Day: November 14, 2003

Categories
Burningbird Technology

Semantic web, live and in color

I’m taking advantage of this server move to make some pretty drastic changes in my own sites. For instance, I’m not going to try maintaining the old numbered system for my Movable Type page names because, to be blunt, it’s a mess.

What with my recent tax evasion weeding out, and my habit of splitting weblog entries across different sites, the numbering is completely out of whack. Enough to bother even me, virtual slob that I am; for the anal among you, it would be enough to send you into a coma.

I contemplated a weblog redesign — something all new. My first thought was to put a big graphic at the top of a half naked man, but then I thought, what does this tell people about my weblog? So I discarded that idea. The For Poets sites has a look I like and I considered using it with this weblog, but displaying different photos every time you access the page. However, this idea is too much like Jonathon Delacour’s and I don’t want to steal his mojo.

Besides, I like my weblog look. I’m used to it. It suits me and what I write about. I may, however, change the look of the photo blogs, and I’m definitely changing the rest of the sites, such as burningbird.net.

The photo blogs are going to their own domain, mirrorself.com. All my photographs are going to this domain, and you can imagine how interesting this is going to be with all the embedded photos I have in my pages, and the number of photo blogs I have (each with hardcoded absolute URLSs). The For Poets weblogs are also going to their own Movable Type installation, and will be using the new page naming system. There aren’t that many For Poets weblog entries so doing redirects could be handled manually. However, with Burningbird and the rest of my stuff, we’re talking a significant impact. I have an application that’s currently tracking requests for missing resources and all I can say is, you sure can tell I’ve been online a long, long time, and that I move things around a lot.

One challenge with splitting my weblogs into completely different MT installations is my current comment/trackback facility. Normally this goes across all the weblogs; through this approach, to be blunt, I own Blogdex, as a comment for one post is repeated across all weblogs and robots see this as a fresh link to the post. I’ve been in the top Blogdex ranks every weekend for two months (weekends are slower linking times.) I’m trying to decide if I’ll find a way to work across databases, or to be kind to Blogdex.

To handle the Burningbird weblog reorganization, I’m putting my little PostCon application into full gear. The only part missing on the application is the forms-based front end that allows you to create a PostCon RDF file from scratch. I really don’t like doing forms-based development — I like working backend stuff. However, I don’t need to have the forms-based component right now. It would be handy, but I don’t need it.

(What would be nice is a generic forms application that can be used to define a data model, automatically create the forms, and then record data to create the serialized RDF/XML files. Wait a sec, I do! It’s called Protege. I’m using Protege for my PostCon pages that aren’t being generated through Movable Type.)

I integrated PostCon into Movable Type some time ago, but now I’m increasing the integration and am using pieces of PostCon, as well as Movable Type to handle the redirects — from old numbered pages to the new page system. More than that, though, is that each page now has its own particular history — what did the resource used to be named, what is it now, who wrote it, what’s it about, and linkage info. All in a machine readable format, that can also be viewed by people pushing a button on each individual page and seeing the ‘hidden’ page self-description. There’s a little FOAF in this, as well as a few other odds and ends RDF vocabularies that I’m absorbing.

I’ll be writing all this up in my Semantic Web for Poets site. I hope to show that the semantic web starts small, and starts when each of us takes a little bit of extra time to record just a little bit of extra information that could be helpful down the road. Yes, PostCon uses RDF. But it also uses plain old, Perl, too, and is served through Apache, and run on Linux. The entire Internet did not have to be rewired in order to use it.

For those who like moving parts, yes, there’s even some moving parts, though my weblog still doesn’t talk to my toaster.

Caveat on all of this, though: There is going to be some major changes and expect a rough week for my sites. Not for anyone else — the other weblogs should move with a minimum of fuss and bother.

Categories
Burningbird

Burningbird Network Move

This weblog and the rest of the existing Burningbird Network/Wayward Webloggers are moving to a new server this next week. As usual with a move, DNS changes take time to propagate so any comments made may mysteriously disappear during the move.

This weekend I’m moving Burningbird, For Poets, the RDF and photo sites, Joe Duemer, Farrago, Mike Golby and Si (AKMA’s son).

Next week, I’ll be moving Emptybottle (aka Stavros aka Chris), Loren Webster and Michael O’Connor Clarke.

We have new webloggers coming on board, including Frank Paynter, who should be livening up our environment considerably.

I’ll be posting notes and status of moves to the Renaissance Web site as I progress.

I am disappointed to be leaving our dedicated server at Rack Force — I did so enjoy tweaking it. But as I’ve said previously, the Internet is going to be taking a beating next year, and you all know that webloggers are now become a nice juicy target. (Anyone curious as to why I say next year’s going to be bad?)

I just don’t have the time to fight back the hordes. With the SPEWS blacklisting,not being able to use email with any confidence is also a continuing problem. However, I appreciate the professionalism and quality of support I’ve had with Rack Force.

(The problem with blacklisting is it can takes months to recover from what is a moment’s flick of a thoughtless switch. SPEWS is almost impossible to get removed from once added because of the distributed, non-accountability nature of the list. I know that Rack Force is trying, and I’ve tried, but I’ve basically been told by SPEWS, “tough titties”. )

I love Hosting Matters reseller software that allows me to add new Wayward Webloggers so easily! And the Waywarders are going to have fun with their new control panels. New toys. New buttons to push. New vistas to horizen or some such thing.

The move will be good. Be patient as things temporarily break.

Categories
Diversity

Hands gloved, legs crossed at the knees

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

I appreciated the folks that commented on the Gender Ghetto and G Quotient postings. I am lucky to have thoughtful readers.

I have to admit, though, that I am disappointed by the lack of feminine response to the writings. I received honest, interested, humorous, even slightly angry responses from men, but few women, other than terrific posts from Maria and Elaine, and a comment by NetWoman. I don’t value less the comments made by men, particulary the excellents one that have been made; but this was an issue about women, and if they’re not interested, why am I wasting my time or energy.

(Perhaps the women think this is nothing more than a way to generate links for myself. A hell of a situation when one can’t start a conversation — or try and start a conversation — and be seen as nothing more than a link whore.)

More likely though, most women believe that the issue is either not of interest, or that my bitchy, non-feminine ways are not the way to go for women to make an impact. I’ve been told that my strident ways are off-putting to the men, and the men have been kind enough to let me know that my bitching isn’t going to win points with them. All that I’m doing is feeding their ego, and not helping the cause of women. Perhaps they’re right.

Today’s woman, at least in the countries where women have an illusion of control over their lives, wants to get ahead by focusing on women’s positive contributions, rather than men’s oppressive behavior. You catch more flies with honey and all that rot.

I am not a modern woman I guess. Or perhaps I’ve read too much history and seen that rarely does change occur by appeasing those in control. However, I am also not one to throw my good time away on bad causes, so to the appreciations of one and all, I’m sure, this will be my last posting on women and weblogging and women and technology and women in the Western World.

Rather, I’ll focus on those women for whom the issue of equality is one of life and death, rather than trying not to be strident or to offend the nice men.

Categories
Critters Photography Writing

Robin Redbreast

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

We had another flock of robins come through again today. Many more females this time since they are on a southern migration, not northern. Robins are ground feeding birds, so it’s surprising how fast and agile they are in the air.

robin1.jpg

Robins have long been the harbingers of spring, but for some reason, the robin is also associated with war and even with death. I wonder if its because its a migratory bird, leaving in the winter and returning in the spring. Leaving and winter reminds us of loss, while spring and returning remind us of hope.

As coincidence would have it Loren discussed Stanley Kunitz’s poem “Robin Redbreast” this week:

 

It was the dingiest bird
you ever saw, all the color
washed from him, as if
he had been standing in the rain,
friendless and stiff and cold,
since Eden went wrong.
…

Loren covered the poem on Veteran’s Day a day when we honor our veterans from so many wars. When I was driving yesterday, the radio played a set of ads from different organizations and companies and people in celebration of Veteran’s Day. The word Freedom was central to each and every one.

Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.

At poets.org, I found Sara Teasdale’s poem “There will come soft rains” that references a robin. I liked it, but it, too, is somber:

 

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white,

Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.

 

The page noted that this was a war time poem. My first reaction was: which war?

robin3.jpg

But robins are also a harbinger of spring, and they cheer me so with their puffed up chests of bright scarlet; like an old-time politician thrusting out his well-filled belly before shaking the hands of Father, while patting baby Suzy on the head.

Robins are also a contradiction: they’re a territorial bird, independent and individual, but they migrate in flocks. It’s comical to watch them when they fly as a group — they fly their own path within the flock’s path, and it looks like this big disorganized cloud of fast moving but fiercely chaotic smoke. When they land on the holly berry trees, they start to squabble when others land nearby but then remember, “Oh yeah. That’s right. Cooperate’, and settle in to feed.

Today though they picked a holly tree that has a large, well entrenched grey squirrel nest in it. The birds drove that poor squirrel to distraction — just as he chased one off, another would land.

Everything is a pest for something else.

robins2.jpg

P.S. Back online when the move and conversion are finished.