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Tuesday, January 17, 2006Mineralogy in OPMLThe Earth is made of minerals. There are a lot types, and many are stunningly beautiful. [More cool photos at my friend Tim Ivanic's page.] The array of different minerals and classes is mind-boggling, and for a geology student it can be quite taxing to learn the names and properties. I spent many an hour sticking Post-it notes into Deer, Howie and Zussman (the undergrad's bible), trying to make sense of it all.I would have liked to view the mineral classes and sub-classes/varieties as an outline. Imagine an online "Rock-forming Minerals Outline", of all the major minerals, with links to photos and descriptions. Monday, January 16, 2006Applying OPML to Earth scienceI'm into geology, and like to think about ways to use the internet to enhance comprehension of geoscience. I'm already nuts about the potential of Google Earth for this.It occurs to me that outlines are an ideal way to express stratigraphical relationships. Even simple horizontal layers of rock that haven't been messed about by tectonics need organising into stratigraphical schemes to enable geologists to understand their relationships, and how they were formed. Sometimes those relationships get quite complicated, and being able to collapse and expand views of parts of the stratigraphy in OPML Editor might make it a lot easier to comprehend the geology. How detailed you want to get about stratigraphy is up to you: you can look at large scale features, say, the different coloured rock layers that you see when you look into the Grand Canyon. Or you can zoom in to millimetre, grain of sand size (or smaller). Each subdivision can be represented by a new subheading in the outliner. The real usefulness of this is in the collaboration enabled by OPML inclusion. As Dave says, authorship of nested OPML directories (stratigraphic subdivisions) can be delegated, in this case to geoscientists with knowledge of the geology in question. Geological boundaries mean that there are limits to how much of an area can be cleanly represented in an outline, but inclusion enables the linking together of as many strata as the geology allows. A When I get some time I'll post an example stratigraphic outline. Last night I googled my username, and came across part of a cached post by Amyloo, mentioning my Leo McGarry header graphic. Amy's blog dumped some of her files the other day, and that post doesn't seem to be among those she recovered. So I don't know what she said because the Google cache didn't recall it all, but it's nice to know there's another West Wing fan on OPML, and thanks for noticing me, Amy! As promised, here is the direct link to the streaming Real video of Paxman's interview with Bill Clinton (13 mins). Today he met Colin Powell. Sunday, January 15, 2006Help NASA find comet dust!NASA want online volunteers to help search for cometary dust particles in samples due to return to Earth later today. After passing a validation test you get to help sift through the millions of gel slides for the first ever comet samples seen by man! It's done online with a downloaded viewer. If you are lucky enough to find one of the few particles, you get to name it, and have your name on a scientific paper as co-author. If you don't find anything, you get the satisfaction of knowing you helped in a historic scientific programme. I just pre-registered. Saturday, January 14, 2006Jeff Jarvis reports that Apple is now worth more than Dell. :) There is no Wikipedia article for "river of news", nor any mention of the concept in the aggregator article. I may fix that sometime. Anyone have an opinion on the best form of capitalisation...river of news...River of News...River of news? I figure all lower case, as long as we're talking concept and not an aggregator name. Excellent Paxman interview with Bill Clinton on Newsnight last night.
You can watch whole the programme until Monday night only, but I'll link to the permanently archived interview when it goes up. This wasn't an occasion for Jeremy's usual, brilliantly acerbic, interviewing style, but an interesting, rather warm encounter. I found it fascinating to hear how Clinton sees several of the world's major challenges, and to get an insight into his method of problem-solving. He clearly still has a lot to offer. Tuesday, January 10, 2006The header graphicFor anyone who doesn't recognise him, that's the late, great actor John Spencer, as Leo McGarry in The West Wing. I'll miss him.
I will probably change the header graphic from time to time. Hello worldThis is mainly a trial blog that I'm using to learn about OPML, to compare NewsRiver with other aggregators, and to think about ways to organise information. I'm an OPML newbie. Thanks to Dave for getting me interested in this.Apart from OPML/"river of news" related stuff, I'll probably end up blogging eclectic things about technology, culture and politics. I'm English, a former geology student, and have a job unrelated to IT. |
Last modified: Tuesday, January 17, 2006 at 5:35 AM.
Email: roadgoer AT googlemail.com
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