The Cloud appreciation society lead me to the Cloud Harp project. I'm listening to a recording made in 2004 - very ethereal.
It re-generates my interest in artificial synaesthesia generally and perhaps a return to my Bristol Harbour project, using image stream and image processing to pick out the frequency and direction of wave patterns to modulate music, with self-contained stations set up around the harbour.
Information arts often has artificial synaesthesia at its heart, converting information in one medium to information in another, with the aim of thus enhancing our appreciation and understanding of the source domain and creating beauty and interest in the target domain.
Monday, January 29, 2007
Sunday, January 28, 2007
Cloud Appreciation Society
One of my Christmas presents was 'The Cloudspotter's Guide' by Gavin Pretor-Pinney and published in 2006 by Hodder & Stoughton on behalf of the cloud appreciation society.
This site includes an excellent example of a subject-specific photo site, with many excellent photographs of cloud formations, optical effects and associated phenomena. The site was interesting in the context of the DSA module because it combines the problem of creating a photo site with the problems of tagging and categorising information, so I thought I'd write a review of it here, as perhaps as an example of what might have been included in theFlickr review. Next year I think I will base the coursework on a selection of sites like this rather than a monster site like Flickr. I welcome suggestions.
Navigation
The home page is a page featuring the last photo to be loaded.
Search by category and by partial string match within the title string are provided on this page. These lead to two different album pages - a paged layout in the case of the category, a list with thumbnails and titles in front of the page from which the search was launched in the case of the title search. Its not clear why there should be two different approaches. Usefully, the category selector shows the number of photographs in that category.
Direct links to the categories to which the current image has been assigned are provided and a featured category (Cloud Lookalikes) is at the top.
Each page includes a selection of other photographs. The criteria appears to be just the adjacent photo accession numbers and is not based on any criteria of similarity, but nevertheless it does encourage serendipitous browsing. Curiously the aspect ratio of these photos is determined by that of the main photo, leading to mal-shaped images.
Clicking on the photo rather surprisingly links to the next photo in sequence. There is also a 'Previous Page' link which is functionally a back button - it is not quite clear why this is included since this is a standard browser button. Perhaps Next and Previous links (in the accession sequence) would provide a better navigational mechanism.
A search (or link) to a members photos would be useful.
Photo Data
Images are jpegs at medium and thumbnail resolution.
Meta data include the name of the copyright owner (or is it just the member?), a descriptive title, data and time (but of upload I would guess, not of the photograph itself). The title can contain links e.g. to related sites.
Each photograph is related to several categories.
It is a pity that the photographs do not appear to be geo-coded, because it would be nice to mash these up with Google Earth. There is often a description of the place which could be translated through a geo-coding service. Since some photos are taken from planes, altitude data is needed too.
Tagging and classification
Each photograph is classified into one or several of around 40 categories and hence linked to other photos in the same category through that category. The category system itself is interesting as a information construct. On the surface, it would seem that it would benefit from some hierarchy. e.g.
* All photos
** Cloud Type
*** Cumulus
**** Kelvin-Helmholtz wave cloud
***
** Cloud features
*** Contrails
***
** Time-of-Day
*** Sunrise
*** Sunset
** Optical Effects
*** Rainbow
*** Halo
***
and probably others.
It also seems that some category meta-data is embedded in the name - the numbers on Cloud types is a reference to the Chapters in the book. Clearly a general description of the category itself could also be part of the overall data structure. The book provides a hierarchical classification of cloud types which would be useful to include. There are also occasional synonyms embedded in the name -eg Mamma (also know as mammatus) which could be treated uniformly as category meta-data.
The task of classifying each photo into these categories is not open to the public or members but is seen as an expert task. However there are places, such as in the category of 'Clouds that look like things' where folksomony would seem to be appropriate. Photographs also sometimes contain objects e.g. balloons, planes, boats for which arbitrary tags seem suitable.
Upload
Rather surprisingly, photo upload, even by members, is not supported, and photos have to be emailed to the webmaster with accompanying meta data for upload and categorisation.
Rating and comments
The public can easily rate photos and add comments. The comments are generally expressions of appreciation of no interest to anyone but the photographer. There is no information on the basis of the rating - indeed all photos I've seen are rated 4.It is not clear what value this adds or indeed what is being rated - the photograph or the subject.
Compatibility and Accessibility
Images have alt tags but these are the copyright names, not the description of the image which would better aid the reader.
There are keywords in the page meta data but these are not photo specific.
XHTML compliance - main photo page shows 1 error and 17 warnings. Typically these are problems with table and div tag nesting and problems with & . The error is a non-HTML tag.
The display of some characters in the title is broken (on Firefox and IE) e.g this
API and Feeds
The site provides RSS2.0 and Atom feeds of the latest photo additions and a Feedburner link.
Technology
The scripting language is PHP, images are held as files, not held in the database. Not sure what database is used (probably MySQL?). CSS is used for styling. Small amount of Javascript e.g. for GIF rollover on the rating buttons and call to update the rating. One function is defined (flip) which is not used.
The program architecture uses a single index.php script with a parameter to determine what page type to return, rather than multiple scripts. Interesting design issue here.
Data Model
This site includes an excellent example of a subject-specific photo site, with many excellent photographs of cloud formations, optical effects and associated phenomena. The site was interesting in the context of the DSA module because it combines the problem of creating a photo site with the problems of tagging and categorising information, so I thought I'd write a review of it here, as perhaps as an example of what might have been included in theFlickr review. Next year I think I will base the coursework on a selection of sites like this rather than a monster site like Flickr. I welcome suggestions.
Navigation
The home page is a page featuring the last photo to be loaded.
Search by category and by partial string match within the title string are provided on this page. These lead to two different album pages - a paged layout in the case of the category, a list with thumbnails and titles in front of the page from which the search was launched in the case of the title search. Its not clear why there should be two different approaches. Usefully, the category selector shows the number of photographs in that category.
Direct links to the categories to which the current image has been assigned are provided and a featured category (Cloud Lookalikes) is at the top.
Each page includes a selection of other photographs. The criteria appears to be just the adjacent photo accession numbers and is not based on any criteria of similarity, but nevertheless it does encourage serendipitous browsing. Curiously the aspect ratio of these photos is determined by that of the main photo, leading to mal-shaped images.
Clicking on the photo rather surprisingly links to the next photo in sequence. There is also a 'Previous Page' link which is functionally a back button - it is not quite clear why this is included since this is a standard browser button. Perhaps Next and Previous links (in the accession sequence) would provide a better navigational mechanism.
A search (or link) to a members photos would be useful.
Photo Data
Images are jpegs at medium and thumbnail resolution.
Meta data include the name of the copyright owner (or is it just the member?), a descriptive title, data and time (but of upload I would guess, not of the photograph itself). The title can contain links e.g. to related sites.
Each photograph is related to several categories.
It is a pity that the photographs do not appear to be geo-coded, because it would be nice to mash these up with Google Earth. There is often a description of the place which could be translated through a geo-coding service. Since some photos are taken from planes, altitude data is needed too.
Tagging and classification
Each photograph is classified into one or several of around 40 categories and hence linked to other photos in the same category through that category. The category system itself is interesting as a information construct. On the surface, it would seem that it would benefit from some hierarchy. e.g.
* All photos
** Cloud Type
*** Cumulus
**** Kelvin-Helmholtz wave cloud
***
** Cloud features
*** Contrails
***
** Time-of-Day
*** Sunrise
*** Sunset
** Optical Effects
*** Rainbow
*** Halo
***
and probably others.
It also seems that some category meta-data is embedded in the name - the numbers on Cloud types is a reference to the Chapters in the book. Clearly a general description of the category itself could also be part of the overall data structure. The book provides a hierarchical classification of cloud types which would be useful to include. There are also occasional synonyms embedded in the name -eg Mamma (also know as mammatus) which could be treated uniformly as category meta-data.
The task of classifying each photo into these categories is not open to the public or members but is seen as an expert task. However there are places, such as in the category of 'Clouds that look like things' where folksomony would seem to be appropriate. Photographs also sometimes contain objects e.g. balloons, planes, boats for which arbitrary tags seem suitable.
Upload
Rather surprisingly, photo upload, even by members, is not supported, and photos have to be emailed to the webmaster with accompanying meta data for upload and categorisation.
Rating and comments
The public can easily rate photos and add comments. The comments are generally expressions of appreciation of no interest to anyone but the photographer. There is no information on the basis of the rating - indeed all photos I've seen are rated 4.It is not clear what value this adds or indeed what is being rated - the photograph or the subject.
Compatibility and Accessibility
Images have alt tags but these are the copyright names, not the description of the image which would better aid the reader.
There are keywords in the page meta data but these are not photo specific.
XHTML compliance - main photo page shows 1 error and 17 warnings. Typically these are problems with table and div tag nesting and problems with & . The error is a non-HTML tag.
The display of some characters in the title is broken (on Firefox and IE) e.g this
API and Feeds
The site provides RSS2.0 and Atom feeds of the latest photo additions and a Feedburner link.
Technology
The scripting language is PHP, images are held as files, not held in the database. Not sure what database is used (probably MySQL?). CSS is used for styling. Small amount of Javascript e.g. for GIF rollover on the rating buttons and call to update the rating. One function is defined (flip) which is not used.
The program architecture uses a single index.php script with a parameter to determine what page type to return, rather than multiple scripts. Interesting design issue here.
Data Model
Saturday, January 20, 2007
Where I've been
Just discovered this little application which generates a GIF map of the world showing the countries you have visited.
So many places yet to see, and so much of places visited unseen like most of the States:
From Douwe Osinga, a Google engineer
So many places yet to see, and so much of places visited unseen like most of the States:
From Douwe Osinga, a Google engineer
Thursday, January 18, 2007
Voice snippets
I've been experimenting today with http://www.evoca.com/
A free account allows you to record and store up to 60 minutes of sound. This interface is simple to use. Sound can be captured from a number of sources but the easiest is directly from a microphone on the computer. Everything is done through the web interface. When the recording has been made, an HTML snippet is provided to paste where you need it, and this invokes a flash player.
I'm trying these as an addition to my blog for the DSA module
I suppose it will just pollute the airwaves, but maybe it offers another mode for information dissemination which may just help some students. For two lectures last year I recorded the whole lecture and mounted it as an MP3 file, but they very long and un-synchronised with the Powerpoint slides. I tried calling out slide numbers but it was reminiscent of the early soccer commentaries which used numbered squares (the origin I learnt today of the phrase 'back to square 1') .
A free account allows you to record and store up to 60 minutes of sound. This interface is simple to use. Sound can be captured from a number of sources but the easiest is directly from a microphone on the computer. Everything is done through the web interface. When the recording has been made, an HTML snippet is provided to paste where you need it, and this invokes a flash player.
I'm trying these as an addition to my blog for the DSA module
I suppose it will just pollute the airwaves, but maybe it offers another mode for information dissemination which may just help some students. For two lectures last year I recorded the whole lecture and mounted it as an MP3 file, but they very long and un-synchronised with the Powerpoint slides. I tried calling out slide numbers but it was reminiscent of the early soccer commentaries which used numbered squares (the origin I learnt today of the phrase 'back to square 1') .
Monday, January 15, 2007
Whisky - Laphroaig
This entry is a sample of data sources on a specific whisky - assembled here as a notepad for the workshop at SPA2007 and for the Data, Schemas and Applications module.
Laphroaig
Laphroaig Distillery,
Port Ellen,
Isle of Islay,
Argyll,
PA42 7DU Tel. 01496 302418
Home site
General
Types of information
Printed
Laphroaig
Laphroaig Distillery,
Port Ellen,
Isle of Islay,
Argyll,
PA42 7DU Tel. 01496 302418
Home site
General
- Scotland: Whiskies and Distilleries
- Wikipedia
- ScotchWhisky.net
- Whisky Magazine
- Scotland Whisky
- John Butler's site
Types of information
- Chronology
- Location
- Gooogle Map http://maps.google.com/maps?q=PA42%207DU
- Multimap http://www.multimap.com/map/browse.cgi?pc=PA427DU&scale=25000&cat=loc
- Wikipedia Geohack
- Pronunication - John Butler's site
- Taste http://www.whiskyclassified.com/laphroaig.html
- Tasting notes e.g. Mike Padlipsky
- Ownership - changing ownership - see the yearbook
- Bottlings http://www.laphroaig.com/whiskies/index.asp?expanded=our_whiskies
- Glossary http://www.whiskymag.com/words/
Printed
- Malt Whisky Yearbook 2006 p170
- Collins Gem Whisky p 171
Beyond Belief
I spent part of this weekend listening to the presentations at BeyondBelief2006 for which all sessions over the two and a half days are available as Flash video. A great resource to have provided and very well done. Ongoing discussion on the Edge.
Amongst the speakers, I was particularly taken with
Amongst the speakers, I was particularly taken with
- Carolyn Porco - the picture of Earth through the back-lit rings of Saturn is just wonderful.
- Harold Kroto - vega science trust
- Mahzarin Banaji - Implicit association tests
- Ann Druyan - Carl Sagan
Saturday, November 04, 2006
Double line spacing in Dissertations
It is standard practice to require dissertations to be double-spaced. In the age of word processors, one wonders why this practice persists. This must surely be a legacy from the days when dissertations were typewritten and students were allowed to make corrections in situ rather than re-print. Word processors have eliminated that problem. Double-spacing might also be suitable for drafts which require annotation for editing, but final copies of dissertations are not used in this way and modern techniques such as commenting do this job.
(Primo Levi's 'Chromium' in 'The Periodic Table' has several great examples of the way solutions to old probelms hang around even when the problem not longer exists.)
I have seen readability expressed as another reason for double-spacing. It's not easy to track down the evidence for this. Kruk and Muter(1984) report "single spacing produced reading that was 10.9% slower than that produced by double spacing" on a 'video' screen. Weller (2004) reports on a previous study that "It was discovered that single spacing of text requires more eye fixations per line and therefore fewer words are read per fixation, which increases reading time (Kohler, Duchnicky & Ferguson, 1981)." But Mills and Weldon (1987) report that this same study showed a 2% slowing of reading rate, hardly convicing evidence.
Other writers express the view that this convention is out-moded e.g. the author of the Tex manual : link
Princeton University now accepts single-spaced printed copies although ProQuest (an online dissertation repository) still requires double-spacing for the electronic copy ( and hence all printed copies therefrom). It is claimed that this improved on-line readability.
A PhD Student in the US has calculated that 20,000 reams of paper would be saved if ProQuest accepted single-spaced.
Double-spacing is often mandated in legal practice but even here the convention is challenged.
(Primo Levi's 'Chromium' in 'The Periodic Table' has several great examples of the way solutions to old probelms hang around even when the problem not longer exists.)
I have seen readability expressed as another reason for double-spacing. It's not easy to track down the evidence for this. Kruk and Muter(1984) report "single spacing produced reading that was 10.9% slower than that produced by double spacing" on a 'video' screen. Weller (2004) reports on a previous study that "It was discovered that single spacing of text requires more eye fixations per line and therefore fewer words are read per fixation, which increases reading time (Kohler, Duchnicky & Ferguson, 1981)." But Mills and Weldon (1987) report that this same study showed a 2% slowing of reading rate, hardly convicing evidence.
Other writers express the view that this convention is out-moded e.g. the author of the Tex manual : link
Princeton University now accepts single-spaced printed copies although ProQuest (an online dissertation repository) still requires double-spacing for the electronic copy ( and hence all printed copies therefrom). It is claimed that this improved on-line readability.
A PhD Student in the US has calculated that 20,000 reams of paper would be saved if ProQuest accepted single-spaced.
Double-spacing is often mandated in legal practice but even here the convention is challenged.
Monday, October 23, 2006
Declarative Processes
I am getting back to the declarative process work I began a couple of years ago. Peter Marks and Ben Moseley's session at SPA2006 got me started again.
I now have a partial implementation of a DVD rental application written in a declarative process style using eXist and XQuery. The essence of the design is to retain all events and compute the current state by the evaluation of predicates over the event trace. The rules are hard-coded in eXist functions in this demo. Rules are mostly XPath expressions. For example
Much more work is needed to see how well this model will fit with other processes. Some applications include:
The Alloy language (Daniel Jackson, MIT)
Peter Marks and Ben Moseley - Functional Relational Programming, SPA 2007, FRP site
Work on rule-based language has had a rough ride - several projects in this area (e.g. BRML) are defunct. Some activity in R2ML and RuleML.
I now have a partial implementation of a DVD rental application written in a declarative process style using eXist and XQuery. The essence of the design is to retain all events and compute the current state by the evaluation of predicates over the event trace. The rules are hard-coded in eXist functions in this demo. Rules are mostly XPath expressions. For example
- To find the current address for a person $p given SetAddress events
- events($p)[SetAddress][last()]//address
- To find the address at $date
- events($p)[SetAddress][@date < $date][last()]//address
- To check if a member is suspended given Suspend and Reinstate events
- exists( events($p)[Suspend or Reinstate][last()][Suspend])
- the state of the system can be evaluated at any time in the past by filtering the event stream for events before the specified date
- if the rules are held as data, the state can be computed synoptically (i.e. according to rules applicable at the time) - but how should they be encoded - as executable XQuery expressions?
- changes in rules are supported, allowing re-interpretation of the past
- subjective rules are supported although only within the event language created
- 'what-if' analysis is supported, allowing questions to be asked about the impact of changes in the rules
- rules are robust to insertion of other events
- the event history is often required to understand what has happened and why so there is no addition storage requirement
- The computational cost is higher than simply fetching a simple value
- Writing declarative rules is not easy and will need a higher level language
- The approach requires a global model of the system, so its applicable to systems but not to distributed systems
- It's not yet clear what range of behaviour is expressable
Much more work is needed to see how well this model will fit with other processes. Some applications include:
- lightweight processes - e.g. academic processes such as setting and marking coursework
- descriptive models of real processes and their subsequent analysis for process improvement
The Alloy language (Daniel Jackson, MIT)
Peter Marks and Ben Moseley - Functional Relational Programming, SPA 2007, FRP site
Work on rule-based language has had a rough ride - several projects in this area (e.g. BRML) are defunct. Some activity in R2ML and RuleML.
Friday, August 04, 2006
America
Time to forget about University and the project. Tomorrow we're off to the USA for adventure and catching up with friends and relatives.
Here is a link to a GoogleEarth overlay containing the main places we are visiting:
Trip on Google Earth
Photos from the Minnesota trip are now up on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/paddlers9/
Here is a link to a GoogleEarth overlay containing the main places we are visiting:
Trip on Google Earth
Photos from the Minnesota trip are now up on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/paddlers9/
Sunday, June 04, 2006
eXist examples
I now have somewhere to host my example XML database examples.
http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/chriswallace/index.xql
This supercedes the previous hosts for my teaching applications on a friend's server and on the exist-db demo server.
There are a few there, but further development will have to wait till the end of the term. Few typos I've just spotted :- (
One problem I faced was to allow a visitor to view the Xquery files themselves. I initially saw this as a eXist problem, needing an eXist solution, and indeed Adam, one of the eXist developers, put in a feature to support this. However I slowly realised that if I wanted to put up a number of examples (there are about 9 in various stages of development) , I should develop a schema for an application index page, and individual XML configuration files instead of writing unique pages. I can then use XSLT to display the page. If I then wrote an Xquery to fetch a query and display it , I could use the application configuration XML to authorise access to the scripts.
This experience prompted or reminded me of a couple of computing adages:
In future, I want to enhance this configuration file to be a description of the application architecture and information flow, so I can also generate, via GraphViz, a clickable SVG image of the application.
That's the problem with eXist and XQuery: this technology greatly reduces the time needed to create an application, but it increases the range of ideas for applicatins which can be easily implemented even more!
http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/chriswallace/index.xql
This supercedes the previous hosts for my teaching applications on a friend's server and on the exist-db demo server.
There are a few there, but further development will have to wait till the end of the term. Few typos I've just spotted :- (
One problem I faced was to allow a visitor to view the Xquery files themselves. I initially saw this as a eXist problem, needing an eXist solution, and indeed Adam, one of the eXist developers, put in a feature to support this. However I slowly realised that if I wanted to put up a number of examples (there are about 9 in various stages of development) , I should develop a schema for an application index page, and individual XML configuration files instead of writing unique pages. I can then use XSLT to display the page. If I then wrote an Xquery to fetch a query and display it , I could use the application configuration XML to authorise access to the scripts.
This experience prompted or reminded me of a couple of computing adages:
- The only numbers of importance in computing are 1, 2 and many- with its meta counting variant: 1, 2, Schema
- Use of the configuration file to generate the web page and to authorise access to the script as an example of the Shanley principle - in which one component serves multiple purposes see Michael Jackson, Software Requirements and Specifications, Addison-Wesley 1995, p29-30].
In future, I want to enhance this configuration file to be a description of the application architecture and information flow, so I can also generate, via GraphViz, a clickable SVG image of the application.
That's the problem with eXist and XQuery: this technology greatly reduces the time needed to create an application, but it increases the range of ideas for applicatins which can be easily implemented even more!
Monday, March 13, 2006
RSS
Discovered bbc backstage this morning whilst researching for my lecture on Web services and REST. As an experiment, I thought I'd add a page of RSS-derived links to the FOLD. I shouldn't still be surprised by this, but it only took a few lines to add a primitive page.
I've put the demo up on the exist demo site. There is also a version which generates Voice+XML to make a real newsreader. It needs Opera 8 with the speech extension and there is only a selection of two American voices but it handles the task very well.
I've put the demo up on the exist demo site. There is also a version which generates Voice+XML to make a real newsreader. It needs Opera 8 with the speech extension and there is only a selection of two American voices but it handles the task very well.
Monday, March 06, 2006
Cellular automata and Processing
I've just re-discovered my Processing application which implements the generalised Conway Game of Life. The interface allows you to set any rule - for each of the counts of alive neighbours, whether a dead cell lives or a live cell dies. You can also run Conway's rule or generate a random rule.
Here it is
and here is my Processing page
What it doesnt have is any way to register interesting rules the viewer may discover. I discovered a nice one today: l2d=134&d2l=157 which shows constantly varying interesting behaviour - perhaps for a screen saver. Also l2d=125&d2l=3568&id=0.1 which is a slow converger to nearly all white with a few blinkers.
So two jobs to do: One to allow finds to be registered and commented on, the other to take automata specification from the URL in a form like that above. Both seem very Web2.0 - the first enabling participation, the second a unique url for every resource.
Apart from being a exercise in writing Processing, I use it in a lecture on Processes and Emergence.
'Processing' is a poor brand name (try searching for it!) [like eXist in that regard] but a wonderful little language for animations. Developed by two design students form MIT, Ben Fry and Casey Reas, it is open-source software with a really nice little IDE, Java-based (it generates a Java applet) with some great examples of both animations and information display. A much better introduction to programming than full-on Java I think and a candidate for a first language, partly because it places emphasis on algorithms and change, not structure and stasis. Its also much simpler than Flash Actionscript as well as non-propriatory.
Here are some of my favourite Processing examples
Zipcodes by Ben Fry - locates a US Zipcode
Flight Patterns by Aaron Goblin - visualising the flights of planes in the US on a single day
Dreamlines by Leonardo Solaas - a Flickr/Processing mash-up
Here it is
and here is my Processing page
What it doesnt have is any way to register interesting rules the viewer may discover. I discovered a nice one today: l2d=134&d2l=157 which shows constantly varying interesting behaviour - perhaps for a screen saver. Also l2d=125&d2l=3568&id=0.1 which is a slow converger to nearly all white with a few blinkers.
So two jobs to do: One to allow finds to be registered and commented on, the other to take automata specification from the URL in a form like that above. Both seem very Web2.0 - the first enabling participation, the second a unique url for every resource.
Apart from being a exercise in writing Processing, I use it in a lecture on Processes and Emergence.
'Processing' is a poor brand name (try searching for it!) [like eXist in that regard] but a wonderful little language for animations. Developed by two design students form MIT, Ben Fry and Casey Reas, it is open-source software with a really nice little IDE, Java-based (it generates a Java applet) with some great examples of both animations and information display. A much better introduction to programming than full-on Java I think and a candidate for a first language, partly because it places emphasis on algorithms and change, not structure and stasis. Its also much simpler than Flash Actionscript as well as non-propriatory.
Here are some of my favourite Processing examples
Zipcodes by Ben Fry - locates a US Zipcode
Flight Patterns by Aaron Goblin - visualising the flights of planes in the US on a single day
Dreamlines by Leonardo Solaas - a Flickr/Processing mash-up
Saturday, February 11, 2006
Family Relationships
The family album site really needs generalized deduction. The deductions about dates and ages are hand coded:
deduce the date of the photo:
photo.deduceddate =
(photo.date,
{ some subject s | s.birthday and photo.s.age | s.birthday + photo.s.age},
)[1]
deduce the age of the subjects:
all s: subject |
s.deducedage = (photo.s.age, photo.deduceddate + s.deducedage)[1]
One neat trick would be to calculate relative relationships: if the viewer is x and the subject is s then what is s to x ( great great grand uncle or even the more verbose - your father's father's father's brother)
This calls for a Prolog engine perhaps
Possibilities include
[sites which are undated are just terrible - I must remember that on my own site]
deduce the date of the photo:
photo.deduceddate =
(photo.date,
{ some subject s | s.birthday and photo.s.age | s.birthday + photo.s.age},
)[1]
deduce the age of the subjects:
all s: subject |
s.deducedage = (photo.s.age, photo.deduceddate + s.deducedage)[1]
One neat trick would be to calculate relative relationships: if the viewer is x and the subject is s then what is s to x ( great great grand uncle or even the more verbose - your father's father's father's brother)
This calls for a Prolog engine perhaps
Possibilities include
- PyLog a Prolog translater for Python
- A number of Prolog engines listed here but this looks very old.
[sites which are undated are just terrible - I must remember that on my own site]
Sunday, February 05, 2006
Exist NDX web server
Paul has generously provided me with space on his server to install exist in its Jetty configuration. This provides me with an external site which I can use with GoogleMaps. So far I've been putting up the family history site.
Developing on this site is much more immediate that with my typical FTP enabled site. With the Java client, I can work directly on the database , editing code, uploading scripts and photos and executing test queries. There is also a rather safer web interface. Great for rapid development. I was working on improving the XSLT and looking at the problem of aliases (maiden names usually) . I'm so used to using the oh-so-useful generalised = in Xquery that I forgot that Xalan is still on XSLT 1.0 with XPath 1.0, whereas XQuery uses XPath 2.0. This generalisation is the main difference to hit me but its so useful and a pain to have to replace with the inferior contains(). In fact I'm really struggling with alias still.
One idea is to develop this family history with my brother Richard and my nephew, Reddyn, in New Zealand, who I have sadly neglected. Here we could all work together in a very Web 2.0 collaboration. Hope they run with the idea.
Developing on this site is much more immediate that with my typical FTP enabled site. With the Java client, I can work directly on the database , editing code, uploading scripts and photos and executing test queries. There is also a rather safer web interface. Great for rapid development. I was working on improving the XSLT and looking at the problem of aliases (maiden names usually) . I'm so used to using the oh-so-useful generalised = in Xquery that I forgot that Xalan is still on XSLT 1.0 with XPath 1.0, whereas XQuery uses XPath 2.0. This generalisation is the main difference to hit me but its so useful and a pain to have to replace with the inferior contains(). In fact I'm really struggling with alias still.
One idea is to develop this family history with my brother Richard and my nephew, Reddyn, in New Zealand, who I have sadly neglected. Here we could all work together in a very Web 2.0 collaboration. Hope they run with the idea.
Tag Clouds
Just been playing with generating tag clouds, based on the UCAS keywords which I obtained before Christmas. These are now integrated into the view of programmes, but perhaps all such relationships are worth reversing - here keyword to programme - and the obvious way to do this is with a tag cloud. Ian reminds me of my play with Postscript, generating exam result lists in fonts scaled to the mark itself. The big plus here was that when students were sorted into ascending order of the overall average, you could see at a glance how well each separate exam correlated with the overall.
My tag cloud uses xquery and xslt. First pass to compute the tags and counts, then compute min and max counts from this computed element, and a scaling factor, all in Xquery. XSLT generates the cloud, computing a fontsize based on the count. All a bit slow but it does the job.
I've also just realised a feature of most clouds I've seen - double description [Bateson]. That is tags are not only scaled in size but intensity is increased as well. Newzingo uses a 7 point scale, not the continuous variation I'd assumed from my Postscript days, where both font size and red intensity increase together. Clouds differ in the link styles - default isnt appropriate since it's just a page of links, but just what style is best? I've set the title attribute on my tags, containing the course codes themselves for a quick check but this seems to conflict with hover styling.
But I wonder how to use the comparative idea here - so that keywords in one faculty can be contrasted with those in another, in order to visualise the difference between the two faculties. Perhaps the trick would be a single map which can be dynamicly switched between the two - perhaps even programmed to do so, like a flicker star-map comparator. I would need to get the two maps to register, so that there is a single merged map, but words can be turned on or off - perhaps I'd have to drop the size scaling since this will alter the position of text. Just coluring the text by coding for the datasets and varying the intensity proportional to importance.
Since our new VC seems likely to be merging faculties, this might be a useful tool for him to see which ones to merge - quelle horreur - its just the way this visualisation might be used!
My tag cloud uses xquery and xslt. First pass to compute the tags and counts, then compute min and max counts from this computed element, and a scaling factor, all in Xquery. XSLT generates the cloud, computing a fontsize based on the count. All a bit slow but it does the job.
I've also just realised a feature of most clouds I've seen - double description [Bateson]. That is tags are not only scaled in size but intensity is increased as well. Newzingo uses a 7 point scale, not the continuous variation I'd assumed from my Postscript days, where both font size and red intensity increase together. Clouds differ in the link styles - default isnt appropriate since it's just a page of links, but just what style is best? I've set the title attribute on my tags, containing the course codes themselves for a quick check but this seems to conflict with hover styling.
But I wonder how to use the comparative idea here - so that keywords in one faculty can be contrasted with those in another, in order to visualise the difference between the two faculties. Perhaps the trick would be a single map which can be dynamicly switched between the two - perhaps even programmed to do so, like a flicker star-map comparator. I would need to get the two maps to register, so that there is a single merged map, but words can be turned on or off - perhaps I'd have to drop the size scaling since this will alter the position of text. Just coluring the text by coding for the datasets and varying the intensity proportional to importance.
Since our new VC seems likely to be merging faculties, this might be a useful tool for him to see which ones to merge - quelle horreur - its just the way this visualisation might be used!
Friday, January 20, 2006
More Google mashups
More play with map-based mashups. This evening, using programmableweb's listing , I found Flash Earth, a Google Earth mashup. Here's the link to a narrow siq in the Wadi Rum area in Jordan, one of several with old inscriptions carved in the sandstone.
This memory game is a neat idea, using yahoo images to populate a layout of images to play pairs (or memory).
But my favourite is Community Walk Last night I started to create a walk around the university campus - just a single, rather bland view of our building - perhaps this is not such a good idea if we want to attract students. Later I started one for our trip to Jordan. Just three photos uploaded at present, and I'm uncertain about the location of one of these - I can''t seem to find the location of Petra. I do wish I'd keep the GPS data since I had the Garmin with me to check heights and distances, but at that time, the advantages of geo-coding photographs just hadn't occured to me. Maybe a student project to make a camera and GPS lashup. What would be really nice would be to add a fluxgate compass too, so the photo is coded with the direction in which the camera was pointing as well.
Just found another UK mashup of all UK schools It shows the location of all UK schools, locates the nearest 20 to a specified location, highlights the marker from a list of school names and their Ofsted rating (at least for Independent Schools).
Finally on this bit of research, located Barry Hunter's work on at nearby.org.uk which offers a REST interface for conversion between a range of different coordinate systems, e.g. Postcode to Lat/long. Will be very handy for the FamilyHistory mashup, although the postcode is only down to sector level - not enough accuracy for this application, and I suppose there's not much extra work in hand-coding this number of locations.
This memory game is a neat idea, using yahoo images to populate a layout of images to play pairs (or memory).
But my favourite is Community Walk Last night I started to create a walk around the university campus - just a single, rather bland view of our building - perhaps this is not such a good idea if we want to attract students. Later I started one for our trip to Jordan. Just three photos uploaded at present, and I'm uncertain about the location of one of these - I can''t seem to find the location of Petra. I do wish I'd keep the GPS data since I had the Garmin with me to check heights and distances, but at that time, the advantages of geo-coding photographs just hadn't occured to me. Maybe a student project to make a camera and GPS lashup. What would be really nice would be to add a fluxgate compass too, so the photo is coded with the direction in which the camera was pointing as well.
Just found another UK mashup of all UK schools It shows the location of all UK schools, locates the nearest 20 to a specified location, highlights the marker from a list of school names and their Ofsted rating (at least for Independent Schools).
Finally on this bit of research, located Barry Hunter's work on at nearby.org.uk which offers a REST interface for conversion between a range of different coordinate systems, e.g. Postcode to Lat/long. Will be very handy for the FamilyHistory mashup, although the postcode is only down to sector level - not enough accuracy for this application, and I suppose there's not much extra work in hand-coding this number of locations.
Tuesday, January 17, 2006
Beginner's Mashup
I've been playing with integrating maps into my family history photo album. The idea is to place each photo in time, place and (through the people in the photo) in the web of family relationships.
The first attempt uses an XML file of photo meta-data, transformed with a simple XSLT on the client-side. This transformation is to a table of data with links to the raw jpegs, map positions (courtesy of Multimap) and years (thanks wikipedia). No relationships yet. Hardly a mashup, since the context data is linked only with URLs.
The second attempt uses Google maps. Now the map is embedded in the photo page, much closer coupling afforded by the use of Javascript. The step of including the Google Javascript source is coupled with authorisation via URL parameters- a neat application of the Shanley principle. The XSLT caused me a bit of pain here when generating the Javascript and it's still not right: the transformed HTML works fine in IE6 and if generated client-side with XALAN, but its no good on Firefox which just spins.
I now have to think how the students will use and develop this example: their server is inside our firewall and so Google won't be able to issue a key. They need a server in the DMZ for this I guess but we need that for the new Internet Applications Development module for September this year.
The first attempt uses an XML file of photo meta-data, transformed with a simple XSLT on the client-side. This transformation is to a table of data with links to the raw jpegs, map positions (courtesy of Multimap) and years (thanks wikipedia). No relationships yet. Hardly a mashup, since the context data is linked only with URLs.
The second attempt uses Google maps. Now the map is embedded in the photo page, much closer coupling afforded by the use of Javascript. The step of including the Google Javascript source is coupled with authorisation via URL parameters- a neat application of the Shanley principle. The XSLT caused me a bit of pain here when generating the Javascript and it's still not right: the transformed HTML works fine in IE6 and if generated client-side with XALAN, but its no good on Firefox which just spins.
I now have to think how the students will use and develop this example: their server is inside our firewall and so Google won't be able to issue a key. They need a server in the DMZ for this I guess but we need that for the new Internet Applications Development module for September this year.
Sunday, January 15, 2006
The title
The title is an echo of Alfred Russel Wallace's Line through the Malay Archipeligo which he postulated to explain the differences he observed in bird and animal species. The line runs between Borneo and Sulawesi, and between Bali and Lombok, Asian species (such as tigers) to the west , Australiasian species (such as marsupials) to the east. Nowadays the theory of tectonic plates and land bridges during ice ages provides an explanation for this disjuncture.
My appropriation is hardly warranted: ARW is no relation of mine, and I'm a teacher of computing, not natural history. I have crossed the Wallace line however, when a few years ago, my wife and I circumnavigated in our yacht Perdika of Bristol. It was in fact quite a struggle. The current flow through all these straits is fierce and we crabbed our way from Lombok to Bali, pointing fully 40 degrees north of our track over land, and later when motoring northwards up the strait, finding the inshore counter-current frighteningly close to the Bali shore.
The title also reflects the nature of a blog, a time-line of writing. I'm interested in time-lines and the representation of complex event-spaces at present, partly as a domain to use in my second year course on data structures which this semester will be looking at XML and XML databases, eXist in particular. I've also started to do a bit of genealogical research into my personal 'Wallace Line' and discovered how addictive this detective work is. From census records available online at scotlandspeople.gov.uk, I find that my great-grandfather (or rather one of four of course) Ebenezer Wallace was a wine merchant in Edinburgh in the 1880's, a fact which makes my own consumption of good wines now feel like a family duty.
My appropriation is hardly warranted: ARW is no relation of mine, and I'm a teacher of computing, not natural history. I have crossed the Wallace line however, when a few years ago, my wife and I circumnavigated in our yacht Perdika of Bristol. It was in fact quite a struggle. The current flow through all these straits is fierce and we crabbed our way from Lombok to Bali, pointing fully 40 degrees north of our track over land, and later when motoring northwards up the strait, finding the inshore counter-current frighteningly close to the Bali shore.
The title also reflects the nature of a blog, a time-line of writing. I'm interested in time-lines and the representation of complex event-spaces at present, partly as a domain to use in my second year course on data structures which this semester will be looking at XML and XML databases, eXist in particular. I've also started to do a bit of genealogical research into my personal 'Wallace Line' and discovered how addictive this detective work is. From census records available online at scotlandspeople.gov.uk, I find that my great-grandfather (or rather one of four of course) Ebenezer Wallace was a wine merchant in Edinburgh in the 1880's, a fact which makes my own consumption of good wines now feel like a family duty.
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