Just finished reading Practical RDF by Shelley Powers. It's a good introduction and overview to the Resource Description Framework, with an emphasis on RDF/XML syntax. It is already a little dated in it's description of RDF applications but this a minor, and probably unavoidable shortcoming. Recommended.

We spent Memorial Day touring Wyoming in my S2000. We had some top down weather, but it was mixed with rain, sleet, snow, and hail. We took US 287 to Rawlins on Sunday and booked a motel room there for two nights to be our base of operations. Monday we followed 287 to Grand Teton National Park, turned south and looped back toward Rawlins. The scenery was sometimes desolate, but always beautiful. We'll be back.

Steel Bank Common Lisp version 0.9.13 has been released. Main changes in sbcl-0.9.13 relative to sbcl-0.9.12:

• new feature: source path information is generated for macro-expansion errors for use in IDEs like Slime (thanks to Helmut Eller),
• bug fix: calls to the compiler no longer modify *RANDOM-STATE*,
• bug fix: compiler does not loop forever on an invalid type in TYPEP,
• improvement: compilation of most CLOS applications is significantly faster,
• optimization: added a limited bytecode compiler for simple toplevel forms, speeding up compilation and FASL loading.

The Python Need for Speed sprint in Reykjavik, Iceland has successfully concluded. It yielded a number of nice speed increases which should make it into Python 2.5.

Gaijin Biker shows an interesting world motorcycle map indicating the number of motorcycles in various regions around the globe.

SciPy 0.4.9 has been released. This version adds support for NumPy version 0.9.8. It also has enhancements to sparse matrices, including a new linear solver module with UMFPACK support, and new support for fitting conditional maximum entropy models.

In a W3C presentation, Identity Crisis and Serendipity, Ora Lassila argues that the value proposition of RDF and the Semantic Web lies in information reuse and integration. Noting that the ability of RDF to provide these benefits has been limited because many important things lack URIs. He proposes that RDF be enhanced with identity predicates and inverse function properties to overcome this.

OINK (Open Integration of Networked Knowledge) is a browser for RDF data built upon the Wilbur Open Source Semantic Web toolkit. OINK renders RDF graphs as XHTML with one page per node, providing an intuitive way to explore them.

NumPy 0.9.8 has been released. This is a bug-fix and optimization release with a few new features. The C-API was changed so that extensions compiled against NumPy 0.9.6 will need re-compilation to avoid errors. See the release notes for more information.

Nokia has announced a Google Talk client for the model 770 Internet tablet. This could be attractive if support for Blue Tooth headsets is also added.

When I bought my Kawasaki Z750S last year, I didn't look too hard at Honda's, despite the fact that we have two Honda automobiles in the family (S2000 and Insight). This is partly because the VFR 800, while more technically sophisticated, is heavier and considerably more expensive. The Z750 hit the sweet spot when I was shopping for a reentry bike.

Being a motorhead, I'm always looking at new vehicles and watching trends. I came across this speech that Honda's CEO made last year about plans for building cleaner and more fuel efficient engines. He forecast a 30% fuel efficiency improvement for Honda's 4 cylinder motorcycle engines. This would boost a VFR to about 60 MPG, making it even more attractive.

Automobile got to test drive VW's EcoRacer concept car. It's a good example of the kind of fun and frugal cars that I'd like to see, 0-60 in 6.3 sec, 143 MPH top end and 80 MPG.

The upcoming Toyota super car has been picked to be the pace car for the 2007 Japanese Grand Prix. A 500 HP V-10 clad in a carbon composite body with a 2500 pound curb weight sounds interesting, but at $150,000 I'll have to pass.

Peter Diamandis has a vision for private space exploration and colonization. It's ambitious, but given his track record, I believe it is credible. We do live in interesting times.

APL Quote Quad 34:3 came in yesterday's mail. This is the Summer 2004 issue, and while the mail is a little slow getting to Lyons, it isn't that slow. This is the third issue since the fall of 2002 as SIGAPL is working to rebuild.

Paul Murphy recently wrote about APL, Cobol, and Dijkstra in his Managing L'unix blog.

Dijkstra famously said:

  APL is a mistake, carried through to perfection. It is the language
  of the future for the programming techniques of the past:
  it creates a new generation of coding bums.

I believe that Dijkstra was reacting against the use of GOTO in early APL. Dijkstra was a witty and merciless critic of programming languages, who enjoyed pointing out their weaknesses. APL's parallel operation on entire arrays eliminates much of the need for explicit flow control, and modern APLs have all the usual structured programming flow control elements. Many also support Object Oriented program structuring techniques.

Paul points out that Dijkstra also said things supporting APL style mathematical treatment of programming. In APL, the mathematical proof of an algorithm and it's implementation can be one and the same.

PyTables 1.3.1 has been released. It features better NumPy support and quite a few bug fixes.

Rocketplane is an Oklahoma company that's shooting for the stars. Unlike Virgin Galactic's well financed and publicized private space tourism effort, Rocketplane is quietly working on a shoestring to give them some competition. Where Virgin Galactic has two vehicle approach (jet carrier vehicle and rocket spacecraft), Rocketplane uses a single vehicle with both jet and rocket engines.