Category: Random observations

At long last, I got around to adding RSS functionality to my DIY blog software. The RSS feed for my blog can be accessed from the menu on the left. Please be aware that my RSS feed generator has not been extensively tested. I started writing it at about 5pm this afternoon, so it’s only been up and running for a few hours. Please let me know if you run into any problems. For what it’s worth, I’ve been using the Sage Firefox extension to aggregate and view the RSS feeds I’m interested in.

I meant twenty-four. Really I did!

Happy birthday to you.
Happy birthday to you.
Happy birthday dear Karen.
Happy birthday to you.

Have a great year, Sweetness!

Under strict orders, I’ve added a sequence of photos of my cat, Twinkle, to the Fairfield section of my photo album. I’ve also added a shot of some little ducklings to the university album. I think I’ve got a lot of web site redesigning to do. I’m not sure why the university album is separate from my other albums. It just evolved that way.

Ben notified me today that the URL for his blog has changed. It also seems to have a fresh new look. The subject matter is still cars and HCI, for the most part.

The bottom line of the first paragraph of the previous post should read: I’d like to see them try to run an RDF validator, let alone an OWL inference engine such as their own F-OWL, on a mobile phone or something even smaller.

I’ve just read a Tech Report which advocates the use of the Web Ontology Language (OWL) as a description language for service discovery in mobile computing environments. How the authors think this could possibly work is beyond me. These guys have written papers on this which have actually been accepted to conferences. Their description language is based upon previous work they have done: DReggie. I understand that an ontology based solution might work for DReggie, since it is an extension to Jini, and therefore relies on a central lookup service. Service descriptions in queries and advertisements could be validated against schemas maintained at the lookup service. But how is this transferrable to the domain of truly mobile computing, where it is infeasible to expect every node to maintain schemas defining the myriad of service types it will come across in the course of processing advertisements and queries? This is perhaps the least of my worries. OWL comes in a number of flavours (OWL Lite, OWL DL and OWL Full). But I contend that even OWL Lite is too heavy to be used in a mobile computing environment. For a start it’s based on RDF. During honours I had lots of experience with RDF while analysing CC/PP. It’s bloated, big time. Further, instances need to be validated. Then, to compensate for the general bloatedness of the OWL family of languages, OWL Lite imposes some silly limitations like only supporting cardinality values of 0 or 1. I mean, what the hell kind of stupid limitation is that!? To round things off nicely, the acronym doesn’t even fit (WOL?). Given that it would be next to impossible to do proper validation in an ad hoc mobile network, what is the point of using OWL (or anything based on RDF for that matter?). I’d like to see them try to run an RDF validator, let alone an OWL inference engine such as their own F-OWL.

On the contrary, my non-OWL based description language does run on a phone. No, descriptions are not validated against schemas. There is no inference engine. But then, I contend that these processes are not really feasible for pervasive computing environments consisting of light-weight mobile nodes. The whole world has gone OWL crazy, and not stopped to think about it. From now on, I dub my own description language AWOL: the Anti-Web Ontology Language. And the acronym actually works.

Last week we started driving Karen’s nineteen year old Toyota Corolla (1985) to work, which she acquired just over a week ago. It has been kept in mint condition, and it goes really well; much better than my family’s Hyundai Excel, which is around the same age. Karen’s been taking lessons, so she’ll be driving it herself in no time! Anyway, the Corolla’s steering is way better than our old Hyundai. The gear shift is really smooth. The clutch pedal-arm is very short compared to the Excel’s, which took a little bit of getting used to, but now I think it has a much better feel than the Excel’s. It even has air-con! :) One down side is that it uses LRP, which seems to be about 5c per litre more expensive than unleaded. Of course, there are also fewer LRP pumps at the petrol stations, so you have to hunt around for the right pump. The hand brake also needs to be pulled on really tightly before it holds the car on a slope. That might need looking at. Then again, maybe it’s just me. Needless to say, Karen’s mightily pleased at owning her own car!

Had a lovely BBQ last night. Have to do that again some time.

We installed a 802.11g NIC (Netgear WG311) into Karen’s PC yesterday. Her dad has a wireless ADSL router. Unfortunately, the ADSL only seems to work intermittently, but it works well as a wireless access point. The software that came with the NIC seems a bit flaky, but once I got the card configured, everything worked properly, and I shouldn’t have to use the configuration software again. Her PC is a dual boot system. I upgraded her Red Hat Linux install to Fedora Core 2, and now I’m trying to work out how to configure the NIC under Linux. Most people are reporting that the WG311 works with no glitches under Fedora once you load right driver. Must investigate further. Seeing the ease with which a wireless network operates in a home environment, it is very tempting to convert all our machines at my house to use 802.11. No blue cable everywhere. No drilling holes in the floor whenever you want to connect another box. No having to crawl under the house. It’s also one less cable to yank out of the back of the machine every time I need to move it out from under my desk. The prices for wireless cards are coming down, too. The WG311 cost $66 from Umart.

So I managed to squeeze one more page out of the afternoon, courtesy of a figure that shows what a Superstring resource description looks like. This week has shown that my theory that I work better at home is not necessarily true, since I’ve spent the entire week at uni and got quite a bit done. Maybe it has something to do with waking up at a decent hour every day (somewhere between 6am and 7am) instead of sleeping in until 8am. Maybe it’s something else. :)

This has been my most productive week for quite a while. I’ve written thirteen pages of my thesis since Monday morning, and there’s still two hours to go until 5pm. :) Somehow I don’t think my tally will be going up any further this afternoon. I’m feeling a little bit spent. Might go and lie by the lake. Thankfully, my analysis chapter is complete (barring minor alterations Jaga wants me to make to a couple of figure captions). It feels good to have this chapter rubber-stamped by my supervisor, since it is really the chapter that validates my Ph.D work. The downside is, it was probably the most exciting chapter to write, which means that I have a lot of boring, tedious writing still ahead of me.

Cancel the relaxing afternoon by the lake. :(

Last Sunday, K and I headed up to Caloundra. We arrived bright and early after having dropped of K’s parents at the Brisbane airport at 7:15am. We spent much of the day by the ocean lazing around and reading the Sunday paper (whose headlines were to do with the election result). I had a swim. It was a really nice day.

On the way back from Caloundra, we stopped at the Rustic Cabin, which is located at the Caloundra exit on the Bruce Highway. This place does a wonderful Devonshire tea. So here’s our review. Importantly, the jam and cream came in little pots. The scones were enormous, fluffy and suitably crumbly. One order of Devonshire tea ($8.50) comes with tea for one and three scones! Three scones were too many for just the two of us (although I was forced to polish off the third scone). The tea came in a nice big pot, and was brewed from real leaves. An extra pot of hot water was supplied for adjusting the strength of the tea. Apparently the teacups were satisfactory, but there was no tablecloth! Overall, we think the Rustic Cabin serves an excellent Devonshire tea, though the goldfish in the pond outside are very distracting. Highly recommended.