David Seth

G'day Nova

David Peterson — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 11:27:23 GMT

Before I begin telling you why I would like early access to Twine I would just like to thank you. I first sent you an email about a year ago asking what Semantic Web conferences you would recommend. I was pretty new to the field and certainly had not yet met anyone I could even discuss the word "RDF" with. You were kind enough to send me an email back recommending SemTech in San Jose, May 07.

I took your advice and haven't looked back yet... I work in Australia and my company is now working with many of the leading marine science agencies to find ways of accelerating research into climate change. We are using Semantic Web technologies along with open access policies to come up with clever solutions to nearly impossible situations. So I just wanted to let you know what your "small" reply to me over a year ago has lead to.

There are many reasons why I would love to get my hands on Twine, but I will only go into two right now to keep this post short.

1. My regular blogging is done with SitePoint (one of the most visited Web developer sites around). That is a good thing because the people that frequent the site are not your regular Semantic Web junkies, in fact, they are pretty much in the opposite camp. So it is the perfect venue to help persuade a HUGE audience of developers into drinking the Semantic Web kool-aid :)

2. I previously mentioned our work with climate change researchers and science groups and they are just begging for a tool like Twine (although they don't know it yet). I would love to pry and dig my way around to see how it could benefit their important work.

Running D2R server with MS SQL 2005

David Peterson — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 10:40:21 GMT

I was having trouble getting D2R server running on my machine. Now, I know this worked in the past with no problems, but that was a few months ago. I think my version of MS SQL 2005 Express has been updated since then, but I wasn't sure.

Anyway, I couldn't get the thing to run. I kept getting the following error message:

The connection to the named instance has failed. Error: java.net.SocketTimeoutException: Receive timed out.

I was using the exact same configuration file as before so I was getting very frustrated.

map:database a d2rq:Database; d2rq:jdbcDriver "com.microsoft.sqlserver.jdbc.SQLServerDriver"; d2rq:jdbcDSN "jdbc:sqlserver://david-xps;instanceName=sqlexpress;databaseName=xxxx"; d2rq:username "xxxx"; d2rq:password "xxxx"; .

I did a search and came across this Microsoft doc - How to connect to a named instance of SQL Server 2005 or SQL Server 2000 by using the client tools in the earlier version of SQL Server. I was running a named instance of SQLEXPRESS so I followed the directions from the doc:

Open SQL Server Configuration Manager, and then expand SQL Server 2005 Network Configuration.
Click Protocols for InstanceName, and then double-click TCP/IP in the right panel.
Note InstanceName is a placeholder for the named instance of SQL Server 2005.
On the Protocol tab, notice the value of the Listen All item.
Click the IP Addresses tab:
1. If the value of Listen All is yes, the TCP/IP port number for this instance of SQL Server 2005 is the value of the TCP Dynamic Ports item under IPAll.
2. If the value of Listen All is no, the TCP/IP port number for this instance of SQL Server 2005 is the value of the TCP Dynamic Ports item for a specific IP address
Note If the value of the TCP Dynamic Ports item is not set, you must set it yourself. For more information about how to configure a server to listen on a specific TCP port, visit the following Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) Web site: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms177440.aspx (http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms177440.aspx)
Click OK.

So, after all that, I used the TCP Dynamic Ports value and plugged it in to my connection string:

d2rq:jdbcDSN "jdbc:sqlserver://david-xps:49417;instanceName=sqlexpress;databaseName=xxxx";

And it worked like a charm!

del.icio.us Tags: D2R, D2RQ, SQL2005

Installing Drupal on Apache and getting .htaccess errors all over the place - fixed!

David Peterson — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 23:53:05 GMT

I was trying to get Drupal installed on a shared linux host and having no luck at it. After a few hours of 500 error pages I went to sleep.

Woke up fresh (well sort of) and bit the bullet and did a Google search... Came across this forum post and that solved it. I had to edit my httpd.conf file and change the line:

AllowOverride FileInfo Options

AllowOverride All

And up popped the the Drupal installation wizard! Yeah. I wish this was on the Drupal site for the installation (anyone listening?).

del.icio.us Tags: drupal, apache, 500, allowoverride

Incomprehensible

David Peterson — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 14:42:33 GMT

It is with trembling fingers, watery eyes and a heavy, heavy heart that I write this. A warm and gentle person I met at a conference earlier this year and had the pleasure to personally talk with has lost his three daughters due to a tragic house fire. Chimezie Ogbuji and his wife Roschelle have lost so much, I can not even fathom. I pray that they will be okay...

A charitable trust has been set up in the memory of the three girls.

The Kingdom Kids will provide families information and support to help protect other young children from the hazards of house fires.

Sacrifices

David Peterson — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 14:09:00 GMT

My brother is in the Marines and he is stationed in the Pacific. He was due to be back in the States before Christmas but due to the typhoon in Bangladesh they have been re-deployed. There has not been an official call yet by the Bangladesh government for help, but they are going to ready in case they are required. Depending on the situation they may / may not make it back in time for the holidays.

The military is capable of many things, but its use in humanitarian efforts is something that doesn't get talked about as much as it should.

I know that the States gets a bad rap for many things, but the actual people are good people. I have spent time with some of my brothers colleagues and they are wonderful people. They sacrifice a lot for their country.

Canon releases new Vista codec for .CRW!

David Peterson — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 01:15:26 GMT

I have been waiting for this for, let me see, one year... but finally they have released a .CRW codec for Vista. This allows me to use the RAW files that my 10d has been writing natively in Vista and the Photo Gallery app. Canon released a version for the CR2 format but I had thought they were just going to leave the older (but still wonderful) cameras out in the cold.

I must add that Canon has always done a great job of driver support and had some of the earliest Vista drivers and support many older hardware as well.

Well done Canon, I can know properly manage my thousands of RAW files with my many more thousands of jpgs.

~~Oh, here is the link:~~ ~~http://www.canon.com.au/products/cameras/digital_slr/eos_10d_drivers.aspx, click on the driver downloads link. It is called Canon RAW Codec 1.2 for Windows Vista and was release last month.~~

25/02/08 - UPDATE

James has just left a comment saying the old location no longer worked and he emailed me the new location of the file. It appears that Canon have released an update to ver 1.2 of the codec. It now supports pretty much the entire RAW lineup all the way back to the D30. That is great.

I have a G1 (haven't used it in awhile) but in its day it was a top camera. I took loads of photos with it and many RAW images so it looks like this update will now cover all my images.

Here is the new location:

http://software.canon-europe.com/software/0026049.asp

del.icio.us Tags: canon, raw, crw, 10d, 1g, codec

Photos from Busan, Korea

David Peterson — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 02:46:52 GMT

I am putting some of my photos online from Busan, South Korea where the ISWC2007 conference is taking place. Please take a look.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/davidsethp/tags/iswc2007/

Flickr Tags: iswc2007, busan

Technorati Tags: iswc2007, busan

W3C's New Marketing for the Semantic Web

David Peterson — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 15:32:30 GMT

del.icio.us Tags: semweb, w3c

The W3C has a new set of icons for the Semantic Web. About time. Marketing and looks are important and for the Semantic Web to begin to sink in a re-branding was/is necessary.

I congratulate the W3C on a smart move. Although I do question the box theme? The logo makes me thing small, I know it has an upturned corner to invite, but to me, box = closed.

Anyway, it was a good move.

ISWC2007 - All in order...

David Peterson — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 12:51:21 GMT

del.icio.us Tags: iswc2007, semweb, busan

Finally booked at the Seacloud. It is amazingly tough to find ratings or unbiased information on places to stay in South Korea. I know they are one of the most connected countries in the world so that is what makes it so odd.

Seacloud looks great and it has 100mbs connections free in-room.

SmugMug supporting FOAF and other open standards

David Peterson — Sat, 06 Oct 2007 11:06:21 GMT

Just read this on their blog, it has been in place for a few weeks now. Great news, I have a develop account so plan on using this new feature in the Linking Open Data kind of way.

Here is a quote from the blog:

I’m absolutely positive we’re barely scratching the surface, and people like David will set me straight, but at least we’re making forward progress - 150K SmugMug accounts now have auto-discoverable FOAF, embedded XFN, and are OpenID endpoints.

What does this mean for you? It means, hopefully, that SmugMug can play nicely with other social applications on the web. Your network of friends & family is now published in machine-readable formats so that other networks can do intelligent things with that data. How exactly this will happen remains to be seen, but there are lots of bright people thinking about it, so hopefully it’ll happen.

At the very least, when the Semantic Web actually works in the year 2022, SmugMug will be ready.

It is good to see that such a great photo sharing site (SmugMug) has such forward looking developers.