Planet ISKCON

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

After the keynote I attended a tutorial on best practices in web development sponsored by Bill Cullifer of the the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW).

David Leip from IBM and David Shrimpton from the University of Kent talked about Web 2.0. The Web 2.0 phenomenon is exemplified in the difference between mapquest and google maps, ofoto and flickr, britannica online and wikipedia, personal websites and myspace, stickness and syndication, etc. The value of a website can no longer be measured by how many people visit it. Instead people can subscribe to feeds off the website and get all the benefits without ever actually visiting the site.

Websphere is IBM's Java Enterprise Application Server. It's biggest competition no longer comes from products like BEA WebLogic, but instead from Amazon. Amazon offers people a virtual e-marketplace that handles all the accounting, advertizing, searching, buying, selling and refunds. All you have to do it set up the user account and use their APIs. Very easy and very cheap; very Web 2.0.

Another Web 2.0 phenomenon is the perpetual "beta". A product is never finished, but rather is continuously re-evaluated and refined. Updates can be pushed to all users, since the entire application lives on the web.

New application create buzz by being genuinely fun to use. Google Maps delights its visitors. The wow-factor makes people stay loyal. However, as soon as things start to go wrong, people will very quickly switch to using another service that works. Word of mouth is the way! Google never advertise; they don't have to.

Web 1.0 was all about commerce, Web 2.0 is all about people (what Web 3.0 will be is still written in the stars). The myriad number of WS* standards may be useful and necessary for the enterprise, but any normal person will be totally bewildered by WS*-standards vertigo. Web 2.0 is about the people taking back the Internet.

In the Web 2.0 world accessibility matters. Don't use red and green together on a web page, some people are color blind. Use xHTML and CSS, some people use screen readers.

AJAX (asynchronous javascript and XML) is the new buzzword. It was only coined by Jesse james Garrett on February 18, 2005 and already everyone is talking about it. All there is to it is the realization that you can use the XMLHttpRequest javascript function to ask for something from a server. This makes sophisticated Web 2.0 application possible. For example:

Writely - an online word processor
Kiko - an online calendar
Box - online file storage

Exclusive, hierarchical, fixed taxonomies are out. Flexible, flat, multi-tag, emergent folksonomies are in.

Microformats decree: Humans first, machines second. They are the lower-case semantic web. They use simple semantics, adding to the stuff that's already there, instead of inventing this hugely complicated description logic stuff (that I'm working on). Microformat are cheap, easy and, as long as people agree on them, they can be just as powerful and interoperable as if you had created a full XML-Schema monster. More at microformats.org and programmableweb.com.

After the keynote I attended a tutorial on best practices in web development sponsored by Bill Cullifer of the the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW).

David Leip from IBM and David Shrimpton from the University of Kent talked about Web 2.0. The Web 2.0 phenomenon is exemplified in the difference between mapquest and google maps, ofoto and flickr, britannica online and wikipedia, personal websites and myspace, stickness and syndication, etc. The value of a website can no longer be measured by how many people visit it. Instead people can subscribe to feeds off the website and get all the benefits without ever actually visiting the site.

Websphere is IBM's Java Enterprise Application Server. It's biggest competition no longer comes from products like BEA WebLogic, but instead from Amazon. Amazon offers people a virtual e-marketplace that handles all the accounting, advertizing, searching, buying, selling and refunds. All you have to do it set up the user account and use their APIs. Very easy and very cheap; very Web 2.0.

Another Web 2.0 phenomenon is the perpetual "beta". A product is never finished, but rather is continuously re-evaluated and refined. Updates can be pushed to all users, since the entire application lives on the web.

New application create buzz by being genuinely fun to use. Google Maps delights its visitors. The wow-factor makes people stay loyal. However, as soon as things start to go wrong, people will very quickly switch to using another service that works. Word of mouth is the way! Google never advertise; they don't have to.

Web 1.0 was all about commerce, Web 2.0 is all about people (what Web 3.0 will be is still written in the stars). The myriad number of WS* standards may be useful and necessary for the enterprise, but any normal person will be totally bewildered by WS*-standards vertigo. Web 2.0 is about the people taking back the Internet.

In the Web 2.0 world accessibility matters. Don't use red and green together on a web page, some people are color blind. Use xHTML and CSS, some people use screen readers.

AJAX (asynchronous javascript and XML) is the new buzzword. It was only coined by Jesse james Garrett on February 18, 2005 and already everyone is talking about it. All there is to it is the realization that you can use the XMLHttpRequest javascript function to ask for something from a server. This makes sophisticated Web 2.0 application possible. For example:

Writely - an online word processor
Kiko - an online calendar
Box - online file storage

Exclusive, hierarchical, fixed taxonomies are out. Flexible, flat, multi-tag, emergent folksonomies are in.

Microformats decree: Humans first, machines second. They are the lower-case semantic web. They use simple semantics, adding to the stuff that's already there, instead of inventing this hugely complicated description logic stuff (that I'm working on). Microformat are cheap, easy and, as long as people agree on them, they can be just as powerful and interoperable as if you had created a full XML-Schema monster. More at microformats.org and programmableweb.com.

The second day of the WWW2006 conference started with Les Carr saying how super-excited he was about everything in the upcoming conference. Les was one of my former teachers back in Southampton University. He is the one who encouraged me to submit a paper for WWW2006.

Then the first minister of Scotland got on stage and gave a talk, singing the glories of mother Scotland. He talked about how the great country of Scotland, with its devolved parliament and independence from oppressive England was making great strides in the world. No nation is more illustrious!

Wendy Hall and Tim Berners-Lee also said a few words. Tim Berners-Lee is the guy who invented the World Wide Web back in 1990 (yup, the Web is only 16 years old).

Sir David Brown, the chairman of Motorola Ltd. gave a speech. He recalled how he estimated ten years ago that there might be 900,000 mobile phones sold every year. Now there are 900,000 mobile phones being sold every 19 hours. He was 46,000% wrong! But at least he was 46,000% wrong in the right direction.

Mobiles are the 4th screen, he said. The computer desktop, the living room, the car and the mobile make up the places were we consume media. The future is personalized content anywhere and anytime. The device formally known as the mobile phone will be central to this ubiquitous media revolution.

Globalization is good. It's a chance for a positive-sum gain for everyone. Smart countries will use communication technology to combat outsourcing of manufacturing by "insourcing" logistics control. For example, there is no reason that a manufacturing plant in China can't be managed and control remotely from the UK.

On to socioeconomics: there will be an estimated 930 million new mobile phones in developing countries by 2008. The proliferation of low-cost mobile devices everywhere will lead to drastically increased economic output from developing nations. Technology innovation will be followed by business innovation, which will be followed by renewed technology innovation, and so on in a spiral of economic growth. More money for everyone! This will create better health, better education, better lifestyle and a better world.

What Sir David does not realize is that with increased economic development there also comes greatly increased suffering, stress, mental illness, pollution and war. As my spiritual master has said: "vaisyas (businessmen) can not be the leaders of any working society, material or spiritual"

The second day of the WWW2006 conference started with Les Carr saying how super-excited he was about everything in the upcoming conference. Les was one of my former teachers back in Southampton University. He is the one who encouraged me to submit a paper for WWW2006.

Then the first minister of Scotland got on stage and gave a talk, singing the glories of mother Scotland. He talked about how the great country of Scotland, with its devolved parliament and independence from oppressive England was making great strides in the world. No nation is more illustrious!

Wendy Hall and Tim Berners-Lee also said a few words. Tim Berners-Lee is the guy who invented the World Wide Web back in 1990 (yup, the Web is only 16 years old).

Sir David Brown, the chairman of Motorola Ltd. gave a speech. He recalled how he estimated ten years ago that there might be 900,000 mobile phones sold every year. Now there are 900,000 mobile phones being sold every 19 hours. He was 46,000% wrong! But at least he was 46,000% wrong in the right direction.

Mobiles are the 4th screen, he said. The computer desktop, the living room, the car and the mobile make up the places were we consume media. The future is personalized content anywhere and anytime. The device formally known as the mobile phone will be central to this ubiquitous media revolution.

Globalization is good. It's a chance for a positive-sum gain for everyone. Smart countries will use communication technology to combat outsourcing of manufacturing by "insourcing" logistics control. For example, there is no reason that a manufacturing plant in China can't be managed and control remotely from the UK.

On to socioeconomics: there will be an estimated 930 million new mobile phones in developing countries by 2008. The proliferation of low-cost mobile devices everywhere will lead to drastically increased economic output from developing nations. Technology innovation will be followed by business innovation, which will be followed by renewed technology innovation, and so on in a spiral of economic growth. More money for everyone! This will create better health, better education, better lifestyle and a better world.

What Sir David does not realize is that with increased economic development there also comes greatly increased suffering, stress, mental illness, pollution and war. As my spiritual master has said: "vaisyas (businessmen) can not be the leaders of any working society, material or spiritual"

Tagging is also being used in the enterprise. IBM has added tagging to its internal contact management system: Fringe Contacts. IBMers are connected by location, projects, position in the organizational hierarchy and now also by the tags they give each other. For example, everyone attending the chi2006 conference might tag themselves, or get tagged with that tag by a co-worker. By collecting all the reverse links one can easily build a list of all attendees, something what would have been otherwise very difficult in such a large organization. No single person has to maintain the list. It is updated organically.

The researchers noticed that the most interesting tags were those that were used by lots of people on a small number of people. These kinds of tags describe special expertise that there few people have. They can be used to identify special skills in the company.

Avaya labs has a similar system. They used to use a system of broad categories (e.g tech, development, marketing, etc) and skills. Every employee was tasked with keeping their own user profile up to date. However, inevitably, people got lazy, forgot the update their profiles and the system became useless.

Tagging collects dynamic user categories by the social relationships that already exist in the company. Changes in people's interests and people learning new skills are reflected in the collective tag cloud.

The talk by the lady from Avaya was somewhat difficult to understand. Loads of text on each slide and a virus scanner constantly coming up during the presentation, blocking the view, all made it very difficult to follow what she was saying. The slides might as well have not been there. Lesson for her to learn: less is more.

Mitre corporation created a system called Onomi. This enables social bookmarking, networks of expertise and information sharing. It integates with del.isio.us, LDAP, email, RSS, Soap, intranet URIs. They now use it as a replacement for email when telling people about something interesting. 18% of the workforce are using it. Most were attracted by a banner ad on the Intranet, as well as by selective announcements to specific user groups.

Yahoo has developed an AJAX tagging engine that suggests tags. This reduces the overlap between tags. If you tag something with one tag, all related tags will be pushed way own on the selection list. It also helps eliminate tag spam. If you use good tags (those used by many other people) those tags get a higher value (in a mutual reenforcement HITS algorithm style). It also awards original tags. People that introduce tags that later become popular are awarded a higher "importance" score. A further advantage is that users don't need to come up with their own tags.

Another presentation by Yahoo research was on combining ontology and flickr tags. Tags are like dynamic/shifting namespace, very different from a static controlled vocabulary. The lack of structure makes it difficult to hunt and search for content, but leans itself well to random browsing and accidental discovery.

Introducing simple subsumption between tags helps highlight that London is in the UK, for example. People will put in hypernyms in the middle strip of an ontology, e.g. golden retriever and dog. But the high-level hypernyms are too obvious, so people forget to add them (e.g. London and UK). Luckily, these kinds of high-level relations are well defined in ontologies. A combination of upper-level ontologies with low-level tags seems to be a promising area of research.

Some people from the steve.museum tagging project gave a talk on how the professional museum curators were very good at describing some things about the museum exhibits and terrible at others. The difference between the professional and layman taggers was staggering.

Tagging is also being used in the enterprise. IBM has added tagging to its internal contact management system: Fringe Contacts. IBMers are connected by location, projects, position in the organizational hierarchy and now also by the tags they give each other. For example, everyone attending the chi2006 conference might tag themselves, or get tagged with that tag by a co-worker. By collecting all the reverse links one can easily build a list of all attendees, something what would have been otherwise very difficult in such a large organization. No single person has to maintain the list. It is updated organically.

The researchers noticed that the most interesting tags were those that were used by lots of people on a small number of people. These kinds of tags describe special expertise that there few people have. They can be used to identify special skills in the company.

Avaya labs has a similar system. They used to use a system of broad categories (e.g tech, development, marketing, etc) and skills. Every employee was tasked with keeping their own user profile up to date. However, inevitably, people got lazy, forgot the update their profiles and the system became useless.

Tagging collects dynamic user categories by the social relationships that already exist in the company. Changes in people's interests and people learning new skills are reflected in the collective tag cloud.

The talk by the lady from Avaya was somewhat difficult to understand. Loads of text on each slide and a virus scanner constantly coming up during the presentation, blocking the view, all made it very difficult to follow what she was saying. The slides might as well have not been there. Lesson for her to learn: less is more.

Mitre corporation created a system called Onomi. This enables social bookmarking, networks of expertise and information sharing. It integates with del.isio.us, LDAP, email, RSS, Soap, intranet URIs. They now use it as a replacement for email when telling people about something interesting. 18% of the workforce are using it. Most were attracted by a banner ad on the Intranet, as well as by selective announcements to specific user groups.

Yahoo has developed an AJAX tagging engine that suggests tags. This reduces the overlap between tags. If you tag something with one tag, all related tags will be pushed way own on the selection list. It also helps eliminate tag spam. If you use good tags (those used by many other people) those tags get a higher value (in a mutual reenforcement HITS algorithm style). It also awards original tags. People that introduce tags that later become popular are awarded a higher "importance" score. A further advantage is that users don't need to come up with their own tags.

Another presentation by Yahoo research was on combining ontology and flickr tags. Tags are like dynamic/shifting namespace, very different from a static controlled vocabulary. The lack of structure makes it difficult to hunt and search for content, but leans itself well to random browsing and accidental discovery.

Introducing simple subsumption between tags helps highlight that London is in the UK, for example. People will put in hypernyms in the middle strip of an ontology, e.g. golden retriever and dog. But the high-level hypernyms are too obvious, so people forget to add them (e.g. London and UK). Luckily, these kinds of high-level relations are well defined in ontologies. A combination of upper-level ontologies with low-level tags seems to be a promising area of research.

Some people from the steve.museum tagging project gave a talk on how the professional museum curators were very good at describing some things about the museum exhibits and terrible at others. The difference between the professional and layman taggers was staggering.

I attended the World Wide Web 2006 conference in Edinburgh, Scotland last week. It was really interesting. Lots of knowledge on the future of the Internet. Here is what I learnt:
The first day I went to a workshop on tagging organized by Yahoo and RawSugar.

Tagging is the act of annotating something with a keyword. On the Internet anyone can tag. It puts the user in control. Tagging becomes useful when it happens on a large scale. Tags can be aggregated, organized into sets (like in flickr, youTube and technorati). A good tag set will cover as many facets as possible, e.g. music, artists, song, band, etc. People don't think "definition" when they tag. A tag can express an emotion, a insight, a gut reaction, anything. People are willingly telling us how they feel about something. That's part of the power. It's metadata for the masses.

Tagging works because it does not involve high brain functions of conscious sorting. It does not force people to make a choice (does skiing belong in the "recreation" or "sport" category?), things can have any number of tags. This kind of free, loose association is cognitively easy and makes less time. However, categories are arguably more memorable than tags, because you have had to make more of mental effort to add the category.

Tags can also count as opinion votes. Multiple instances of a tag are collected in bags of tags and determine how interesting a webpage, piece of music, photo, or any other tagable resource is (like in lastFM, My Web and delicious).

Tagging gives a sense of community. Like when playing a massively multiplayer online role-playing game like World of Warcraft, it gives a sense of "alone together". As described in the book, the wisdom of crowds, this leads to more cognitive diversity, less group-think, reduces conformity, reduces the correlated effects of individual mistakes, encourages new viewpoints, leads to less herd behavior and encourages participation.

Benefits of tags are:

• better search
• less spam / ability to identify genuine content
• ability to identify trends and trend setters
• a metric of trust
• ability to measure how much attention a resource is getting
• helps filter by interest (really works!)

Tagging is however limited in that people very rarely tag other people's stuff. Most tags are added by the content author. Tags are also often not very prominent, nor identified and collated in one's account.

Tags also lack structure and semantics. They exist in a large cloud, not an ordered hierarchy. Synonyms and polysemy can lead to a vocabulary explosion.

Search is a pull mechanism. Search engines need to go out an crawl the web to index all the content. This can take days. Tagging is push. Blogs notify the search engines when there is something new to to be had. Readers can be notified of new content the very second it appears.

It is difficult to add tagging to an existing system. Amazon tried this and failed. There has to be a clear role for tags. They have to provide some tangible benefit. The best tagging systems highlight unique contributions, give users control, allow for smaller tag-related sub-groups and allow for personalization.

Tagging can be described as going for a hike in the woods, or picking berries, while categorization is more like driving a car, or riding a rollercoaster.

I attended the World Wide Web 2006 conference in Edinburgh, Scotland last week. It was really interesting. Lots of knowledge on the future of the Internet. Here is what I learnt:
The first day I went to a workshop on tagging organized by Yahoo and RawSugar.

Tagging is the act of annotating something with a keyword. On the Internet anyone can tag. It puts the user in control. Tagging becomes useful when it happens on a large scale. Tags can be aggregated, organized into sets (like in flickr, youTube and technorati). A good tag set will cover as many facets as possible, e.g. music, artists, song, band, etc. People don't think "definition" when they tag. A tag can express an emotion, a insight, a gut reaction, anything. People are willingly telling us how they feel about something. That's part of the power. It's metadata for the masses.

Tagging works because it does not involve high brain functions of conscious sorting. It does not force people to make a choice (does skiing belong in the "recreation" or "sport" category?), things can have any number of tags. This kind of free, loose association is cognitively easy and makes less time. However, categories are arguably more memorable than tags, because you have had to make more of mental effort to add the category.

Tags can also count as opinion votes. Multiple instances of a tag are collected in bags of tags and determine how interesting a webpage, piece of music, photo, or any other tagable resource is (like in lastFM, My Web and delicious).

Tagging gives a sense of community. Like when playing a massively multiplayer online role-playing game like World of Warcraft, it gives a sense of "alone together". As described in the book, the wisdom of crowds, this leads to more cognitive diversity, less group-think, reduces conformity, reduces the correlated effects of individual mistakes, encourages new viewpoints, leads to less herd behavior and encourages participation.

Benefits of tags are:

• better search
• less spam / ability to identify genuine content
• ability to identify trends and trend setters
• a metric of trust
• ability to measure how much attention a resource is getting
• helps filter by interest (really works!)

Tagging is however limited in that people very rarely tag other people's stuff. Most tags are added by the content author. Tags are also often not very prominent, nor identified and collated in one's account.

Tags also lack structure and semantics. They exist in a large cloud, not an ordered hierarchy. Synonyms and polysemy can lead to a vocabulary explosion.

Search is a pull mechanism. Search engines need to go out an crawl the web to index all the content. This can take days. Tagging is push. Blogs notify the search engines when there is something new to to be had. Readers can be notified of new content the very second it appears.

It is difficult to add tagging to an existing system. Amazon tried this and failed. There has to be a clear role for tags. They have to provide some tangible benefit. The best tagging systems highlight unique contributions, give users control, allow for smaller tag-related sub-groups and allow for personalization.

Tagging can be described as going for a hike in the woods, or picking berries, while categorization is more like driving a car, or riding a rollercoaster.

Another visit to Dr. Philip Weeks. He has been reading these blog entries of mine and commented to me that he was impressed by the accuracy of my summaries of the consultations. Most patients, he said, get it completely wrong and imagine all kinds of crazy things that never happened. He concluded that while I may be soft spoken, quiet, reserved, I have an extremely sharp intellect underneath.

Aside: Phil hit upon a long running issue of my personality: people tend to underestimate me. After getting to know me for a while they appreciate by strengths, but, upon the first meeting me, most people are not very impressed. This is especially true of the proud, brash American types of people. They tend to roll right over me. That kind of persona intimidates me and causes me to withdraw even more than usual, further reinforcing their perception of my uselessness. One of my high school teachers back in Germany put it well: "Man traut es dir einfach nicht zu, obwohl du es so gut kannst" (Translation: one just does not have confidence in your ability, even though you can do it so well)

Anyway, on to my treatment.

Phil reiterated that I need to process things by feeling emotions. That will greatly improve by health. I need to turn a consciousness of "I am what I think" into "I am what I feel", though both, of course, are ultimately just material illusion. However, I find it difficult to express, or even be aware of, how I'm feeling. This is not going to change overnight. It's a long process of person improvement and growth.

In the mean time, the best he can do for me is carry on with the treatment. The effects of the acupuncture don't seem to last very long; only a couple of weeks. However, sometime my body will decide it no longer needs to have its disease (attack itself) and I'll be "cured".

Also, living in a warm (but not too warm), dry place would be good for me. Manchester must be the worst place on earth for my health.

My triple pulses revealed that I was doing better overall. Just a little damp left to clear. Dr. Phil stuck some needles in my legs and wrists. My wrist felt especially weird for quite some time after the treatment. There was definitely some serious energy moving around in this bodily vessel of mine.

Philip also gave me some more Chinese medicine witch-brew/tincture to take. His most recent concoction is for strengthening my blood, allowing it, among other things, to carry more oxygen. That's the next stage in my treatment, apparently.

The doc also noticed that my legs were slight swollen legs. Remedy: I need to drink more water (I remembered afterwards that I had indeed been drinking less than usual after loosing my aluminum water bottle a few weeks ago). Solution: I picked up a Platypus plastic water bottle on my way back to Manchester. This water bottle is collapsible, flexible, durable and very lightweight. The 1 liter bottle weighs just 23 grams / 0.8 oz.

Finally, some dietary recommendations for me: more proteen, some nuts; almonds are good (soaking them overnight removes the toxin they contain).

Another visit to Dr. Philip Weeks. He has been reading these blog entries of mine and commented to me that he was impressed by the accuracy of my summaries of the consultations. Most patients, he said, get it completely wrong and imagine all kinds of crazy things that never happened. He concluded that while I may be soft spoken, quiet, reserved, I have an extremely sharp intellect underneath.

Aside: Phil hit upon a long running issue of my personality: people tend to underestimate me. After getting to know me for a while they appreciate by strengths, but, upon the first meeting me, most people are not very impressed. This is especially true of the proud, brash American types of people. They tend to roll right over me. That kind of persona intimidates me and causes me to withdraw even more than usual, further reinforcing their perception of my uselessness. One of my high school teachers back in Germany put it well: "Man traut es dir einfach nicht zu, obwohl du es so gut kannst" (Translation: one just does not have confidence in your ability, even though you can do it so well)

Anyway, on to my treatment.

Phil reiterated that I need to process things by feeling emotions. That will greatly improve by health. I need to turn a consciousness of "I am what I think" into "I am what I feel", though both, of course, are ultimately just material illusion. However, I find it difficult to express, or even be aware of, how I'm feeling. This is not going to change overnight. It's a long process of person improvement and growth.

In the mean time, the best he can do for me is carry on with the treatment. The effects of the acupuncture don't seem to last very long; only a couple of weeks. However, sometime my body will decide it no longer needs to have its disease (attack itself) and I'll be "cured".

Also, living in a warm (but not too warm), dry place would be good for me. Manchester must be the worst place on earth for my health.

My triple pulses revealed that I was doing better overall. Just a little damp left to clear. Dr. Phil stuck some needles in my legs and wrists. My wrist felt especially weird for quite some time after the treatment. There was definitely some serious energy moving around in this bodily vessel of mine.

Philip also gave me some more Chinese medicine witch-brew/tincture to take. His most recent concoction is for strengthening my blood, allowing it, among other things, to carry more oxygen. That's the next stage in my treatment, apparently.

The doc also noticed that my legs were slight swollen legs. Remedy: I need to drink more water (I remembered afterwards that I had indeed been drinking less than usual after loosing my aluminum water bottle a few weeks ago). Solution: I picked up a Platypus plastic water bottle on my way back to Manchester. This water bottle is collapsible, flexible, durable and very lightweight. The 1 liter bottle weighs just 23 grams / 0.8 oz.

Finally, some dietary recommendations for me: more proteen, some nuts; almonds are good (soaking them overnight removes the toxin they contain).

MacZOT.com Fans want Pzizz because 'According to the National Sleep Foundation, sleep deprivation and its effect on work performance may be costing U.S. employers some $18 billion each year in lost productivity. Another study pushes this cost to over $100 billion.' - link to full article

I posted that advert clip so that I get a free version of that software (via BlogZOT). It uses NLP to enhance the sleeping/napping process. Taking frequent naps allows one to sleep less overall which means more time for doing pure-goodness activity.

MacZOT.com Fans want Pzizz because 'According to the National Sleep Foundation, sleep deprivation and its effect on work performance may be costing U.S. employers some $18 billion each year in lost productivity. Another study pushes this cost to over $100 billion.' - link to full article

I posted that advert clip so that I get a free version of that software (via BlogZOT). It uses NLP to enhance the sleeping/napping process. Taking frequent naps allows one to sleep less overall which means more time for doing pure-goodness activity.

Dr. Dr. Jeremy Rogers, a long time researcher at the University, recently took up a new a job in industry working for a large consultancy company. To commemorate the occasion my research group went out to dinner to an Italian restaurant called the Olive Press. I went along for this important social occasion.

However, due to my restrictive diet the only thing I could eat was a red pepper soup and some baked potatoes. It took quite some time negotiating with the waitress to find these few items on the menu that were eatable for me. Most of the so-called vegetarian options had eggs in them. What to speak of all the wheat and cheese in practically everything. I guess that is the nature of material (Mediterranean) world.

I took many pictures. View them here.

Dr. Dr. Jeremy Rogers, a long time researcher at the University, recently took up a new a job in industry working for a large consultancy company. To commemorate the occasion my research group went out to dinner to an Italian restaurant called the Olive Press. I went along for this important social occasion.

However, due to my restrictive diet the only thing I could eat was a red pepper soup and some baked potatoes. It took quite some time negotiating with the waitress to find these few items on the menu that were eatable for me. Most of the so-called vegetarian options had eggs in them. What to speak of all the wheat and cheese in practically everything. I guess that is the nature of material (Mediterranean) world.

I took many pictures. View them here.

No yoga this session. B.'s body is not very well suited to it and everyone else who came wasn't too eager for bodily exercise either. In all, 4 of our regular guests came.

We chanted "om namo bhagavate vasudevya" for a while. J. commented afterwards that he really relished it. He said he was meditating on the story of Dhruva Maharaja (which I read out during the relaxation period of the yoga the previous week) through the chanting.

We then chanted the Maha-Mantra. I found that super blissful. F. commented that, since the mantra was quite new to her, she had to concentrate very intensely to get it right and keep up with everyone. I pointed out that, although she might not realize it at the time, that kind of intense meditation results in huge spiritual benefit. It was very inspiring to see her try so hard.

After the meditation we talked about the 3 modes of material nature, as explained in the the 14th chapter of the Bhagavad-Gita.

I played six different pop songs and everyone guessed which of the three gunas (modes) each song induced. Can you guess? The songs were (note: you need to have iTunes installed for the links to work):

• Superbeast by White Zombie
• Human Behaviour by Bj??rk
• Agnus Dei by Libera Boy's Choir
• Aria: Gott ist unser Sonn und Schild (God is our sun and shield) by Johann Sebastian Bach
• Punk Rock Song by Bad Religion
• Ray of Light by Madonna

We then proceeded to each read a verse of the chapter until the end. The conclusion: overcoming the modes is easy. Just practice bhakti-yoga.

No yoga this session. B.'s body is not very well suited to it and everyone else who came wasn't too eager for bodily exercise either. In all, 4 of our regular guests came.

We chanted "om namo bhagavate vasudevya" for a while. J. commented afterwards that he really relished it. He said he was meditating on the story of Dhruva Maharaja (which I read out during the relaxation period of the yoga the previous week) through the chanting.

We then chanted the Maha-Mantra. I found that super blissful. F. commented that, since the mantra was quite new to her, she had to concentrate very intensely to get it right and keep up with everyone. I pointed out that, although she might not realize it at the time, that kind of intense meditation results in huge spiritual benefit. It was very inspiring to see her try so hard.

After the meditation we talked about the 3 modes of material nature, as explained in the the 14th chapter of the Bhagavad-Gita.

I played six different pop songs and everyone guessed which of the three gunas (modes) each song induced. Can you guess? The songs were (note: you need to have iTunes installed for the links to work):

• Superbeast by White Zombie
• Human Behaviour by Bj??rk
• Agnus Dei by Libera Boy's Choir
• Aria: Gott ist unser Sonn und Schild (God is our sun and shield) by Johann Sebastian Bach
• Punk Rock Song by Bad Religion
• Ray of Light by Madonna

We then proceeded to each read a verse of the chapter until the end. The conclusion: overcoming the modes is easy. Just practice bhakti-yoga.

Once again, hosted a Saturday Feast at my flat. 5 guests attended. It was K.'s and F.'s first visit to my place. On the menu:

• gem salad with cherry tomatoes
• bengali sak spinach
• mixed vegetable curry
• sweet potato pie
• clove basmati rice
• vegan sesame seed digestive biscuits

I had planned to finish the meal at 14:10, but alas, you know what they say about the best made plans. It took me 3 hours to cook everything and we ended up eating a very late "lunch" at 14:40. On the positive side, at least everyone was really hungry.

F. was amazed at the taste of prasadam. Prasadam is spiritualized food that has been offered to Krishna. The food becomes non-different from God.

Some people ask to see God, but why should we limit ourself to just using only that one sense? Eating prasadam is, quite literally, tasting God. I remember the first time I had prasadam, I ate soooo much. It is quite an other worldly experience. No one will argue that point. Proof by direct personal experience.

After prasadam we chatted for some time. The Krishna conscious knowledge was bubbling out of Nanda Sunu, he impressed everyone with his broad, brahminical understanding; he then also lead a very nice kirtan. I learnt that one of the reasons F. was attracted to Vedicsoc was the cleverly worded answer to the question "Do I have to give up anything?" on the Vedicsoc website. Then we read the story of Madhavandra Puri, who's birthday it was.

We also spent quite some time singing the glorifies of the new Apple Macintosh computer I recently acquired (more on that later). It is a very impressive, elegant and powerful machine. Apple certainly has put lots of love, devotion and attention to detail into its design. I used it to magnify and display the story of Madhavandra Puri on screen, so everyone could follow along as we took turns reading.

After an enlivening, blissful 4 hours of each other's association, we broke up for the day. F. left carrying two volumes of the Krishna Book!

Once again, hosted a Saturday Feast at my flat. 5 guests attended. It was K.'s and F.'s first visit to my place. On the menu:

• gem salad with cherry tomatoes
• bengali sak spinach
• mixed vegetable curry
• sweet potato pie
• clove basmati rice
• vegan sesame seed digestive biscuits

I had planned to finish the meal at 14:10, but alas, you know what they say about the best made plans. It took me 3 hours to cook everything and we ended up eating a very late "lunch" at 14:40. On the positive side, at least everyone was really hungry.

F. was amazed at the taste of prasadam. Prasadam is spiritualized food that has been offered to Krishna. The food becomes non-different from God.

Some people ask to see God, but why should we limit ourself to just using only that one sense? Eating prasadam is, quite literally, tasting God. I remember the first time I had prasadam, I ate soooo much. It is quite an other worldly experience. No one will argue that point. Proof by direct personal experience.

After prasadam we chatted for some time. The Krishna conscious knowledge was bubbling out of Nanda Sunu, he impressed everyone with his broad, brahminical understanding; he then also lead a very nice kirtan. I learnt that one of the reasons F. was attracted to Vedicsoc was the cleverly worded answer to the question "Do I have to give up anything?" on the Vedicsoc website. Then we read the story of Madhavandra Puri, who's birthday it was.

We also spent quite some time singing the glorifies of the new Apple Macintosh computer I recently acquired (more on that later). It is a very impressive, elegant and powerful machine. Apple certainly has put lots of love, devotion and attention to detail into its design. I used it to magnify and display the story of Madhavandra Puri on screen, so everyone could follow along as we took turns reading.

After an enlivening, blissful 4 hours of each other's association, we broke up for the day. F. left carrying two volumes of the Krishna Book!

No one came.

I waited for 30 minutes in an empty room passing the time by chanting. Then, to my surprise, just before I was about to leave, three people arrived. Within the course of about 5 minutes three members arrived, each independently thinking that they were really late, but other people would have already been there and they could catch the end of the session.

So, we started the session 35 minutes late with part two of the killer power yoga session (which wasn't all that difficult).

Then we chanted a full round of the Maha-Mantra. All the attendees were regulars, so we could go at a faster speed than usual. That was blissful, as always.

We then talked about some issues of free will and (pre-)determinism that had been an ongoing issue of debate for some time. We read BG 7.21. In the purport Prabhupada says that we are completely controlled and have independent free will, both at the same time.

Amazing, it's not a contradiction. The purport makes complete sense (at least it does to me, J., of course, didn't think so).

No one came.

I waited for 30 minutes in an empty room passing the time by chanting. Then, to my surprise, just before I was about to leave, three people arrived. Within the course of about 5 minutes three members arrived, each independently thinking that they were really late, but other people would have already been there and they could catch the end of the session.

So, we started the session 35 minutes late with part two of the killer power yoga session (which wasn't all that difficult).

Then we chanted a full round of the Maha-Mantra. All the attendees were regulars, so we could go at a faster speed than usual. That was blissful, as always.

We then talked about some issues of free will and (pre-)determinism that had been an ongoing issue of debate for some time. We read BG 7.21. In the purport Prabhupada says that we are completely controlled and have independent free will, both at the same time.

Amazing, it's not a contradiction. The purport makes complete sense (at least it does to me, J., of course, didn't think so).

Once again 4 guests for the university club. A new person named K. came who was already chanting 16 rounds and had found out about Vedicsoc from J. at the temple. He was interested in Krishna conscious yoga to improve his bodily health and asked lots of questions.

I had just gotten back from London a few hours earlier. I therefore didn't have any time to prepare any food for the session, as I usually. I also didn't have much of the usual equipment and paraphernalia that I usually bring.

I taught a killer power yoga class. Everyone was sweating, groaning and asking "is the next asana savasana yet"? Maybe I was a bit too hard, but everyone said they liked it. Hey, maybe I'll be even more cruel next time (heh-heh).

I talked a bit about my experiences traveling with my spiritual master (something I'll post more about later) and answered intermittent questions from left-field.

Once again 4 guests for the university club. A new person named K. came who was already chanting 16 rounds and had found out about Vedicsoc from J. at the temple. He was interested in Krishna conscious yoga to improve his bodily health and asked lots of questions.

I had just gotten back from London a few hours earlier. I therefore didn't have any time to prepare any food for the session, as I usually. I also didn't have much of the usual equipment and paraphernalia that I usually bring.

I taught a killer power yoga class. Everyone was sweating, groaning and asking "is the next asana savasana yet"? Maybe I was a bit too hard, but everyone said they liked it. Hey, maybe I'll be even more cruel next time (heh-heh).

I talked a bit about my experiences traveling with my spiritual master (something I'll post more about later) and answered intermittent questions from left-field.