What are virtual worlds good for?
If you've ever wondered about what virtual worlds (like Second Life) are good for, beside games, Greg Pfister describes a better way to do presentations:
Living in a presentation. It cannot be done in two dimensions. You cannot even do it in real life. It's something virtual worlds are, uniquely, good for.
Erik Naggum, R.I.P.
Apparently, Erik Naggum died. I never knew him, but words of his death reached me and I've learned a lot. Two excerpts from his entry on wikiquote (these are his signatures, not necessarily quotes):
- In a fight against something, the fight has value, victory has none. In a fight for something, the fight is a loss, victory merely relief.
- Act from reason, and failure makes you rethink and study harder. Act from faith, and failure makes you blame someone and push harder.
Rest in peace, Erik Naggum.
XSPARQL W3C Submission
Over a year and a half after Axel first told me about this idea, and over a year since it was presented at ESWC 2008, XSPARQL has reached the next step: it was now acknowledged by the W3C, the Web's standardization body.
XSPARQL is a fusion of SPARQL and XQuery, a query/transformation language able to process RDF and XML data sources and return RDF or XML. It's great for transforming data from XML to RDF or vice versa, and more. Finally the worlds of XML and RDF might be getting closer, yay!
Now go check out the online demo. 8-)
Web is 20 years old
This month, the Web reaches 20 years since its conception and there will be celebrations! Boy, am I happy not to be too much older than the Web.
Happy birthday, Web. Thanks, Sir Tim.
Focusing on the Bad
In relationships, it seems sometimes that people only see the bad things and never notice the good ones. I just formed a theory for why this is. (I'll use Adam and Eve to explain, but I don't see any reason that it has to be these genders in particular, just two people.)
When Adam does something good, such as buying flowers or cleaning the bathroom, Eve can thank him, smile, and it's done, off everybody's mind, a small pleasant memory.
When Adam does something bad, such as forgetting to clean the bathroom or burping loudly, but it's not so bad that Eve would feel like raising it as a criticism (fearing that would be creating a bad feeling), Adam may not notice that it was perceived as bad, and Eve will be left with this unfinished matter on her mind, waiting in the back ready to pop up, souring her mood. When enough of these small unfinished matters accumulate, the last straw (just as insignificant as the others) leads to an outburst of criticism, which focuses on all those small bad things left not-dealt-with, and ignores all the small good things that were closed with a thanks and a smile.
I believe this is a natural course of life — we can't really bring up every small bad thing that someone does.
If the partners keep this natural course of things in mind, it could lessen the violence of the outbursts without keeping any pent-up issues waiting to explode later and with more strength.
This should apply in situations other than couple relationships as well (e.g. in a workplace), but it seemed easiest to describe in terms of two people.
It's not likely to be a new insight, but it's new to me. 8-)