Daniel’s Blog

Hello everyone,

Today I met the master who will be tutoring me on Reiki this November, I was just going to post the registration form in her letter box but she invited me in. She ended up giving me an initial Reiki attunement, just so that I could feel the Reiki energy is available. It really works! My hands have been feeling really warm ever since, unfortunately because it is just an initial attunement it is not strong enough to last, she said it will last about 3 weeks at the most. In November I will get the full attunement to Reiki Level 1, and will be able to give healing sessions to myself, others and also animals and plants. It is Hands-On Traditional Usui Reiki (down the Hayashi - Takata lineages) with Chakra theory.

I will be practicing the Reiki firstly on myself, my girlfriend and probably my fish. Then (hopefully) my family. Then I should feel comfortable enough to give healing to others. So hold tight if you would like me to heal you and I haven’t mentioned you.

I have heard in a few places that Reiki is a bit like acupuncture but without the needles, so it is excellent if you don’t like needles (and also excellent if you do )

Anyways, feel free to ask me about it.

Daniel

Technorati Tags: Reiki, Usui, Oxford

I leave you with a quote from Mikao Usui (the founder of Reiki):

Can anyone tell me whether I have translated my name into Lojban correctly, I have got:

daniul.leuis

Anyone have any idea?

Daniel Lewis

I am going to try my best not to laugh at HTML5, I read a little while ago that someone was going to create HTML5 as a “representation of the type of code that is currently on the web” (sorry can’t find the site where I read that from - so no reference, you are just going to have to trust me on that approximate quote). And so now there is an HTML Working Draft on the W3C website: Available here (https://www.w3.org/html/wg/html5/).

Near the beginning of the document (a section called relationship) they say:

[XHTML2] lacks elements to express the semantics of many of the non-document types of content often seen on the Web. For instance, forum sites, auction sites, search engines, online shops, and the like, do not fit the document metaphor well, and are not covered by XHTML2.

Which I refuse to believe as XHTML 2 is made to be able to handle “modules”, and it is based on XML and therefore can be extended… not to mention being able to handle RDFa and microformats.

The next thing I would like to quote from the Working Draft is:

The second concrete syntax uses XML, and is known as “XHTML5″. When a document is transmitted with an XML MIME type, such as application/xhtml+xml, then it is processed by an XML processor by Web browsers, and treated as an “XHTML5″ document. Generally speaking, authors are discouraged from trying to use XML on the Web, because XML has much stricter syntax rules than the “HTML5″ variant described above, and is relatively newer and therefore less mature.

• First thing: XHTML5 is invented in the same draft, and in the same paragraph it says XHTML5 shouldn’t be used.
• Second thing: ok what about XHTML 3 and 4… I think I missed them
• Third thing: It is a good thing that XMLs structure is strict, it means that it can be handled with some good tools such as XPath and XSLT.
• Fourth thing: SGML became a W3C activity in 1995 (but was created in the 80s). XML became a project in 1996 and 1997, and it was based on SGML. In my eyes there is a natural progression: IBMs GML -> SGML -> XML… just like HTML -> XHTML

Some of the things they put in the document are so strange, especially as one of the authors is from Google and the other is from the Safari/WebKit team at Apple! I thought both of these teams would prefer the ease of handling an XML based solution, especially when it comes to search engines (come on Google, you should know better).

The XHTML2 document seems to be backed by a lot more people than the HTML5 working draft, and I hope that it stays that way. However, saying that, I would accept HTML5 if it did actually become standard (in its XML form anyway).

Technorati Tags: xhtml2, html5, xhtml, html, xml

I decided to find a new job, and my last day at Lovell Johns will be on the 28th August 2007. I was a Web Developer and Systems Administrator at Lovell Johns, but unfortunately there was way too much Systems Admin for me to cope with - especially as my background is a degree in Intelligent Systems and Software Engineering. Lovell Johns is a really lovely company though, and if you like Systems Administration and you live in or near Oxford or Witney then contact them, because they are all such a nice bunch of people - its just the role wasn’t right for me.

Anyway, I am starting a new job on the 29th August 2007, at a company called Curverider. Who invented and now support* a wonderful piece of Open Source Software called Elgg. Elgg is a Social Networking Platform which has achieved great interest from education institutes (e.g. universities) and other organisations. Very interesting stuff, which is quite connected with my undergraduate degree project.

I am really pleased to get the job, and would like to thank all those people that were thinking for me during the past week.

(* by still developing it and providing training and consultancy)

For those people who know, I believe it was good news that I received this evening. More information will follow tomorrow.

Daniel

The title sums up my current status.

The water out of the tap is currently tasting nasty, even when I make a cup of tea with it! I think it is some kind of softness (chlorine or fluorine or something)… it is horrible. So I am drinking milk, and trying my best to put up with the water taste when I need it.

I am currently having a bit of a late night, mainly because I can’t sleep. My adrenaline is going crazy because there is some news that I am waiting for tomorrow which could change the path ahead if the news is good news. I will no doubt tell you (the reader) about it if it is good news. It is messing with my head (i.e. can’t sleep), and I am sure that I will just end up falling into a very deep sleep.

During this late night I decided to do some work on Google Maps, and I have chosen to do this in PHP 4, but with an Object Oriented style. It is quite surprising how much making things Object Oriented clears the “messy look” that PHP tends to have…. however… saying that, PHP does not have a clean looking Object Model, but it will do, this is mainly because PHP is a weakly typed dynamic programming language and could not really give a very strict representation of inheritance instantiation (which can be provided in Ruby (a strongly typed dynamic programming language) and Java (a strongly typed static programming language)). It is nicer doing things in OO, I do look forward to functional programming coming into the mainstream (which will probably happen when Fortress is released)

btw. Make sure you visit: https://www.incenseandthings.co.uk/ We have lots of products on there now, high quality produce at low prices - available through delivery or pickup from Oxford.

Feel free to comment or email anytime.

Daniel of Vanir Systems and Incense And Things

Technorati Tags: water, late, oo, php, incense

I just did a 20 Question survey called “Belief O Matic”, to see if it could tell what my faith is. Here are the results:

Which is interesting to know, because I would officially be classed within number 6

(which just happens to be position 6 with 66%…. dear me, way to many 666s in my life).

Officially because I am an Anglican who goes to a High Church of England church in Oxford.

Position 7 and 9 are very interesting, because I find Quaker thought really very interesting.

Positions 1, 2 and 3 are probably because I believe in some things to do with Dharma and Karma, even in a Christian sense.

I think the survey is reasonably spot on, here is the link if you want to do it: https://www.beliefnet.com/story/76/story_7665_1.html

Link back here if you do it and tell me what you get.

Cheers,

Daniel