Fuel

I have a 2 litre car nothing out of the ordinary and it's a petrol powered. I just paid £77 to fill it up, what's going on?

This driving a car is starting to real expensive...


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Rest

I must admit that this weekend I have had rest from the computer and my blog.


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Semantic Properties

this is just a note to me;

actor has a property of a person

sex has a property of male but also female, how to code this?

Semantic wiki says

[[Is a director::Dirk Maggs]]

"Is a director" is the name of the property
"Dirk Maggs" is a property

Reading

I have some how managed to finish a book that I have been reading for the last couple of weeks or so.

The book is called The Strangest man and its by Graham Farmelo is about the Quantum genius Paul Dirac.

I have to admit that I had already heard of Dirac and what one of his discoveries was in the world of Quantum physics. So finding a book on this bloke it was always to me going to be interesting to see what made this man tick.

I don't think the book pulls that part off completely, and from what I know understand of the man I don't think any book will capture what or how Dirac ticked.

The book makes it very clear that Dirac saw the world in a different way and that may have been the reason why he was so good at what he did.

One sad fact that this book reinforces for me is that must original thought in the bleeding edge of human thought appears to me over by your late thirties, which from some of my reading appears to hold if you are male or female and it does not matter from part of the planet you are from.

Anyway back to the book.

The is well worth reading as it does explain the man and the world that he was brought up in and what the state of human knowledge was with the atom and all that sort of stuff in the late thirties, so well worth the time.

Blog

I have just had a bit of a shock on just how many blog entries I have done for both the year and the month. It would appear that I have already exceeded in two months what took me a year in the past.

I have put this down to the fact that I now have the tools which allow me to blog as and when an idea hits me.

The two tools are the iPad which is my favourite gadget at this time as I can do most things that I need to do without using a computer or laptop and it stores and plays back my music really well.

The second tool is a software package called BlogPress which is Woking well and does all at this time that I need it to do.

The third tool is something that is built into the iPad and that's the spell checker, which a tool I really need and have to use a lot. So far it appears to catch most of my spelling mistakes and almost all of my typing errors, which has got to be good.

The other change is that as this is my notebook of ideas it's not unreasonable for me to make many blog posts a day, in fact I don't care how many or how few I make, and I also don't care if I don't make any at all.

I have just for fun also changed the layout and the colour scheme of the blog, and for some reason have also allowed Google to put some ads on the blog, which I must admit don't get in the way too much with the most important thing the blog posts.

I must admit that I do wonder if anyone ever sees my posts, but at the end of the day I do this blog for me and no one else, if someone is does find this blog and reads it good luck to them, I have yet to find out how to find out if any one other than the bots ever see this blog, as it must be one in the millions out there.


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Dirk Maggs Wiki

I have to admit that the continuing problem with working out how to code the actors data is starting to get me down a bit. One of the problems is that so far every idea that I have come up with as a way to encode the data when I think about it even more I keep finding that it does not work.

So my latest idea is to see if out of the 400 odd semantic wiki's that are supposed to be out there is to see if any of them have something that is similar to my actors problem, the only thing is I have yet to work out what other data out there look similar to my actors encoding problem.

I am sure that I will work it out.

My other idea that I had was to put up the standard pages and then just add the properties tag to the different bits of data, but for some reason I think that this might be such a good idea.


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Daylight

Just a note to me that as we get to the end of February the day brightness to me appears to be increase as well as the day length , all I can say is great.


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James Follett

My Website

Had proof today that at least one other person has been on my James Follett website which is nice, as the site has not had a lot of work done on it over the last few months, mainly due to the fact that there is no new information and so not much has happened in the way of an update to the site.

So to all intents and purposes the site is in hibernation as there is nothing to add to, although not for want of trying but I have a very good excuse in that James has not produced anything new in a while, in fact I am beginning to worrying that he has now retired and there will not be anything new to report on. I hope that I am wrong.

Perhaps I will be lucky and find something new to add to the site later this year.

Sunshine

So today after I don't know how many days is a sunny day!

And I have to admit that it's great to see the sun and some blue sky. I was starting to think that blue skies were a myth.


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Wiki templates and lost properties

My current project as you would know if you have been reading this blog is to create a semantic version of my Dirk Maggs website in a wiki format, the idea being that if the data is stored in a format that can be accessed by computers then I should be able to do searches and presents data in easier to control formats, well that's the idea.

Well things have got just a little bit stuck in that I can't seem to work out how to have all the different actors for the different productions coded as properties in an easy to maintain way.

It is prop ably due to me not fully understanding the strange vocabulary that semantics has, I suppose that any technical subject will always suffer from the same thing, that is buzz worked and specialist vocabulary which is I suspect a byproduct of what ever specialist subject you happen to be in.

So to get back to the subject in hand I have I am afraid to say stuck, I feel that I need to sort this problem now before I do too much work as redoing it is not something I want to repeat.

So I am going to do what I think others have done
, that's the 400 folks who have managed to get their semantic wiki's working and that's to look at how they did it, I am hopeful that at least one of them will have something that is similar to what I need for my website.

I shall as usual report back if I make any headway, or if I find a wiki site that has the information or even clues as to what I need.


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Dirk Maggs Semantic wiki part 3

So I have the wiki mostly working I think.

I even have an understanding of sorts what properties I need for all the different data there is for each Dirk Maggs production.

The problem that I don't know how to solve is how do I code all the actors in a production.

One of Dirks productions has some 20 different actors in it!

Just to add to the fun just tried to go to the wiki site which I notice I have not listed here is;

Http/:www.dswilliams.co.uk/aee

Is not working!

Why nothing ekes has been done to the site so I hope it's a glitch at the IP website

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Semantic Dirk Maggs wiki part 2

Well I think I must be thick or some thing as things are not going to well on the semantic wiki front, this is where I have got to and where I am stuck.

I have the wiki working and the semantic extension working and working well.

I have the semantic template working and I have worked out what properties I think I need for all the data that there is for each audio production.

The problem that I have is setting up the forms and the templates so that they link together in such a way as they work correctly so that I can see all of say the productions made in a particular year or month.

The other problem that I have not yet worked out is how to tie in all the actors to the different productions so that I could then have a query that will show all the productions that particular actor has worked in for any of Dirks productions.

Perhaps I have not fully understood the property side of this semantic wiki yet.


The other problem that I have not even looked at is how to store all the synopsis information for each production or each episode of each production.

So far I think I have created some 80 different properties and at the rate that I am going that is only going to get bigger as I am sure I will have overlooked stuff that needs to be captured.

I think I am beginning to see why there are only some 400 semantic wikis in the world and it's all down to the fact that the software tools out there just are not yet ready for mainstream use.




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Semantic Properties

So as you know if you have been reading my blog I have been trying to set up a semantic wiki based on all the production work of British director producer Dirk Maggs.

So far the progress has been good in that I have the wiki working, I have the semantic extension also working, which is very good as without it I wouldn't have a semantic wiki would I?

The problem I have now hit is this I have to define all the different properties of the different items of information that I want to code up.

Some items are easy others less so, I did a quick paper check on just how many items I think I need to have properties for and it's over twenty!

I also have to work out how to encode all these into a semantic template so that it makes it easier later on to enter the data. As I have to do every production that Dirk has done since 1987 that's a lot of productions, as some years he was very productive, others less so but I think you get the general idea that there is a lot of information that needs to be put into the wiki so any thing I can do to make the process easier has got to be good news hasn't it?


So I will report back as and when I make any progress.


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Dirk Maggs Productions

So what has happened to Dirk Maggs and his radio productions?

I don't know!

But I do know away to find out!


That's to ask the man himself.


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Things

Just found that the iPad has emotional icons such as :)


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Web site

The Dirk Maggs website that I run has I must admit been very quite of late mainly due to the fact that Dirk has not had many productions on the BBC of late due I think to how stuff is now commissioned.

It's sad that the BBc just not produce or even air as many radio plays as it used to.

Why the change I just don't know but I suppose that somewhere out there is someone who knows and has very good reasons for the change which for me personally is not a change for the better but then who am I to complain I am only one person.

I have not seen on the web or even print anyone else making the same point as me so perhaps I am wrong on this.



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Semantic website

Work on the semantic website of mine is going on I did try to do the development offline, you know as a localhost.

But for reasons that I can yet work out it did not work correctly when trying to use semantic templates in the mediawiki, for some reason it just did not work and came up with errors that made no sense to me.

So I bit the bullet as they say and have set up a website on my web host, which this time I am hopeful I have locked down hard so that I don't get any script kiddies playing on it.

So far all is going well in that all the semantic Estabrooks that I have added are untapped and working, the troublesome semantic templates are working and I have got my first semantic form working and it put the data I entered into the right places on the wiki.

I have also managed to get the front page working in such a way that you can see at a glance what changes have been made to the wiki.

I am now using a pencil and paper to work out what data I actually need to encode all the different information I have on all the different Dirk Maggs productions, there is a lot of data and there are a lot of productions that need their data encoding in such a way that I can get the system to find links in the data that would be hard work to do by hand, which hopefully the programme can do in seconds.

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Test

Testing the new software so far it all appears to be working well which is good as I have spent a whole 1.79 on this.

So far it work and I have managed to upload a post which is good as that's the whole idea of it


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Software

Just trying out some new software that is supposed to make it easier to blog on the iPad and then to upload to my blog.


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Tom Tom

I have a Tom Tom xl live or whatever it's now called one of the things that I like about it is that it warns you of any hold ups and will reroute you if the reroute is quicker than the hold up.

It's also very good at warning you of speed cameras and what speed your daughter is driving you at!

Not that I would say anything to her about the speed that she is driving at.

Passenger

Being a passenger while being driven to Portsmouth by ones daughter is I think a nice experience.

It's even better if you are in the back seat and you have your iPad with you it makes the hour long journey easier and the times seems to go by very quickly.

Spring

I think that spring is just a little bit nearer today, as I saw both my first daffodil and the first blossom on a flowering tree, what type of tree I just don't know but it was nice just to see two signs of spring.

Portsmouth

Shopping in Portsmouth with wife and daughter today I don't think I have been in so many women,s clothes shops for years, when those two shop they really mean it and goat it as if it was an Olympic sport and that both of them want to get the gold medal.

Semantic websites rare

I think and I am not sure on this that I said in an earlier blog post that semantic websites are very rare.

The figure that I have is that there are just 400 known websites, which for a technology that started back in 2005!

The number to me is very low, why it should be I don't know but one thing that I did think of was that perhaps the software to do all the semantic stuff was and is still in it's early stages of development and that as the software matures it will become much easier to setup and run a semantic website, I suppose only time will tell if I am right.

I must admit that so far what I have seen of the semantic wiki has me wondering if I have jumped on to this semantic thing just a bit to early and that the software and all of that is not yet ready for the mainstream user.

Semantic Blog

While I have been learning all about semantic wiki's I came across the idea of semantic blogs, which with my limited knowledge of the subject I find hard to understand how it would work so that the task of doing the casual blog post would not get blocked by doing the stuff you need to do to make the post semantic.

I also have yet to find any free software that would allow you to do a semantic post to your blog.

As I use blogger to host my blog I have little chance at this time of being able to have a semantic blog until google offer to host or modify the software that drives the blogger website.

At this time I can't find at this time a reason why they would want to offer users of blogger the chance to turn there blogs into semantic ones, unless I suppose it in some way will allow them to do searching and the finding of information better.

Who knows may be as I write this they are already working on it or something like it, if so I claim that I said it first!

Semantic wiki

Well got the media wiki working, installed the semantic bundle and I have now also got that working.

I think from my reading of what documents I have found so far that I have to use semantic forms to get the data in the format that I need and to set up how the semantic data I want is coded into the pages.

Luckily I have found a how to do it page which walks through what you have to do to set up the forms, templates and links so I think that's what I shall be doing over the next few days.

I have also found out that the total number of semantic websites in the world is about 400!

So it would appear that what I am trying to do is not yet very common!

So I don't think it's that surprising that set one up and then to also populate it is not going to be easy.

So I will report back as I make progress.

Car tax

Just got my car tax demand through it seems to have jumped in cost

Figs

Today is the very first time that I have eaten a fresh fig.

Even now I am not sure if I like it or not the taste and the flavour were okay it was the texture that has left me wondering about it.

Of course it might also be that the fig that I rate was not fully ripe, but as I have never eaten a fresh one I would not know would I?

Semantic

I had to look up the word semantic

Its not a word that i use in everyday speech, and I think I would not be far wrong in saying that most people don't use it either!

Mediawiki

I have started again to look at this software, which I have used in that past and have had a lot of fun with it and learned a lot about how to set databases and stuff like that.

The software has got better and o think easier to use since the last time I used it, which has got to be a good thing.

One of the things that I want to do this time with the software is to look at all the extensions that people have added to the software that you can now download and install.

The last time I played with mediating the date that I was putting into was based on stuff from my Dirk Maggs website.

One of the problems that I had last time was that there was a lot of information that was facts and figures and without making lots of either categories or hand made lists I could not at that time see any easy way to present this information or indeed how to find the information in an easy to find way.

Well the good news is that I think I may have found an extension to mediating that will allow me to code the information in such a way that will allow me to easily find and present the information and also to find new connections to different bits of the information.

The only problem is there does appear to be a bit of a learning curve as the way the information is coded is different to how you would normally code stuff in a wiki.

The extension is called semantic wiki and it appears that this is cutting edge stuff and I suspect the way that information on the Internet is going to get coded in the future on wiki sites. As there appears to be a lot of information that computers can not get at.

As the semantic wiki is new to me there are a lot of new terms that I don't understand so I think that it is going to be a while before I get out anything that is worth seeing, but rest a assured that once I do get something that is worth looking at I will put a link up on this blog of mine so that you can have a look.

It goes without saying that if you are looking at this blog post in the future all of the links might and probably don't work anymore and I will have gone on to something else.

So to recap I am looking forward to learning how to use a semantic website and wiki and it will be interesting to see of it will code and be able to present the information I have in the ways that I need it for my website.

I am going to use my Dirk Maggs website as the basis for the semantic wiki of mine as it has lots of data like dates and duration of all the different programmes that Dirk has done.

One of the things that I hope that it will allow me to solve is this;

I have on the website possibly 200 or 300 different actors and actresses who over the years have worked on more than one radio show or play, I want to be able to type in their name in a search box and for the wiki to come up with a list of all the productions that that actor has been in.

At the last time of trying this I could not get it to work.

Another question which is fairly similar to the above is what is the duration of each play and which is the most common format and duration of the productions that actor or actress has been in.

So I am hoping that the semantic wiki can help or even sort out these questions that's assuming that I understand what a semantic wiki can and cannot do.

Sundog

Saw my first sun dog of the year while driving home, it was a really bright one with some really dramatic sky behind it and to the side of it, what annoyed me was that I could not stop to take a picture of it.

Valentines day

I see that the card company's and lots of others I now trying to make sure that valentines day is a big spend a bit like Easter or even Xmas.

I think that it has just become an way of making money, which is sad as it's supposed to be a pagin day!

Music

Just downloaded a new album from Above&Beyond and I must admit getting over 300 minutes for £7.99 does to me seem like a good deal.

So far the music has been great

New printer

So finally after what seems like for ever we have gone and got ourselves a new printer.

As we have got sick and tired of paying an absolute fortune for ink and also because we wanted a wifi printer we went for a kodak printer.

The wifi setup was very easy and it work a treat.

I even managed to download a free app which let's me print photos from my iPad.

All I now have to do is find an app which will let me print from my word apps and my iPad is finally connected.

So far the printer is working well and the results of the scan and print are also good.

Cost of in is very good and much much cheaper than the old printer.

Dates

Can you have a date with your wife?

Can you have an affair with your wife?

I don't know the answers to these questions, but it's fun I think to ask them cause if you don't ask them who will?

I think when I get the chance I will give the Internet a good going over and see if anyone else has asked these questions and if they came up with any answers

Games

Why is it that certain games you like as soon as you see them and others no matter how much you see them and how many times you see them played they just don't do anything for you?

I don't know the answer to the above question but it's something that I have noticed not just with games but also with book and television programmes

I suppose that it could also be true for other thing that people like and dislike.

Blogs

So this blog of mine is now a few years old.

Which is a bit like me!

Now the thing is that before if I wanted to write a post I had to be on my computer which is at home, which means that I have no chance of just doing a post on a win.

It also takes a while to log on to the site and get into the position where I can do the posting.

As you might know if you read this blog I got an iPad at Xmas and one of the free apps that I have downloaded allows me to do my posts on the iPad and then upload them when I have a wifi connection.

The great thing about this is that I can do a post whenever the muse strikes, even when I have no wifi connection as it will store the posts and then will upload as soon as there is a connection.

The net result is that the number of posts I now post has gone up a lot which is good in that a lot of those odd thoughts that you have at odd times are now getting recorded.

As this blog is a notebook for my ideas it means that I will get more of them recorded and perhaps will be able to look at them in more detail later on.

Baths

Why is it that having a bath is always more relaxing than a shower?

I don't know the answer to that question but I do know that I do enjoy a good hot bath.

Blood

I am as you know if you have read this blog a blood dinner of more than ten years.

So yesterday I gave blood for the first time this year and all being well will give at least twice more possibly three times Delong on the timing as it all depends on the calendar and the availability of the blood bank being in my area to collect the blood.

You can give blood every twelve weeks so they say as your body has to build back up all the iron and stuff that goes onto your blood.

So how many units of blood have I given?

117 as of yesterday, it's not a bad total and it's nice to think that each unit that o have given has helped some three people!

So if my maths is correct(not that I claim to be a mathematician ) I think the total is somewhere in the region of 351.

So I have helped some 300 odd people, it's nice to think that I might have made a difference to their lives.

Spaghetti bowl

Just made a really great spaghetti bowl, just thought I would record it here

Writing

So as you know I am writing this book and as i said last time I have done the first draft.

No the problem I am having is that as I come to do the second draft the software that I am using to do the job is for some reason or other is having problems

More significantly it keeps crashing when I try to remove lots of content that I no longer need.

I have already treks just using the computer with nothing else running on it, and sad to say I am getting the same failure.

It goes with out saying that it is now really starting to p@@@ me off big time.

As it's stopping me from getting on with the book.

Weather

The weather is as always surprise and today it's been very windy but warmish.

Windy

So very windy outside not sure how long it's going to be going on.

But the noise outside is so loud that it woke me up early, the noise being the wind through trees near by the house.

Training

Funny I like to learn new stuff or to have stuff I already know explained to me in a different way.

What I don't like is the travel!

And what's worst thing about it is that my discomfort at the thought of traveling is getting worse swell.

I don't understand why it is happening as for many holidays travel is all part of it.

So go figure I don't have a clue as to what is going on with me.

But I am going to fight it

Midsummer murders

Well just seen the last episode of midsummer murders with John Nettles in sad to see him leave but nice the way that they treated his character in the end

Time

Time is something that you can either have too much of or not enough of.

I would say that just lately I have a real shortage of time.

Month two

So the first month of the year is already over, some will say good others will have the opposite to say.

All I can say about January is that it was an expensive month in that the wife had to have two new tyres on her car which was an expense that we did not expect to have but that's how life is, you never quite know what is going to turn up next.

So I wonder just what this month is going to bring which is of course no change for the month before and the month before that.

I suspect that if I go looking back over my blogs that I have said the same thing or something very much like it before.

Coffee

Do you like freshly brewed coffee in the morning?

I know I do

Just thought I would record that here

Plans

I have made a few plans on some of the things that I would like to do this year.

One of them is to write a book!

Now if you have looked at other posts on this blog you will see that it is not such a strange or outlandish thing to want to do, as I have in the past written the odd book or two.

The good news is that I have got off my arse and have done something about it.

In fact I am surprised just how much I have managed to do so far.

I have done the complete first draft of my new book which is good.

My plan now is to put it to one side and let it mature for some days or weeks and then look at it again.

Hopefully this will give me time to see what needs to be done on editing it and what is missing and what needs to be taken out to improve the book.

Only time will tell, so look out for another post on how this years book is going.