Stuff

Amazing how your free time can just disappear without a moments notice, so all the things that I wanted to do on Sunday never happened due to other stuff getting in the way.

I suppose there is always next weekend, saying that the garden does look a lot better since I cut the grass.....


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Film Red

Just seen this movie on DVD at the weekend, when not cutting the grass!

All I want to say about it was that it was a good film to watch and that it made the evening go quick, and I did laugh as it's billed as an action comedy.

There is plenty of action and also plenty of comedy well worth a look and a hour or so of your life.


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Car parks

Car parks can be interesting places to people watch, and in this case the car park is not a multi-storey one but a single level one.

Mind you the width of some of the car parking spaces leaves a lot to be desired.


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Go carts

So a chance has come about in that I can go go karting, now I must admit that I am not very good at it, but it is fun to go.

I have been several times before and I have each time got faster around the track. But at the end of the day it's all but the experience right?

I me we are racing for fun not prizes or money..

I will report back when it's all over as it's 2 weeks away.


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Cold

April and it feels colder than March did, but according to the weather men it's been the driest March for the last 50 years here in the UK, I must admit that the third week in March was very warm and sunny.


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Petrol

Just filled my car up and £69 later my car has a range of 433 miles, I still have trouble understanding why we pay so much for our fuel in this country and why we let our government put so much tax on it.

I am told that out of the 133 a litre that we are getting charged for it that about 80 percent of it is made up of taxes!

I am also told that there is no shortage of oil in the world and that there will not be for some time to come, as we are better at extracting it from the ground and that we make far better use of it than we ever did before, and as time goes by we will continue to make better use of it.

So why the very high taxes on it?

I was going to say because Thayer can, and they can as there is not yet any other way of powering car and truck that is so easy and convenient at this time.

I suppose that you could argue that because of the high cost of fuel people will start to look for other ways of powering cars and trucks.

The downside of this is that once we have a new fuel source that is easy to use and that we start to use it, the government will then start to tax it, then tax it more and more and we will be back to where we started with petrol!



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BBQ

I have just had the stupid thought when will the weather be good enough to have a BBQ?

I would like to put my prediction that late April will be about right.

It will be interesting to see how accurate this prediction will be, knowing the UKs weather it will either be too early or too late.


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Blogs

I see from looking at how many blogs that I posted this month that it's going to be the least amount posted so far this year, not by much it must be said.

But taking in to account that I have had a week away and did not blog during that time.

I find it amazing that I have found so much to talk about or make notes on.


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Websites

Looking at the website logs from a few days ago, I wonder sometimes just how folks find my webpages, the things is that as my websites are very specialist the search terms used tend also to be very specific, so in a way I have not really found out how the site is found.


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Mixing music

I compose music, which for some reason or other tends to happen in phases, with it sometimes being months between tracks that I write.

So I have a track that has been work in progress know for more than a year, the problem that I have with it is that the track has five drum tracks.

What is the best way to mix these tracks in the overall mix?

At this time I have one track on the left and one on the right and then the rest in the centre, I don't know if this is the best arrangement for the drum tracks I think I should also add here that all five drum tracks are live at the same time so it's not a case of turning each drum track on and off as the track progresses.

The track itself is about six minutes long and runs at about 140 beats per minute.

Perhaps the best thing to do is to leave the track to rest and then come back to it, and then compare the old mix with the new and on that hearing choose which track to use.

I suppose that this is a case where only time will tell.


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Stuff on the go

Just a note to me.

I have the following projects on the go at this time

1. Dirk Maggs Semantic Website
2. Music tracks for new album
3. Book train and terrain
4. Website update Dirk Maggs Productions Website
5. Website update James Follett Website


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Bishopswood

Donna and me for reasons that now quite escape us decided to go for a walk that included at the end of it a walk through Bishopswood in hind sight this may have been a mistake as the assent up Bishopswood is not only long but comes with rather a large incline.

To say that we were rather exhausted by the end of it.


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1002

So I have just noticed that some how or other I have just written 1001 blogs, this being my 1002

I am also very surprised on just how many blogs I have written this year, it I suppose has something to do with the fact that I now have an iPad and also some good software on it that allows me to blog when I want, and to upload them when I have a wifi connection.

It also helps that the software that I use to do the blogging has a spell checker, and that is something that I really do need!

So this year I have written a lot of blogs so far I don't know and I don't care if I beat any of my previous years blogging as this a site that I use as a notebook for myself so there are no targets as such only that I should record anything that takes my fancy.


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Weather

So last week I was on holiday and the weather was such that I could sit in a tee shirt on a patio drinking wine and very nice it was to.

This week?

Yep

Looks like it's going to be a bit wet, blue sky has become very rare.

Such is the weather in the UK


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Wiki

The Dirk Maggs Wiki has because of my holiday stopped, I did not carry out any work on it or even had any thoughts about it.

But never fear it is something that I will pick up again and start work on.


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Castles

Went to Chepstow castle while away and was very lucky that we had a blue sky day with it also being warm, which is always nice.

Anyway the thing that amazed me was kist how big a castle it is.

And it was great to see some young kids running around it and wanting to see what was in the next room or in the next bit of the castle, I don't think at a young age castles are anything but a really good playground that is absolutely huge and fun to be in.

Donna and me must have spent some 2 or 3 hours just walking around it with time to just enjoy what was there and the views that you get from the castle over the River Seven.

A place well worth a visit, even better if a blue sky day can also be arranged at the time of your visit.


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River Seven

So the River Seven is a big river here in the UK, and it has the second largest tidal range in the world, some 46 feet is what I have been told.

It is only when you actually see it with your own eyes that it strikes home just how big that range is.

Seeing bridges that have been designed to take the tidal range into account is also eye opening.

I wonder what it would be like to see the River Seven in full flood, safely not on any bridge!


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Weatherspoons

Over the last few days I have had the chance to be in several different Weatherspoon pubs, one in Wales and one in Guildford.

Both were very good, all were clean, service was good and the food and the beer that we had was also very good.

I was lucky that there are doing a real ale week, so I had the chance to try some real ales that I have never had before.

The one thing that did catch us out was that weatherspoons have regional menus, which when you stop and think about it does make sense, but when you come up against it for the first time it does make you stop and think.

But at the end of the day, you know what you are going to get when you go to a weatherspoons and that's all I want if I am visiting a part of the UK that I have not been to that has a Weatherspoons.


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Reading yet again

What happens when you are ten pages into a new book only to discover that you have already read the book two years ago!

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Another read

Another book that I have just read while on holiday is called Private and it's written by James Patterson and with Maxine Paetro who wrote what I don't know and really I don't care, all I want is to have a book that tells a good story and this book does that apart from one observation that I want to make.

This book is very very American and as a european I had in places difficulty in understanding the distances that some of the places that the characters visit in the course of the story.

But apart from that the story is good and the bad guys are bad and the good guys are good but with some rough edges.

The book is the first in a new series and I suspect that I will look out for the second book when it comes out.


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Reading

Just finished reading another book, this one while on holiday, in the resting times between walks ect.

Anyway back to the book it's called The Silent Sea and it's by Clive Cussler and it's in one of the various series of books that he appears to write these days, or should I say the person who just gets the with credit on these books.

Have you noticed that there appear to be many more books with more than one author these days?

The book is a good read, it's not making it's self to be anything but an entertaining thriller and that's what it is, some of the action scenes I suspect are just not possible in real life but in the book they work, and as I have said before the bad guys get what they deserve and I loved they way that the books authors stage the big set scenes.

Well worth several hours of your time if you want to get away from life.


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Real ale

Just trying a new real ale that I have never had before called hopping hare by the badger brewery, it's only a 4% but so far the taste has been great, now all I want is a nice hot summers da and a steam chair to sit on in the sunshine with this beer in my hand.


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Holiday weather

One thing that I always start to look at is the weather and what is going to be like when I am on holiday.

So one thing that I have been very surprised at is how quickly in hours it seems to change.

So as it is I still do not know for certain if I am going to get wet, sunburned or fog bound on my holiday.




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Red nose day

So here in the uk it's red nose day, wonder how much response we will get,at work or around the place


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Wiki tables

Not too sure if my wiki should be all tables or a mixture of both, either one has an advantage but also disadvantages.

At this time I am not sure which way to go or if the way to go is to have a mixture of the two.




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Time off

Did I say that I having some time off soon?

Well only two days to go!


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Holiday

Going on holiday only for a week but I am sure that the break will do me good.


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Dirk Maggs Wiki

So the wiki has gone a bit slow, I have got distracted and have spent time on learning how to do tables in the wiki, and I must admit that the results are far better than I thought that they would be.

I also managed to get from the mediawiki site the help pages and with help form the mediawiki site installed the public domain help pages into my wiki!

Which is really neat.

It all works well.

So when back from holiday, I will have another look at the semantic side of things, I am sure that in the end I will work out what I want and also work out how to get it all working the way that I want it to work.

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Cold

A bit of a shock again this morning as it's really rather colder than I expected it to be.

I am not sure but should I still be removing ice from the window screen in mid March?


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Mercury

Last night just after sunset I was luck to see both Jupiter and Mercury in the sky together with out any clouds in the way, if I am luck I shall have another go tonight to see them, it's really a rather nice sight.

But knowing how fickle the weather can be here in the UK it will either be raining about to rain or foggy!



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Reading

I have finally finished reading The Wrecker by Clive Cussler and Justin Scott, now for some reason I felt a bit disappointed with the book, as to me parts of it where very formulaic which is something that I don't like in a book.

In the story the main characters seemed to sped an awful lot of their time catching trains, sometimes just because they can.

Finding out who the wrecker was so early in the story was a bit of a letdown and then to find out that his behaviour changed after we found out who he was, was to me also a bit of a letdown.

Did the book entertain me?

Yes but if I was to treat this book as a movie, then I would say it was a feature that was realised straight to DVD with no cinematic release.

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Bumble bee

So my first bumble bee today.


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Bread

Baking some bread only 2 hours to go


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GarageBand iPad

So I found myself buying this app for my iPad.

So far it's been real fun playing with it, no I want to start importing my vocal parts into it, as mp3's and it does not work for me.

I wonder what I am doing wrong, I have read on the Apple forms for GarageBand iPad that you can,t do this?

Why?

I would have thought that importing and exporting would be one of the major items that this type of software should be capable of doing.

So at the moment until apple see fit to release an update it will remain a toy, which is a shame because it is a nice app to use.


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Ill

Starting to feel a bit run down and the old throat is also starting to hurt, I have a feeling I may have a cold coming on.

Let's hope that I am wrong.


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Ipad2

Just read some more reviews on the ipad2 and as the owner of the iPad 1 there does not appear to be that much different from the unit that I have.

Two things stop me from updating and they are the cameras fitted to the iPad are not that good if I am going to spend all that money on a new iPad I want the cameras to be of good quality as I am going to be using the iPad for some time, I mean the iPad is expensive and I will have to use it for some time.

Why did they put such low quality cameras in?

Perhaps they had some very good reasons why

But asan end user I am sorry to say that for me the decision sucks

The other reason for stopping me upgrading is that the screen needs to be better than the existing unit, don't get me wrong the screen on the iPad is good but when you have seen the display on the iphone4 you have to ask yourself why can't the iPad have the same?

I suspect that one reason for the ipad2 not to have the display was that units where not available in the numbers needed so the ipad3 will have this better screen, will apple wait a whole year before releasing the ipad3?

The other minor point is that the memory in the machine does not appear to have been increased ?

Because of cost?

I don't know, all I do know is that I will be looking at the ipad3 and not the ipad2 when I update.

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Plotters

How is that never mind how many times you have used a plotter it's always fun to watch them at work.

Why?

Not a clue....


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Pancakes 2

Just a post note to myself, always cook pancakes slow.

Maple syrup and butter make a nice topping.


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Stress

Stress can do strange things to people and how they react to the world and the other people in their lives.


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Butterfly

So this morning my very first butterfly!

Not sure if that is the earliest that I have ever seen one, in fact there were two and they were I think yellow.


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Bright

So today has been I think one of the brighter days of the year so far.

Because it's still early March that means that tonight is going to be a hard frost, did I tell you that I hate having to deuce the car before setting off to work.

That's of course if I can afford to continue putting fuel into the car it's at £1.33 a litre.



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Dirk Maggs semantic wiki

So I did do some work on the wiki, but for reasons that I yet to work out I got carried away with finding information on some contributors from an early Dirk Maggs production and ended up creating pages for them, instead of making my mega semantic form, if I did not know better I would say that I am doing displacement activities.

I must admit that I do know now just what I need to do, all I now have to do is do it.


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Cold

So it's spring very soon or so I am told, so why was it -3 this morning and had to scrape the Car for ages?

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Dirk Maggs semantic wiki part something 2

I have to admit that I have not done much work on the wiki this week, I just have not felt that well and really not that interested in anything especially anything on the web or anything to do with the web.

So the wiki has not therefore progressed.

But I have made the decision that a semantic form is the way to go as that's the best way of making sure all the properties that I require are used in a proper way.

Hopefully if the semantic forms are used in they way i hope they should be I will be able to store the information on the wiki in the way that will allow me to do the searches I need and also perhaps has information that has been so far hidden in the detail and also hidden in the 100's of pages on the existing website in a format that you can't search for.

So hopefully this weekend I hope to get the main semantic form setup and running.

I will report back in this blog what happens.


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Dull

So you what it's like when the day is just dull,dull and dull?

I just wish that it would be a bit brighter you know some actual sunshine and even a blue sky.

But as I am in the UK there is not much chance of that!

Oh well I can hope I suppose.


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Spring

So is spring really just a few weeks away?
I hope so as I want it to at least be a just a bit warmer than it has been.

I know that the days are now getting longer in fact you can see it as you go about your daily activities, it's nice.

It's even better if you get a day that has sunshine, but I suppose you can't have every thing can you?


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Ipad2

So the ipad2 has been announced the question for me is it worth upgrading?

I know that my current iPad will go to the wife and by how often she uses mine so that's not a problem.

Will having a faster iPad make much difference to how I use it now?

I don't know the answers to these questions at this time, I do know that I do need more storage and that 32 gig is looking to small and that 64 would be better, I was very surprised that there was not an increase to 128, but I suppose there must be a good reason or reasons why

Perhaps the reason might be cost or they can't get hold of the parts I suppose that we will never know the reason.

One thing I did notice is that there is yet another new version of iTunes to install and that there is an update of the OS that powers the I devices, thing is will I notice any difference with the new OS.

I shall report back, but note that the OS does not get updated until the 11 march so that over a week into the future, but the iTunes update is now available all I have to do is download it and install it.

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Casual

Can you be too casual while having lunch at work?

It's a good question and I am afraid that I just don't know the answer to it.

Is reading a book something that could be considered too casual?

I don't have an answer.


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Reading

Just started to read yet another book, I know that's the 2nd or even 3rd book this year!

So I am only some 29 pages into so far and I can't say if the book is good or bad yet it's still too early into the book.

The book is called The Wreckers and it's by Clive Cussler and Justin Scott, although I think most of it was written by Scott with perhaps Clive providing the brief and doing some editing, I just don't know how the writing collaboration thing is set up between these two but it's possible that that is the set up, not that it matters.

As all that I am interested in at the end of the day is am I going to be entertained by this book.

As I said I can't say yes or no.

Will report back when I have something to say about it later

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Sleep

I need more sleep or having a sleep is making me tied, I am not sure which it is.

I woke this morning feeling more tied than when I went to bed!

Why?

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Dirk Maggs Semantic wiki pt something

I know that I have talked a lot about my Dirk Maggs semantic wiki, which as it's a large task is naturally something that you would expect me to talk about, and as this is my blog I can do whatever I want in this blog.

So I found that I have a choice to make I can either make a form which can collect almost all the information that I need and create the page for me or I can go the other way and code each bit of a page with the semantic properties that I need.

The second choice gives total control but at the cost of a lot more work, the first choice allows for a lot of the work to be carried out automatically which means I suppose that in the long run less errors.

The problem is that it means that there will be lots of templates that need to be created and I have to admit that I have not found yet an easy way of editing them correctly so that I don't break them.

Which sadly is something that I have managed to do now on more than one occasion, but in the end I did find out what I had done and managed to sort out the problem.

So I think that an automatic solution is they way to go forward as I have some 500 pages that I think are needed in the wiki, as I will list every production that Dirk has done, and he has done just a few since 1987.

I also want to provide a page for every actor, writer, producer and mixer that has also been involved in Dirk's productions, it's a tall order but as it's going to be the only website or wiki dedicated to a audio producer, director I think that it should be the best I can do, I don't think the wiki will ever get huge hits to it, as it's a very specialised site but I do think that I will learn a lot about databases and semantics, well I must admit that on the later I already have and the learning curve so far has been straight up!




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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.