Categories
RDF Writing

Open review of “Practical RDF”

I chatted with my Practical RDF editor, Simon St. Laurent, and we decided to open up the technical book review to my weblog readers as well as the RDF Interest Group and the RSS Developers group.

I created a new weblog to support this effort, Practical RDF — a book, and have posted the current Table of Contents in HTML format.

Monday evening I’ll be posting the first half of the chapters for review, and the remaining chapters will be posted the following week. Chapters will be posted in Microsoft Word and HTML formats.

Practical RDF is for anyone who’s interested in learning more about RDF: what it is, how to work with it, who is using it now, and how. Because of this, I’m hoping to get reviewers who are interested in RDF but aren’t necessarily programmers, XML experts, or RDF experts. Of course, I hope to get the experts, too.

Gone are the days when a book was hidden until all of the blemishes had been removed, the mistakes erased, and reviews made by a few select reviewers. Today, drafts are exposed, warts and all, in the belief that we — the reviewers, the readers, and the authors and editors — will all benefit from the openness.

So, give a fellow weblogger a hand and help me write a terrific book.

Now, back to working on the book.

Categories
Just Shelley Weblogging

To sleep, perchance to dream

All I’ve wanted to do for the past few weeks is sleep. As soon as the sun goes down, I’m ready for bed. I’m ready for bed now, and it’s only 7:45pm.

It’s not the weather — Fall is my favorite time of the year, and the weather has been wonderful lately. And it isn’t the book, as it’s been going very well. For instance, today I had an extremely productive day working with, and writing about, HP’s Jena — a Java RDF API. And I played a bit with IsaView a graphical RDF authoring tool.

I’ve been out walking every day or almost every day, so I’m getting exercise. My appetite’s down, but I can stand to lose some weight.

Wanting to sleep my life away is bad enough, but when I do sleep, my nights are filled with dreams — color, sound, and I swear smell and taste and touch. Especially touch. Last night I dreamed I was sitting down on the ground and a friend I hadn’t seen for over ten years was looking down at me, giving me a wry smile, hands on her hips. She reached down to give me a hand up, and I could feel her hand in mine. What was astonishing is that my mind made her image approximately ten years older than the last time I saw her.

(I didn’t know my unconscious mind was so clever. I’ll have to let it out to play more often.)

A couple of days ago, I dreamed that I had to take a job working on an assembly line at a local factory that makes bombs. Not hard to figure out the roots of that dream, is it?

Those are the dreams I can tell you about. The one’s I can’t (or won’t) discuss online are rich with sensory impressions that last long into the day. When I walked at Tower Grove tonight, a couple of times it seemed as if the dream world overlaid the ‘real’ world, and I would stop walking a moment to savor the double vision the effect created.

Mark has running, Loren has hiking, half of the people in my blogroll are at conferences, except for a few (Gary and Steve), who are weblogging other webloggers as they weblog (and who seriously need to have their computers removed from their possession before they hurt themselves), Jonathon is fantasizing about sexy women he can’t have, Shannon’s sucking on candy cigarettes, you’re reading this…

And all I want to do is sleep.


stonebridge

Categories
Photography

XKrispy XKreme at Babble Meadow

There’s something close and secretive about the St. Louis parks, an otherworldly quality that strongly appeals to me. Last week I took photos at Laumieir Sculpture park at dusk and I was the only person among the paths and the sculptures set in odd corners. Echoing my footsteps was the rustle of bushes and dead leaves from squirrels running from my approach. I knew the reason for the noise, but that didn’t stop the impression of a ghostly companion paralleling my movement in the darkening forest around me.

Spooky. A bit scary. Wonderful.

The photos used in The Parable of Languages are from Tower Grove park in St. Louis, an amazing place full of trees, streams, lily ponds, interesting buildings and odd gazebos, and faux ruins complete with lake and fountain — a true Victorian park. It was love at first sight, so expect more from Babble Meadow in the future.


water lilies and reflected tree

Categories
Weblogging Writing

Essential blogging

“Essential Blogging” has hit the streets, available at a bookstore near you. O’Reilly has put my chapter, “Advanced Blogger”, online if you want a peek.

I haven’t received my copies yet. Hopefully soon.

In the meantime, I’m finishing up the writing for the RDF book in the next few weeks. Time to weblog less, work on book more.

Categories
Political

Iraq and goals

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

I listened to the President’s speech on Iraq last night. I’m not surprised at the familiar refrain of Saddam Hussein being an evil man, nor was I surprised about the tie-in with September 11th.

There was a strongly inconsistent message in the President’s speech that I’m a bit surprised no one seems to have noted. President Bush emphasized the need for Iraq to disarm, but also brought into the message questions about terrorism, treatment of its people, and other factors outside of the original UN security resolution:

And that is why America is challenging all nations to take the resolutions of the U.N. Security Council seriously. Those resolutions are very clear. In addition to declaring and destroying all of its weapons of mass destruction, Iraq must end its support for terrorism. It must cease the persecution of its civilian population. It must stop all illicit trade outside the oil-for-food program. And it must release or account for all Gulf War personnel, including an American pilot, whose fate is still unknown.

The confusion about the focus of our goals was further enhanced by direct attacks on Saddam Hussein:

The dictator of Iraq is a student of Stalin, using murder as a tool of terror and control within his own cabinet, and within his own army, and even within his own family.

What are our goals? Do we want to disarm Iraq? Or do we want to depose Saddam Hussein? The former is within the charter of UN security resolutions, the latter is not. Sending arms inspectors back and allowing them unfettered access will, hopefully, result in disarmament, but won’t remove Hussein from office.

Which does the President want? Disarmament? Or Hussein? There’s a world of difference between these two. A word of difference.

In the meantime, if you want your views known, contact your Congressional representatives. I would also recommend that you contact your local politicians (mayor, governor, and so on). And you might want to consider joining whatever demonstrations are happening in your area that support your viewpoint.