An Exercise in Irrelevance

At a workshop in NESC, looking at data integration in the Neurosciences.

Very interesting talk from Maryann Martone. She showed a slightly depressing slide describing the aims of the various eScience projects which is basically interchangable between all projects — data heterogeneity, distribution, autonomy. Like other medical research projects that I have heard off, they spent nearly three years getting the data through the various ethical approval committees before they could even think about hosting the data. The requirement for anonymity is important, of course, but the cost is enormous. It’s a pity that this effort can’t be shared for different projects.

Neurobase presented an interesting architecture which looks very like ComparaGRID — they have a set of wrappers mapping into a common relational datamode; essentially ComparGRID does the same thing but with an OWL based model.

Originally published on my old blog site.

I drove passed a crash on the A1 yesterday. One car was facing in the wrong direction along side the central reservation. It’s pretty depressing really. Everyone was very measured about it, with all the traffic slowing down and moving passed in an organised way; this was before the police had got there. But no one stopped. Once one person has done it, we all follow along, without any though of even offering help to those in distress. It’s a sad reflection on the isolation of modern life, sitting in steal boxes.

Still, the road afterwards was really clear for quite a few miles, so it’s not all bad.

Originally published on my old blog site.

A new James Bond has happened. Hard to have avoided this with vast amounts of plugging going on; the BBC News appeared to turn into the advertising wing of the Bond machine for a week.

Went to see the film in the Vue cinema in Worcester. Fairly horrible place, lets be frank. When you come in through the door, you are assaulted by a wave of fat smells from the popcorn and ice cream. The foyer is actually quite tatty now, despite the fact that it’s relatively new.

An initial feeling of relief, sitting comfortably in the cinema seats (the Vue has got this bit right), is soon blown away by the assault of the 30 minute pre-film advertising and "Copyright is theft" propaganda. Finally, the film starts. Sadly the advertising doesn’t. James Bond driving his Form, using his Vaio, phoning on his Sony Ericsson. It’s got to the point where it totally disrupts the flow. Combining it with the new, darker, more serious Bond makes it even worse — the new film has a sense of self-importance about it, which is totally punctured by the adverts.

It’s not all bad, though. John Cleese is no longer in it, which is one hell of a relief.

Originally published on my old blog site.