Andy Turner's Blog 2006-03 Page

Andy Turner's Blog

2006-03-31

• Dived deep into XML again... There is so much to learn and so much application needed... Perhaps work through some examples then go home...
• Chatted with Rob Lewis from the Greater London Authority (GLA) and Cecilia MacIntyre Head of Demography, General Register Office for Scotland about NCeSS and MoSeS over lunch. Both are on the UPTAP Advisory Committee. Rob is very keen for links to be made with regard dissemination beyond the academic community. Cecilia talked metadata and fortunetly we both managed not to get indigestion or too worked up. The quality of metdata in Social Science data and government is improving. However UK population census metadata is in the pre XML pre DCMI dark ages. Interestingly Cecilia knows of a project that used name and address information to link ethnicity from the census with a health database. Fantastic! I want to know more. Justin Keen and the other MoSeS big wigs will be suprised, they did not think such a thing could be done. I will email Cecilia now, I should caveate that the standard of this page is 1999, not 2006...;) Wow, sending Cecilia an email was tricky... Now I understand why she was worried about spam, they have clearly been having problems. Let's hope the webmaster comes up trumps...
• UPTAP
  • ...is running late... But running well.
  • Oli's presentation
    • ...was fantastic!
    • Virtual and not interactive, but will hopefully initiate a lot of collaboration. For MoSeS we are particualrly keen to set up collaboration with Oliver to develop a model of the UK population from 2001 to 2031. This is a brief entry to stimulate this. I will email Oli in due course...
    • After the presentation some guy looking at the southern part of the NE region was interested in the relationships with housing build and demand. He reckoned that there was evidence showing that the southern part of the NE region was relatively self-contained with regard commuting and migration.
    • I made the audience aware that the MoSeS Node of NCeSS was developing a UK human population model for 2001 to 2031 to show case eScience tools for modelling and simulation. I made the point that the remit of e-Social Science is much broader than simply looking at this. I hope to organise further collaboration will Oli. To kick this off, I will email and link to this entry.
    • Roona Simpson made a point that Living apart together is not captured in any of the data Oli was planning to use. Some other guy reckoned the work of John Haskey was relevant in this. I think Oli is moving in the right direction to help us understand more of the complexities of things like extra household family relationships by looking within the household at individuals relationships.
• Release MoSeS code... Done. I'll email Paul and Belinda... Done... On to Oli's talk now then...
• Went over to pass on my farewells to Luke who is off to work in a library down south. Popped into reception to check post and had a conversation with Jan about modelling and carbon neutrality and information management. Jan is our receptionist that is using software to track the whereabouts of School of Geography staff. She knows about my blog now. Am I expecting too much of my colleagues to map their whereabouts, information and energy flows? Probably... Ho hum, back to code release :)
• I am chomping at the bit... Really want to get using the new webserver Mike is setting up for developing our MoSeS portal. First things first, I need to cut a new release of MoSeS code for Paul. After that I should get back to the nightmare that is modelling the UK human population from 2001 to 2031 based initially on UK Population Census data... First I will deal with communal establishments populations and data creation using the Individual SAR. Next I will write the loaders for the Household SAR... We need to start handling the look up files for Super Output Areas too... Ugh!
• Kevin Porteous from Leeds University Catering and Conference Service knocked on my door looking for David Appleyard and the Graphics Unit. He is wanting a map so for a Piano competition held at leeds. We talked briefly about Google Earth and Google Maps. Google Map View of LS2 9JT I'll email Kevin who doesn't have a Web Home Page (poor Kevin). His email box is full! Ah well... Hopefully he will get what he wants from the graphics unit and David will move us into 2006 with a bang and start mapping using google or something similar...

2006-03-30

• I want to go to FOSS4G2006 12-15th September in Switzerland
  • Plan to present on the Grids software I have developed and to see how to open its development in the future and integrate it with other products.
  • Submitted an abstract and developed a page about my involvement in FOSS4G2006
  • Abstract submitted
  • Status of the abstract
• BBC Health News
  • Securing Good Care for Older People: Taking a long-term view (Derek Wanless report)
  • Justin Keen has his head in it. Thanks for the link Justin. Thanks Sarah Smith for the pointer.
• UPTAP Conference at the School of Geography
  • Very relevant to MoSeS... Lot's of collaboration to be had... Network network...
  • Unfortunately no information found online at present about the event!
• Chipped into the carbon neutrality debate...
• HyperText Markup Language (HTML) Home Page
  • The future seems to be XHTML2.0. Are there any browsers that handle it?
  • XForms 1.0 (Second Edition)
    • Recommendation now out. Had a look at the examples...
• NCeSS Sustainability Working Party
  • Need to refer back to this. Has Terry put any documentation on the Intranet yet? If so it is not where I was expecting it...
• Want a new version of this Blog that sends RSS feeds. Need an associated RDF document. Want to start aggregating feeds... this could be tricky to do well... Let's start with one thing aggregating into one place... Hmmm... Still need to shutdown this pc...
• RSS Viewer
  • Does it help? Need some way of aggregating and pushing data into files...
    • XML News Feeds in RSS 2.0 Format
• Nice article on the difference between Spacial and Spatial
  • 3D lets have it!
  • One of those things I read a while back, but thought I'd link it in now as I have to restart my PC
• Geongrid
  • Looks like it's taking off.
  • Mark Birkin pointed me to this for MoSeS reckoning it will be useful. I am awaiting authorization to be a portal user...

2006-03-29

• Let's look at the last NCeSS Service Deliver Board Minutes...
  • Seems there not available yet, but the preparatory material gives me a good idea as to what it was all about.
• foaf
  • I've registered as it were...
  • Here is the RDF
  • Thanks Pete Edwards for pointing me to this and for being my friend
• Blimey, how time flies! It's not that I've been doing nothing (I've not being doing nothing), I've just been sufferring from a lack of organisation since returning from a weeks hoilday to Ireland. Ireland was a fantastic break I was ready for it so I though, but my return to work was chaotic and I did not know what to do first. This was as much a systems failure than anything else. More and more I find that while I do not implement Dublin Core Metadata Institute recommendations the more work I have. Eeek it could all grind to a halt!
  • So, I'm still trying to use this blog to drive my information management... Let me track back... What have I done since my last entry:

    • 2006-03-28

      • Introduction to e-Infrastructure: Enabling the research of the future
        • The workshop was good
        • Mike Mineter went through a lot of important introductory stuff most of which I had seen before. I'm sure it was a great help for others there that were just getting into e-Science.
        • I learned some useful background on Shibboleth. Our admin guys at Leeds University seem quite advanced on the implementation of it. It should enable much greater collaboration within academia especially for courses. Penn State and Leeds have set up a federation for developing joint degree programmes. They have a token guinea pig student taking a module. It was said that Swiss and some Scandinavian universities are well advanced in this area.
        • The DAME guys have been successful in getting yet more funds, so they can keep going for time. This has to be a good thing :)
        • There were various hints that e-Science money is running out and that traditional e-Scientists are looking for application areas outside the harder sciences. I think this is a good thing...
        • Sorry I felt a little uncomfortable giving my presentation. It was partly the place being a little tight - not much room to wave arms and move around the screen. I was nervous, there were a number of important people there and I didn't manage to relax during my presentation and get into the swing of things. I don't think I presented well, but the practice should help me do better next time...
        • It was hard to describe all of NCeSS, outline the future of e-Infrastructure for e-Social Science and go into any detail of Modelling and Simulation in 20 minutes. I refered to the notes that accompany the slides in the powerpoint presentation I prepared. I wanted the audience to be checking out the URLs and feeding back...
        • I got on dodgy ground at one stage while I was covering a grey area regarding data (there are many of them). I don't recall my exact words, but I bolted upright in bed last night... I said something along the lines of: "sometimes it is best not to relax and not worry too much about usage/license agreements". I was trying to make several points, but this was a bit of a foot in mouth thing to say and I got a bit befuddled. I didn't mean it, it just came out wrong. It was not an attempt at a joke or anything, I was thinking out loud. No excuse... shoot me at dawn!
        • Social science metadata for discovery is usually not available, most of the data is old and non-standard and for the most part non-XML. Making data securely available on the NGS requires something like shibboleth and encryption/decryption. For much social science data you are not to disclose some patterns you identify. The data and usage aggreements are complex, so it is often that the data providers want to see your outputs before allowing publication. This is an issue when there are a number of data providers involved. I'm not planning on worrying about what I said too much. I haven't done anything really bad I hope, but I feel like what I said could be interpreted that I was encouraging something I shouldn't... Can I offer a similar defence to Robert:
          • "I know that you believe that you understood what you think I said, but I am not sure you realise that what you heard is not what I meant..." Robert McCloskey, US State Department Spokesman. On the back cover of Eats Shites and Leaves: Crap English and how to use it A. Parody ISBN 1-84317-098-1
        • I'm not going to loose any more sleep on it hopefully. I'll try to back up by putting more explanation on-line if you want...
        • Thanks to everyone involved. I look forward to our on-going collaboration

    • 2006-03-13 - on-going

      • Geomorphometrics in 2006
      • NCeSS Node meeting
      • WUN GIS seminar

2006-03-04

• I realise my blog has been way to formal (boring and not really conversational). Also it has not been nearly colourful enough or contained nearly enough interesting material.
• I've just checked out Jody Garnett's Blog. He is a bit of a hero that develops cool stuff and keeps us informed about all sorts of goings on in open geospatial stuff. So, Jody pointed us to this OGC Web Services Demo. I'd like to iterate that if you have 15 minutes spare this is well worth consuming.
• I think I'm going to drop standard English as it's too long winded...
• Time to figure out RSS. Should probably use software once figured out how works...
  • How to test if works?... Hmmm...

2006-03-03

• NCeSS Node Jamboree
  • Andy Turner's NCeSS Node Jamboree 2006-03-03 Page

2006-02-27 to 2006-03-02

• NCeSS Training School
  • Program and Tutorial Information
  • My notes