Planet ISKCON

There was a talk on "The Web Structure of E-Government - Developing a Methodology for Quantitative Evaluation".

The researchers from University College London (UCL) used several statistical measures for evaluating government websites: worse case strongly connected components, incoming vs. outgoing link, path length between pages, etc. They compared their statistical measure with results from user evaluations. That is, they got a bunch of users together and measured how long it took them to find stuff on various website (both with and without using Google).

They tested the UK, Australia and USA immigration websites. The results:

• UK is best, both navigating the link structure and searching
• AU is terrible to navigate, but good to search
• USA is bad any way you look at it, but at least search will eventually find you what you are looking for.

Automated statistics don't tell you much.

More info at: www.governmentontheweb.org

This was followed by a talk by Ian Pascal Volz from the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Germany. He talked about "the Impact of Online Music Services on the Demand for Stars in the Music Industry".

His main (and interesting!) finding is that people tend to buy music they already know and like from online music stores like the iTunes Music Store. Peer-to-peer file sharing networks, on the other hand, tend to get people to try and discover new music. Virtual communities are somewhere in between the two.

People who buy music will not spend any money on something they don't already know and value. Even $1 per song is too high a price for a casual purchase. If you want people to discover your music and you are unknown it must be available for free.

On a related topic: when recording lectures on spiritual subject matter, please, please, please don't try to charge for them. No one will pay. Make them available for free. That way to the whole world will benefit.

And so ends the WWW2006 conference. Next stop Banff, Canada for WWW2007.

There was a talk on "The Web Structure of E-Government - Developing a Methodology for Quantitative Evaluation".

The researchers from University College London (UCL) used several statistical measures for evaluating government websites: worse case strongly connected components, incoming vs. outgoing link, path length between pages, etc. They compared their statistical measure with results from user evaluations. That is, they got a bunch of users together and measured how long it took them to find stuff on various website (both with and without using Google).

They tested the UK, Australia and USA immigration websites. The results:

• UK is best, both navigating the link structure and searching
• AU is terrible to navigate, but good to search
• USA is bad any way you look at it, but at least search will eventually find you what you are looking for.

Automated statistics don't tell you much.

More info at: www.governmentontheweb.org

This was followed by a talk by Ian Pascal Volz from the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Germany. He talked about "the Impact of Online Music Services on the Demand for Stars in the Music Industry".

His main (and interesting!) finding is that people tend to buy music they already know and like from online music stores like the iTunes Music Store. Peer-to-peer file sharing networks, on the other hand, tend to get people to try and discover new music. Virtual communities are somewhere in between the two.

People who buy music will not spend any money on something they don't already know and value. Even $1 per song is too high a price for a casual purchase. If you want people to discover your music and you are unknown it must be available for free.

On a related topic: when recording lectures on spiritual subject matter, please, please, please don't try to charge for them. No one will pay. Make them available for free. That way to the whole world will benefit.

And so ends the WWW2006 conference. Next stop Banff, Canada for WWW2007.

A presentation by some researchers from Karlsruhe, Germany was very interesting (well presented, too). They talked about their "semantic wikipedia", an extension to the popular MediaWiki that allows authors to express some semantics, i.e. to get at the hidden data within the articles.

The normal wikipedia only has plain links between articles. Nevertheless, it is the 16th most successful website of all time (according to alexa.com). However, in the semantic version every link has a type. Object properties map concepts to concepts and datatype properties map concepts to data values.

Why do it this way? Answers: adding these annotations is cheap and easy (no new UI), they can be added incrementally and there is no need to create a whole new RDF layer on top of the existing content, the annotations are right there in the wiki text.

This simple addition is enough to allow for powerful queries. You can create pages that automatically pull in all articles of a specific category, with a specific title and between a specific date range, for example. Checking for completeness because easier too: you can construct a query that tests if every Country has a Capital. If some countries come up that don't, those can be easily fixed.

The whole thing self-regulates. Each property has its own page in the wiki, so that people can suggest property types and eventually come to a consensus about which properties are the right ones to use.

The wiki can be imported into OWL and vica versa. The template system can also be leveraged to quickly create semantic annotations.

The whole thing is a win-win-quick-quick scenario (bit of an in-joke there).

A presentation by some researchers from Karlsruhe, Germany was very interesting (well presented, too). They talked about their "semantic wikipedia", an extension to the popular MediaWiki that allows authors to express some semantics, i.e. to get at the hidden data within the articles.

The normal wikipedia only has plain links between articles. Nevertheless, it is the 16th most successful website of all time (according to alexa.com). However, in the semantic version every link has a type. Object properties map concepts to concepts and datatype properties map concepts to data values.

Why do it this way? Answers: adding these annotations is cheap and easy (no new UI), they can be added incrementally and there is no need to create a whole new RDF layer on top of the existing content, the annotations are right there in the wiki text.

This simple addition is enough to allow for powerful queries. You can create pages that automatically pull in all articles of a specific category, with a specific title and between a specific date range, for example. Checking for completeness because easier too: you can construct a query that tests if every Country has a Capital. If some countries come up that don't, those can be easily fixed.

The whole thing self-regulates. Each property has its own page in the wiki, so that people can suggest property types and eventually come to a consensus about which properties are the right ones to use.

The wiki can be imported into OWL and vica versa. The template system can also be leveraged to quickly create semantic annotations.

The whole thing is a win-win-quick-quick scenario (bit of an in-joke there).

Over lunch I bumped into John Darlington, the former CEO of Active Navigation, a small company (spin-off from Southampton University) that I worked for a while ago. John is now working for Southampton University as a Business Manager and was involved in organizing the WWW conference.

Active Navigation was a very nice place to work. It had the atmosphere of a small start-up without the killer, passionate, burn-out, no-holds-barred pace.

The company creates a server technology that automatically injects hyperlinks into web pages pointing to relevant, related pages on the same website. Website navigation can be improved by using these injected links. If someone, for example, creates a web page containing the word "ontology" and someone else has written a web page that also contains the "ontology", then the server transforms those words into links to each other's web pages. Someone browsing the website could find the two related pages by clicking on the automatically created link.

John called me over: "Julian! Wow, great to see you!"

Turning to Nigel Shadbolt next to him: "Julian here worked for me for a while, then disappeared into the either, as you do, and now: I'm chairing a session (the one on education), look down and who do I see? Julian, asking a question!"

He suggested I might look into digital media production in New Zealand as a possible career path. Ever since Lord of the Rings that has apparently taken off in a big way down-under.

Over lunch I bumped into John Darlington, the former CEO of Active Navigation, a small company (spin-off from Southampton University) that I worked for a while ago. John is now working for Southampton University as a Business Manager and was involved in organizing the WWW conference.

Active Navigation was a very nice place to work. It had the atmosphere of a small start-up without the killer, passionate, burn-out, no-holds-barred pace.

The company creates a server technology that automatically injects hyperlinks into web pages pointing to relevant, related pages on the same website. Website navigation can be improved by using these injected links. If someone, for example, creates a web page containing the word "ontology" and someone else has written a web page that also contains the "ontology", then the server transforms those words into links to each other's web pages. Someone browsing the website could find the two related pages by clicking on the automatically created link.

John called me over: "Julian! Wow, great to see you!"

Turning to Nigel Shadbolt next to him: "Julian here worked for me for a while, then disappeared into the either, as you do, and now: I'm chairing a session (the one on education), look down and who do I see? Julian, asking a question!"

He suggested I might look into digital media production in New Zealand as a possible career path. Ever since Lord of the Rings that has apparently taken off in a big way down-under.

Harith Alani presented his position paper on building ontologies from other online ontologies. He explained how building ontologies is difficult, so it is best to reuse existing knowledge bases, or, even better, completely automate ontology construction. The state of the moment is that there are quite a few ontology editing tools, but little support for reuse. Furthermore, these tools are build for highly trained computer scientists, not the average web-developer.

His idea is to combine three existing research areas:
Ontology libraries (e.g. DAML library, Ontolingua) and ontology search engines (e.g. Swoogle) can be used to located ontologies on the Internet.
Ontology segmentation techniques (like mine) can be used to cut smaller pieces out of these ontologies.
Ontology mapping techniques can be used to reassemble the pieces into new ontologies.

Result: instant custom ontology. However, to get this working in practice takes quite a bit of doing. He himself admitted that is was quite an ambitious undertaking. Good idea though.

Mustafa Jarrar (from Beligum) and Paolo Bouquet (from Trento, Italy) presented the next two papers. They talked about a very similar topic. Both were advocating linking ontology terms to dictionary / glossary definitions.

It was interesting two observe these two researcher's presentation styles. Paolo was very fast and frantic, very much unlike Mustafa who was very slow and relaxed, even when trying to hurry (Vata vs. Kapha, for those knowledge in Ayurveda).

Mustafa told of how he built a complex ontology for some lawyers, but, after he had gone through the trouble of carefully constructing this knowledge base, the lawyers found it to be too complicated to understand and threw everything expect the glossary part away. However, the did really like and appreciate having a sensible glossary of all kinds of law-related knowledge.

He defined this "gloss" as:

auxiliary informal (but controlled) account for the common sense perception of humans of the intended meaning of a linguistic term

The glosses should be written as propositions, consistent with the formal definition, focused on the distinguishing characteristics of what is being described, sufficient, clear, use supportive exampled and be easy to understand.

Advantages are that these glosses are highly reusable (very important for his lawyer clients) and that they are very easy to agree upon.

So everyone: link your ontology to WordNet (or something better)!

Paolo picked up the issue and talked about his WordNet Description Logic (WDL). An extension to DL that adds lexical senses to the vocabulary of logic. It allows for compound meanings. So, UniversityOfMillan is automatically inferred as University that hasLocation some Millan.

Using this type of dictionary-link makes it possible to check for errors by comparing the glossary definition to the logical semantics. If they don't match, a potential error can be flagged.

His system also allows for bridging and mapping between ontologies. If two ontology concept refer to the same dictionary definition, then that is a very good indication that they are describing the same sort of thing.

Harith Alani presented his position paper on building ontologies from other online ontologies. He explained how building ontologies is difficult, so it is best to reuse existing knowledge bases, or, even better, completely automate ontology construction. The state of the moment is that there are quite a few ontology editing tools, but little support for reuse. Furthermore, these tools are build for highly trained computer scientists, not the average web-developer.

His idea is to combine three existing research areas:
Ontology libraries (e.g. DAML library, Ontolingua) and ontology search engines (e.g. Swoogle) can be used to located ontologies on the Internet.
Ontology segmentation techniques (like mine) can be used to cut smaller pieces out of these ontologies.
Ontology mapping techniques can be used to reassemble the pieces into new ontologies.

Result: instant custom ontology. However, to get this working in practice takes quite a bit of doing. He himself admitted that is was quite an ambitious undertaking. Good idea though.

Mustafa Jarrar (from Beligum) and Paolo Bouquet (from Trento, Italy) presented the next two papers. They talked about a very similar topic. Both were advocating linking ontology terms to dictionary / glossary definitions.

It was interesting two observe these two researcher's presentation styles. Paolo was very fast and frantic, very much unlike Mustafa who was very slow and relaxed, even when trying to hurry (Vata vs. Kapha, for those knowledge in Ayurveda).

Mustafa told of how he built a complex ontology for some lawyers, but, after he had gone through the trouble of carefully constructing this knowledge base, the lawyers found it to be too complicated to understand and threw everything expect the glossary part away. However, the did really like and appreciate having a sensible glossary of all kinds of law-related knowledge.

He defined this "gloss" as:

auxiliary informal (but controlled) account for the common sense perception of humans of the intended meaning of a linguistic term

The glosses should be written as propositions, consistent with the formal definition, focused on the distinguishing characteristics of what is being described, sufficient, clear, use supportive exampled and be easy to understand.

Advantages are that these glosses are highly reusable (very important for his lawyer clients) and that they are very easy to agree upon.

So everyone: link your ontology to WordNet (or something better)!

Paolo picked up the issue and talked about his WordNet Description Logic (WDL). An extension to DL that adds lexical senses to the vocabulary of logic. It allows for compound meanings. So, UniversityOfMillan is automatically inferred as University that hasLocation some Millan.

Using this type of dictionary-link makes it possible to check for errors by comparing the glossary definition to the logical semantics. If they don't match, a potential error can be flagged.

His system also allows for bridging and mapping between ontologies. If two ontology concept refer to the same dictionary definition, then that is a very good indication that they are describing the same sort of thing.

It's really really cold. I don't know why I find it so cold here, but today is freezing. I grew up in -40*C (which is about equal to -40*F, interestingly enough), but here in New Zealand, it's well above freezing, but the cool air is so humid that it just goes straight to your bones and makes your whole body feel very very cold.

Of course, I'm still suffering from this flu. Only two members of the asrama managed to escape it's clutches, Balagopala and Yadu-raya. Even Khela-tirtha, who claims to have not been sick in ten years, caught this particularly nasty bug.

I'm about to start taking alot of radical measures for my health. I have hardly done any sankirtana in the last month, and I've had to ask other devotees to take over alot of my other physically demanding services over this period. If I don't get on top of this, then I'm just going to get spaced out from a lack of engagement. So my full-time service for the next little while is going to be getting healthy so that I can get back into full engaging service for Guru and Krsna.

It's really really cold. I don't know why I find it so cold here, but today is freezing. I grew up in -40*C (which is about equal to -40*F, interestingly enough), but here in New Zealand, it's well above freezing, but the cool air is so humid that it just goes straight to your bones and makes your whole body feel very very cold.

Of course, I'm still suffering from this flu. Only two members of the asrama managed to escape it's clutches, Balagopala and Yadu-raya. Even Khela-tirtha, who claims to have not been sick in ten years, caught this particularly nasty bug.

I'm about to start taking alot of radical measures for my health. I have hardly done any sankirtana in the last month, and I've had to ask other devotees to take over alot of my other physically demanding services over this period. If I don't get on top of this, then I'm just going to get spaced out from a lack of engagement. So my full-time service for the next little while is going to be getting healthy so that I can get back into full engaging service for Guru and Krsna.

New feature:

I was inspired to imitate the recent comments feature of Sitapati's blog. However, the side panels of this website design are already cluttered with all kinds of useful information. I didn't want to add yet another long heading. I have therefore created dynamic HTML pop-up display of the most recent comments. Check it out!

Implementation: It's a "mash-up". It is a combination of the Recent-Comments plugin by Nick Momrik with the FreeStyle DHTML / JavaScript Menu by TwinHelix Designs.

Tell me how you like it and let me know if there are any bugs.

New feature:

I was inspired to imitate the recent comments feature of Sitapati's blog. However, the side panels of this website design are already cluttered with all kinds of useful information. I didn't want to add yet another long heading. I have therefore created dynamic HTML pop-up display of the most recent comments. Check it out!

Implementation: It's a "mash-up". It is a combination of the Recent-Comments plugin by Nick Momrik with the FreeStyle DHTML / JavaScript Menu by TwinHelix Designs.

Tell me how you like it and let me know if there are any bugs.

My body just doesn't seem to be getting a chance to recover from any illnesses. This flu that I've gotten this week is hitting me pretty heavily. Yesterday, my mother took me to the A&E (ER for the North Americans) because I had been delirious all day. They took my temperature there, it was 39*C, which is pretty hot. From memory, 38* is something to worry about. Anyway, they said I was at risk for getting pneumonia again, and my throat looked rather infected so I'm back on anti-biotics, for the second time in practically a month. This morning I got up at about 3:30 just to go to the toilet. As I was exiting the toilet my head started spinning, and everything went dark, next thing I knew I woke up on the floor outside the toilet, leaning up against the wall. I crawled back to bed, the clock said 3:45, so I think I was on the ground for about ten minutes before I woke up. And today I am incredibly tired. My fever has subsided, but my throat is still sore. I didn't finish my rounds until about 12:45. Anyway, Dan is very excited about the beads I gave him, he's shown them to everyone who has come to visit. He has promised to chant one round a day, and then increase, so the trip hasn't been a total waste.

My body just doesn't seem to be getting a chance to recover from any illnesses. This flu that I've gotten this week is hitting me pretty heavily. Yesterday, my mother took me to the A&E (ER for the North Americans) because I had been delirious all day. They took my temperature there, it was 39*C, which is pretty hot. From memory, 38* is something to worry about. Anyway, they said I was at risk for getting pneumonia again, and my throat looked rather infected so I'm back on anti-biotics, for the second time in practically a month. This morning I got up at about 3:30 just to go to the toilet. As I was exiting the toilet my head started spinning, and everything went dark, next thing I knew I woke up on the floor outside the toilet, leaning up against the wall. I crawled back to bed, the clock said 3:45, so I think I was on the ground for about ten minutes before I woke up. And today I am incredibly tired. My fever has subsided, but my throat is still sore. I didn't finish my rounds until about 12:45. Anyway, Dan is very excited about the beads I gave him, he's shown them to everyone who has come to visit. He has promised to chant one round a day, and then increase, so the trip hasn't been a total waste.

Today was a very jam-packed day for me. I got up abit later than desired, but earlier than I have for the last week, and managed to chant the majority of my rounds before it was time to leave. Gurudeva gave a class this morning on the other side of town, starting at 7am. At around 5 am we got a phone call, Gurudeva wanted me to drive him around today. I haven't driven for two years, and I don't even have a full lisence, but somehow or other, it turned out that I was going to be the one driving him this afternoon. Anyway, my rounds weren't so attentive after that, all I could think about was the rules of the road that I would have to revive before 10:30.

The class was a brahmacari class, understanding the practicalities of the brahmacari vow, and brahmacarya's relationship with all other asramas. Gurudeva stressed again and again that brahmacarya is meant to produce real human culture, so that if a brahmacari does get married, he does so with a mood of sense control, not free enjoyment.

Anyway, the class ended, I did a few chores for Gurudeva, and managed to read a little bit. Then I drove him to his appointment, making it there wiht 5 minutes to spare. We drove back with no problems. I then jumped into the kitchen to help Yadu-raya with Gurudeva's lunch for today, and his ekadasi meals for tomorrow. Gurudeva is on his way to India, so he needed to be prepared for the long flight. I put together a few ekadasi samosa's, which was definitely a bit difficult. Lunch was JUST on time. And we managed to leave for the airport right on schedule, aside from a little hitch in regards to Gurudeva's cashews, dates and raisins he requested. The hitch wasn't my fault, but Gurudeva made a few amusing remarks.

So, then I made it home after all that, catching the bus back to the asrama with a pot full of maha-maha-prasadam. I hadn't eaten all day, the way things worked out, so I was very relieved to make it home alright. I am not feeling very healthy at the moment. I did do 1/2 hour of exercise today, in what will hopefully be a regular routine. But my body is still feeling very weak from these two back-to-back illnesses. My throat is now rather sore, my body aches, and my temperature was rather high when I took it an hour ago.

Right now, Ramadas, Yadu-raya and myself are getting ready to head over the Tauranga for a visit. The two Prabhus will be doing books, I'm going to try and recuperate. We will be staying at my parents place. I don't know if I have mentioned yet, but my little brother is very close to becoming a devotee. He's rising early and chanting every morning, he is listening to heaps of kirtana, he's preaching the glories to prasadam to everyone he meets, and he is reading a few different Krsna conscious books. He just need a little bit of guidance and I think within six months he'll be ready to move down to the asrama in Wellington, to get some training from Mahavana. My mother is also getting interested in Krsna. She is has been listening to a few lectures by Ravindra-svarupa, and reading some of his articles. She has asked for a Bhagavad-Gita for herself, in fact she was jealous that my brother Dan got one before her! She is even thinking about taking a Bhagavatam set when she has finished her studies.

Anyway, I better get packing. I just needed to sit down for a few minutes to get my body together.

Today was a very jam-packed day for me. I got up abit later than desired, but earlier than I have for the last week, and managed to chant the majority of my rounds before it was time to leave. Gurudeva gave a class this morning on the other side of town, starting at 7am. At around 5 am we got a phone call, Gurudeva wanted me to drive him around today. I haven't driven for two years, and I don't even have a full lisence, but somehow or other, it turned out that I was going to be the one driving him this afternoon. Anyway, my rounds weren't so attentive after that, all I could think about was the rules of the road that I would have to revive before 10:30.

The class was a brahmacari class, understanding the practicalities of the brahmacari vow, and brahmacarya's relationship with all other asramas. Gurudeva stressed again and again that brahmacarya is meant to produce real human culture, so that if a brahmacari does get married, he does so with a mood of sense control, not free enjoyment.

Anyway, the class ended, I did a few chores for Gurudeva, and managed to read a little bit. Then I drove him to his appointment, making it there wiht 5 minutes to spare. We drove back with no problems. I then jumped into the kitchen to help Yadu-raya with Gurudeva's lunch for today, and his ekadasi meals for tomorrow. Gurudeva is on his way to India, so he needed to be prepared for the long flight. I put together a few ekadasi samosa's, which was definitely a bit difficult. Lunch was JUST on time. And we managed to leave for the airport right on schedule, aside from a little hitch in regards to Gurudeva's cashews, dates and raisins he requested. The hitch wasn't my fault, but Gurudeva made a few amusing remarks.

So, then I made it home after all that, catching the bus back to the asrama with a pot full of maha-maha-prasadam. I hadn't eaten all day, the way things worked out, so I was very relieved to make it home alright. I am not feeling very healthy at the moment. I did do 1/2 hour of exercise today, in what will hopefully be a regular routine. But my body is still feeling very weak from these two back-to-back illnesses. My throat is now rather sore, my body aches, and my temperature was rather high when I took it an hour ago.

Right now, Ramadas, Yadu-raya and myself are getting ready to head over the Tauranga for a visit. The two Prabhus will be doing books, I'm going to try and recuperate. We will be staying at my parents place. I don't know if I have mentioned yet, but my little brother is very close to becoming a devotee. He's rising early and chanting every morning, he is listening to heaps of kirtana, he's preaching the glories to prasadam to everyone he meets, and he is reading a few different Krsna conscious books. He just need a little bit of guidance and I think within six months he'll be ready to move down to the asrama in Wellington, to get some training from Mahavana. My mother is also getting interested in Krsna. She is has been listening to a few lectures by Ravindra-svarupa, and reading some of his articles. She has asked for a Bhagavad-Gita for herself, in fact she was jealous that my brother Dan got one before her! She is even thinking about taking a Bhagavatam set when she has finished her studies.

Anyway, I better get packing. I just needed to sit down for a few minutes to get my body together.

T-Mobile UK has finally released the new AKU2 firmware ROM update for its MDA Vario Windows Mobile smartphones (and MDA Compact and MDA Pro). It's about time!

The update enables push email for business users who's employers run the latest Microsoft Exchange server (Exchange Server 2003 Service Pack 2 or later). However, A2DP = stereo audio over bluetooth is not included in this update. It seems getting stereo sound to transmit over Bluetooth is a really difficult challenge.

The update also fixes a number of bugs in the Windows Mobile 5 operating system. And trust me, I can say, after a few months of using/cursing my Vario, there were a lot (!) of bugs.

Hopefully it all works like a charm now with the update. We shall see. People in various online forums seem to be happy with the fixes.

Get the update from the T-Mobile site. Do it now.

T-Mobile UK has finally released the new AKU2 firmware ROM update for its MDA Vario Windows Mobile smartphones (and MDA Compact and MDA Pro). It's about time!

The update enables push email for business users who's employers run the latest Microsoft Exchange server (Exchange Server 2003 Service Pack 2 or later). However, A2DP = stereo audio over bluetooth is not included in this update. It seems getting stereo sound to transmit over Bluetooth is a really difficult challenge.

The update also fixes a number of bugs in the Windows Mobile 5 operating system. And trust me, I can say, after a few months of using/cursing my Vario, there were a lot (!) of bugs.

Hopefully it all works like a charm now with the update. We shall see. People in various online forums seem to be happy with the fixes.

Get the update from the T-Mobile site. Do it now.

I got up abit late this morning. Although my stomach has settled down, I'm still missing alot of the strength I previously had. I tried to get up at 4, but didn't make it out of bed until 5. Which I guess isn't so bad.

My japa this morning was a little bit distracted. In a few of his seminars on good chanting, Ravindra-svarupa Prabhu talks about different kinds of inattentiveness in the chanting of the Holy Names. He talks about 'good idea' japa (I don't think he actually uses that term). This happens when the mind becomes calm by chanting and focusing on the mantra, but as a result of this clarity, the mind starts to think clearly about some problem/philosophical point/plan/anything, and we get the feeling that we are really making progress on that thing, but in the meantime, we totally miss out on hearing the Holy Name, which is what our japa is really all about. Ravindra-svarupa relays that once he brought one of his lecturers or tutors to the temple, and during kirtana this guest was dancing and chanting enthusiastically. Afterwards, Ravindra-svarupa Prabhu asked him what he thought. He replied "That was great! I had so many great ideas!".

There is a risk with this kind of japa that one will mistake their coming up with good ideas for actual progress in devotional service. It's an anartha which can grow beside the bhakti-lata, and we can mistake it for Krsna consciousness, but it's not, it's actually a distraction and it causes inattentiveness.

Anyway, that was my japa this morning. And during this distracted japa I discovered an anartha that I did't really expect to find, nor do I like it very much. It kind of relates to Prabhupada's famous purport in the Bhagavad-gita, Chapter 4, text 10: "Being freed from attachment, fear and anger, being fully absorbed in Me and taking refuge in Me, many, many persons in the past became purified by knowledge of Me — and thus they all attained transcendental love for Me."
The purport can be seen online - http://www.bhavagadgitaasitis.com/4/10/en

In this purport, Prabhupada explains how material attachments, and the resulting let downs, lead one to actually reject personalism, and be so afraid of actual personal relationships that one comes up with so many other theories, concepts etc just to escape having to deal with what it actually means to be a person, to have real loving relationships.

Anyway, I realised today that one of my major problems in Krsna consciousness is related to this. Our hearts are like fine china, and when they are hurt, they really get damaged. We have hopes for what relationships hold, and we place so much in this hope, that when this hope comes crashing down, our hearts are totally and utterly crushed. And instantly, we aren't able to put our hearts into an endeavour like that ever again. We hold back alot. We don't trust anymore. We don't want to risk that heartache again. And with good reason.

I noticed this once when I was young. I thought it was a sign of material detachment, but looking at it now, it was a result of being smashed while being materially attached. I had a girlfriend, who I was very attached to. I was young, and never really had a girlfriend before, so I was head over heels. This is why I kind of, cynically, understand what that boy Kana was going through, (mentioned in a previous entry - http://xmeatlessx.livejournal.com/24224.html?). I put alot of emotional effort into that, and ended up thoroughly battered by the end of it. And thus, in some way, there was a resolution that took place in my heart - I was not prepared to allow myself to be that vulnerable again!

And I didn't. In the only other relationship I had in my life, which happened about half a year later, my heart was not even remotely there. It wasn't going to be even if I wanted it to be. The classic example of once bitten, twice shy.

Anyway, don't worry, this isn't just some nostalgic blog update. This has practical applications to Krsna consciousness.

As Prabhupada points out in the purport to 4.10 "...because they are too materially absorbed, the conception of retaining the personality after liberation from matter frightens them. When they are informed that spiritual life is also individual and personal, they become afraid of becoming persons again, and so they naturally prefer a kind of merging into the impersonal void." Prabhupada often gives the example of a sick person. When a person is suffering very much, simply eating in bed, passing urine and stool in bed, bathing just by a sponge bath, totally suffering...and if you were to go to that person and say "when you are better you will be able to run, dance, eat cake, and enjoy", the sick person will just scoff. His conception of these things are all full of suffering due to his sick condition, so he can't concieve of these activities ever causing happiness, therefore he would rather just end it all, commit suicide.

This is what happens when our hearts are trampled by limited material relationships. We think "Forget the whole thing! I put in so much effort, so much emotion, so much heart, and now? Pain! I will never do that again!" Of course, we don't know that in a healthy condition of existance, the greatest pleasure possible can only be gained through establishing real relationships with Krsna and His devotees, which absorb every drop of emotional potential we have.

So, because of material experience, my heart is holding back. Deep inside there is a feeling like "I know what it's like to give my heart fully over, it's a risk I'm not willing to take." Thus, in my relationships with the devotees, and in my relationships with my Gurudeva, there is resistance. I'm not putting in my full emotional effort, because I fear that if I do, I will be let down.

This means that in my japa I am not putting my full hearts energies into calling out for Krsna, because, afterall, perhaps He will leave my heart trampled as well.

Of course, this isn't true. Krsna, the most merciful personality, the most attractive reservoir of all pleasure, is not going to trample the hearts of His devotees. My Gurudeva, who is an abode of mercy, is not going to misuse my dedication to him. And the devotees, who are full of compassion on all the fallen, conditioned souls, are not going to trample my heart. But the conception is there, this fear of personalism which results from material attachments and material experiences.

I long so much for the day when my full hearts efforts can be put into calling out Krsna's name, into serving my Gurudeva with firm dedication, and into my every interaction with the devotees of the Lord. And I beg the blessings of all the Vaisnava's that one day this will be a reality.

I got up abit late this morning. Although my stomach has settled down, I'm still missing alot of the strength I previously had. I tried to get up at 4, but didn't make it out of bed until 5. Which I guess isn't so bad.

My japa this morning was a little bit distracted. In a few of his seminars on good chanting, Ravindra-svarupa Prabhu talks about different kinds of inattentiveness in the chanting of the Holy Names. He talks about 'good idea' japa (I don't think he actually uses that term). This happens when the mind becomes calm by chanting and focusing on the mantra, but as a result of this clarity, the mind starts to think clearly about some problem/philosophical point/plan/anything, and we get the feeling that we are really making progress on that thing, but in the meantime, we totally miss out on hearing the Holy Name, which is what our japa is really all about. Ravindra-svarupa relays that once he brought one of his lecturers or tutors to the temple, and during kirtana this guest was dancing and chanting enthusiastically. Afterwards, Ravindra-svarupa Prabhu asked him what he thought. He replied "That was great! I had so many great ideas!".

There is a risk with this kind of japa that one will mistake their coming up with good ideas for actual progress in devotional service. It's an anartha which can grow beside the bhakti-lata, and we can mistake it for Krsna consciousness, but it's not, it's actually a distraction and it causes inattentiveness.

Anyway, that was my japa this morning. And during this distracted japa I discovered an anartha that I did't really expect to find, nor do I like it very much. It kind of relates to Prabhupada's famous purport in the Bhagavad-gita, Chapter 4, text 10: "Being freed from attachment, fear and anger, being fully absorbed in Me and taking refuge in Me, many, many persons in the past became purified by knowledge of Me — and thus they all attained transcendental love for Me."
The purport can be seen online - http://www.bhavagadgitaasitis.com/4/10/en

In this purport, Prabhupada explains how material attachments, and the resulting let downs, lead one to actually reject personalism, and be so afraid of actual personal relationships that one comes up with so many other theories, concepts etc just to escape having to deal with what it actually means to be a person, to have real loving relationships.

Anyway, I realised today that one of my major problems in Krsna consciousness is related to this. Our hearts are like fine china, and when they are hurt, they really get damaged. We have hopes for what relationships hold, and we place so much in this hope, that when this hope comes crashing down, our hearts are totally and utterly crushed. And instantly, we aren't able to put our hearts into an endeavour like that ever again. We hold back alot. We don't trust anymore. We don't want to risk that heartache again. And with good reason.

I noticed this once when I was young. I thought it was a sign of material detachment, but looking at it now, it was a result of being smashed while being materially attached. I had a girlfriend, who I was very attached to. I was young, and never really had a girlfriend before, so I was head over heels. This is why I kind of, cynically, understand what that boy Kana was going through, (mentioned in a previous entry - http://xmeatlessx.livejournal.com/24224.html?). I put alot of emotional effort into that, and ended up thoroughly battered by the end of it. And thus, in some way, there was a resolution that took place in my heart - I was not prepared to allow myself to be that vulnerable again!

And I didn't. In the only other relationship I had in my life, which happened about half a year later, my heart was not even remotely there. It wasn't going to be even if I wanted it to be. The classic example of once bitten, twice shy.

Anyway, don't worry, this isn't just some nostalgic blog update. This has practical applications to Krsna consciousness.

As Prabhupada points out in the purport to 4.10 "...because they are too materially absorbed, the conception of retaining the personality after liberation from matter frightens them. When they are informed that spiritual life is also individual and personal, they become afraid of becoming persons again, and so they naturally prefer a kind of merging into the impersonal void." Prabhupada often gives the example of a sick person. When a person is suffering very much, simply eating in bed, passing urine and stool in bed, bathing just by a sponge bath, totally suffering...and if you were to go to that person and say "when you are better you will be able to run, dance, eat cake, and enjoy", the sick person will just scoff. His conception of these things are all full of suffering due to his sick condition, so he can't concieve of these activities ever causing happiness, therefore he would rather just end it all, commit suicide.

This is what happens when our hearts are trampled by limited material relationships. We think "Forget the whole thing! I put in so much effort, so much emotion, so much heart, and now? Pain! I will never do that again!" Of course, we don't know that in a healthy condition of existance, the greatest pleasure possible can only be gained through establishing real relationships with Krsna and His devotees, which absorb every drop of emotional potential we have.

So, because of material experience, my heart is holding back. Deep inside there is a feeling like "I know what it's like to give my heart fully over, it's a risk I'm not willing to take." Thus, in my relationships with the devotees, and in my relationships with my Gurudeva, there is resistance. I'm not putting in my full emotional effort, because I fear that if I do, I will be let down.

This means that in my japa I am not putting my full hearts energies into calling out for Krsna, because, afterall, perhaps He will leave my heart trampled as well.

Of course, this isn't true. Krsna, the most merciful personality, the most attractive reservoir of all pleasure, is not going to trample the hearts of His devotees. My Gurudeva, who is an abode of mercy, is not going to misuse my dedication to him. And the devotees, who are full of compassion on all the fallen, conditioned souls, are not going to trample my heart. But the conception is there, this fear of personalism which results from material attachments and material experiences.

I long so much for the day when my full hearts efforts can be put into calling out Krsna's name, into serving my Gurudeva with firm dedication, and into my every interaction with the devotees of the Lord. And I beg the blessings of all the Vaisnava's that one day this will be a reality.

UK National Health Service (NHS): web-enabled primary care is finally coming, but is still super-clunky. And forget technology use in secondary care, it's non-existent. If only there was a central registry of patient's records. That would be really useful both for patients and statistical medical research. It would also be very cost effective.

The NHS is spending ?£6 billion on modernizing its information technology. Unfortunately, despite being only about one year into the project, they are already ?£1 billion pounds over budget.

I know from first hand ontology building experience that the Systematized Nomenclature of Medical Clinical Terms (SNOMED-CT), which is supposed to underly this whole revamp, is an extremely poorly architected ontology. A disaster just waiting to happen.

USA Health IT: IT in health could prevent some of the 90,000 avoidable annual deaths due to medical errors. Test often have to be re-done, because it's cheaper to re-test someone than to find the previous lab results. We need to get rid of the medical clipboard!

Knowledge diffusion is super-slow. It takes 17 years (!) for observed medical evidence to be integrated into actual practice. Empower the consumer (while also providing privacy and data protection). Also, empower homeland security to protect us from the evildoers.

Most practices don't have Electronic Health Records (EHR). Those would enable some degree of data exchange between practices, which would benefit a practice's competitors. The patient would be less tided to one doctor. Less tie-in means less profit. So, in the fierce competitive market of for-profit health care, there is little reason to go electronic.

However, SNOMED will help (... or so they say).

UK National Health Service (NHS): web-enabled primary care is finally coming, but is still super-clunky. And forget technology use in secondary care, it's non-existent. If only there was a central registry of patient's records. That would be really useful both for patients and statistical medical research. It would also be very cost effective.

The NHS is spending ?£6 billion on modernizing its information technology. Unfortunately, despite being only about one year into the project, they are already ?£1 billion pounds over budget.

I know from first hand ontology building experience that the Systematized Nomenclature of Medical Clinical Terms (SNOMED-CT), which is supposed to underly this whole revamp, is an extremely poorly architected ontology. A disaster just waiting to happen.

USA Health IT: IT in health could prevent some of the 90,000 avoidable annual deaths due to medical errors. Test often have to be re-done, because it's cheaper to re-test someone than to find the previous lab results. We need to get rid of the medical clipboard!

Knowledge diffusion is super-slow. It takes 17 years (!) for observed medical evidence to be integrated into actual practice. Empower the consumer (while also providing privacy and data protection). Also, empower homeland security to protect us from the evildoers.

Most practices don't have Electronic Health Records (EHR). Those would enable some degree of data exchange between practices, which would benefit a practice's competitors. The patient would be less tided to one doctor. Less tie-in means less profit. So, in the fierce competitive market of for-profit health care, there is little reason to go electronic.

However, SNOMED will help (... or so they say).

Now the chance for up and coming semantic web developers to demo their killer applications. The apps that will revolutionize the Internet, on display.

Tim Bernes-Lee (who uses a Mac, by the way) showed his Tabulator RDF browser. He gave a brief talk and demo of the app. It gives an "outline" style view of RDF and asynchronously and recursively loads connecting RDF using AJAX technology. It follows the 303 redirects, follows # sub-page links, uses the GRDDL protocol on xHTML and smushes on owl:sameAs and inverse functional properties (the killer feature, apparently).

Some commented to me afterwards that they thought that no one should ever have to see the RDF of a semantic web application, let alone browse it. Oh well.

Then came DBin. Not just a browser, no, a semantic web rich client! It uses so called brainlets (HTMLS) and a new semantic transport layer (not HTTP) to dynamically query and retrieve RDF using peer-to-peer transfer.

Again, I'm skeptical. It is just (yet another useless) RDF browser that saves bandwidth by sending the data through a peer-to-peer network. But RDF file sizes aren't exactly huge and compression will do far more than peer-to-peer to help with bandwidth. This browser is solving a problem that doesn't exist.

Next up: Rhizome. A python-based app that allows one to build RDF applications in a wiki style. Is uses a Raccoon application server to transform incoming HTTP requests into RDF, evolve them using rules and uses schematron validation. In short, it is to RDF what Apache Cocoon is to XML. Or, in more understandable terms: you declaratively build your web-site using RDF for everything from the layout to the database.

Pity, of course, that no one uses Cocoon and this Rhizome system looks really complicated, despite being pitched at "non-techical folks".

At this point I left the semantic web demo session. My thinking: these guys are nuts.

I caught the end of an entirely different demo/paper. The Guide-O system by researchers from Stony Brook University in New York.

It uses a shallow (read: simple) ontology to label areas of a web page according to their functional roles. It also creates a hierarchy of elements inside of each area or module. The third component of the system is a Finite State Automata for moving between functional states of the website.

Putting these three things together allows one to identify common trails of FSA transitions. That is, processes which users tend to perform regularly. Having identified these trails, one can cut out all the modules that do not contribute to the task. All useless clutter is eliminated from each web-page.

Result: mobile web surfing speed could be accomplished twice as fast as before and blind web surfing (using a screen reader) could be performed 4 times faster than before.

Future work: mining for workflows, using web services and analyzing the semantics of web content. Problems: coming up with standard way to describe the process and concept models. A system for semantic annotation of web content is needed.

I was impressed. It sounds like a really good idea. It takes three relatively simple ideas and combines them into something innovate and powerful. Nice.

Now the chance for up and coming semantic web developers to demo their killer applications. The apps that will revolutionize the Internet, on display.

Tim Bernes-Lee (who uses a Mac, by the way) showed his Tabulator RDF browser. He gave a brief talk and demo of the app. It gives an "outline" style view of RDF and asynchronously and recursively loads connecting RDF using AJAX technology. It follows the 303 redirects, follows # sub-page links, uses the GRDDL protocol on xHTML and smushes on owl:sameAs and inverse functional properties (the killer feature, apparently).

Some commented to me afterwards that they thought that no one should ever have to see the RDF of a semantic web application, let alone browse it. Oh well.

Then came DBin. Not just a browser, no, a semantic web rich client! It uses so called brainlets (HTMLS) and a new semantic transport layer (not HTTP) to dynamically query and retrieve RDF using peer-to-peer transfer.

Again, I'm skeptical. It is just (yet another useless) RDF browser that saves bandwidth by sending the data through a peer-to-peer network. But RDF file sizes aren't exactly huge and compression will do far more than peer-to-peer to help with bandwidth. This browser is solving a problem that doesn't exist.

Next up: Rhizome. A python-based app that allows one to build RDF applications in a wiki style. Is uses a Raccoon application server to transform incoming HTTP requests into RDF, evolve them using rules and uses schematron validation. In short, it is to RDF what Apache Cocoon is to XML. Or, in more understandable terms: you declaratively build your web-site using RDF for everything from the layout to the database.

Pity, of course, that no one uses Cocoon and this Rhizome system looks really complicated, despite being pitched at "non-techical folks".

At this point I left the semantic web demo session. My thinking: these guys are nuts.

I caught the end of an entirely different demo/paper. The Guide-O system by researchers from Stony Brook University in New York.

It uses a shallow (read: simple) ontology to label areas of a web page according to their functional roles. It also creates a hierarchy of elements inside of each area or module. The third component of the system is a Finite State Automata for moving between functional states of the website.

Putting these three things together allows one to identify common trails of FSA transitions. That is, processes which users tend to perform regularly. Having identified these trails, one can cut out all the modules that do not contribute to the task. All useless clutter is eliminated from each web-page.

Result: mobile web surfing speed could be accomplished twice as fast as before and blind web surfing (using a screen reader) could be performed 4 times faster than before.

Future work: mining for workflows, using web services and analyzing the semantics of web content. Problems: coming up with standard way to describe the process and concept models. A system for semantic annotation of web content is needed.

I was impressed. It sounds like a really good idea. It takes three relatively simple ideas and combines them into something innovate and powerful. Nice.

I attended a session on computing and education.

Tim Pearson said:
Schools in the UK spend just 1% of their budget on training and information technology. Business, in comparison spend 3%.

Schools like the web. It means less Microsoft, less expensive, in-school equipment, easy home access and is known to be modern/cool. Web 2.0 is great for lots of applications, but will never completely replace a rich-client for: hardware access, serious graphical work, immersive virtual reality and complex-process based assessment.

Learning is transforming into something more self-driven, interactive, open-ended and creative. Teachers will spend less time lecturing and more time mediating.

In terms of administration: school need to seriously look into getting some decent web-based admin, record keeping and curriculum planning applications. Crazy that this kind of stuff is still often done by hand, or in an Excel spreadsheet.

Gordon Thomson from Cisco said:
The IQ is dead as a measure of a good student. Better: passion + curiosity!

Cisco is working on innovative teaching solutions such as Telepresence. Imagine having a 3D image of Bill Clinton projected into the classroom to give a speech on global warming. It's like Star Trek.

The laptop is overrated. The $100 laptop, for example, is seen as the panacea to bridge the digital divide. However, in a few years technology will become so omnipresent that it doesn't matter anymore. What really matter is, first and foremost, that parents are interested in their children's education.

Addressing the challenge of web-based e-assessement, Neil T. Heffernan talk about an online exam system he and his student's built. It doesn't just assess students, but also offers hints and advice as students get questions wrong. It can also detect differences in performance over time as students learn. Teachers can use it to monitor their students, see which areas they are struggling with and then invest more time in explaining those in the classroom. Indeed, evaluation showed that student knowledge could be predicted very well.

I thought it was a very interesting and well-designed system. Looked good. It actually made answering math questions on a website kind-of fun.

Finally Elizabeth Brown presented her research on "Reappraising Cognitive Styles in Adaptive Web Applications".

We process information either visually or verbally, globally or sequentially, reflective or impulsive, convergent or divergent, tactile or kinesthetic, field dependent or independent, etc.

Focusing on the visual/verbal issue she used the WHURLE adaptive hypermedia system to present students with a customized revision plan best suited to their individual learning style. However, after extensive analysis, she had to conclude, that the adaptive learning environment made no difference whatsoever to students' performance. It might actually result in less learning, since if a student is only subjected to content that matches his or her individual learning style, then he or she will never learn to adapt to compensate for imperfect information. Students did say they liked the system, however.

I attended a session on computing and education.

Tim Pearson said:
Schools in the UK spend just 1% of their budget on training and information technology. Business, in comparison spend 3%.

Schools like the web. It means less Microsoft, less expensive, in-school equipment, easy home access and is known to be modern/cool. Web 2.0 is great for lots of applications, but will never completely replace a rich-client for: hardware access, serious graphical work, immersive virtual reality and complex-process based assessment.

Learning is transforming into something more self-driven, interactive, open-ended and creative. Teachers will spend less time lecturing and more time mediating.

In terms of administration: school need to seriously look into getting some decent web-based admin, record keeping and curriculum planning applications. Crazy that this kind of stuff is still often done by hand, or in an Excel spreadsheet.

Gordon Thomson from Cisco said:
The IQ is dead as a measure of a good student. Better: passion + curiosity!

Cisco is working on innovative teaching solutions such as Telepresence. Imagine having a 3D image of Bill Clinton projected into the classroom to give a speech on global warming. It's like Star Trek.

The laptop is overrated. The $100 laptop, for example, is seen as the panacea to bridge the digital divide. However, in a few years technology will become so omnipresent that it doesn't matter anymore. What really matter is, first and foremost, that parents are interested in their children's education.

Addressing the challenge of web-based e-assessement, Neil T. Heffernan talk about an online exam system he and his student's built. It doesn't just assess students, but also offers hints and advice as students get questions wrong. It can also detect differences in performance over time as students learn. Teachers can use it to monitor their students, see which areas they are struggling with and then invest more time in explaining those in the classroom. Indeed, evaluation showed that student knowledge could be predicted very well.

I thought it was a very interesting and well-designed system. Looked good. It actually made answering math questions on a website kind-of fun.

Finally Elizabeth Brown presented her research on "Reappraising Cognitive Styles in Adaptive Web Applications".

We process information either visually or verbally, globally or sequentially, reflective or impulsive, convergent or divergent, tactile or kinesthetic, field dependent or independent, etc.

Focusing on the visual/verbal issue she used the WHURLE adaptive hypermedia system to present students with a customized revision plan best suited to their individual learning style. However, after extensive analysis, she had to conclude, that the adaptive learning environment made no difference whatsoever to students' performance. It might actually result in less learning, since if a student is only subjected to content that matches his or her individual learning style, then he or she will never learn to adapt to compensate for imperfect information. Students did say they liked the system, however.

The day started with Mary Ann Davidson, the chief security officer at Oracle Corporation and former Navy officer, giving a keynote talk on the critical issue of security.

She quoted the head of the department of homeland security in the USA as saying:

"a few lines of code can be more destructive than a nuclear bomb".

Poor security costs between $22 and $60 million per year (National Institute of Standards and Technology). People would never accept if we built bridges as poorly as we build software. Software developers need to be accredited and licensed professional like engineers are.

She ended with a quote from Thomas Jefferson (in a letter to George Hammond, 1792):

"A nation, as a society, forms a moral person, and every member of it is personally responsible for his society."

Then Tony Hey (former head of the Computer Science department at Southampton University and now working for Microsoft) talked about e-science, grids and high-performance computing and how Microsoft was getting into it. They would build simple grid services, based upon simple web services protocols. This will result in e-science mash-ups: people combining different services to perform a really useful new task.

His presentation was technically good, but used far too many words on far too many slides. With so much visual clutter, I stopped listening to him half-way through.

The day started with Mary Ann Davidson, the chief security officer at Oracle Corporation and former Navy officer, giving a keynote talk on the critical issue of security.

She quoted the head of the department of homeland security in the USA as saying:

"a few lines of code can be more destructive than a nuclear bomb".

Poor security costs between $22 and $60 million per year (National Institute of Standards and Technology). People would never accept if we built bridges as poorly as we build software. Software developers need to be accredited and licensed professional like engineers are.

She ended with a quote from Thomas Jefferson (in a letter to George Hammond, 1792):

"A nation, as a society, forms a moral person, and every member of it is personally responsible for his society."

Then Tony Hey (former head of the Computer Science department at Southampton University and now working for Microsoft) talked about e-science, grids and high-performance computing and how Microsoft was getting into it. They would build simple grid services, based upon simple web services protocols. This will result in e-science mash-ups: people combining different services to perform a really useful new task.

His presentation was technically good, but used far too many words on far too many slides. With so much visual clutter, I stopped listening to him half-way through.

In the evening there was a food and drinks reception at the Edinburgh Castle.

The castle was impressive. Very large and imposing. I could literally feel the history of the place. Many, many wars were fought on its mighty walls. The entire city of Edinburgh has a unique ancient feeling to it. Of course, not everything was awe-inspiring. The dog cemetery, for instance, was laughable (sad, sad, sad).

The reception (price of admission = ?£50) involved pretty waitresses walking around with trays of expensive wine and hors d'oeuvre for everyone's enjoyment and nourishment. However, there was far too much wine and far too little food. Every time a food tray appeared, the poor waitress was jumped upon by a crowd of hungry researchers and raided for all she (or, more accurately, her food tray) was worth.

The food was completely abominable, too. Various varieties of dead animals. The only vegetarian options I saw were plates of deep-fried mushroom balls. Yum. Needless to say, I didn't eat or drink anything, nor did I have much opportunity to.

As the night wore on the who's who of the World Wide Web became more and more drunk. Give famous and powerful innovators, researchers and academics lots of free alcohol and they turn into "high-class" swaying, stammering simpletons. The British are especially renowned for their joy in and expertise at getting themselves utterly and completely drunk. It is, after all, the supreme form of enjoyment.

It was however a good opportunity to meet and rub shoulders with like-minded people from all over the world. I met lots of folks from my alma mater, Southampton University. However, with 1200 delegates attending, it was a bit too overwhelming. With so many people it is difficult to get to know anyone.

Feel free to browse the pictures of this event, as well as the rest of the conference here.

In the evening there was a food and drinks reception at the Edinburgh Castle.

The castle was impressive. Very large and imposing. I could literally feel the history of the place. Many, many wars were fought on its mighty walls. The entire city of Edinburgh has a unique ancient feeling to it. Of course, not everything was awe-inspiring. The dog cemetery, for instance, was laughable (sad, sad, sad).

The reception (price of admission = ?£50) involved pretty waitresses walking around with trays of expensive wine and hors d'oeuvre for everyone's enjoyment and nourishment. However, there was far too much wine and far too little food. Every time a food tray appeared, the poor waitress was jumped upon by a crowd of hungry researchers and raided for all she (or, more accurately, her food tray) was worth.

The food was completely abominable, too. Various varieties of dead animals. The only vegetarian options I saw were plates of deep-fried mushroom balls. Yum. Needless to say, I didn't eat or drink anything, nor did I have much opportunity to.

As the night wore on the who's who of the World Wide Web became more and more drunk. Give famous and powerful innovators, researchers and academics lots of free alcohol and they turn into "high-class" swaying, stammering simpletons. The British are especially renowned for their joy in and expertise at getting themselves utterly and completely drunk. It is, after all, the supreme form of enjoyment.

It was however a good opportunity to meet and rub shoulders with like-minded people from all over the world. I met lots of folks from my alma mater, Southampton University. However, with 1200 delegates attending, it was a bit too overwhelming. With so many people it is difficult to get to know anyone.

Feel free to browse the pictures of this event, as well as the rest of the conference here.

Right after the opening keynote came the ontology research track. This track included my presentation on ontology segmentation.

Peter-Patel Schneider gave the first talk in the session. It was a position paper presenting a new idea. He explained how the open-world semantics of classical logics was better suited to the wide-open world wide web, but the well known datalog (database) paradigm also had some useful attributes. The idea therefore was to merge the paradigms of datalog and classical description logic into a ideal hybrid web ontology language.

Sounded like a good idea to me. Unfortunately, he didn't see himself actually doing any work to realize this idea anytime in the foreseeable future.

Then came my presentation. I wasn't half as nervous as I thought I would be, despite there being over 100 people in the audience.

Unfortunately, I forgot to record the talk. Fortunately, I re-did the talk and you can view and listen to a quicktime movie of it.

I got lots of questions, though mostly of the "please explain this semantic web thing to me, I don't understand anything" variety. Many people were also taking pictures of my presentation slides with their digital cameras throughout my talk. I was one of the few people to use the Apple Keynote software to give my presentation. This software allowed me to produce slides that were vastly better-looking than the usual death-by-powerpoint variety.

I got lots of feedback afterwards. Here a few things people said to me:

• I liked and understood, you explained it well.
• I liked little story in the middle of your talk.
• Well done, the story didn't go overboard. It lightened the mood, but wasn't overblown and made a good point.
• Well done answering questions about what OWL is. I would have just told him to read the paper.
• I really liked your presentation.
• That was really interesting; this problem you are working is part of a larger issue of academics who just work on toy examples and never consider large-scale problems.
• I actually understood you talk, unlike the other two talks in the session, thanks.
• I think your algorithm is flawed because of the irregularity in the data on slide number 21! (I proceeded to explain how a depth-first search strategy in my implementation would potentially result in such irregularities and that a breath-first search would have resulted in a more regular, linear graph) Oh, now I understand; it was a really good talk.

Right after the opening keynote came the ontology research track. This track included my presentation on ontology segmentation.

Peter-Patel Schneider gave the first talk in the session. It was a position paper presenting a new idea. He explained how the open-world semantics of classical logics was better suited to the wide-open world wide web, but the well known datalog (database) paradigm also had some useful attributes. The idea therefore was to merge the paradigms of datalog and classical description logic into a ideal hybrid web ontology language.

Sounded like a good idea to me. Unfortunately, he didn't see himself actually doing any work to realize this idea anytime in the foreseeable future.

Then came my presentation. I wasn't half as nervous as I thought I would be, despite there being over 100 people in the audience.

Unfortunately, I forgot to record the talk. Fortunately, I re-did the talk and you can view and listen to a quicktime movie of it.

I got lots of questions, though mostly of the "please explain this semantic web thing to me, I don't understand anything" variety. Many people were also taking pictures of my presentation slides with their digital cameras throughout my talk. I was one of the few people to use the Apple Keynote software to give my presentation. This software allowed me to produce slides that were vastly better-looking than the usual death-by-powerpoint variety.

I got lots of feedback afterwards. Here a few things people said to me:

• I liked and understood, you explained it well.
• I liked little story in the middle of your talk.
• Well done, the story didn't go overboard. It lightened the mood, but wasn't overblown and made a good point.
• Well done answering questions about what OWL is. I would have just told him to read the paper.
• I really liked your presentation.
• That was really interesting; this problem you are working is part of a larger issue of academics who just work on toy examples and never consider large-scale problems.
• I actually understood you talk, unlike the other two talks in the session, thanks.
• I think your algorithm is flawed because of the irregularity in the data on slide number 21! (I proceeded to explain how a depth-first search strategy in my implementation would potentially result in such irregularities and that a breath-first search would have resulted in a more regular, linear graph) Oh, now I understand; it was a really good talk.

I’m in the city of Jaipur, just about to head to Vraj (finally). Had some nice darshans here of the original deities of Radha-Govandaji and Radha-Damodar. Lot’s of devotion amongst the devotees here. You should see them chanting bhajans to lord Govinda! I observed nirjala ekadasi yesterday and by the Lord’s mercy was able to have the association of some nice iskcon devotees, one of whom I met randomly as I was walking on my first day here to find the Govindaji temple. We did the full thing, even staying up all night! I didn’t know how I was going to survive as it is extremely hot and dry here and my mind was rebelling since the early morning, but by the Lord’s grace and the encouragement from the devotees time passed quickly and I didn’t die. It was my first time staying up all night for the ekadasi. Wanna try that next time in LA?

I’m in the city of Jaipur, just about to head to Vraj (finally). Had some nice darshans here of the original deities of Radha-Govandaji and Radha-Damodar. Lot’s of devotion amongst the devotees here. You should see them chanting bhajans to lord Govinda! I observed nirjala ekadasi yesterday and by the Lord’s mercy was able to have the association of some nice iskcon devotees, one of whom I met randomly as I was walking on my first day here to find the Govindaji temple. We did the full thing, even staying up all night! I didn’t know how I was going to survive as it is extremely hot and dry here and my mind was rebelling since the early morning, but by the Lord’s grace and the encouragement from the devotees time passed quickly and I didn’t die. It was my first time staying up all night for the ekadasi. Wanna try that next time in LA?

Wendy Hall started off the day talking about the trials and tribulations of organizing the conference. She had to put up a ?£0.5 million deposit to secure the conference center three years in advance. She could have kissed her career goodbye, if this conference had not been a success.

Next Charles Hughes the president of the British Computer Society (BCS) spoke. He gave an utterly boring scripted speech about how computing needs to become a respected professional profession.

Carole Goble then spoke about the paper review process. The conference was super-competitive. 700 papers were submitted, over 2000 reviews issued, and only 84 papers accepted (11% acceptance ratio).

Thereafter came a panel discussion on the next wave of the web. Important people from research and industry talked about the semantic web. Business wants TCO figures, risk measures, abundance of skilled ontology engineers and stuff like that. Academia underestimated the amount of work necessary (and wants more grant money).

Ontologies can be used today: they are especially useful for unstructured information and to organize already structured information in database tables.

Tim Berners-Lee brushed off Web 2.0 as just hype. That's just AJAX and tagging. Folksonomy is not going to fly in the business world. The real, hard-core Semantic Web is where it's at. What's more: we're already there. We've reached critical mass, but just haven't realized it yet. All we need is for the right search engining to "connect the dots" and boom! Instant semantic web via network-effect (or something like that).

The right user interface is going to be the most difficult part. Browsers will need an "Oh yeah? Why?" button query the RDF and give a justification for any entailment.

"Don't think of the killer app for the semantic web, think of the semantic web as the killer app for the normal web"

The value of the semantic web will be universal interoperability and findability. We have more information than ever before and are spending longer trying to find stuff. The semantic web will help automate some of the "find stuff". The search engines of today aren't sufficient went searching for information on Exxon Mobile, for example. That will return millions of hits.

Tim: "search engines make their money making order out of chaos, if you give them order, they don't have a business. That's why they are not interested in the semantic web"

Take home message from the panel:

• "you ain't seen nothing yet"
• "a lot of education still has to go on. It needs to get simpler for the average business person and there needs to be a lot more investment"
• "we can already apply the first results in a business context"
• "it's a great simplifying technology"

My take: they are quite right, we have indeed not seen anything yet ... if nothing else they certainly succeeded in securing the next 5 years of grant money ...

Wendy Hall started off the day talking about the trials and tribulations of organizing the conference. She had to put up a ?£0.5 million deposit to secure the conference center three years in advance. She could have kissed her career goodbye, if this conference had not been a success.

Next Charles Hughes the president of the British Computer Society (BCS) spoke. He gave an utterly boring scripted speech about how computing needs to become a respected professional profession.

Carole Goble then spoke about the paper review process. The conference was super-competitive. 700 papers were submitted, over 2000 reviews issued, and only 84 papers accepted (11% acceptance ratio).

Thereafter came a panel discussion on the next wave of the web. Important people from research and industry talked about the semantic web. Business wants TCO figures, risk measures, abundance of skilled ontology engineers and stuff like that. Academia underestimated the amount of work necessary (and wants more grant money).

Ontologies can be used today: they are especially useful for unstructured information and to organize already structured information in database tables.

Tim Berners-Lee brushed off Web 2.0 as just hype. That's just AJAX and tagging. Folksonomy is not going to fly in the business world. The real, hard-core Semantic Web is where it's at. What's more: we're already there. We've reached critical mass, but just haven't realized it yet. All we need is for the right search engining to "connect the dots" and boom! Instant semantic web via network-effect (or something like that).

The right user interface is going to be the most difficult part. Browsers will need an "Oh yeah? Why?" button query the RDF and give a justification for any entailment.

"Don't think of the killer app for the semantic web, think of the semantic web as the killer app for the normal web"

The value of the semantic web will be universal interoperability and findability. We have more information than ever before and are spending longer trying to find stuff. The semantic web will help automate some of the "find stuff". The search engines of today aren't sufficient went searching for information on Exxon Mobile, for example. That will return millions of hits.

Tim: "search engines make their money making order out of chaos, if you give them order, they don't have a business. That's why they are not interested in the semantic web"

Take home message from the panel:

• "you ain't seen nothing yet"
• "a lot of education still has to go on. It needs to get simpler for the average business person and there needs to be a lot more investment"
• "we can already apply the first results in a business context"
• "it's a great simplifying technology"

My take: they are quite right, we have indeed not seen anything yet ... if nothing else they certainly succeeded in securing the next 5 years of grant money ...

The World Organization of Webmasters tutorial session offered a chance to take an exam to become a certified professional webmaster. I though, "what the heck": the exam normally costs $195 to take and here at the conference they are offering it for free, so I might as well give it a go.

The exam wasn't easy. One needed to answer 70% of the questions correctly to qualify as a professional webmaster. There were some tough questions. A typical question would be something like:

Which of the following is valid XHTML 1.0 / HTML 4.0 (mark all that apply):
a. <img src="image.gif" alt="the image" height=25 width=25 />
b. <strong><a href="link.html">click here</strong></a>
c. <DIV CLASS="style.css">text</DIV>
d. <img src="picture.jpg" alt="my picture" />
e. <hr><a href="page.html">next page</a><hr>
f. (none of the above)

Any guesses?

Bill Cullifer was impressed with the exam results. Most people did extremely well. He commended that the individuals present were obviously the top people in the world in the Internet field.

I passed, of course. I'm now a WOW Certified Professional Webmaster.

The World Organization of Webmasters tutorial session offered a chance to take an exam to become a certified professional webmaster. I though, "what the heck": the exam normally costs $195 to take and here at the conference they are offering it for free, so I might as well give it a go.

The exam wasn't easy. One needed to answer 70% of the questions correctly to qualify as a professional webmaster. There were some tough questions. A typical question would be something like:

Which of the following is valid XHTML 1.0 / HTML 4.0 (mark all that apply):
a. <img src="image.gif" alt="the image" height=25 width=25 />
b. <strong><a href="link.html">click here</strong></a>
c. <DIV CLASS="style.css">text</DIV>
d. <img src="picture.jpg" alt="my picture" />
e. <hr><a href="page.html">next page</a><hr>
f. (none of the above)

Any guesses?

Bill Cullifer was impressed with the exam results. Most people did extremely well. He commended that the individuals present were obviously the top people in the world in the Internet field.

I passed, of course. I'm now a WOW Certified Professional Webmaster.

Along the same lines as Web 2.0 comes eXtreme Programming. This new philosophy of how to program has 12 basic principles:

• Pair programming: two people to one screen. This is easier than it sounds. Software engineering is a very social activity, so pairing up is only natural. Pairings change naturally over time, sometimes several times a day. This practice helps introduce new people to the team, creates shared knowledge of the codebase and (most important) greatly improves the quality of the resultant code, while only minimally reducing productivity.
• On-site customer: the customer is present throughout the development process. No huge requirements documents that no one reads. This means that the customer must always be reachable to ask about a design decision. A programmer with a question should not have to wait longer than an hour for an answer.
• Test-first development: write the tests first and then create the program until all the tests pass.
  Frequent small releases: most important principle. Release a working product at some small fixed period. A beta every two weeks, for example. The customer always has something tangible to use and give feedback on. No big-bang integration.
• Simple design through user stories: simple 3x5 cards to capture requirements. These serve as a contract to further discuss the feature with the customer and find out exactly what they want.
  Common code ownership: anyone on the team can change anything in the codebase (relies and builds upon test-first development and pair programming)
• Refactoring: if you need to change something, do it!
• Sustainable pace: work no longer than 40 hours a week. No burn out.
• Coding standards
• Continuos integration
• Planning game
• System metaphor

Along the same lines as Web 2.0 comes eXtreme Programming. This new philosophy of how to program has 12 basic principles:

• Pair programming: two people to one screen. This is easier than it sounds. Software engineering is a very social activity, so pairing up is only natural. Pairings change naturally over time, sometimes several times a day. This practice helps introduce new people to the team, creates shared knowledge of the codebase and (most important) greatly improves the quality of the resultant code, while only minimally reducing productivity.
• On-site customer: the customer is present throughout the development process. No huge requirements documents that no one reads. This means that the customer must always be reachable to ask about a design decision. A programmer with a question should not have to wait longer than an hour for an answer.
• Test-first development: write the tests first and then create the program until all the tests pass.
  Frequent small releases: most important principle. Release a working product at some small fixed period. A beta every two weeks, for example. The customer always has something tangible to use and give feedback on. No big-bang integration.
• Simple design through user stories: simple 3x5 cards to capture requirements. These serve as a contract to further discuss the feature with the customer and find out exactly what they want.
  Common code ownership: anyone on the team can change anything in the codebase (relies and builds upon test-first development and pair programming)
• Refactoring: if you need to change something, do it!
• Sustainable pace: work no longer than 40 hours a week. No burn out.
• Coding standards
• Continuos integration
• Planning game
• System metaphor