Please note that this is my old blog, to My New Blog is available at https://www.vanirsystems.com/blog

This blog is kept here for archival reasons as it has a lot of interesting old posts that I am sure people would find useful

Good News!

My second article through IBM developerWorks has been published! (there are one or two things wrong with this article, I won’t say anything about it for now and will try to rectify it asap!)

It’s titled “Building Semantic Web CRUD operations using PHP” (<- click the title to go read it). It’s essentially about showing:

  • The similarities and differences between the Relational Database Model and the Resource Description Framework model.
  • The similarities and differences between SQL and SPARQL.
  • How to implement SPARQL calls for Creation, Reading, Updation and Deletion (CRUD) operations using PHP.

After a bit of toying with it (keep at it, because it will be challenging but worth it!), you should be able to build your Web Application with RDF and SPARQL manipualtion.

If anyone has any questions about it (or about my previous developerWorks article which was titled “Intelligent Agents and the Semantic Web“) then please do let me know.

Oh yeah, by the way… both of my articles so far have been “featured” articles on the IBM developerWorks front page :-P

Daniel

religious, spiritual @ 18 November 2008, “6 Comments”

A random musing….

Spirituality and Religion are different. Basically, Religion is Spirituality but with dogma and creeds attached. I think everybody has spirituality, and it’s their choice whether to acknowledge that. If they do acknowledge that then they should be free to choose whether or not to explore that through formal means (e.g. at a Church or a Temple etc)… that’s when that person becomes religious.

The problem is spirituality is attached to us, and we (as individuals) grow in person physically and mentally. This kind of growth, or evolution if you like, filters through into the spiritual us. Unfortunately, religion is a collective thing, and so if one person evolves their spirituality, it’s unlikely that the rest of that religious group evolves with him/her. Therefore, that religion may become more of a degrading religion than an upgrading religion to that person… and for fulfilment that person may develop better using other techniques which that group may not be providing.

Unfortunately, the people within religious institutions are sometimes too conservative in their beliefs. Therefore, if you are not in their group, then you have the opposite of their beliefs and become some kind of “nemesis” to them. This is pretty unfair if you take the fact that we’re constantly evolving into consideration, and that we, as humans, are completely equal (no matter of gender, culture or race).

From a personal point of view, I class myself as Christian and I go to a Church of England (Anglican/Episcopal) Church. But I acknowledge my Spirituality, I don’t follow the crowds and I try to make my own mind up on things when I have the knowledge and intellect to do so. This has lead to conversations with other Christians which seem to prove that I have completely different views to them. I was even talking to a atheist (who acknowledges his spirituality) the other day, and he actually related my belief system most similar to Atheism, Humanism or Buddhism…. stating that everything I said even Richard Dawkins would not disagree with (see his online article “Atheists for Jesus“). But this is my current state of spirituality, I feel certain things about the world and I apply them to my understanding of things. I therefore decide to interpret Christian scripture in what may seem like a Humanist/Buddhist fashion, because that is what Christianity speaks to me… and on the other hand I am completely happy to talk to another Christian who thinks otherwise.

I feel that it’s not going to be religion that makes peace on this world, but it’ll be the acknowledgement of spirituality. We are all spiritual people, we are all humans (brothers and sisters if you like), it is very natural to be spiritual, but it doesn’t always fit to be religious.

Yes, I feel like we’re entering a third era which will eventually unite all peoples through acknowledgement of spirituality.

Comments welcome,

Daniel

Personal, random @ 13 November 2008, “No Comments”

I’ve just taken this shot out of my window:

Scene from Whiteladies Road, Bristol

It’s a bit blurry because my digital camera is getting old now (it’s a 2 Megapixel Nikon Coolpix 2500). It was taken from my flat on Whiteladies Road, Clifton, Bristol, England.

Now, who said that Bristol isn’t a lovely place to live! Look it’s so beautiful!

Hi all,

Just letting you all know that this months Semantic Web Gang podcast for October 2008 was released today. It’s available on the The Semantic Web Gang blog as a post titled “October 2008: The Semantic Web Gang discusses the launch of Twine“. It is in fact about the recent public release of the Twine.com system by Radar Networks.

Plus, we’ve got Nova Spivack (the CEO of Radar/Twine) and Jim Wissner (the Chief Architect of Twine) on the call!

It’s great. I am on the call, I didn’t say much on the call particularly as just as I was about to ask a question someone else usually piped up just before me and asked a question (often the same question!). I appear at the start and the end of the recording though.

The central thing that I am interested in is actually still under the hood of Twine. I’m incredibly interested by the progression of the recommendation algorithms, particularly through modern machine learning techniques. I’m also interested in their automatic ontology editing. It’s very exciting, and I do have a feeling that the public release that you see today isn’t the entirety of twine.

It was lovely to speak to Nova and Jim, and the rest of the gang. There should be another episode later this month :-)

Enjoy!

Daniel

politics @ 04 November 2008, “No Comments”

We’ve had a poll at my University (Bristol) for who should be president of the United States. It ended today, here are the results:

  1. Barack Obama: 1943 votes
  2. Neither Obama nor McCain: 171 votes
  3. John McCain: 127 votes

So a plea to those in the US. Please take in to consideration that your voting not only impacts the USA, but your vote could have an impact on the rest of the world. That’s all I’ll say.

Cheers, have a good day

Daniel


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