Daniel Lewis

reverting back to cutline until i fix straightwalker

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StraightWalker is a new Wordpress 2.3 Theme (not sure whether it works on 2.5), which I (Daniel Lewis) have developed. It is made specifically to be:

• Completely valid XHTML 1.0 Strict (some of the code base is from the Cutline theme, but I’ve highly modified it)
• Adds a few hCard based microformats (establishing POSH)
• Adds some XHTML meta tags based on Dublin Core (establishing POSH)
• Unobtrusive JavaScript (StraightWalker uses labels.js, and will soon contain a few more subtle UJS interaction enhancements)
• Separated CSS
• Links into SIOC, FOAF and potentially other Semantic Web vocabularies and DataPortability recommendations

The idea is that the unobtrusive JavaScript and the Separated CSS allow little-to-no editing of the XHTML in order to create the design that you require. The idea of microformats and the Semantic Web vocabularies allows easy lifestreaming based on the data that you explicitly link to (implicit knowledge from simple explicit links).
Version 0.1 Alpha (testing on vanirsystems.com/danielsblog )

StraightWalker 0.1 Alpha is my first experiment with a Semantic Web approach to WordPress Theme development. It is to be tested on danielsblog. Feedback is very much welcome, and after the first set of bugs are ironed out then I will release it for public review, use and manipulation (possibly via svn or something like that).

StraightWalker is the first part of my “leading by example” when it comes to providing a “Semantic Web View” of Blogging. The next part will be released soon… this all involves “eating ones own dog food”.

Known Bugs:

• Major issues:
  • Single Page template seems to be showing all posts like the index
  • Single Post template seems to be showing all posts like the index
• Minor issues:
  • Search result page is not as structured as the other parts of the site, and so causes a design break

If anyone has any hints about how to solve this issues then I am more than happy to listen and fix. Hopefully we can get these issues fixed as I am very keen to release this into the wild.

Also, let me know what you think… and if you spot any other bugs/issues/problems.

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A Quick Example of Content Negotiation.

Requires the curl command line tool, but can be done using any http fetch tool.

Here is the command for getting RDF/XML:

$ curl -I -H "Accept: application/rdf+xml" http://myopenlink.net/dataspace/person/danieljohnlewis#this

Here is the output:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: Virtuoso/05.00.3028 (Linux) i686-generic-linux-glibc23-32 VDB
Connection: Keep-Alive
Date: Wed, 07 May 2008 15:23:16 GMT
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Content-Length: 0
ETag: "6689-2008-05-07T11:23:16.000000-0-9851f9cbda1201e253939e204e596f4d"
Content-Type: application/rdf+xml

Here is the command without specifying which MIME Type:

$ curl -I http://myopenlink.net/dataspace/person/danieljohnlewis#this

Here is the output:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: Virtuoso/05.00.3028 (Linux) i686-generic-linux-glibc23-32 VDB
Connection: Keep-Alive
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
Date: Wed, 07 May 2008 15:23:47 GMT
Accept-Ranges: bytes
X-XRDS-Location: yadis.xrds
Content-Length: 0

Summary

This example quickly shows Content Negotiation, it id done by querying Myopenlink.net/ods (an installation of OpenLink Virtuoso Universal Server).

If you actually want to get the response then remove the -I from the command line flags.

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Everything is fine with the letting agents in Bristol. I can get the keys on Monday

…right.. back to XTech (fingers crossed my talk later will go well).

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Arg!!!

Three problems I have at the moment:
* Banks
* Letting Agents
* Inconvenient timings

My tenancy in my new flat in Bristol is due to start tomorrow (7th May), but I plan to pick up the keys on the 12th and move in fully by the 17th.

The problem with the bank
—
Apparently they couldn’t recognise my signature on the documentation that the letting agents sent to the bank. I received notification of this on the Saturday 2nd May, after the banks had closed. Apparently I need to go to a branch (I can’t do this over the phone), and it was a Bank Holiday yesterday! Highly annoying because the bank needed to send back a reference to the letting agents before the tenancy starts. Whats weird is that I have never changed my signature ever since I invented it in my early teens, in fact its identical to the one in my passport PLUS I’ve never had this issue in the past!

Inconvenient timings
—
Not only did this bank situation happen, but it happened just as I needed to go to Dublin (where I am at the moment), for a conference where I am speaking on behalf of the company that I am working for (OpenLink Software). I arrived in Dublin yesterday, and won’t get back to Oxford until late on Friday.

Apparently there is a branch of my Bank in Dublin… and it is looking like I might have to go there in a minute to see if they can fix this problem for me.

Also it is a bit annoying that I can’t seem to connect to the wireless in the hotel which the conference is in, it needs a special code which the conference organisers have to buy. I’ll try to find out if they do have a code in a moment, they should have bought one as this is a conference about the web. (plus the hotel which I am staying in doesn’t have wifi, I have to rely on a dodgy connection to another wifi spot which is unsecured.

Letting agents
—
Because of this issue with my signature, and the fact that I can’t sign the tenancy papers before the actual tenancy starts (i.e. tomorrow!) they are threatening to “put the property back on the market”… even though I am definitely sure that I did mention that I was going to be picking up the keys on the 12th May due to this conference, but clearly we didn’t get this down formally in writing. I currently await a phone call from the agents about if the landlord is not unhappy to everything that is happening (fingers crossed). I really do apologise to the letting agents about this, and I said that on the phone to them. I seriously do apologise to them, as this is all out of my control and I am really doing as much as I possibly can to get this fixed.

Summary
—
I obviously really do want to move in to the property, and would love to be in Bristol right now to be able to sort it all out in person (I dread to think what my mobile phone bill is going to be like at the end of this month!!!).

I have to move out of my current property in Oxford on the 17th, so it is crucial that I have this place to move in to.

The plan
—
Wait for a phone call from the letting agents (although I’ll call them if I don’t hear from them by 12:15pm), depending on the situation after the phone call I may need to walk a kilometre or two to the nearest branch in order to sort this out (I’m hoping they may be able to fax some documents over to the letting agents) (this obviously means that I miss lunch at the conference, which is something that I am going to have to do).

I’ll give you an update about this whole situation later.

So far
—
So far, for me, XTech has started off badly… although the content so far is good.

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ok the schedule for XTech2008:

• Day -1 (today, 4th May 2008): The day before I take the plane to Dublin… at my parents house in North West Kent!
• Day 0 (tomorrow, 5th May 2008 = UK Public Holiday): I get the plane from Gatwick airport and arrive in Dublin. Try to find my way from Dublin airport to my hotel (wish me luck). I hope to go see Christchurch Cathedral in the evening… take a few pictures.
• Day 1 (Tuesday 6th May 2008): This is the first day of the actual conference, packed full of tutorial based workshops.
• Day 2 (Wednesday 7th May 2008): The second day of the conference, and when the talks will start. A couple of keynotes in the morning. I’ll be on 2nd after lunch (14:45) in “Goldsmiths 2″ with my talk “Linked Data Deployment”. A few more Linked Data / Semantic Web based talks on this day!
• Day 3 (Thursday 8th May 2008): Some more talks, including some by Linked Data / Semantic Web people!
• Day 4 (Friday 9th May 2008): Morning includes some more talks, including Linked Data / Semantic Web / Distributed Data Web topics and DataPortability. XTech finishes at Lunchtime. I have a bit time to do my last report, and then I get my plane back to Gatwick in the early evening. I get back to Gatwick and then have to get the coach back to (hopefully a nice and sunny evening in) Oxford, where my darling Beki will be waiting for me

Anyways, I’ve done a little video describing things a bit “XTech 2008 Day Minus One” YouTube Video.

(To Kingsley: I can’t currently email out but can receive, would you be able to email me the OpenLink Presentation format that you mentioned and I’ll shuffle my slides into the right format before my presentation on Wednesday. Else, my presentation style will have to do… it’s not too bad)

I will post after each day giving an update of what has happened, what I have been learning and how I think the conference is going. At the end of the week I’ll write a bigger post with a wider picture of the whole week. I will also be recording myself a little bit (as above), and taking some pictures!

Follow

I’ve just noticed that there is a PlanetXTech (including RDF based syndication for PlanetXTech)

Also. Kingsley has collated a list of SemWeb / Linked Data people at XTech.

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The April 2008 Semantic Web Gang Podcast has been released. I enjoyed taking part in this episode, it is a little bit more relaxed than our first episode (mainly because there are less people, and so everybody got their chance to speak about particular topics).

Strangely, I sound incredibly camp on this recording… oh dear!!

Topics include:

• Wikipedia for Data
• DBpedia
• The Linked Data sets available now (see Richard Cyganiaks Linked Data Cloud )
• “Coming-up” at the WWW2008 conference and LDOW2008
• The separation of business and academia
• Is Linked Data beneficial to business? (of course it is!!)

The panel this month consisted of:

• Paul Miller
• Daniel Lewis
• Tom Heath
• Alex Iskold

The special guest this month was:

• Georgi Kobilarov

You may have noticed that I had a follow-up blog post extending some of my thoughts expressed in this podcast episode. The blog post was “The Divide between Business and Academia“.

Its good, so go listen!

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Don’t consider me weird…

Yes I have started reading a Deepak Chopra book (”The Third Jesus”) in my (very little) spare time… mainly to read when I am not at the conference next week, and during my week off the week after. Plus I’ve just bought the newest album by Kula Shaker “Strangefolk“.

Seriously I’m not weird, honestly… maybe a tiny bit hippie

Anyways… back to work, and listening to Kula Shaker

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Hi all,

This is just clearing up the misconceptions that Ben Werdmuller has written in his Guest Post on ZDnet titled “Guest post: Introducing the Open Data Definition”.

“The semantic web community has RDF, a format designed for the purpose that is potentially powerful but – as one might expect from the semantic web community – prone to ambiguity and overcomplicated implementation.”

Thats just a cheeky comment about the Semantic Web community! Anyway, I’ve already mentioned that RDF isn’t complicated at all in my Simple RDF blog post. Some of the commenter’s also explained it in their own way, and one commenter said that RDF is actually too simple! In the Semantic Web community; we aren’t some wacky bunch of academics, a lot of us are actually in business and actually implementing this stuff in real life (Companies such as Microsoft, Adobe, Sun Microsystems, OpenLink Software, Mozilla, Nokia, Skype, BBC, Joost and Oracle are all using RDF in one way or another)

“In small doses, it works (FOAF is based on a subset of RDF),”

FOAF is not a subset of RDF, it is a vocabulary. Just as XHTML is defined in an XML Schema, FOAF is defined in an RDF Schema.

“but for more abstract data, it becomes exponentially harder to build for.”

Thats actually rubbish. RDF was made to describe abstract and concrete data: “one persons data is another persons metadata”. There are also the RDF Schema and OWL frameworks if you need even more descriptions.

“Adding new data fields requires doing contortions in XML, which makes it harder to generate dynamically.”

Thats wrong in so many ways. RDF is NOT XML, therefore you don’t need to do “contortions in XML”. Plus RDF is dynamic when you use it as a distributed web language.

“RDF parsers are also not widely supported,”

There are a lot of RDF tools out there already, including parsers (take your pick from the many on the list).

“and it seems unlikely that most web coders would bother to read through the specification, let alone sit down and actually write compliant software.”

Coders don’t want to read any specifications, this shouldn’t be a comment specifically about RDF. There are lots of tutorials and frequently asked questions available about RDF, the Semantic Web and Linked Data… including my recent three blog posts:

• “RDF: Simpler if you look at it in a different way“
• “Linked Data are the roots of the Future Web“
• “Linked Data: The role of the data server“

Lets just repeat this again. RDF is not XML, and RDF is not a format. RDF is a linked object modeling framework for the emerging Web of Data. XML and N3 are formats which can show RDF. FOAF and SIOC are vocabularies of RDF, and are not subsets.

Seriously, if there are any questions then do ask… because nobody likes misconceptions/misunderstandings. We are friendly people in the Semantic Web community, feel free to email me, or if you don’t want to come to me then there is the Semantic Web IRC channel #swig on the freenode network.

Many thanks,

Daniel

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So just a quick blog post (while my stomach digests my miso-noodles) which I have been thinking about doing for a while.
I wanted to let you know of various who have inspired me and in some way influenced my thoughts and actions. I’ll start with the ones within Computer Science, and then go into other areas.

People who have inspired me in computing (met)

Dr Ravji Pindoria

Dr Ravji Pindoria was one of my tutors at the Further Education College that I went to between 2001 and 2003. He was incredibly inspirational, not just in computing but in the things that he did and said. Ravji taught me the C++ programming language, I will always remember him saying that C++ is “not quite a horse, not quite a donkey” because of its ability to be either Object Oriented or Procedural.

Ravji was a great teacher, and quite academically minded. I think he has influenced me when it comes to the fact that I love teaching, breaking things down into allegory.

Ravji also gave me some spiritual advice, he is a Swaminarayan Hindu and I really admired the peace that he gave off. He was also vegetarian. One of the things that I remember him telling me was that “as long as you have some kind of faith, and some kind of morality then I think you’ll be fine”. I turned out to be a Liberal/Mystic Christian and vegetarian, and fascinated about other religions (particularly of Dharmic/Eastern origin).

(Image above is linked to from RavjiPindoria.com )

Dr Ian Bayley

Dr Ian Bayley was one of my lecturers at the University that I went to for my BSc (Hons) Intelligent Systems and Software Engineering. He taught me a number of things, including the Haskell programming language and Object Oriented Design Patterns.

I consider Ian to be an inspiration, not just because he was a great teacher, but because he knows almost everything… in fact he is one of the British Quiz Playing Champions.
(Image above linked to from QuizPlayers:Ian Bayley . Ian do you have a newer picture somewhere?)

Oli Winks

I met Oliver “Oli” Winks during my work experience year, and we became good friends. We often talked about artificial intelligence & artificial life, and discussed our academic plans for the future. We both stopped working for the same company at about the same time, I went off to do my final year of my undergrad degree and he went off to do his masters (and now his PhD).

He inspires me because I have interests in Symbolic AI and logic based systems/algorithms, whereas he is very connectionist/soft-computing/biologically-inspired. We also used to talk about Buddhism from time to time. I hope to write a paper or two with him in the future.

Also, his brother has a cool band called the Joff Winks Band.

(Image above linked to from Oli’s staff page at the University of Sussex)

People who have inspired me in Computing (not met (yet))

Tim Berners-Lee

Founder of the Web, Head of the W3C, Linked Data Genius, Unitarian Universalist, British.

Tim Berners-Lee is an inspiration, he knows who to do things with best intentions for people, academia and business. There is little more that I can say about Tim, just pure awesomeness.

( Tim’s picture in Wikipedia, taken by Uldis Boj?rs)

Kingsley Idehen

He is my boss, the chief of OpenLink Software. I haven’t met him yet, but I expect that I will do soon.

Kingsley Idehen isn’t any ol’ boss. He really does know what he is talking about when it comes to technology and his own products. Like many of the people already discussed, he is incredibly clever and I seriously wouldn’t be surprised if his head was actually some kind of large knowledge based system.

Kingsley is also a really nice guy, he understand business but has got a clear picture about academia too.

(Photo of Kingsley on Flickr, taken by Henry Story)

Alan Turing

British Computer Science Genius.

Alan Turing knew his stuff! He invented things like the Turing Test and the Turing Machine… and he created many of the theoretical underpinnings of a lot of stuff that I (and many) do today.

(Photo of a statue of Alan Turing, taken by doeth)

Lotfi Zadeh

Probably not a well known name to people outside of artificial intelligence, but Lotfi Zadeh created Fuzzy Logic, Fuzzy Mathematics and Fuzzy Set Theory. A very clever man, who has inspired me to think outside the box. Fuzzy Logic essentially is about the real numbers in between 0 and 1, so its quite different to the traditional binary logic that most computer scientists know and love. Think outside the box!

(Photo of Lotfi Zadeh from Wikipedia)

People not inside Computer Science who have inspired me (not met (yet))

• The Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso. A great leader, an advocate of peace and a charismatic interfaith dialogue advocate.
• The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams. Also a great religious leader, and he has a similar view to Christianity as I have (He is quite Liberal and quite Catholic, whereas I would say that I am very Liberal and quite Catholic). Also open to interfaith dialogue. There was a bit of uproar by conservative Christians about Rowan being chosen, and this was because of his liberal stance…. but it takes a liberal person to be accepting enough of the range of people in the Anglican denomination.
• Meister Eckhart. A German Theologian, famous for his mystic ideas. I’ve read up a bit about his work in the past, and consider it to be true. (He died in the early 1300s, so I doubt I’ll meet him)
• There are many more!

People not inside Computer Science who have inspired me (met)

• The Vicar who taught me Christianity, and got me ready for my Baptism and Confirmation: Rev. Andrew Bunch.
• Rev. John Pritchard, the Bishop of Oxford: Baptised and Confirmed me into Christianity and the Anglican Communion.
• Hazel Hobbs: Reiki master, she attuned me to level one Usui Shiki Ryoko Reiki. She inspired me by showing me eastern chi/ki/qi practices.
• Hazel Appleton: A great friend ever since we met randomly on the web. She has provided me with various bits of advice about life and spirituality.
• My parents and my sister. Obviously a big influence as they are my family!
• My girlfriend, Beki. Has been a fantastic girlfriend and also a support ever since I met her. You know true love by experiencing it!

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