Trying to get a photo blog right
I have been messing around trying to make my blog more photo-friendly – but without much joy. I use Apple Aperture which is integrated with MobileMe and Flickr. I have a MobileMe gallery so I could include images from there but Apple don’t provide an API just a rather inadequate…
Edinburgh Snow
I think I need to look for some photo blogging software. This gallery isn’t that inspiring.
My Spelling ‘Issues’
Someone just handed me a photocopy with this poem on. It hits the nail on the head as far as my English is concerned. Spelling “Eye halve a spelling chequer It came with my pea sea It plainly marquees four my revue Miss steaks eye kin Knot Sea Eye strike…
Wikipedia – Donate Now
Wikipedia is running its annual fund raising campaign. If you rely on Wikipedia to make you look cleverer than you really are (like I do) then it is time to flex your plastic friend and give it some dosh.
Bangor Mindfulness Course – Second Weekend
Wonderful weekend. Voluteered for EEG experiment on Thursday. All day John Peacock lecture on Friday covering the early Buddhist background to mindfulness. Foundation module on Saturday and Research module Sunday.
Nice Take On Drugs
I used to be ambivalent about drug legalisation then I heard this great polemic from Ed Vulliamy (author of Amexica: War Along the Borderline) on Start the Week on BBC Radio 4. I set off vaguely with this idea that is prevalent in liberal circles, you know, just add instant legalisation and the…
SpeciesIndex.org – an impractical, practical solution
Last year I did some work on a prototype system called speciesindex.org but have just taken it down and abandoned the idea. You may have reached this post via the speciesindex.org domain as it will probably resolve to here until I use it for something else. Here is how speciesindex.org…
Failing To Use OWL To Merge Occurrence Ontologies
I am not sure how to say this. Either: I just had my first Nature Precedings paper published. I just published my first paper on Nature Precedings. The distinction is a big one. Saying I had a paper published implies the blessings of my peers. This is more like vanity…
Size Of The Biodiversity Problem
These are some figures I culled from Arthur Chapman’s excellent Numbers of Living Species in Australia and the World. The numbers speak for themselves really. Taxon # Known # Estimated % known # To Do % of Problem Chordates 64,788 80,500 80.48 15,712 0.17 Invertebrates 1,359,365 6,755,830 20.12 5,396,465 57.16…
Neither Parenting Nor Mindfulness?
I just ready “A Model of Mindful Parenting: Implications for Parent–Child Relationships and Prevention Research” Duncan” Duncan et al Clin Child Fam Psychol Rev (2009) 12:255–270 DOI 10.1007/s10567-009-0046-3 in a quest to find some papers on mindfulness in adolescents for my research assignment. I feel uncomfortable with the notions of both…
Which is the biggest word?
Look at the Wordle above. It was produced from Tweets of all the Greater Manchester Police incidents over a 24 hour period. I pinched it from this BBC new article. What is remarkable is that the article does not mention the biggest word in the Wordle. It looks to me that…
Biological Diversity & Motivational Diversity
I just completed my first weekend on the MSc in Mindfulness Based Approaches at Bangor University. It was a wonderful three days. I enjoyed communing with like minded people and learnt a great deal – notably some of the major differences between psychology research and taxonomy. In response to one…
Pension Pondering
I came home the other day to a letter informing me that my pensions appeal had not succeeded. It is a long and boring story. I have a ‘Classic’ civil service pension that I am not allowed to pay into even though I am currently in a pensionable civil service…
What the Buddha Thought – Finished!
It took two transatlantic flights but I have just finished “What the Buddha Thought” by Richard Gombrich. I was inspired to read it by my boss, Charles Hussey, who kindly took me to a lecture for the old boys of St Paul’s School in London given by Richard. My first…
PESI – Standards and GUIDs at TDWG2010
Just back from TDWG2010 where I gave a talk on the use of standards in PESI and the prospect for stable identifiers for taxa. The take home message was that if we bind the identifiers to nomenclature then the identifiers will not be stable. You can see the presentation as…
Edelweiss – the nomenclatural smoking gun?
I was just putting my talk together for TDWG2010 and I needed a well known European species with restricted range to make a point about distribution maps. I chose Edelweiss as the name alway makes me want to break into song – plus it as a limited distribution but is…
Taxonomy Primal Use-Case
I have been around and around this thing over the past few years and it all comes down to a simple use-case. I thought I would present it graphically here: David is a decision maker. He wants to use data from two studies, Helen 2002 and Harry 1998. Is it…
The iReckon – “Drowning Out the Screaming Void”
This sketch from Mitchell and Webb is just so good I have to reproduce it here (sorry lawyers). It sums up why I meditate in 90 seconds without me having to wave my arms about and explain it. The iReckon – MP3
Is it worth developing Smart Phone Web Apps?
This quote “‘Expect to see smart phones accounting for a growing proportion of the wider mobile phone market as they become increasingly affordable to more customers,’ said Canalys Senior Analyst, Pete Cunningham. ‘By 2013, smart phones will grow to represent over 27% of shipments worldwide, with the proportion in some…
My Rhododendron Hymenanthes Thesis
I’m looking to do some work on Rhododendron again and so have had to dig out the old digital copy of my PhD thesis. I have mangled the MS Word files together using OpenOffice derivative NeoOffice. For the record here is a PDF version of it. Molecular and Conventional Data…
Ratty’s Real Name – Arvicola amphibius/terrestris
I put this talk together for a meeting just in case I needed to elaborate on a point in one of my reports. I never used it but post it here for the record. The Water Vole – Arvicola terrestris / amphibius? View more presentations from rogerhyam. The slides are pretty self explanatory….
Taxonomy, Nomenclature and PESI – An explanation for mortals.
I just wrote 500 words explaining the relationship between Taxonomy, Nomenclature and PESI for use in the PESI portal. Here they are: The process of creating a classification of life is split into two parts. Firstly experts decide which species exist. This process is called taxonomy. Secondly the experts work…
MSc Mindfulness-Based Approaches
I have just been accepted onto the course in Mindfulness-Based Approaches at Bangor University. Starting in October this year I’ll be travelling to Bangor for 5 weekends a year and studying from home to develop my practice and knowledge of mindfulness based approaches to mental health and general well being….
Words About Names – What I do for a living?
Sometimes two things cross your desk at the same time and they say more than either one of them would on their own. Firstly I was looking for a list of British birds and happened across the British Ornithologists’ Union (BOU) list of bird names and how they have changed…
PESI Deliverable D4.3 – Application and Adoption of Taxonomic Standards
I finally submitted deliverable D4.3 for the PESI project and in the great tradition of putting my outputs on my blog here is a PDF copy: Application and Adoption of Taxonomic Standards. This will be of interest to those involved in taxonomic and nomenclature projects as it shows our collective…
The Nuts Are Off!
I have decided to close down comments on the pine nut blog post. I have been meaning to do this for some time but people seemed to find it very useful, or even therapeutic, to be able to express their feelings and I figured I was providing something of a service…
More Relations
These are some of my blood relations in 1906. The two guys on the right hand end of the second row down are Chadwicks and the first guy on the front row is a Nicklin.