BurningbirdLatest update on train:
Estimated arrival: 1 hour and 23 minutes late.
As of the last report at 2:43 pm at Glasgow, MT (GGW), it was running 2 hours and 17 minutes late.
It was a broken rail. Question is, though: what else will happen? But the airport shuttle is 90.00. Sh*t. Sh*t. Sh*t.
IF THE MOUNTAIN WILL NOT COME TO MOHAMMED, MOHAMMED WILL GO TO THE MOUNTAIN – “If one cannot get one’s own way, one must adjust to the inevitable. The legend goes that when the founder of Islam was asked to give proofs of his teaching, he ordered Mount Safa to come to him. When the mountain did not comply, Mohammed raised his hands toward heaven and said, ‘God is merciful. Had it obeyed my words, it would have fallen on us to our destruction. I will therefore go to the mountain and thank God that he has had mercy on a stiff-necked generation.’
From the wonderful Phrase Finder
Google has entered the semantic web lists with the introduction today of Google Base. I tried it out by adding my recent RDF tutorial, and immediately ran into one problem when it didn’t like my use of a misspelled keyword: Burningbird. You can pull up the link using keyword search of RDF.
I’m not as negative as some folks on the service. I agree with Danny Ayers in that Google Base is a step forward in the effort to get folks to think about how to annotate their material online:
The mere existence of Google Base may help encourage developers to take the (Semantic) Web of Data idea a bit more seriously (though what I saw was still very document-oriented). The growth of folksonomies has already led a lot of people into the space between free-text indexing and rigid taxonomies, and it’s clear that when you use tech like RDF the two extremes are not mutually exclusive – you can exploit the good points of both. Google Base may be a few decades behind what can be done with Description Logics (such as RDF/OWL), but at least it’s a move away from the confines of hierarchies (XML/Gopher) and fixed record-oriented systems (SQL DBs) and towards a more flexible kind of relational approach. Google already make quite a bit of URIs with LinkRank, I imagine this system will go further, though probably not quite so far as their significance on the Semantic Web.
Before using, a person should carefully read the Terms of Service to see what can happen to your data; one addition since this product was originally leaked is that if you delete an item, it’s removed from the base.
My biggest concern about this service is the centralized, proprietary nature of this type of data store. Right now, I have simple-to-use plugins installed on my weblog tool that automatically generate very rich metadata formatted as RDF/XML, available for all. If you use Piggy Bank or some other tool that can consume RDF, or any tool that can work with XML, you have access to this data. It can be easily and unambiguously combined with other data from the same or other sources, and queried using the SPARQL query language. The ‘owner’ of the data is the originator of the data and whatever gatekeeping happens to the data is nodular and thus easily routed around.
In other words, the data is very web-like: structured, distributed, linked (discoverable), and malleable. Google Base is interesting, but it isn’t web-like. It’s architecture is contrary to Google’s own success, too, because the company’s processes have always gone to the source, rather than have the source go to it; earlier efforts that reversed this, such as the original Yahoo, have not been as successful.
With Base, Google has forgotten who is Mohammad and who is the Mountain.
I head back home tonight. There’s a movie titled, Planes, Trains, and Automobiles with Steve Martin as a man wanting to spend Thanksgiving with his family. Though I hope my trip does not emulate his, I can easily borrow the title for mine:
I catch the train from Sandpoint, Idaho to Spokane tonight at 11:49pm. According to the train tracker:
As of the last report at 10:41 am between Stanley, ND (STN) and Williston, ND (WTN), it was running 14 minutes late.
I get into Spokane at 1:50am if all is well. I then grab a taxi to the airport, in a city notorious for cabs with duct taped doors.
I get to the airport hopefully by 3:00am, check in, go through security with two laptops, and a camera with lenses–each of which, along with my shoes, will have to be investigated for bombs or other WMD.
*My flight leaves for Salt Lake City at 6:45 am, on board Delta, just one of the many American airline companies in Chapter 11 bankruptcy. I wish I could remember where I read about one person’s experience flying, where the captain’s end of flight announcement was, “Thank you for choosing our bankrupt airline over others.”
I get to Salt Lake City at 9:45 MST, and spend three hours exploring the airport, including its art collection. I contemplate taking photographs of the airport. I then remember the general American paranoia associated with our airports, and most likely refrain.
I depart SLC at 1:00MST on a flight run by a Delta subsidiary, which was just sold to another airline.
I arrive in St. Louis at around 5 in the afternoon, when roommate picks me up.
At 6, I hug Zoë.
am eating an apple.
I am eating a red apple.
I am eating a red Fuji apple.
I am eating a juicy sweet, red and green Fuji apple.
I am eating a juicy, barely blushed Fuji apple, which leaves a tart-sweet taste across my tongue.
I am eating the apple, and the taste takes me back to a time when all I had to worry about was whether I would still be hungry after one apple, or whether I should go for two.
I eat the apple! I, woman, eat the apple! No man peels it for me, and no ring of flesh will be tossed over my shoulder to see who will be my captor and hold the keys of my cage. Because I am woman, hear me eat!
I linger over the next bite into the fresh flesh of the ruby dusted globe of pure sweet nectar–just oh so tart enough to make my lips pucker…making me think of you and that night; you know which night.
I am eating the omega of a world hell bent on self-destruction since the first, the alpha was plucked from the reluctant tree by innocent Woman and bit by gullible Man; led out of gardens of joy by Corporations, who slither here and there whispering words of want, breathing fumes of greed.
I bite the apple and become the apple and the apple becomes me. Therefore, bite me.
I hold the apple to the sun and admire the play of light across it’s shiny surface and think there has never been an apple as perfect as this, and how can I eat it; but I must–the perfection of the apple exists within its core and I must carve away the outer to discover it.
No, I did not have sex with this apple! But if it is left unchecked, I have no doubts that its seeds would proliferate and someday take over the world–forcing you and me into a continuous round of shopping at Wal-Mart because it is WMD: a Wal-Mart Delectable.
What the f**k is an apple suckling tree and is this apple I suck from it?
If apples weblogged they would….wait, that sounds strange.
Misbehaving pointed to a new Geek Calendar featuring 12 young, attractive female tech workers in typical calendar poses.
According to the “About the Producer” page (the producer being one of the models):
Lilac Mohr, who herself is a Senior Java Developer, is the producer of the Geek Gorgeous Calendar. Sick of hearing complaints from male co-workers about the lack of attractive women in the computer industry, Lilac set out to show the world that there are plenty of beautiful, intelligent, and interesting women in the fields of computers and engineering.
Gina at Misbehaving writes:
This seems like a good idea, but it’s too bad the photos are so cheesy and tasteless (in my opinion). I don’t know about you, but I don’t use pink ethernet cable as a bikini top. In addition to the photo, each month includes a summary of each model’s technical skills and quotes on working in the male-dominated tech industry.
I would have much rather seen classy, artsy photos of people looking both beautiful and geeky.
Personally, I would rather have seen a small, stylish photo of each woman, and then fill the page with code or other results of their work. To me that would be both geeky and beautiful. But then, according to the creative tech writer, I’m not the target audience:
My version would probably be a study of “What Not to Wear” befores and afters — in my experience, it’s a rare geek who can pull off the prOn pout with studied disheveledness with any style. Give me the slightly overweight and overworked senior network engineer who wears too-tight yoga pants, oversized sweaters, and ponytails. Or the newly-back-from-maternity-leave security manager who’s gotten no sleep in 12 weeks and still has to manage the outcomes of 3 crises her first week back. Talk about people in need of some cheesecake overhauling. And after they’ve been pampered and styled for the camera, what do you think their eyes would say as you stared at their calendar pic? I don’t think it would be anything like what the GeekGorgeous.com girls are saying. Sure, they’d look as good, but they’d be telling a whole other story.
I’m sure that were I to interview at any number of companies, and I walked in looking like who I am — an almost 51 year old woman who would really prefer not to pose in Victoria Secret underwear in public, thank you–there would be no disappointment among the young males who I’m most likely to be interviewing with. I believe in challenging stereotypes, but I agree with I Speak of Dreams: There are better approaches.
Maybe my reluctance about the calendar is that I don’t know any of the women. I wonder how Joi Ito would look as a Victoria Secret Angel?
