I’ve mentioned metadata in a few of my previous postings, and something else that is related to metadata is the concept of a ‘controlled vocabulary‘. This is a term that suffers from many misunderstandings so I’m going to try and define what it is and where it sits in the grand scheme of things, using… Read more »
Posts Categorized: Books
OSGeo and DCLite4G
Regarding my posting of a few month’s back, ‘The curse of metadata’, which was quite negative about the current state of web-related metadata initiatives in general, I thought perhaps I should provide a more positive counterweight so here goes.
Canadian Rockies #5; Wildlife
One of the best things about my recent trip to the Canadian Rockies was the huge amount of wildlife I saw. An excellent book for identifying the various animals one can see in this area is ‘Handbook of the Canadian Rockies‘ by Ben Gadd. I got this book in Jasper, but it seems to be… Read more »
Canadian Rockies #4; Hikes
Although my recent trip to the Canadian Rockies wasn’t primarily a hiking trip, I still had plans to do some walking in Jasper National Park and possibly get up to some summits. Here’s a list of the hikes I did on the trip whilst staying at Patricia Lake Bungalows near the town of Jasper.
Auster and Hopper; estranged brothers in an empty room
I’ve just finished reading Brooklyn Follies, the most recent novel by Paul Auster, and whilst it’s an enjoyable read, it’s not really comparable to Auster at his best. With his last three books, Auster seems to be heading away from the mystical and mind-bending themes he is so justly renowned for, and which find perhaps… Read more »
Scottish glaciers
Ever since my first real mountain walking trip, to the Cairngorm plateau, I have been fascinated by the idea that in Scotland there can exist at high altitudes, even in the summer months, a small portion of the arctic. This trip was in June 1983, and the Cairngorm plateau then truly was arctic in nature,… Read more »
The global warming debate, the scientific method, fortean philosophy and the paranormal, and the Iraq war
My previous posting, ‘Is global warming really caused by human activity‘ caused some debate, notably on the Scran Scribble discussion forum. The television documentary that prompted my posting has also generated a lot of discussion, and the blog of the science journalist Ben Goldacre (who writes for the Guardian) contains a good sampling of the… Read more »
My macabre interest
I go walking a lot in various parts of Scotland, especially the more mountainous and hilly bits, and I have a secret about this that that I don’t tell many people; I’m fascinated by aircraft crash wreckage that you find surprisingly often in these sorts of places. I’ve written in detail about this here.
In defence of Cowboy Coding
At the organisation where I am a software engineer, discussions and debates about software development methodologies and tools (such as UML, Agile, XP etc) has gone on for a long time. There is a general feeling that these are a Good Idea, and that we should embrace them, but variety and complexity seem to be… Read more »
Spammers and hackers
I’m currently taking a detailed a look at what it means to make a website completely ‘secure’. This is a bit of an unattainable concept really, given that there are so many hackers and spammers out there, and there are so many ways they can cause havoc. However, there are a few basic things that… Read more »
I am a software engineer / database administrator / web developer living in Edinburgh, Scotland. In my spare time I like to travel and take photographs (especially of mountains). See my main website here: Eddie's Photo Archive