Beach or mountains? Which do you prefer? Why?
Do I prefer the beach or the mountains? Do I? I do. On balance I find the mountains more satisfying, more fulfilling than the beaches. But I like beaches too.
Each is atmospheric in its own way, wide open expanses in common. Both are windy. One is rugged, the other flat.
Continue reading “Mountains soar, Beach extends”Despite a lifetime of outdoor walking and climbing activities I’m not a natural backpacker. Making a journey on foot with my home on my back is almost alien to me. That’s not to say I’ve never done it but the occasions have been few, far between and of short duration.
Thus, it was with trepidation that I embarked upon my Pennine Way adventure in May 2022. What would this 255 mile 17 day journey bring? Would I be capable? Would I cope? Would I finish it? I set out with the intention of doing so.
Continue reading “Exploring the Pennine Way: A Hiker’s Experience”Wandering hills across England and Wales, I often come across man-made stone structures like this old shepherd’s shelter on Arnsbarrow Hill, Cumbria.
In various states of disrepair and decay, they’re usually not that interesting after you’ve seen a few. I moved on and around to reach my intended hill summit just behind. Turning to look at the view on all sides, my eye was drawn unexpectedly again to the shelter.
Continue reading “Vandalism or thoughtful touch?”A first visit for me. Margam Country Park has been on my ‘to visit’ list for years and years. Finally got around to it. Didn’t disappoint as we saw the remains of the old monastery (12th century), its more modern parish church on the same site, the 19th century castle ‘pile’ with the longest orangery in Britain (apparently and deer. The views were to die for – Port Talbot Steelworks and across to Somerset – but we couldn’t see them because of the low cloud.
An open-access repository or open archive is a digital platform that holds research output and provides free, immediate and permanent access to research results for anyone to use, download and distribute. (Source: Wikipedia).
The European Collection Objects Index (ECOI) proposed by DiSSCo is one such repository for Digital Specimens and Digital Collections. Continue reading “European Collection Objects Index – an open-access repository for Digital Specimens”
Linking building in DiSSCo, to build the unified knowledge graph around and between digital specimens is something I’ve been thinking about for a few months now. How would you do it, authoritatively with confidence, in an automated way at scale for 1.5 billion specimens across European natural science collections? This is quite a challenge. My experience of doing it manually (see these examples) can basically be characterized as fishing in deep pools for something you know is there but can’t see!
Digital transformation of physical natural science collections has been underway for some time already but with the inclusion of the Distributed System of Scientific Collections (DiSSCo) into the ESFRI Roadmap 2018 there is a new stimulus to unify a fragmented landscape into a coherent and responsive research infrastructure where ‘Digital Specimens‘ and ‘Natural Science Identifiers‘ can play an important role to improve access for scientists, policymakers and the public.
Several months ago, moving into a new home I discovered the central heating system is controlled by ‘smart devices’. To make it work I had to invest in a ‘home hub’, initialise and pair the boiler controller and the smart thermostat to the hub, and install an app on my smart phone to control it. It’s quite good really. I can sit in my comfy chair and if I start feeling a bit chilly I just reach for the phone and crank up the temperature a bit. And when I’ve been out for the day and I’m on the way home I can reach for the phone and turn the heating on so that it’s toasty warm when I arrive.
Continue reading “Every customer has one – Losing privacy to pernicious smarts”
In a companion article, “What is interoperability? (Part 1)” I began explaining what is meant by interoperability between systems; a concept that reveals itself to be more complex and more faceted than one might first imagine. My interest in exploring this is to develop thinking for my work in the GLOBIS-B project fostering global cooperation between providers of biodiversity research infrastructures to advance implementation support for Essential Biodiversity Variables. During the first half of this year, we’re aiming to develop a manifesto to steer global co-operation on informatics interoperability and I’m looking for ways to express this in concrete form that’s easy to work towards.
In this article, I go more in-depth looking at the way interoperability is understood today in several communities having relevance to the work. Let’s start with the ENVRI Community view of interoperability.
Used as an adjective, when two things are described as ‘interoperable’ it means they can work together. In the specific case of two computer systems, the characteristic of being interoperable relates to the ability to transmit and receive data between them i.e., to communicate. But is it that simple?
Alex Hardisty 