Posts from — May 2008

It is! It is my handwriting.

Propagandee from Urantian Sojourn sent me this quotation from The Urantia Book. I like it.

100:4.6 You cannot truly love your fellows by a mere act of the will. Love is only born of thoroughgoing understanding of your neighbor’s motives and sentiments. It is not so important to love all men today as it is that each day you learn to love one more human being. If each day or each week you achieve an understanding of one more of your fellows, and if this is the limit of your ability, then you are certainly socializing and truly spiritualizing your personality. Love is infectious, and when human devotion is intelligent and wise, love is more catching than hate. But only genuine and unselfish love is truly contagious. If each mortal could only become a focus of dynamic affection, this benign virus of love would soon pervade the sentimental emotion-stream of humanity to such an extent that all civilization would be encompassed by love, and that would be the realization of the brotherhood of man.

Lady Fortune the Absurd of Greater Internetshire presents – Your very own eccentric British aristocratic title:

For my real name:

My Peculiar Aristocratic Title is: Entirely Miss Reverend Lady Heidi the Abrupt of Withering Glance Get your Peculiar Aristocratic Title

For my internet name:

My Peculiar Aristocratic Title is: Empress Virushead the Gnomic of Lardle St Earache Get your Peculiar Aristocratic Title

For a couple of my aliases:

My Peculiar Aristocratic Title is: Her Grace Lady Melody the Decent of Divine Intervention Get your Peculiar Aristocratic Title

My Peculiar Aristocratic Title is: Reverend Countess Faelily the Blossoming of Mousehole by Sea Get your Peculiar Aristocratic Title

Many more of my questions about semantic technologies and their applications have been answered in the last couple of days. There were a couple of outstanding sessions today, but even more helpful were the informal conversations taking place all around the conference area.

I think I’ll probably have to make a distinction between long-term interoperability modeling goals and short-term projects that address specific needs. I’ve got a lot more resources to add to my toolbox now, and a better understanding of the context and history of what’s happening with this kind of technology. It turns out that there is also an academic version of this conference, and a few publications, so I can probably start to follow some of the wider theoretical questions there. For what I need to do, I’ll have to be more practical.

I helped out at an informal book signing today. One of the authors had just finished an excellent presentation (two perspectives on ontology – big O and little o – “the Two Towers” – {grin}) and he was tied up in conversation. Meanwhile, the other author was trying to swipe credit cards and make change and sign books to each person. There was a long line of people waiting, so I jumped in and took care of the selling transactions so that he could just sign the books. I don’t think they expected such a response – two boxes of books sold out rather quickly. The book looks very helpful. Check it out at Amazon:

I had intended to blog on the conference in more detail, but I’m too tired. These have been long days – worthwhile, but tiring.