Digital Camcorder Considerations

GPS/Geo, Hardware, Image Description

We want to get a digital camcorder.

There’s a wedding coming up, some travelling, later perhaps more interesting “subjects”, and then of course there’s the gadget dimension.

Among the criteria for selection are:

  • Relative ease of use: OK, I’m geeky, but devices with less than 85 keys are often impossible to figure out…
  • Dependability: We’re prepared to back up to HD and other media, but we still want to be able to trust the media.
  • Quality: The raw footage should be raw, not compressed. The images are more important than the sound.
  • Future proof: I know, not possible in this world, but it seems it’d be OK to go for HD?
  • Comfortable: Small and handy, likely to just be available and ready to go when needed.

Currently on the short list is the Sony HDR-HC3. Compared to its predecessor, the HC1, there are improvements as well as changes to the worse, but overall it seems it’s progress.

What to do?

ObSemWebAngle: Ideally, it should also include GPS integration and other ways of content description! ;-)

Planet Changes

Blogging, Python, RSS

Recently, a new solar system was discovered, one with a planet that just might contain liquid water.

This is not about that.

Rather, this is about the Planet Planet, a flexible feed aggregator, that Sam Ruby and Danny Ayers (among others) have been hacking on recently.

I have created a personal planet for myself, one of the introverted ones that gather what I produce rather than what I consume: Planet Morten (styling yet to be perfected).

While setting it up, and getting it running like I wanted to, I noticed that it updated the generated files on every run, even though no new entries had been included. On a web that knows about Last-Modified and ETag (as Planet Planet itself does), it seemed like waste of bandwidth to preserve the incoming bytes but not the outgoing ones.

My limited Python skills to the rescue.

Two patches against the latest nightly — the one with a Last-Modified header of Mon, 22 May 2006 16:02:22 GMT (even though it contains files that were changed in the future when I GOT it):

planet-filecmp.diff
This patch makes Planet Planet write its output to a temporary file, which is then compared to the previous version, which is then only overwritten if the contents differ. This precludes the use of <TMPL_VAR date> in templates, as that will surely make the files differ, but the patch has the added bonus of not trashing the previous version of the generated file, in case something goes wrong during the write process.
planet-conditional-output.diff
This patch contains the above patch and additional logic to prevent output files from being generated if no channels were updated. Thus, the original files will be left untouched if no new entries were found, logic that also somewhat invalidates <TMPL_VAR date> in templates, since it can’t be trusted anymore.

The Planet Planet development list has been notified.

Update: Sam Ruby was kind enough to point out some shortcomings in my solution and prompt me for a test case. Thus:

Semantic Mainstream

Databases, Linux, SemWeb

I spent most of my wednesday at the Copenhagen Bella Center at the anual Linux Conference : Linux on Enterprise 2006. It was organized in part by OSL — thanks to Magenta for the invitation.

It was quite interesting to hear about practical experiences with open standards and open source in the government, and listening to Peter Quinn of Massachusetts fame was inspiring (as was the free beer — the presentation included hilarious jabs at Richard Stallman).

Most interesting was the fact that the IDC analyst as well as the special guest Dirk van Rooy from the EU Information Society/IST activity, both mentioned intelligence in computing as “the future”, with clear references to the Semantic Web (and the omnipresent intelligent refrigerator).

Another point: The May/June issue of Oracle Magazine contains an article on the Semantic Web, with sidebars tooting the horn of Oracle 10g Release 2: Semantic Breakthrough

I think it seems like this stuff is going to stick…

SFSW 2 and Reboot 8

SemWeb, Travelling

The 2nd Workshop on Scripting for the Semantic Web (SFSW) is getting closer.

Deadline for submissions is March 30th, 2006.

Also, this year’s version of reboot, that’s 8.0, has been announced.

For reboot there really isn’t a deadline, but the planning has only just begun, and there’s a discount if you register before April 19th.

I likely won’t be able to attend either of them, although perhaps I might try to squeeze in a day of reboot and perhaps some meetups just before. As for SFSW, it’d be more than nice to go to Montenegro, and since I’m actually blessed to be on the preliminary program committee, I really should. I won’t be able to make the deadline though, and it seems the workshop itself doesn’t fit the calendar either…

EOR

General

Finally.

This weblog should — at least if you are reading this — no longer be write-only, it should be readable from outside my private network…

Of course, that also means that I should start writing.

Morale: Trust noone, especially not Tele2 (but for once, TDC came through, and in less than a week, too).

PS: If you are still not seeing what you expect around this part of the web, please wait for DNS changes to propagate.