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- http://www.w3.org/2001/10/glance/doc/howto
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- Who Really Runs Leeds?
- ASAP Lecturer discussions
- It really is a challenge for our management so that at the end of the day all three candidates want still to persue their careers at the University of Leeds. Clearly they are all appointable to the post. They each add something different and they should all be offered positions or at least plans drawn up so that in two years time they are working along side us.
- The meeting after the presentations went well. I agreed with most of what was said. I hope that common sense prevails.
- IMHO we want Alison to do this the GIS and Java teaching. We want Paul to take over some of the reigns from Phil and John. We want Kathryn for future-cities. All of them will fund themselves, so where is the problem?
- ASAP Lecturer presentations
- Alison Heppenstall
- Paul Norman
- Kathryn Pain
- These are all excellent people and the University of Leeds should seek to employ all three. Unfortunatley they are all competing for one post... It is a challenge to our management to handle this. If they can adapt to the situation and appoint all three today I will be very impressed. After round one Alison is favourite, but appointment committee and RAE strategy is wierd!
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- Documentation...
- ASAP meeting... Lots of documentation to do...
- Impromptue meeting with Erling. He had an idea at coffee which I described using a whiteboard. I encouraged him to write it down and send me a link to the document. Hopefully he will do this...
- Meeting Lindsay Banin
- The definition of Tropical Forest is not majorly important to Lindsay's research as outlined yesterday, but it is interesting.
- Things that will be worth thinking about are the life zones presented by Holdridge, Koppen and others - these are climate based POTENTIAL distribution maps rather than maps post-human-impact for example. Are you interested in looking at the accuracy of climate based models in predicting potential distribution, or the inaccuracy of these in light of deforestation or climate change etc?
- Interested in the geographic uncertainty of definitions of Tropical Forest. Change over spatial and temporal resolution and scale... This is related to the uncertainty in the estimated parameters (data) used in classifications such as precipitation etc... Although we deal with fuzzy boundaries, there is a way of visualising change.
- Lindsay plans to be using an expanded Rainfor database based on the current work of the EGC Research Cluster some of this is published and some unpublished.
- I should read about Holdridge's life zones and how they came up with their maps of Tropical Forest.
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- Version: 6.0.2900.2180.xpsp_sp2_gdr.050301-1519 of Microsoft Internet Explorer does not render my web content as expected. I think an automatic update today has caused this. Am investigating...
- Went through the A-Z Doctorial Postgraduate Student pages. A lot of good work going on here. Some researchers in particular have developed excellent Web Content.
- Documentation...
- Encouraged Manuel Gloor to develop web content. Great his base page is now up and running...
- Encouraged Gemma Hobson to collaborate. Pointed Gemma to the following URLs to some content of interest
Encouraged Lindsay Banin to collaborate. The initial definition of tropical forest areas she is using is based on rainfall estimates. I let Lindsay know that I am keen to collaborate with you in mapping the uncertainties in this.
- Responded to Library Survey
- Develop Web Content
- New version of Home Page... Done
- Re-organise Blog...
- Syndicate RSS properly...
- SCXML
- NCRM workshops
- Excellent and very pleasing Geog5060 feedback from Rupam, Sam and Alex
- Great! Reminds me that I need to update the documentation... done! Some good blogging going on out there!
- MoSeS documentation...
- OGC Grid Collision proposal has been sent. Thanks to all, especially Chris.
- Steven, Hao and Chongyang are all asking similar things about the geomorphometrics assignemnt for geog5060. I encouraged them to work together to save them some time.
- OWS-4
- OGC Grid Collision... It's getting there...
- Read through the NCeSS Research Board minutes from 2006-03-13 that Katy sent today. All seems to be in order... I wonder what took so long distributing these.
- One of our students Alex was wanting Surpop data but the service was broken. We emailed MIMAS helpdesk...
- Level 1 Teaching and Personal Web Content has now been updated to DCMI and XHTML1.0-strict... Research next...
- Chris's group have produced some metrics for an area up in Durham. They are thinking about identifying the channel and the flood plain and comparing with a flood risk map. Great!
- Rodolfo got back about timings for the 50% Geomorphometrics coursework. I suggested to meet up and have a chat. There are many things that can be done. In meeting up we should find it easier to work out something of interest and something reasonable. It is difficult to judge peoples programming abilities and I am fairly new to the game of portioning work packages for which marks are to be awarded. Need to email Steve...
- Erling popped in for a chat. He is interested in genography and had a good Easter in York learning about History. He thinks there is a gap in history from 500-700 AD. His web page is still rubbish! Alas, he said he is listening and may get at least the current details corrected...
- Inkscape Open Source Scalable Vector Graphics Editor looks useful!
- Google "Summer of Code"
- Responded to Belinda's email about [MoSeS] Population modelling information and meeting to explain model and think about how to visualise progress...
- Responded to Rodolfos email about geomorphometrics 50% coursework project. Need to email Steve about this...
- Registered an interest with Paul about Who Really Runs Leeds?
- Should be interesting. Here are some brief answers to the questions set out:
- Who really runs Leeds?
- In terms of general day to day, week to week, year to year, people and their organisations run leeds e.g. bus drivers and transport, businessmen and businesses, criminals and crime etc...
- Who are the big players & power brokers?
- It depends on the context... Power brokering can mean so many things. It depends on what type of power. If it's utilities its one thing, if its politics its another, if its law and order its different again, if its economic then it's again different. One thing that interests me is that some types of power are easier to control from outside Leeds than others per se... I'm more a proponet of the cock up theory than of any detailed conspiracy!
- Who makes the decisions?
- Again this depends on the context. Decisions about land and land use involves a number of authorities and potentially complex economics etc... Decisions about utilities, transportation, infrastructure generally, operational control etc they are all different.
- Who sets the agendas for change & regeneration?
- What agendas? I'm not sure there is sufficient organisation...
- What are the external influences & effects of businesses in Leeds?
- Leeds affects and is effected greatly. I think you need a Semantic Web to answer this!
- What role do citizens play in all this?
- The most important. Ultimately I think the people have power!
- Who are the winners & losers in the governance of Leeds?
- Everyone, but most significantly the people that set foot in the city.
- I'm interested about who comes, who expresses interest in this event. More than anything else, I'm interested in how the information is mapped.
- We all really know that batman runs leeds!
- Data Documentation Initiative
- http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/DDI/dtd/index.html
- http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/*checkout*/ddi-alliance/ddi/dtd/Version2-1.dtd
- MoSeS Meeting
- Updating personal part of my web content including this blog which moves to a new location...
- Chased Andy Evans about OGC membership agreement...
- Steven Pickering dropped by to get an outline of the US mainland as some text file. Nice to do a bit of GIS work... We talked and I learned some of what Steven is up to. I encouraged him to set up a web home page to map out his virtual organisation and information flows. I think he will. I'm going to email a URL to this entry to remind him... Great Steven has emailed back andDr Steven Pickering's Home Page is under active development :)
- While Steven was here we emaied David Meredith as I wanted to know how to logon to the NGS portal... David got back to me and copied in Xiao and Xiabo (I think these are guys that were at the NCeSS training school recently and are who Rob Allan suggested I contact to develop our sakai portal... Great, I'll do a bit of investigation and email back...
- A google search for gridshib turned up this shibgrid-bof list from which I found this interesting article: "Shibbolzing" Zope might email Paul...
- Chris is around... Need to develop GIS Grid Collision proposal...
- Had a look at Upcoming OGC Events. Put OGC TC/PC Meetings 26th-30th June 2006 Edinburgh in my calendar.
- Paul came by and set me up properly for using SRB on the testbed. We chatted about a few things and showed each other some tricks on Web content development and delivery - standards and tools :)
- Chanced upon the Semantic Grid Community Portal... How to aggregate the RSS I wonder... The RSS doesn't validate currently, but not to worry...
- I'm interested in European Science Foundation (ESF)/ Inventing Europe: Technology and the Making of Europe, 1850 to the Present
- This interest is from an e-Infrastructure and e-framework perspective, in particular developments since the advent of the World Wide Web. Enabling Grids for E-sciencE (EGEE) is contributing to the invention of Europe as an e-Research collaboration with a world-wide mission. If such a collaborative contemporary information technology focus ties in with your interests - please let me know, and maybe we can harness resources to organise a detailed response... I propose that the centre of gravity or core area of such a response be 1. Building Europe through Infrastructures from the following list:
- Building Europe through Infrastructures: examines how Europe was shaped by transnational infrastructures - the material links within and between nation states (and regions) including canals, rivers, railroads, highways, energy, media, communication, and information networks.
- Constructing European Ways of Knowing: examines the ways in which Europe became articulated through efforts at bringing knowledge and practices together on a European scale. These efforts range from informal networks to formal large-scale European projects.
- Consuming Europe: explores how a range of social actors-including businesspeople, the state, professionals, consumer groups and consumers-proposed, developed, and reworked material artefacts for specific local, regional, and national contexts. At times these efforts defied and at other times reinforced prevailing trends toward European markets, statist arrangements, use patterns, and identities.
- Europe in the Global World: explores the making of Europe through colonial, ex-colonial, trans-Atlantic, and other global exchanges. By "provincialising" Europe, the non-teleological nature of the processes studied will become clearer.
- The deadline for outline proposals is 31 May 2006
- Once upon a time there was a MoSeS meeting when I shared a dream of the future where one day by routine we could link individual census records and helath data by name and address and that Grid Computing would allow it to be done safely and securely. I was informed this was a pipe dream, or at least there was some scoffing and the words "... it'll never happen ... they'll never allow it ... oh no no ... " began to ring... On page 68 of Ethnicity and health in Scotland: can we fill the information gap? A demonstration project focusing on coronary heart disease and linkage of census and health records is a diagram showing exaclty what can be done... It seems it has been done... I have not read the report in detail yet, but I will give it some attention in the not too distant future... The conclusions are certainly encouraging...
- Added some information about the JISC OGC Grid collision proposal to the NIEeS GRIDGIS Working group wiki... Also had a look, but seems like no activity from others. I wonder what is happening to the EPSRC Responsive Proposal...
- Read OGC Grid collision proposal... Done... Develop some additions and email thoughts...
- GEMEDA had a quick look and emailed Paul and Mark to spark off some emails. Paul was communicating with Pascal last week. It seems GEMEDA is moving away from grid enabling CAS and focusing on SARs...
- Had a skim of the NCeSS Service Delivery Board Minutes from March
- The NCeSS website is to be revamped and a content management system (CMS) may be used.
- Good, IMHO the website is very important and should be developed well and given suffient resources. I want it to be standards compliant and like a portal, more ReDReSSlike. A CMS is a good idea. I wonder what software will be used... lenya, plone, sakai, something else...
- Mark has already asked me to be responsible for developing MoSeS content. This is good as I can move it from it's current location...
- Browsed the Grid Engineering Group report to NCeSS Service Delivery Board
- Great NCeSS are incorporating portal technology into the website based on uPortal
- Nothing on the test site publicly available yet...
- SCIENCE CONSULTATION: Your help needed
- Replied to research support to let them know:
- IMHO the key is a full implementation of fully qualified Dublin Core and the development of Semantic Web Content across the board to: understand our information flows and operations; enhance collaboration and efficiency. Team work and respect at every level across administrative boundaries...
- Really should push to get my own web content in order... Echoed this reponse to Kirsty Finn who is working on a consultation exercise on the future needs for research into research methods and methodology for NCRM (ESRC).
- Bumped into David Appleyard and discussed his training and role as web content developer. It seems David needs to have a meeting with Mike Crabtree his line manager to detail a training and development plan. For some parts of David's work he can feed from some of the research going on in the School of Geography, particularly MoSeS. IMHO David needs to be drawn into a development cycle for updating the schools web content. A move to XML and in particular XHTML2.0 will be of great benefit. I am fairly confident that this can be done without those viewing the current content being aware of the underlying changes. This should prevent major disputes over the presentation style of information content. I am learning a lot about how to develop the next generation standard web content and would like to pass on what I have learned so that we all benefit... I'll email this entry to both Mike and David now... It'll be up to David to chase this up... Done!
- Long MoSeS IRC with Belinda
- Web content development is coming along... trying to move to qualified Dublin Core... First things first get Andy Turner's Web Content @ School of Geography, University of Leeds RDF XML into shape...
- Mike Crabtree popped along with an update on the linux server he is setting up for MoSeS. Mike will need to know the root password, but is giving MoSeS access to this level. Initially the server will allow connections from machines within the University of Leeds. Routes through the firewall will be opened on an as needed basis. Root will maintain an XML file detialing configuration on the base install. MoSeS will be responsible for backing this up along with any content. 2.5G P4 1.5G RAM, very useful resource. Mike will let us know when it will be ready - hopefully early next week. I will email the team now so they know what is going on... Done!
- Trying to get postgres configured so as to run through Belinda's Toy Model code... Done... Got Belinda's code running in NetBeans... Time to give Eclipse a run...
- Great! Chris Higgins got back with a draft proposal on OGC Grid Collision. Need to read this in detail and organise with Terry et al at NCeSS to provide second draft version to Chris by COB on 2006-04-13.
- Some of the looks Research Methods Festival Programme is interesting and relevant. I see some of our NCeSS colleagues are in the programme:
- Do I fancy a trip to Oxford 17th-21st July? Emailed Belinda, Paul and Mark... Belinda had planned to go anyway...
- Developed Andy Turner's xhtml1.0-strict Home Page @ School of Geography, University of Leeds and made it my default home page...
- Had a quick look at OSSIM which is being integrated with uDIG for raster support...
- Trying to get postgres configured so as to run through Belinda's Toy Model code... Done... Got Belinda's code running in NetBeans... Time to give Eclipse a run... Wow, Eclipse is great! I'm converted... I wonder if I will revert to NetBeans...
- Great! Chris Higgins got back hopefully a draft proposal on OGC Grid Collision should be distributed before next week. Must remember to keep everyone in the loop. Not sure about anyone other than Mark from the School of Geography at Leeds. Awaiting some response from these folk...
- Could do with linking information about white rose grid talk I gave last week...
- Postgres installed on my PC
- Great! Thanks Vinny
- Unfortunately Belinda's code did not work work first time... Needed to get beanutils, but that was simple. Emailing Paul and Belinda to work out next step... Done... Awaiting reply... Oh, discovered I was being over optimistic. Netbeans failed to notice the change in jars and the lack of a class to extend until I modified my code... Oh well, I'm sure we can fix this soon...
- Code... Getting there... Nearly seprerated communal establishment (CE) populations... Code is getting a bit messy though... Many improvements can be made... Perhaps biggest improvement is to select only CE residents from ISAR to populate CEs. This can possible be done from reltohr=-9. It best done with a newly ordered AGE0RELTOHRSAR... Great! I seem to have ironed out the bugs and have the population creation program running in a way. There are several ways forward from this point... Next I am to re-integrate the other optimisations... I think this is done... Having to revert to use ToyModel version 0.1 though :(...
- 10:30-10:45 Impromptue meeting with Martin about population modelling... He will check his email about the meeting next week.
- Found another excellent Java resource
- Maybe I should write a Java web page...
- Meeting Paul at 3:30... Another good meeting, we are learning a lot from each other I think... It does seem like I should move to Eclipse from NetBeans sooner rather than later... We are a little concerned that Belinda's MoSeS code platform currently relies on postgres. Why not Apache Derby I wonder... Perhaps the easiest way is for me to get IT to install postgres on my machine then dig into Belinda's java...
- Meeting with Phil and any others, Martin etc that want to learn about the population modelling and how the information about the process is disseminated... Scheduled for 10:30Am Wednesday 12th. (No network in East Building then!) I'll email belinda and let her know its happening... Done!
- Code...
- Registered for Spatially Embedded Complex Systems Engineering (SECSE) Twiki account... Plan to set up collaboration to look at Geographically Weighted Statistics and the network formation of relationships from the UK Human Population modelling from 2001 to 2031 as part of MoSeS.
Replied to Mark's workflow email attaching a GEON architecture description I scraped from the GEON portal (it was presented at AllHands2005). An important function of GEON seems to be to act as a data repository. I wonder
- How does Kepler compare to jBPM?
- Kepler and GEON Documentation seems fairly poor and I found little mention of standards which is worrying. Despite this, the GEON portal may offer something we can build on, or an architecture we can use. In NCeSS there is at least one expert on workflow (Edoardo Pignotti). There are also portal experts (Tobias Shiebeck, Rob Allan, Rob Crouchley et al.). I think we should try to use this expertise. To try to pull on this we should conduct our conversation on the NCeSS forum? There might be added benefits of this, openning the discussion up even wider.
- Code...
- Belinda made a good MoSeS toy Model code release on BSCW. I need to get postres and hibernate installed on my Pc to use it... having trouble with this... Paul offered to help me out if I've not figured this out before tomorrow...
- Excellent meeting with Paul about MoSeS. Great that he can now focus more energy on the project! We covered so much ground in the meeting it is too much to blog now especially since I need to get on with coding...
- Chris Higgins communicated again about JISC OGC collision. All fairly confidential really, so not going to throw notes up here yet. Chris will hopefully email Rob Proctor, Mark Birkin and myself later today.
- Great, Cecilia got back to me. Hopefully her colleague will get back to me once she returns from holiday
![[Validate CSS]](http://www.geog.leeds.ac.uk/people/a.turner/images/vcss.gif "W3C CSS Validation")
![[An image of Andy Turner]](http://www.geog.leeds.ac.uk/people/a.turner/a.turner.png)
