nothing clever
http://www.semikolon.co.uk/blog/index.php
Why've you drugged their onions!?
http://www.semikolon.co.uk/blog/index.php?entry=entry080409-213418
Haven't had much time to play Starcraft lately though, and I'm afraid that mnem has been playing online an practicing.
Até logo.
]]>Scripting for the Semantic Web Workshop!
http://www.semikolon.co.uk/blog/index.php?entry=entry080129-151600
ESWC this summer. The CFP is making rounds on mailinglists as we speak.
Have a look at the Scripting workshop page and submit a paper before the 7th of March! As usual there will also be a scripting challenge - details coming.
If you need more motivation, look here :)
]]>QOTD - On FOAF & SW
http://www.semikolon.co.uk/blog/index.php?entry=entry080117-090312
Good lord, you actually have content there. Sweet Zombie Jesus, it's like if MySpace was irradiated with XML-Rays and mutated into a complete XML-based social network specification [xmlns.com], which requires everyone to write their own specifications and hand-edit XML files.
That's just ... scary.
- about KjetilK's FOAF file in the Slashdot discussion about SPARQL being made a W3C Recommendation.
]]>The global graph
http://www.semikolon.co.uk/blog/index.php?entry=entry080108-122619
The new year seems like an arbitrary point to update/fix/tidy a few things so I moved all my emails from INBOX to INBOX_OLD and I can see how long before it goes back to 2000 unfiled emails. I will also update my web-page in the next few days, however, since I use RDFHomepage this requires first updating my FOAF-self. Enter Alex Passant's Flickr FOAF/SIOC Exporter and Matthew Rowe's FOAF Facebook exporter, and now I have RDF versions of my Facebook contacts and Flickr contacts! Both linked from my foaf using rdfs:seeAlso.
I realise that publishing the Facebook IDs could be seen as giving up some of my friends privacy, but probably not more than putting your life on Facebook does in the first place.
Annoyances now include that the data is not smushed, some people are undoubtably in my FOAF as people I foaf:know, in the facebook export and in the flickr export, but without any unique key I could use to smush them. Also, the export was pretty manual, I even edited the files a bit to make sure the URLs for me were consistent, meaning I have to repeat it some interval (I guess every two years :)
]]>My Koble is your koble is his koble is her koble.
http://www.semikolon.co.uk/blog/index.php?entry=entry071122-091839
Koble!
]]>The Ultimate Acheivement
http://www.semikolon.co.uk/blog/index.php?entry=entry071018-094319
You offer the Amulet of Yendor to Susanowo...--More--
An invisible choir sings, and you are bathed in radiance...--More--
The voice of Susanowo rings out: "Congratulations, mortal!"--More--
"In return for thy service, I grant thee the gift of Immortality!"--More--
You ascend to the status of Demigoddess...--More--
Ha! You didn't expect that after the last post! Anyway, Nethack provided a much needed distraction from long hours working on the thesis, and I've now finally beat the bastard. NOW I can finish the PhD, but as colleague Benjamin said: "Why? Just tell your Prof that you finished Nethack. It's equivalent." :)
Anyway, the whole game summary is here.
Some highlights:
Your inventory
Amulets
d - an uncursed amulet of life saving (being worn)
i - an uncursed amulet of life saving
Weapons
a - a rustproof +6 katana (wielded in other hand)
u - the rustproof +6 Excalibur (weapon in hand)
Armor
b - an uncursed greased +5 silver dragon scale mail (being worn)
k - a blessed rusty +2 dwarvish iron helm
p - a blessed fireproof +5 T-shirt (being worn)
w - a blessed +4 cloak of magic resistance (being worn)
A - a cursed -1 helm of opposite alignment (being worn)
P - a blessed fireproof +5 pair of speed boots (being worn)
V - a blessed +4 pair of levitation boots
Y - a blessed +3 pair of yugake (being worn)
[...]
Vanquished creatures
Asmodeus
Baalzebub
Dispater
Orcus
Juiblex
The Wizard of Yendor (6 times)
Death
Famine (twice)
Genocided species: h, ;, L, Rust Monster, Disenchanter, E (although that didn't work as expected)
Voluntary challenges
You genocided 20 types of monsters
You polymorphed 150 items
You never changed form
You used 5 wishes
You did not wish for any artifacts
Sayonara grimnes the Demigoddess...
You went to your reward with 3855742 points,
[...]
and 1379 pieces of gold, after 54466 moves.
Killer: ascended
You were level 26 with a maximum of 211 hit points when you ascended.
Only thing that makes me feel like I cheated is that I was lawful the whole game and changed to chaotic at the last turn to save me a meeting with pestilence.
Next time I'll do it as a Wizard!
(Apologies if you have never seen or heard of nethack, then this will appear like completely random ramblings :)
]]>quiet before the storm
http://www.semikolon.co.uk/blog/index.php?entry=entry070912-183654
In a extremely motivated moment I googled "finishing a phd is impossible" and found this:
It is useful and funny overall, and includes several good quotes, like this one:
The Feynman Problem Solving Algorithm:
1) Write down the problem.
2) Think very hard.
3) Write down the solution.
I wish I had thought of that.
Also included is the oh-so-very appropriately for my planning-to-learn thesis:
"Failing to plan is planning to fail."
]]>Back from 10 days holiday
http://www.semikolon.co.uk/blog/index.php?entry=entry070801-130845
BUT: Now I'm back. I see that six people who are not me have signed up to Koble! Yet I have not received any of my automated stack-trace emails from when things go wrong - yay! (I have also not received any comments, but that's to be expected)
]]>Koble!
http://www.semikolon.co.uk/blog/index.php?entry=entry070719-165350
Gnowsis was broken so I had nowhere to write it down. Really this should of course have been a job for Nepomuk, but the Nepomuk prototype is not yet at a stage where I feel comfortable trusting my data to it :)
So, with plenty of hacking time on the train and while listening to talk at ESWC I started hacking something to keep track of my world. A few things were clear about my new hackish solution:
It would be written in Python :)
It would be a web-app, for two reasons:
I never liked having Gnowsis being only local, I change computers often and want to take the data with me.
Developing with HTML/CSS/JavaScript is so much easier than any GUI toolkit.
I could use Linux Commandline tools, like pdftotext or imagemagick
I would concentrate on a few features and do them quickly and then leave it alone forever.
When I got home I had some basic functionality ready, and I tried hard to put the thing away to concentrate on my PhD, but it kept coming back. Now, a month and a bit later it's at a stage where I can show it to the world. So! I give you:
Since pictures speak louder than words here are a couple of screenshots (click for larger view):
The Koble welcome screen:
A Thing page:
Adding a relation:
Placing Things on the map:
Even louder than pictures speaks action though, and
Koble is open and you can try it today! Registration requires at least an OpenID account, but preferably a FOAF account linking to your OpenID. Read a bit more about Koble here, or about the FOAF+OpenID accounts.
It is still a bit buggy, and probably always will be. As a guide I have been using it for the past week, and I do trust my data to it :)
PS: Oh, and I just realised it's not quite clear, the URL is http://koble.net :)
