Short user name changer

Given that I've had to do this 3 times in the past 6 months for various people, this could be a lifesaver. Accounts Enhancer.

Posted at 2004-03-24 09:46:21 by Richard • Link to Short user name ch…
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Cover Art Applescript

Here's a little script that will find you cover art for an album. It's presented using an applescript:// URL, so just click the link and save it to your Scripts folder.

Cover Art Finder.

Posted at 2004-03-24 09:40:56 by Richard • Link to Cover Art Applescr…
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So what is the Semantic Web good for?

• Exposing hidden knowledge: enterprises have a lot of information, but putting it together is hard. Inference can help with this.
• Information integration and management: again, useful for business.
• Interoperability: one I often forget about, it's the advantage that keeps on giving. Even if you never share your information with anyone else, there are benefits to you in improvements to the interoperability of your own applications. Like XML, but self-describing.

There are others, but I think that's enough to snap me out of my funk.

Next up: what's novel that I can do on the Semantic Web?

Posted at 2004-03-24 05:06:29 by Richard • Link to So what is the Sem…
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Academia

I'm growing a little tired of the academic circle-jerk. Conferences, meetings, seminars, forms, and processes. I have never liked jumping through hoops, and even the most basic requirements of research (novelty, for example) seem onerous. It appears to me very much that people do very little work, and what work is done is pointless, inapplicable theory.

Combine the need for novelty with the need for referencing (i.e. someone else must already support your theses) and it's clear that it's hard to find any area with any meat to chew on. Academia, and particular the PhD, is a place of processes: it is not a home of revolutionary change — but isn't any incremental change just cranking the handle?

Furthermore, I don't really like computing, and I disagree, in a way, with my research: I am coming to the conclusion that it's really people who matter, though I don't like a lot of them either! The problem is that many of the applications of the Semantic Web will make my life less pleasant: more easily surveilled, more processed, and less private (I was having to try to argue for the benefits yesterday, and I was having difficulty — yes, I realise that taking work away from people makes their lives easier, but hey). The other aspects are unnecessary (witness the way apps are already moving). Social networking software, for example: what is the point? Where is the benefit in encoding my brain's own implicit knowledge in a way that someone else can access? Net loss for me.

Indeed, given that most of the research areas in the Semantic Web are already covered, it's not clear what the hell I'm doing anyway.

I feel rather at a loss; trapped in my own confused mind. There is no point in my research, other than for the sake of doing it. My weekend job is a comic parody of employment. My body is only held together by the strength of my own will, and it's not clear that working it literally to the bone is a good choice. My only aptitudes are in this abstract realm, but it holds no meaning for me.

Imprisoned in a cage of my own making; my world view constrained and confined. Skill with computers is starting to feel a bit like a curse. After all, it's broken my body so that I can't even play guitar or badminton, and what have I to show for it?

Posted at 2004-03-24 03:14:15 by Richard • Link to Academia
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