Author: Shelley Powers

Categories
RDF

Mining passive social networks

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Marc Canter pointed to an upcoming conference, the 1st Workshop on Friend of a Friend, Social Networking, and the Semantic Web (also mentioned at RDFWeb and Danny Ayers). I wasn’t sure about a conference focusing primarily on Friend of a Friend, but looking through the Call for Papers topic list, the conference goes beyond the concept of friend of a friend, if we think of this as primarily focusing on people describing their current, active associations. It also has the potential to go beyond, I think, the current understanding of social networks.

Though social networks have past the hot, new meme phase, we’re still trying to figure out everyday uses for these beasties. Or I should say, I’m trying to find practical and unique uses for social networks. If they continue on as they are, they’re really nothing more than a combination of popularity contest, dating service, job search, mini-blog, and Usenet.

However, the thought of associations defined online in a format that can be mined using standard technologies has a great deal of appeal–and not just within the context of making associations for jobs or professional advancement. If we look at FOAF as a way of enabling open source social networks, and then extend the definition of social networks to include passive associations rather than, or in addition to, active associations–then we have something really unique, and rather exciting.

For instance, I’ve been trying for the last year to find out what happened to others who graduated in 1986 with computer science degrees from Central Washington University. The Alumni directory of CWU isn’t particularly useful because it mainly lists information about people who actively post some new events about themselves, and most of us don’t. I also don’t have access to classmates’ addresses (the Alumni association is wary of giving these out); even if I did, I would hesistate to send them notes because I wouldn’t be sure if these people would want the contact with their old classmates.

If I modify my FOAF file to include information about me attending Central Washingtion University and getting a degree in Computer Science in 1986, this is a node, albeit a passive one, in an existing social network comprised of people who I went to school with. Now if this information were specifically searchable, someone else wanting to connect up with fellow classmates would find my information, including my email address, and they could send me an email, saying hi.

How is this different than the means I have today to connect up with others of my old class? It differs in two important ways:

First of all, the information is publicly available and searchable on the Net. Not only that, but it’s also constrained to specific assertions: I have a degree in computer science; this degree is from Central Washington University; I received this degree in 1986. Someone searching on just these assertions would find my data, rather than get 10,000 records back with a lot of accidental associations based on random scraping of pages in Google.

Secondly, and most importantly, by putting this information into my FOAF file I am acknowledging that I am a part of this particular social network, with an implication that I would welcome associations from other members of this same network. It is a passive node in the network, true; but with FOAF/RDF/OWL and data mining, these passive associations can be converted to active ones in the future.

Orkut leaves me lukewarm and Friendster leaves me cold. Even the Semantic Web doesn’t do much more than elicit a relatively unenthusiastic “yeah, smart shit” out of me. But give me this functionality in the future and I’ll dance from dawn to dusk.

Hopefully Workshops such as this one in Ireland (oh, I’d love to go), will help make this functionality a reality.

Categories
Stuff

Rain drops

I have several essays I’m working on, and as happens when you split your attention into completely different directions, you write and write, but you can’t finish anything. Or if you finish something, you’re not sure you’re happy with it. You feel grumbly, and dissatisfied, and kind of pissed at the whole thing.

Rather than maintain this state, I’m just going to leave everything for the rest of the weekend and go for a walk. A long walk.

However, I did want to point out a fun little scientific article at the BBC that’s making the rounds. Monster raindrops delight experts goes the headlines, about the discovery of the largest raindrops in scientific history. (Thanks to Rogi.)

And there’s also Jerry’s unique form of solar photography using a home telescope and a digital camera. Pretty amazing stuff.

Then there’s my own less impressive contribution to science: my Care and Feeding of Hurricanes done completely in DHTML (Dynamic HTML) – created over four years ago.

It’s not very polished, but it still works all these years later–which isn’t bad for web technology. Especially considering that the JavaScript files that run this application, cbobjects.js and animator.js, were created in 1997.

(Sorry, does not work in Safari. And it requires Javascript. Also, you need to forget all the really sophisticated Flash movies you’ve ever seen before looking at it.)

Categories
Connecting

If only we could see each other’s eyes

During my recent walks in my favorite enchanted forest, I’ve noticed that every day there are fewer lightning bugs, and more well-fed robins. As quickly as nature creates magic, it erases it. Ah, but I’ve fooled that old, contrary lady because her work continues to live in my memory and in my writing.

Well, I should say it lives on in my memory until she gets the last laugh when I’m old and feeble and can’t remember my own name or that robe sleeves aren’t edible, much less one magical moment. Perhaps that’s why the urge to write is so strong in many of us –an act of defiance against the end of both magic and mind.

Categories
Programming Languages

Survival Guide to LAMP: Prepare for prepare

Since PHP 5.0 released a day or so ago, I’ve been seeing how various applications I work with do in the new environment. Porting straight to PHP 5.0 seems to work just fine for the applications tested, including my weblogging tool, WordPress.

Ah, but there’s more to upgrades than just a simple turning off of one PHP version and turning on another. PHP 5.0 includes– in addition to the full support for object implementation and improved XML manipulation–some very slick database toys.

Though PHP is used with MySQL for the most part, look for more work with SQLite, as it’s now bundled with PHP. This lightweight little C-based database engine is ready to go as soon as you need it; for quick database development, it’s hard to resist its simplicity.

However, my heart still belongs to MySQL, and with the new version of MySQL and the new improved MySQL interface extension in PHP 5.0, the love affair continues to grow.

MySQL 4.1 is currently a beta release and should only be downloaded by developers. I found it installed easily and works nicely with existing applications; this includes the existing MySQL interface used by most weblogging tools, such as WordPress, Movable Type, and so on.

However, MySQL 4.1 has one particular new goodie that’s going to make a world of difference in performance with existing applications and that’s support for prepared statements.

Now, Oracle has had this functionality since before PHP was born, but Oracle started out as the 300 pound baby, who has since been finding ways to keep all of its great functionality while trimming down both size and cost. MySQL on the other hand, started out as a cute 6 pounder who couldn’t do much, but is learning quickly.

Prepared statements are a very simple but powerful technology. What happens is you create a statement as a template, with placeholders for values that will change each time the statement is run. You can then run the statement as many times as you want, changing the parameters as needed. We webloggers with our natural born ease around and comfort with templates should find prepared statements to be both friendly and familiar. I just know that this particular technology is what’s going to finally bring those hesitant about working with databases over to the wild data side.

Following is a very quick example of using the prepare statement functionality, tested on one of the WordPress tables ported to the new environment. This code ran successfully using the newly released PHP 5.0, the latest release of MySQL 4.1, in a Windows 2000 environment, under Apache 1.3x.

<?php
$link = mysqli_connect(“localhost”, “user”, “userpass”, “wordpress”);

/* check connection */
if (mysqli_connect_errno()) {
printf(“Connect failed: %sn”, mysqli_connect_error());
exit();
}

// create a prepared statement
if ($stmt = mysqli_prepare($link, “SELECT option_name FROM wp_options WHERE option_id=?”)) {

// bind incoming parameter
mysqli_stmt_bind_param($stmt, “i”, $id);

// bind result variables
mysqli_stmt_bind_result($stmt, $name);

// set input param, execute query and fetch and print value
$id = 77;

mysqli_stmt_execute($stmt);
mysqli_stmt_fetch($stmt);
printf(“option for id %s is %sn”, $id, $name);

// repeat with new input param
$id = 93;

mysqli_stmt_execute($stmt);
mysqli_stmt_fetch($stmt);
printf(“option for id %s is %sn”, $id, $name);

// close statement
mysqli_stmt_close($stmt);
}
else
printf(“prep failed: %sn”, mysqli_error());

// close connection
mysqli_close($link);
?>

This code demonstrates the procedural use of the new mysqli PHP interface, since this will probably be more familiar. I’ll demonstrate the use of objects the next time I try out a little of the new PHP 5.0 code.

In the example, a connection to the database is made, using the function mysqli_connect. Once the link is established and we know no error has occurred, the next thing that happens in the code is creating the prepared statement.

Notice the use of the question mark in the statement? This question mark serves as a placeholder for the input parameters that will be bound to the statement later in the code. It’s not different than the use of templates within your weblogging tool – each of them is replaced by ‘real data’ when the page is accessed or generated.

The function mysql_prepare takes the SQL passed to it, parses it, compiles it and then stores in in the database in a binary format that makes passing the data back and forth between the database and the application more efficient – a bonus for this type of statement.

Next in the code, it’s a matter of binding input and output parameters. For this example, there’s one of each. The input parameter is an integer so in the mysqli_stmt_bind_param function call, a value of ‘i’ is passed as the second parameter to define the data type of “integer”. The first parameter is the prepared statement, and the third is the actual variable that will be bound to the input parameter.

(By ‘binding’ what I mean is that changes to the variable are reflected in placeholder position in the prepared statement, each time it is executed.)

Next, the output parameter is defined, using the function mysqli_stmt_bind_result.

To test the statement, I assigned a value of 77 to the input parameter, executed the statement using mysqli_stmt_execute, fetched the result with mysql_stmt_fetch, and printed both values out. The result is:

option for id 77 is weblogs_xml_url

To demonstrate the reusability of the prepared statement, I assigned a new value to $id, this time a value of 93. Again, the statement is executed, and the resulting value fetched and printed out along with the input parameter. The resulting line from this second run of the prepared statement is:

option for id 93 is blog_charset

The prepared statement will continue to reside at the database until the application goes out of scope (beyond the current operating environment), or until the statement is closed, whichever comes first.

How can something like prepared statements help out in a weblogging environment? For the weblogging application I use, it’s not unusual for us to have to access the posts or comments table more than once in order to process new comments or display or edit posts. In particular, because of my custom spam protection and moderation, I access both tables at least twice when a new comment is posted; with something like the prepared statement, I could improve the program readability, as well as efficiency. I may not get hundreds of comments a day, but as I said in the past – I’m a coding miser. The less work the application does, the happier I am. I and everyone who shares my machine.

However, before we all run out an upgrade to PHP 5.0 and MySQL 4.1, note that I could not complete the migration of WordPress to this new environment because one MySQLi function, mysqli_fetch_object, caused Apache 1.3x to throw a memory exception. That’s ’semi-crash’ for those of you who haven’t seen programs step all over each other’s toes in memory.

This is beta, new, in development code. Just the start of new things. But such great things. And I haven’t even covered all the new goodies coming out in MySQL 5.0.

Categories
Political

Political Games

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

With the American election getting ever closer, the political games will continue to increase. If we’ve managed to stumble about in naiveté for the last three years, now is the time to wake up, and smell the cynicism.

There have been a number of folk who have tried to generate discord in the “Anyone but Bush” solid front by questioning whether Kerry would be a good President. They say, what are the positive things about Kerry that would make him a good leader? After all, can’t elect a man just because he’s not George Bush, can we?

The hope is that they’ll pull the more liberal or seemingly liberal of us about and get us thinking that, why of course we shouldn’t vote for someone just because they’re not someone else. They pro-Bush camp is joined by Ralph Nader and his supporters in this effort to drain off just enough of the votes from Kerry to put Bush back into the White House, while giving Nader the ego boost he seems to desperately need.

What the parties involved forget is that for many elections, people vote for the best of a lot we don’t generally care for, making a determination that we’d rather have someone who is inactively good, than actively bad.

I am voting for Kerry and Edwards because, first of all, they are not Bush and Cheney. Even if Kerry spent the next four years, comatose at his desk and didn’t do a damn thing, he would be a better President than George W. Bush in the White House for four more years without the constraints of worrying about a future re-election. An unconstrained Bush is the stuff of nightmares. (Puerile humorous pun unintended.)

If Kerry just sat in his chair, contemplating his navel, he wouldn’t be attempting to work around the decisive support for ANWR (Alaska National Wildlife Reserve) by opening up the rest of the Arctic for devastating damage via oil drilling infrastructure (thanks Julie.)

If Kerry spent the time playing Solitaire, at least he wouldn’t be invading other countries on shallow pretexts, and then find a handy scape goat when things don’t go according to a badly thought out plan. Or inviting in big time financial supporters to change the course of the environmental and energy policies in this country, until such time as the supporter gets busted.

If Kerry and Edwards spend all their time traveling the country, appearing in nightclubs as a singing act called “The Breckettes”, hopefully they would fire that incompetent Ridge first, with his deliberate manufacturing of fear through vague and unspecified threats; not to mention thoughts of bloodless coups. Then some kid who happens to be the wrong skin color can go back to finishing his photo assignments without being arrested.

(By the way, I didn’t mention this earlier, but half of my photographs that will be appearing in the August issue of Missouri Life were of bridges. I figure this should help sales–all those brown skinned terrorists in this country, you know.)

No, if Kerry spent most of his time finger-painting on the walls of the Oval Office using ketchup, he at least wouldn’t be harrassing gays in order gain a few extra votes from those who like nothing better than to interfere in the lives of others. In the name of God, of course. Don at Hands in the Dirt had it right:

This was about election political posturing at the expense of a minority segment of the population.

And since Kerry is under threat from being denied religious comfort for being a leader to the people rather than a good Catholic, perhaps the righteous religious in this country will have to go back to practicing their religion, all that golden rule stuff, rather than trying to force the rest of us into their beliefs.

(Oh, and for those critical of Edwards and Kerry for not being present for this vote, be aware that the members of Congress almost always know how a vote will go before it happens. A favorite election year gambit is to use this knowledge ahead of time to make those who are running for office seem negligent when they aren’t available for a vote. Members of a party will actually change their vote on a measure to make the vote seem much closer than it would really be, just to generate bad publicity for a candidate. Yeah, I know: devious. And both parties are guilty of it. So take the cries of, “But they didn’t vote” with a grain of salty sand.)

No, I reckon a dead Kerry is worth more than a live Bush in office. After all, we thought a dead man was worth more than Ashcroft when he ran for Congress in Missouri.

But having said this, I think a live Kerry will do a lot of good. I think he’ll put back many, if not all, of the environmental protections we’ve lost over the last three years. I also think he’ll reduce the office of Homeland Security to it’s proper role, and roll back many of the paranoid acts that have been foolishly passed. Contrary to unfounded implications, I expect that he’ll be a strong leader in case of conflict, if needed; but I also don’t think he’ll go looking for a fight.

He knows that healthcare is an issue, needing more effective legislation than that foolish Medicare drug reform that just so happens to benefit yet more Bush supporters. He also knows that we’ve botched our handling of the military needs for the Mideast and will hopefully stop punishing the same military by yanking them about with little regard and even less pay.

He’ll make tough choices – like eliminating some of those tax cuts. Mario Cuomo did a brilliant TV interview this weekend saying that only the top 2% of the country really benefits from the tax cuts. The problem, he said, is that the top 20% of income earners think they’re in the top 2% income bracket. So about 18% of the people think they’ll benefit from tax cuts, when in reality the benefit is negligible.

Most of all, I think both Kerry and Edwards will listen to others, and be prepared to change their minds when new facts arise. Some people call this flip-flopping; I call this learning from experience, and being willing to admit you made a mistake.