Ruby – a programmers best friend

Learning how to code. I like the word “coding” more than “programming”; code is poetry
My first efforts were writing some lines of code in PHP. Now I’m learning LISP. Why? Because it is the granddaddy of computer languages. But there is more: I’m not finished yet learning PHP, and I am doing some very small projects – for learning purposes only – in the Mono development framework.

Yesterday I stumbled on Wagn, “Ruby on Rails, Wiki on Wheels”. This “Explore, Organize, Thrive” CMS seems to me the best application for a new project I am planning for my work. (Don’t ask…).
But…I need some knowledge of Ruby on Rails, as well as Git. Hm, that’s all rather arcane to me, but everything can be taught, so I picked up a book from the Public Library “Handboek Programmeren met Ruby en Rails” (in Dutch) by Ivo Balbaert and followed some online lessons at the Ruby Programming Language Website, that led me to another hands-on tutorial, written by why the lucky stiff, whoever that may be, but he describes himself as

…a fledgling freelance professor, one who will die young and make no lasting impression.

Rather modest, IMHO, because besides his beautiful website he also blessed the world with a funny book Why’s (poignant) Guide to Ruby – completely free!

Okay, I downloaded the One-Click Installer and wrote my first line of Ruby; “Hello World”, or something like that. Let’s see if I’ll get Ruby rolling.

The Art of Sharing

Life is a well of delight; but where the rabble also drink, there all fountains are poisoned.

This quote from Nietzsche’s “Thus Spake Zarathustra” applies to the current state of the internet. Internet is great, but the overload of blogs and microblogs pollute the web. The surplus value of the internet as a means to exchange information is undone by the trouble you have to take to wade through the swamp of second hand information to find a single bit of news.
Nascent, Nature’s Blog on web technology and science, has an article about which web 2.0 services scientists use, written by Euan Adie. The conclusion is:

• Almost a third of Friendfeed scientists have delicious bookmarks. Don’t discount non-academic bookmarking services as a source of paper metadata.
• A similar number use the share functionality in Google Reader.
• Despite rumors to the contrary not everybody is on Twitter.
• A surprising (to me) number of people are uploading and favouriting items on Slideshare.

Hmm, I almost never use my Friendfeed account, although it is the easiest way to share online (as you can read on their own website) So, I’ll give it a little more attention from now on. I’ve subscribed to some groups like life-scientists. Of course I hope to learn from others, but I also share information I found on the web. Quid quo pro. Another way of viewing my web 2.0-activities is my Public Plaxo Pulse Stream, but this shows less services than Friendfeed. You can see how much and where I share conveniently arranged in a pie chart at my Geek Chart page, but this covers only a few services: this blog, Digg, Stumble, YouTube, LastFM, Delicious, Flickr, Facebook and Twitter.
Yes, I’m on Twitter, but I still haven’t discovered what the hype is all about – except, of course, that it is all about exposing in public what you are up to. Somewhere in the world there must be some very interesting people, but usually those people are too concerned about doing their thing that they are not interested in launching their tweets into cyberspace. Proof me wrong; I still haven’t read one single tweet that changed my life – and I doubt if my own tweets are worth the trouble of writing (let alone: reading) them.
I like Delicious, although last year I transferred a lot of my bookmarks to Evernote. I think Evernote is a great tool for sharing information, but My Notebook at Evernote is not public. Another great service not mentioned in the Nascent article is Twine.
I think I’ll have to delve more into the possibilities of CiteULike, Connotea and Slideshare. I’ve seen some very interesting presentations on the Semantic Web. I wrote about that in an earlier post.

Wolfram Alpha

Wolfram Alpha is a data-focused, computational search engine that pretends to make the world’s knowledge computable. Wolfram Alpha is a hybrid between Wikipedia and Google, for simple search queries. You can enter any date (e.g. a birth date), any town (e.g. a home town), any two stocks, any calculation, any math formula, any two first names, any food, any measurement, any chemical formula, any musical notes.

So I tried 42, which is, as we all know, the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything. Here are Alpha’s results. Not bad. Now I tried Enoch Root. Hm, here Google helped me better in the past.

Gina Trapani wrote a comprehensive article about Wolfram Alpha at LifeHacker. She sums up a decent list of trivia calculated by Wolfram Alpha’s computational knowledge engine, but I would be disappointed if this is all Wolfram Alpha has to offer.
If you find yourself using Wolfram Alpha more than Google or Wikipedia, there is a WolframAlpha Search Plugin for Firefox users. There is also a Wolfram Toolbar.

MindRaider and the Semantic Web

Yet Another MindMap Application, you might think. But this piece of software has the best of three worlds: the power of Mindjet, the UI of The Brain and, like FreeMind, it doesn’t cost a penny. I’m talking about MindRaider.

MindRaider is personal notebook and outliner. It aims to connect the tradition of outline editors with emerging technologies. MindRaider mission is to help you in organization of your knowledge and associated web, local and realworld resources in a way that enables quick navigation, concise representation and inferencing.

I found it reading this month’s LinuxFormat magazine #119. Open Tube listed it at the 12+ list of Free MindMapping Tools. Freemind is still on top of the list, but I would be surprised if that will change shortly: MindRaider is not only Another MindMap Application, it is also a Semantic Webtool.

MindRaider

What is the Semantic Web? In fact, I find it difficult to explain! Earlier, I wrote about Twine, a service that combines social bookmarking with the semantic web. I subscribed to the semantic web twine. But all this didn’t increase my understanding of the Web3.0. The MindRaider website offers some great presentations about the Semantic Web, like this one by Freek Bijl, who explains the web3.0 with a stamp:

Web 3.0 explained with a stamp (pt II: techniques)

or this one, rather extensive:

Introduction to knowledge representation in the semantic web

TiddlyWiki Student Notebook

The TiddlyWiki seems to be a never ending project. The TiddlyWiki Google-group is a high-volume mailinglist with many dedicated TiddlyWiki afficionados.
TiddlyWiki is a portable, non-linear notebook, but you can also use it as a GTD-productivity tool or for making a website.
When I learned about TiddlyWiki for the first time, I thought about applying it to education. Unfortunately, TiddlyWiki has a system of linking by “WikiWords” – my students didn’t like it and I switched to TikiWiki and, later, to MOODLE, that incidently appears to have a TiddlyWiki plug-in.
Now Andrew Lister has developped a combination of a Student Notebook and an online Wikispaces wiki for his class of over 250 students at Queens University.

For a more complete description follow the link to this Blog-entry or Lister’s own public demo site.

Bespin: web-based text editor in the cloud

Cloud computing: I wrote about it in another post. Now there is Bespin, an extensible, web-based text editor.

Bespin proposes an open extensible web-based framework for code editing that aims to increase developer productivity, enable compelling user experiences, and promote the use of open standards.

It is still in the Mozilla Labs, but it might grow up to a great word processor, extensible like other mozilla applications.

Introducing Bespin from Dion Almaer on Vimeo.

Twine and Web 3.0

The always interesting “Science and Reason” website by Charles Daney pointed me to Twine, a new bookmarking service, like Delicious, but with some social networking features.

A few months ago I had transferred my Delicious Bookmarks to Evernote, a great online notebook application, but now I think my precious time will have to walk a tight rope between Evernote and Twine.

Bookmarks are organizied into groups called “twines”, which can be public or private, and typically cover some recognizable topic area, or whatever people want to use them for. Each bookmark can also have a description and any number of tags, specified by the user creating the bookmark. Each bookmark also allows for comments, which anyone may add.

Introduction to Twine from Twine Official on Vimeo.

The technology behind Twine is called “Semantic Web” or “Web 3.0“. Why not? Web 2.0 is already obsolete (incidently I know people who still don’t know what RSS Feeds are).Swoogle is the Semantic Web Search Engine and may replace Google. Let’s wait and see.
But for me, always interested in new developments, and especially when it comes to collecting as much information as my brain can capture (and this largely depends on the amounts of time I have available – the only limitation to all my accomplishments), I thought it wouldn’t hurt to sign up with Twine and join some twines.

Flowcharts

Webcomic site xkcd had a comic on flowcharts: “Understanding Flowcharts” last week.

This reminded me of some interesting Flowchart applications.

First of all, there is Dia, an open-source diagram-crating program, based on Visio, a commercial Microsoft program.

Then there is a web-based application, “Lucid Charts“. Of course I have signed up for an account to give it a try:

A similar web-based flow-chart maker is Gliffy, this offers a free basic account and a premium account that is a little more expensive than Lucid Chart.

Of course you can also use the free Dabbleboard for flowcharts.

Flowcharts are a way of organizing your thoughts. Earlier I wrote about the Wellington Grey flowchart on Slashdot publishing.

Juice firefox add-on

A great new firefox-add-on is Juice: Discover. Organize. Share.

Juice is an intelligent discovery engine that integrates seamlessly with your browser.
Highlight and move a chunk of text, and Juice directly delivers a set of rich, relevant content to you.

As you see on the screenshot I’ve selected from my own recent blogpost on the movie “Entre les murs” the text “entre les murs” I dragged and dropped it into Juice. As the Juice website tells us:

Juice will start performing its tricks.

Data-mining is fun with Juice, together with some other great add-ons like Evernote, Delicious, Readeroo and Zotero.

Juice’s rocking webcast from Linkool Labs on Vimeo.

Intelligence Amplification

A Man must get a thing before he can forget it. – Oliver Wendell Holmes

The Wisdom of Thomas Aquinas - Fresco by Andrea da Firenze

This fourteenth-century fresco is on the walls of the Dominican convent of Santa Maria Novella in Florence. It pictures the wisdom and virtue of Thomas Aquinas. Thomas is sitting on a throne, surrounded by flying figures representing the three theological virtues (Faith; steadfastness in belief, Hope; expectation of good and Love; selfless, unconditional, and voluntary loving-kindness) and four cardinal virtues (Prudentia=prudence; proper judgement of reasons for action with regard to appropriateness in a context, Justitia=justice; proper judgement regarding individual human interests, rights and desserts, Fortitudo = fortitude; forbearance, endurance, and ability to confront fear and uncertainty, or intimidation and Temperantia=temperance; practicing self-control, abstention, and moderation).

There is a lot to see in this picture on a theological level, but what is of interest now are the female figures sitting in niches symbolizing the knowledge of Thomas. The seven figures on the right represent the liberal arts, from right to left: Grammar, Rhetoric, Logic, Music, Arithmetic, Geometry, Astronomy. The first three are also known ast the “Trivium“, the other four as the “Quadrivium“.

Septem Artes Liberales by Herrad von Landsberg's "Hortus deliciarum" (1180)

The liberal arts are still the guide to education, aiming to acquire a general knowledge and developing intellectual capacities.However, the scope of our 21-century wikipedia is much bigger than Thomas’ Summa, so it is impossible to know everything about everything.

Google helps us to save all the available knowledge, yeah, but what is on a server @Google is not always accessible to my mind, so I still want to save, edit, recall as much information I can handle. Learning strategies may help us, so this is a round-up about some techniques I use to build up my brain:

• Basic study strategies: I made an outline of the book “Your memory. How it works and how to improve it.” by Kenneth Higbee. I used the Brain for representing the information, you’ll find it here (opens in a new window).
• Bloom’s Taxonomy:

• Mindmapping: I’ve written on this subject before, no reason to repeat myself. Only that the range of MindMaptools is stillexpanding: I prefer Freemind, but there are other applications: see my delicious bookmarks for a more extensive list. However, I have tried The Brain software recently, which offers a quite new perspective on MindMapping.
• The Student Academic Resource Centre of the University of Florida offers a lot of Learning Skill Handouts. Collect them all!
• Edward deBono’s CoRT: CoRT = Cognitive research Trust. You can find an outline of the principles at his website. But, again, The Brain put it all in perspective for me.
• Edward deBono’s Thinking Hats: Part of DeBono’s thinking Skills. I’ve adjusted them to my own habits, four example I only have a four-color pen, not six. So, when note-taking or -making, I use Blue for facts, Black for disadvantages, Green for what I like and Red for references, things I have to do or to evaluate someday/maybe. (it works good with my GTD habits)
• Finally There is the multiple intelligence principle of Howard Gardner, developed in 1983.
• Of course there are still four great “”Mental Filing” techniques. I will mention them here, but they require a lot of training:
• • The Link-system (or chain-system)
  • The Phonetic system
  • The Peg mnemonic system
  • The Memory Palace.

  The last system has been treated extensively by Frances Yates in “The Art of Memory”.

Well, as you can see, there is enough; you can make a study of study techniques without getting wiser:-).

I personally think there is not one style, but you need different techniques for different things you must learn. And, of course, the best way of learning is playing; doing things.

I will finish this blog with the lyrics of a song about the mnemonics of Giordano Bruno:

Vintersorg Ars Memorativa Lyrics:
THROUGH THE LABYRINTH OF THE MIND.

You built all memories on a framework
of the zodiac and other known structures,
every thought was linked to a special picture.
You stigmatized their keenness and location
on a deep and shrouded level. Remembering, controling
was the way to higher knowledge.

In the nature you saw the outlines of an universal intelligence,
every process a reflecting mirror. Symbols meant to trigger
the shadow of the ideas in the maze of recollection.
A vortex of information reigned inside
and found its way,
THROUGH THE LABYRINTH OF THE MIND.
With self-hypnosis you put it in
a dynamic pattern,
IN THE LABYRINTH OF THE MIND

No physical laws were rooted in your system
everything was forces of thoughts and sensations,
which is streaming through man.

Mist and rain just a condition of unawareness,
and volcanos a state of rage.

A prophet in cosmology, like Copernicus
you saw the stars as suns.
And a warrior who fought with intellctual swords,
with arrow-sharp words.

In the nature you saw the outlines of an universal intelligence,
every process a reflecting mirror. Symbols meant to trigger
the shadow of the ideas in the maze of recollection.
A vortex of information reigned inside
and found its way,
THROUGH THE LABYRINTH OF THE MIND.
With self-hypnosis you put it in
a dynamic pattern,
IN THE LABYRINTH OF THE MIND