Simply replace [code] with another subject.

Learning [code] was my way of solving a problem. If your problem can be solved by [code], then learn it. If not, don't.  Don't learn [code] just because you think you should learn [code].  Don't let anyone make you learn [code] if it isn't going to help you solve a problem.

Now go and reform the education system so that we teach our children how to choose the right tool to solve a problem, and not how to pass tests.

What do you think?

What are the pros and cons?

Some ideas for you…

• have lots of easily identifiable public art sculptures that can act as meeting spaces.
• number the squares in the square so that people can find a square stand in it and tell their friends to meet them at that square. could be the basis of some rather interesting games too…
• street furniture that can be tweeted to provide identifiable meeting places

Our Mini-Project team, Don’t Move the Plants was intrigued by the signage in the residencia, so took that as our inspiration.  It is worth noting that all the text translation seen in the video is as translated by Word Lens, an iPhone app which translates words right before your eyes.

Don’t Move the Plants comprised myself, Esther Lozano, Andrea Nuzzolese, Ferdinand Dhombres and Luca Greco.

I’m at risk of over explaining the joke, so here is our winning entry.

Clipper uses javascript ‘recognisers’ to spot properties and classes in RDF data returned from queries. So if Clipper sees a pair of lat/long coordinates, it shows a map.  If the results of a search also include some map data? The recognisers are already there and they just show the points on a map.

So, people introduce new ontologies that describe things. Other people write ‘widgets’ that know what to do with certain properties. If the people who write the ontologies re-use properties that other people have written widgets for, then half the work of visualising the data in the new ontology has been done.

It lives.

Blog in Blog: breakdown of versions in the wild

Looking at the download statistics for my WordPress Plugin Blog-in-Blog, (over 15,000 downloads so far whooo!) I see that WordPress is now giving me a breakdown of which versions are still out and running in the wild.  This is interesting.  Most people are using a more up-to-date version – but only just.

I wonder if the picture reflects a quarter of internet users who are always (perhaps obsessively) updating their plugins; a quarter who regularly update their plugins, and the rest who may or may not update plugins.

There’s actually probably a hundred and one reasons why people aren’t using the latest version. If it’s because you are having issues with a new version, then let me know and I will fix it!

What would students do with open data from academic institutions?

What would academics do with open data from academic institutions?

What would administration staff do with open data from academic institutions?

In each case the answer  will be different.

Students will probably want to see where courses are held, and what other extra curricular activities the institution offers or is close to. They may also want to compare their progress against their peers at other universities while they are there. This last idea could provide positive reinforcement in provision of quality teaching.

Academics are primarily interested in a couple of linked questions.  What Is new in my field?  How much stuff have I published in my field and how does that  contribute to the research counts of my department?

Administration staff would probably want to smooth the wheels of tracking a student’s progress through the university.  Which course they are on, who is paying their fees and when, any other status of the system. Not sure if there is any way in which they will want to share information openly? there must be something they wished that they could know easily…

So, change is afoot again. If there is one thing that Talis (my employer) isn’t, it’s static.  The Talis strapline ‘Shared Innovation’ is exactly what we do on a daily basis.  I am currently shifting my role from a purely library focus, dealing with library customers in the library world to dealing with anyone who wants to work with semantically formed data published on the web of data.

How is this different from libraries?  Well, to some extent it is no different.  We are talking about standardising the publishing of data in machine readable form, whereas Library’s deal with information published and catalogued in a fairly standard human readable way.  One of the reasons that it is so easy to find things in a library (no really!) is because there are standard ways to represent, through classification, where the main topic of a book sits, and therefore which books it should be next to on the shelf.

Thus it is with Linked Data and the semantic web, except here the field is so new that we are still evolving the ways to say things about things, and ways to find what other people are saying about things. I plan to explore some of this stuff in later posts.

So, over the coming months, in my consultancy role, I will be getting the opportunity to meet other people who are getting started with the idea of linked data, and sharing with you some of the first steps experiences that I too have been through.

Now, how many of those sentences are longer than 140 characters?

Although there is no doubt that public libraries have received large chunks (£120m) of funding from National Lottery Funds, the thing that has been lacking is the ongoing funding. It’s all very well buying a bunch of computers 5-10 years a go, but now that those computers are wearing out, where is the commitment to replenish every 2 to 3 years?  For those buildings that have been ‘made over’ with £80m Big Lottery Funds, in 10 years they will need to be ‘made over’ again as long-term commitment to fund the public libraries seems to be absent from Local Council thinking. The library authority I visited today has just bought a shiny new library management system, and within 2 weeks of going live had to close a whole branch library. They now have three libraries.

The policy statement goes on to say:

But, as every good librarian knows, public libraries are not about sitting back and passively waiting for people to borrow your books – they are about active engagement with the community, making links to other public services, and responding to the policy imperatives of the day.

My impression of public libraries, is that they spend all their time chasing after involvement in whichever national and local ‘policy imperatives’ are flavour of the month. They are all short term plans. What ever happened to framework for the future? did that achieve anything? or just lead into a fresh round of “well that would be nice, but we are being job evaluated; restructured; forced to make ‘efficiency savings’, so won’t actually have time to think long-term because my job won’t be here in two months time”.

Whatever happened to keeping a good range of books on a wide range of subjects? I have first hand experience of finding a perfectly good book being withdrawn from stock because it had not issued in almost a year.  When a gentleman came to the enquiry desk and asked for it I was happy to tell him that although we had withdrawn it, I knew where it had gone, because I had rescued it and sent it to another library where I knew it would be valued. My point? Well, If we discarded every book that started to look tatty or had not been issued for years, there would be nothing for future generations to use. Today’s tatty book, is tomorrows antiquarian bookseller’s dream!

rant over… for now…

After about 2000 miles on the Dahon Vitesse D7, it was time to get a new bike. The Dahon had it’s fair share of problems. The frame split where the seat post frame tube met the cross tube – luckily within warranty, so a new frame was fitted. The wheels on the Dahon where very poor.  On average a spoke broke on the rear wheel every three to four weeks.  Eventually I had the rear wheel rebuilt with new spokes.

Of course there was all the usual stuff with chains wearing and the like… but that is normal for a bike that does 8 miles a day four day’s a week. So the Dahon is being retired to ‘second bike’ for use in emergencies.

So, what about the new bike?

I am now a proud owner of a Birdy Touring bike.

This bike has 24 gears, nicely distributed from very low (hill climbing will be so much easier!) to pretty high. One of the things that I found with the Dahon was that there was not enough high end in the gears, and I was quickly at top speed, with a feeling that I could have gone further. The new bike has by contrast a massive high end in the gears. I topped 42 mph on the flat – with a tail wind!

It has full suspension using a combination of elastomer (rear) and spring/elastomer (front). And on a canal tow-path trip which varied from very uneven brick to muddy pools, it coped well.

It is fully kitted out with mudguards and Pannier racks (front and back).

And of course it folds.