A few months ago, I came across ReadySET, a collection of XHTML document templates for software engineering processes. ReadySET has templates for things like project plans, use cases, QA test plans, design documents, status reports and release notes. The collection is structured such that you basically end up with a template for an entire engineering intranet.
When I first came across ReadySET, I immediately thought of four technology improvements that would make it even more useful:
My thinking at the time was some kind of custom wiki-like application that served up the ReadySET documents wiki-style with the additional functionality outlined above.
Now I'm thinking the idea might be perfect for JotSpot. I still haven't found the time to dig deep into the beta but it might be a great project to try.
by : Created on Oct. 29, 2004 : Last modified Feb. 8, 2005 : (permalink)
Previously, we introduced the notion of a metric space.
Once you have a metric space (that is, a set of points and a function that specifies how distant you consider any two points) then you can start to develop notions of continuity and limits that form the basis for analysis.
For a metric space (X, d), let us call all the points less than r away from a point a the open ball of radius r at point a. In other words, B(X, d, a, r) = {x in X | d(a,x) < r}.
We can then define continuity by saying that a function f between the metric spaces (X1, d1) and (X2, d2) is continuous at point a in X iff, given a positive r2, there is a positive r1 such that f(B(X1, d1, a, r1)) is a subset of B(X2, d2, f(a), r2). In other words, f is continuous at point a if you can always provide an open ball at a that maps to points within an arbitrarily small radius open ball at f(a).
Once you think of continuity in terms of open balls, you're able to do something interesting. Imagine that you don't know the distance function of either the domain or co-domain of the function but someone who does has precalculated all the open balls for you. Of course, for most metric spaces, there would be an infinite number of these, but the key point here is that you only need to know what the open balls are to test continuity. You don't need to know the distance function.
Let's call a set of points with the open balls precalculated an open ball space. Clearly it is easy to turn any metric space into an open ball space. You can't go the other way, however, as we've thrown out what the actual radius of each open ball is.
But we're now able to talk about continuity with a more general set structure than a metric space. There are many other notions that can be introduced on an open ball space, some of which we'll get to on our journey through the poincare conjecture.
In the next poincare project entry, however, we will take one more step of abstraction and get to the very core concept of topology itself.
UPDATE: next post
by : Created on Oct. 28, 2004 : Last modified Aug. 10, 2007 : (permalink)
Jason Clarke points out that Scoble's linkblog is a great idea but it's broken in that the full content of the entries he references is not included in the linkblog.
I remember when Scoble started his linkblog, he did include full content but I recall he got in to some trouble with some people that didn't like their content being reproduced in full.
The problem is that, like Scoble, I have a strong preference for blogs with full content feeds. The fact I have a titles-only feed for my own blog is a historical artifact of a time where the aggregator I was reading downloaded the link if the feed entry had no content.
Jason subsequently talks about giving Scoble permission to reproduce content. Well, Scoble, feel free to include the full content of my entries when you linkblog them.
As Jason points out, it would be nice if, rather than Scoble having to track the permissions, each entry included them in a machine readable form (i.e. a CC URI). "Blog this" features in aggregators could easily make use of this to default whether to include the content or not in linkblogs.
UPDATE (2004-11-26): Scoble has announced he's going back to full text link blogging. I, for one, am glad!
by : Created on Oct. 28, 2004 : Last modified Feb. 8, 2005 : (permalink)
Congratulations to Bret, Richard, Graeme and the other organizers for a very successful Perth Blognite. Great diversity of speakers and the talks were just the right length with, in most cases, time for a good Q&A after each.
Highlights for me were Veronica Bowden's humorous and insightful look at personal blogging, Bret Treasure's inspiring Why Perth Should Blog, Richard Giles's informative guide to corporate blogging (which, as was mentioned a number of times, is just as relevant to organizations of other types) and Robert Corr's analysis of the good and bad in political blogging and the application of the Herman-Chomsky propaganda model to the blogosphere.
Interestingly, while Robert maintained a remarkable bi-partisan inclusiveness when discussing the positive effects of political blogging, his selective examples of the negatives betrayed his left-wing bias, which, to his credit, he fully disclosed from the outset.
All in all, a fantastic night.
by : Created on Oct. 27, 2004 : Last modified Feb. 8, 2005 : (permalink)
I've finished scoring Alibi Phone Network and I'm extremely pleased with it. Hopefully the director, Tom Bennett, will be too (although, as producer, I have final cut anyway :-)
It's all solo piano. The main title sequence is a rearrangement of the first 8 bars of a piece for violin and piano I started working on a few years ago. The piece was going around in my head during most of the editing and the fit seemed just right.
The opening music is then broken up into different fragments representing each of the three main characters with variations depicting various moods. There's also a motif representing the alibi phone network itself.
The end title music is a based on a couple of motives from the melody of the main title music but now interpreted much more sadly (this isn't a happy ending).
I also did the remaining sound effects, and added the voice of Tom Bennett in an audio cameo as the Maitre D' at Chez Quis.
Rendering now, ready to burn to DVD and send it express courier to Tom and my co-producer, James Marcus.
by : Created on Oct. 24, 2004 : Last modified Feb. 8, 2005 : (permalink)
I've completed a second rough cut of Alibi Phone Network. I found that doing a left-right flip of shots removed the crossing-the-line issues. It introduces some continuity problems but they are far more subtle than the effect of crossing-the-line.
After completing the rough cut, I showed it to my family. I'm very proud of the film - from the script to the performances to the look to the pacing.
Remaining tasks are:
After that we'll start submitting to festivals.
by : Created on Oct. 23, 2004 : Last modified Feb. 8, 2005 : (permalink)
Can anyone explain to me the build numbering system Apple uses for OS X?
I'm currently running 7M34 (more commonly known as 10.3.5)
There is a list of build numbers here that confirm that the first number is the major release):
But when does the following letter get increased? Even the final number doesn't seem likely to go up after after every build judging by how close some of the numbers are between successive minor releases.
Any readers know, or at least care to speculate?
UPDATE (2004-11-02): The Tiger developer preview that was just announced is 8A294. So they are still on the 'A' series of 10.4. I wonder when they start 'B'.
by : Created on Oct. 23, 2004 : Last modified Feb. 8, 2005 : (permalink)
While reading blogs this afternoon, I found out about Guy Kawasaki's new book The Art of the Start. So I went to Amazon.com to order it and, lo and behold, Amazon was already recommending it to me on the home page as a new release I might like.
I confess to being somewhat of an Amazon recommendation addict. I'm highly motivated to inform Amazon of all my book purchases (the 30% I don't buy from Amazon but instead buy from the Dymocks at the mall near my house in Perth, the Barnes and Noble near the office in Boston or at various airport bookstores I hang out at frequently).
But as you know, I'm also interested in hosting my own data (see aggregation versus hosting). I'm always on the lookout for ways I can take back my data, host it on jtauber.com and provide it to aggregators rather than have to host it with them.
So that's got me wondering about the books-I-own being stored at Amazon. It's somewhat of a duplication, because I have a barcode scanner and maintain my own book catalog (with data, incidently, retrieved from Amazon web services). I've not checked yet, but I wonder if Amazon will let me import the books I own so I can maintain the authoritative list and, in the words of datalibre, "Write Once, Read Everywhere."
Of course, that then leads me to Amazon wishlists. Could I self-host my wishlist without losing the huge value-add of Amazon keeping the wishlist updated based on what others have ordered for me?
by : Created on Oct. 23, 2004 : Last modified Feb. 8, 2005 : (permalink)
Recently, Doc Searls made the observation that the companies known for their brand don't have nearly as many bloggers.
I was all ready to embrace this meme that blogging and branding were opposing when I stopped and thought—hang on, Tom Peters blogs. Tom, more than any other person taught me the power of the personal brand.
Then it dawned on me. Blogging builds your personal brand. Perhaps people that (are good at or want to) build their personal brand don't sit well in companies that have a strong corporate brand.
UPDATE (2004-10-26): Well it looks like Todd Sattersten agrees with me but Doc Searls doesn't. Doc dislikes the notion of a "personal brand" but I agree with everything else he says in his comment so maybe he doesn't mean the same thing that Tom Peters does.
by : Created on Oct. 23, 2004 : Last modified Feb. 8, 2005 : (permalink)
Technorati picked up this compliment from a local Perth blogger regarding Wednesday's Perth Blogger Meetup:
"Our token newbie was James who seemed like a more then worthy addition to the Meetup." — (source)
Only thing is: I wasn't there! Although I'd RSVPed, I found out at the last minute that a friend was performing in the King and I that night so I went to that instead.
Was someone pretending to be me?
UPDATE: David's response: "Whoops! Sorry dude. That would explain why they were calling him Mark."
by : Created on Oct. 21, 2004 : Last modified Feb. 8, 2005 : (permalink)
The pop duo I produce and form one half of, Nelson James, is performing on the local community television station, Access 31, today as the musical act on the chat show, The Couch. If you're in Perth, check us out at 5.30pm.
It will be, not only our first television performance, but our first public performance together.
by : Created on Oct. 16, 2004 : Last modified Feb. 8, 2005 : (permalink)
Most of the bloggers I read who were at WEB 2.0 have already blogged about JotSpot. I wasn't at WEB 2.0 but now it's my turn.
In short, I'm very excited about JotSpot which is a web development platform built on top of a wiki engine. As you may have guess already, I'm a big fan of wikis. I've also long been interested in placing real-time structured data in documents (it's one of the things that excited me about SGML in the first place).
I almost think of JotSpot as a team version of where I want to go with Leonardo. And whereas I'm focused largely on personal info hosting/publishing in Leonardo, JotSpot looks like it could be a great platform for building aggregators.
Beyond the information that's available at JotSpot you might want to check out Jon Udell's flash demo of JotSpot which made me feel like I was getting my own personal demo from JotSpot's co-founders.
I'd already been following Joe Kraus's blog, Bnoopy before JotSpot was announced. I hope he can find the time to get back to blogging more soon.
I just got in the beta program so I'll report more on JotSpot in the future.
by : Created on Oct. 14, 2004 : Last modified Feb. 8, 2005 : (permalink)
A surface is more than just a set of points. Points on a surface have a notion of closeness that doesn't exist with a set unless we add some structure.
One way we can introduce the idea of closeness is to introduce the idea of the distance between points. That is, a function d that gives us a number for any pair of points.
To be a distance function, our function must meet some additional requirements:
A distance function is often called a metric. A set of points with a distance function is called a metric space.
A metric space clearly has a notion of closeness. A point y is closer to x than z is if d(y,x)<d(z,x).
UPDATE: next post
by : Created on Oct. 14, 2004 : Last modified Aug. 10, 2007 : (permalink)
Things are going well so far using a filesystem as a PIM. One odd observation, though, about OS X.
If I create a symlink from a shell, it comes up as an alias in Finder. But if I create an alias in Finder, it doesn't look like a symlink from the shell (it's an empty file but there's no display of the target).
by : Created on Oct. 12, 2004 : Last modified Feb. 8, 2005 : (permalink)
I've talked before about using an outliner as a PIM. Since getting my PowerBook I've tried out a number of OS X outliners with a fair degree of success.
Lately, however, I've wondered if I could pretty much achieve what I want just using the filesystem. I can set up a directory structure that mirrors the outline. I can use symlinks for items that belong in multiple categories. It's dead easy to put notes, bookmarks and arbitrary files under any item. Sharing of parts of my PIM info just becomes a file serving issue and I can version with a revision control system.
It should be relatively easy to integrate email as long as I can treat individual mails as files I can link to.
I can even set up a 43-folder tickler system and have a cron job that moves (or symlinks) files daily and monthly into an INBOX directory.
by : Created on Oct. 10, 2004 : Last modified Feb. 8, 2005 : (permalink)
A friend of my sister was doing a juggling demonstration for me on Friday night. The linguist and mathematician in me immediately asked if there was a notation for juggling. The coder in me then asked if there was software that took that notation and generated an animation. The answer in both cases was in the affirmative.
A quick Google search today revealed Juggling Lab at SourceForge. Very cool.
by : Created on Oct. 10, 2004 : Last modified Feb. 8, 2005 : (permalink)
I'm back home in Perth. Feels like I never left. Things to do today (in no particular order):
by : Created on Oct. 8, 2004 : Last modified Feb. 8, 2005 : (permalink)
One of the things that will be made considerably easier after the Leonardo rearchitecture is pluggable support for alternative approaches to editing. In a way, the RESTful approach I've taken has always made the use of external blog editors possible - I've just never tried it. Of course, I'm not sure the blog editors out there are that RESTful. They seem to largely use XML-RPC rather than just PUTing and/or POSTing.
I'm keen to try out MarsEdit, although I haven't investigated just how RESTful it can get. Part of the appeal of MarsEdit is posts like this one from Brent. I'd love it if more commercial software developers posted this kind of thing on their blogs.
by : Created on Oct. 5, 2004 : Last modified Feb. 8, 2005 : (permalink)
Often when working with RDF or trying to be generally Web-like, one needs a URI to identify something. It's easy enough to come up with your own URI but it would be incredibly useful to be able to see what URIs others have used for the same concept or entity.
Say, for example, that I wanted to express an interest in Linguistics or that I subscribe to American Cinematographer. What URIs would I use?
At first I started pondering a service that would allow you to search for URIs by a human-readable description of the concept/entity. URIs could be submitted to such a service and where duplicate URIs existed, users could assert a "same-as" relationship between them. It could also be possible for preferred URIs to be voted on or, where appropriate, an authoritative URI claimed so people could normalize their references.
But thinking about it more, I wonder if Wikipedia might play a role here. A large proportion of the concepts and entities that a disparate group of people might want to refer to are probably described in Wikipedia (or it's easy to make them so). So an obvious URI to start with would be the link to Wikipedia.
In the cases where a better (perhaps more official) URI exists for a particular concept or entity, then Wikipedia itself could specify the authoritative URI.
What do people think?
by : Created on Oct. 2, 2004 : Last modified Feb. 8, 2005 : (permalink)
Due to a SNAFU in my re-ticketing, I wasn't able to leave Boston yesterday despite having a confirmed reservation. I'm scheduled to now leave on Monday and Qantas this morning confirmed that I now have a valid e-ticket to do so.
After being here three months, what's another three days?
by : Created on Oct. 2, 2004 : Last modified Feb. 8, 2005 : (permalink)