc.freenode.net).

It’s also getting additional use out at Technorati, according to Joi Ito:

Technorati reads the FOAF file from your blog and creates a profile. Your picture from your FOAF file and a link to your profile shows up when you appear in people’s cosmos listings.

These are all good activities, particularly from an RDF perspective. Unlike HTML, RDF isn’t going to come blowing through the front door – it will creep in quietly through the backdoor with different applications that are based on the RDF model, and use the RDF/XML syntax.

However, having said this…

FOAF, as with RSS, does not make the semantic web, all by them lonesomes. Marc Cantor, also getting heavily involved in the FOAF world, recently wrote:

The connections between (n)Echo-Atom and FOAF should be obvious. Now throw in some ThreadsML and RVW – mix it up and out comes a semantic web!

Uh, no.

FOAF is an excellent way of identifying people whom you say you know, with some assumptions, but no guarantees, that they know you back. There is no inherent basis of trust or indication of relationship with FOAF, until you expand on the understanding of what ‘knows’ means in FOAF.

If one were to make a decision on buying a car or a computer based on the fact that you know a person who knows a person who knows a person who knows another who made a recommendation about this car or computer – all relationships documented with FOAF – well then, you deserve what you get if you get a lemon. Trust is diluted with each level of ‘knows’, within the current FOAF vocabulary and existing implementations of same.

There is little semantics in FOAF beyond the fact that it helps to loosely tie together a network of people, and provide some additional information about the people. With this and something like ThreadsML, you can also eventually find out the conversations the person is involved in. Add in this some RSS/Echo/Atom/whatever information and you’ll have a better idea of what they’ve written lately – but all of this combined is not “the Semantic Web”. It’s all just a piece, and a small one at that, of what will eventually become the Semantic Web.

We need a Turing Test of the Semantic Web, a test by while you’ll know the Semantic Web exists when you can do _____ on the web. For instance, I’ll know the Semantic Web exists when:

I can search for a poem about the loss of freedom, and one that uses a closed door to represent this feeling, metaphorically. In addition, I only want to see poems that someone I know, directly or indirectly (3 levels down, show relationship) has either reviewed or recommended, or discussed at some time. My preference would be British poet, a Romantic. Perferably, I would prefer a style similar to Wordsworth.

When I can do this, and I don’t get a lot of crap back as a result, then I’ll know that the Semantic Web is here.

Photography

Pics and bother

Post author By Shelley Powers
Post date July 21, 2003

Unfortunately, it wasn’t until I used my TiBook – with its much better resolution – that I was able to see that my print scanner has a defect, and is leaving a streak. In addition, more dust and speckles on the photos scanned then showed on my Dell laptop. Bother.

But enough with my photos, which have been off lately. I’d rather point you to some other photos – lovely photos. First, Eye Contact by Farrago Flying Penguin. Lynette has a wonderous way with the camera. In addition, the site I mentioned in my little stroll last week – the one with the pretty flower picture – copied one of my photos. Not sure if I’m credited for the photo or not, because the writing is all in Japanese. However, I did find the source of the flower photo. When I saw all the other incredible photos from the same photographer, I felt like shutting down my camera for good.

Two lovely sites of photos.

Speaking of lovely, Jeneane’s redesigned her weblog. I _like_ Jeneane – much better.

In addition, going about tonight catching up, romance is in the air, and it’s all between married folks, including 30 years of marriage, and another hubbie saying the right thing at the right time. I guess AKMA getting a wifely glare from Margaret can also be called romance – if she didn’t care about him, she wouldn’t mind if he ended up in gaol for wearing subversive clothing.

Perhaps I’ll keep my camera – at least it keeps me company.

Photography Weblogging

Photos and Weblogging tools

Post author By Shelley Powers
Post date July 21, 2003

I spent the weekend organizing my photo collection I picked up in San Francisco my last trip – reviewing, grouping into categories and then putting the slides/prints/negatives into their special sleeves in photo notebooks. My goal is to digitalize all of the photos in order to preserve them because most modern film types can start to deteriorate over time, especially the negatives. Plus, I want to start building up a digital library – just for fun.

Unfortunately, I have two scanners that I can’t use at the moment: the Polaroid because it stopped working – never again will I buy a Polaroid – and the Nikon, because I don’t have a SCSI device for my laptop that will work with the scanner. However, I was able to scan some prints using my Office Jet, and most of these turned out quite well. For instance the following photo is one I took in the dead of night during one of the worst wind storms in Seattle. All power was off in the city, and I opened the exposure for a considerable length of time, culminating with a flash on some of the trees around our house (the ones still standing, that is). The effect was interesting.

The odd yellow color in the sky is due to a color shift in the film from the over long exposure. I could compensate for the color, but that’s the best thing about the photo. Sometimes, the best results are based on errors, mistakes, and the unexpected. That’s when you keep your mouth shut and take credit for being innovative, rather than being honest and saying, “Well, there wasn’t any TV, and no power for the computer, so I thought I would screw around with some night photography.”

As for the slides, I have an attachment for my Nikon digital camera that allows me to take photos of slides. However, it lacks the quality of a regular scanner, and adds an odd ‘echo’ quality to the photo, is the only way I can think of it. For most of the shots, this didn’t work. However, for some of my slides, the effect actually added to the shot.

For instance, take a look at the following photo of two crows in a dead tree, taken at Canon Beach, Oregon.

I love the photo – surreal and even a little sinister. Shades of Edgar Allan Poe:

But the raven, sitting lonely on that placid bust, spoke only
That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.
Nothing further then he uttered; not a feather then he fluttered;
Till I scarcely more than muttered, “Other friends have flown before;
On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before.”
Then the bird said, “Nevermore.”

From “The Raven”, Edgar Allan Poe

In fact, my site design for the forpoets.org weblogs is inspired by this photo and the other seaside photos I digitalized using the camera attachment. See? The best laid plans are based on mistakes.

Once I get the Wayward Webloggers feedback on the design, and then port it to all the weblogging tools I’m using, then we’ll be ready to rock and roll.

Speaking of forpoets.org and tools, I also spent a considerable amount of time this weekend tweaking weblogging tools. In fact, tweaking, tweaking, and tweaking. And tweaking, tweaking, and more tweaking. Geez, I can’t tell you how tired I am of tweaking at this point in time!

The WordPress and PMachine weblogs installed with no problems. In fact, pMachine installs more easily than Movable Type in my opinion. However, that was the last easy install. We’re into murky waters from this point on.

I tried Nucleus, but it doesn’t work with MySQL 4.x. I also tried PostNuke, and you can see the installation at Weblogging for Poets. Haven’t a clue how to work it and no matter how I tweaked it, I still can’t figure out exactly what it is. I tried a couple of other weblogging tools, none of which had enough to even comment on.

I also installed, removed, and re-installed Blosxom. Since I want support for comments, I’m using the new beta 2.x release of the product, which supports a plugin concept – writeback is a plugin – and all I can say is: tweak, tweak, tweak. This isn’t a weblogging tool to use ‘right out of the box’. There is no box. I’m about ready to throw in the hat, and go begging at Larry’s door for help at this point.

You can see the current state of the installation at RDF for Poets, and no, it’s not working. I’m still trying to figure out how to incorporate writebacks, which are both comments and trackbacks. The documentation can be read using Perldoc on the source, but there’s still a lot of fragments that have to come together – most of them by guesswork. However, I shall persevere. And beg for help.

I thought about using pyBlosxom for the weblogging subsection, but I’m getting tired of the tweaks. So no go with pyBloxsom, and this also includes foregoing the Zope weblogging tools, though I know I’ll disappoint Rev Matt with this one. No, we’ve reached our tweak quota for the week. Seriously.

I’ll most likely either use Movable Type, or a second installation of pMachine for the remainder of the forpoets.org site. Besides – time to get this show on the road. I want to actually do some writing.

outdoors Photography

Time warp

Post author By Shelley Powers
Post date July 20, 2003

With all good intentions I go on these walks along the Katy Trail determined that I’m going to walk to a specific point, turn around and head back to the car and get home at a reasonable time.

But then I end up going farther on the drive then planned – those country roads – until I remind myself that I’m out to walk, not drive, and then look for the closest entrance to the Katy Trail. Passing some pretty hot speedsters along the way.

Today’s portion of the trail was between two small farming towns, amidst fields of newly mown hay and corn. However, the encroachment of civilization is feeble at best, and the trail is surrounded by the usual flora and fauna. There’s no better smell than freshly cut hay mixed in with Missouri Green.

Today’s trip wasn’t in my usual isolation, and I met honest to goodness walkers as well as several bike riders. Regardless of the people and the crops and the roads, though, there’s something about walking a trail in the country of Missouri that brings to mind your favorite old stories. Huckleberry Finn. To Kill a Mockingbird. Alice in Wonderland.

Thoughts of fancy that last until a herd of bike riders heads your way, all of them giving the biker’s greeting: saying hello when they pass, right hand up, nod, small wave. In unison.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

One woman I walked past was quiet and just smiled in passing, but once she was behind me, I could hear a melody, rather lovely and sounding of a church choir breaking out behind me, rising above the usual birds. On the way back, I again had the trail to myself, and even considered breaking out into a tune, but I know I couldn’t do justice to the surroundings. I’m also sure there’s laws about scaring the wildlife unnecessarily.

However, I will admit that I talk to the creatures I meet in passing. Yes, even to the spiders and butterflies, though I prefer conversations with birds and squirrels. And rabbits! One field had several wild rabbits about and at a farm road that crossed the trail, several very young rabbits froze, trying to remain hidden from me, the hunter. The predator. Poor things didn’t know that I’m unlike the eagles and hawks, their usual nemesis, because they stood out quite clearly in the light dirt. I carefully took a photo of them, trying not to show that I could see them so that I wouldn’t frighten them. I don’t see you, cute little bunny – I’m just taking a picture of the dirt.

(And here my regular readers are going, “Why not? She’s taken pictures of everything else.”)

Watership Down. That’s what I ended my trip thinking about – the book Watership Down. That was a great book, and I realized looking at the field I passed that it could easily be the setting of Watership Down.

You can’t sit in a room looking at a computer and get stories and ideas of things to write about. You have to go out, explore, look around and then the words come to your mind as you wander about, and it’s all you can do to grab paper journal and pen and jot down your notes. That’s writing. Me putting it into a form for you to read using my computer and this weblog is nothing more than a translation – putting the images and thoughts in my mind into a form you can read.

Congratulations, You’re now multilingual – you can speak Shelley.