Monthly Archives: October 2006

Creating "Open Data" on Wikipedia

Posted on October 30, 2006 by pm286

In an earlier post I mentioned that I was going to start an article on “Open Data” on Wikipedia. This is a blow-by-blow account (a few technical details are omitted). Do not be afraid. (I used to be afraid, but … Continue reading →

Posted in open issues | 1 Comment

Enjoyable version control with the Tortoise

Posted on October 30, 2006 by pm286

Update, merge, test, add, update, commit… that’s what I do when working in a communal software project. Update, merge, test, add, update, commit… So I’ve written some additional tests for JUMBO. Now I have to save them and share them … Continue reading →

Posted in programming for scientists | Leave a comment

Unit tests or get a life

Posted on October 29, 2006 by pm286

My unit tests have taken over my life this weekend. This post is a brief respite… Unit tests are one of the great successes of modern approaches to programming. If written briefly about them before and Egon has an introduction … Continue reading →

Posted in programming for scientists | 3 Comments

Do we really need discovery metadata?

Posted on October 26, 2006 by pm286

Many of the projects we are involved in and interact with are about systematising metadata for scientific and other scholarly applications. There are several sorts of MD; I include at least rights, provenance, semantics/format, and discovery. I’ll go along with … Continue reading →

Posted in chemistry, open issues | 3 Comments

Build your own Institutional Repository

Posted on October 26, 2006 by pm286

I have alluded to Institutional Repositories (IR) before. Although I am an enthusiast and early adopter (having reposited 250, 000 digital objects) a year ago I would have said they were still a minority activity. Not now. Universities and related … Continue reading →

Posted in open issues | Leave a comment

Open Map Data?

Posted on October 26, 2006 by pm286

From Peter Suber’s Blog: Mike Cross, Ordnance Survey in the dock again, The Guardian, October 26, 2006. Excerpt: On one side of an electoral boundary, people might buy sun-blushed tomatoes; on the other, economy baked beans. Retailers like to know … Continue reading →

Posted in open issues | 4 Comments

Commons in the pharma industry?

Posted on October 26, 2006 by pm286

I was excited to see the following in Peter Suber’s Open Access Blog: var imagebase=’file://C:/Program Files/FeedReader30/’; Pfizer explores data sharing with Science Commons 17:54 24/10/2006, Peter Suber, Open Access News Pfizer is exploring data sharing with Science Commons. There are … Continue reading →

Posted in open issues | 2 Comments

Rich Apodaca: Closed Chemical Publishing and Disruptive Technology

Posted on October 26, 2006 by pm286

Rich Apodaca, a founder member of the Blue Obelisk, has a thoughtful blog, DepthFirst. Besides the interesting stuff on programming – especially Ruby – there are useful injections from outside chemistry and IT. Here’s one: The Directory of Open Access … Continue reading →

Posted in "virtual communities", chemistry, open issues | Leave a comment

Silicos contributes Commercial Open Source – thank you

Posted on October 25, 2006 by pm286

It is very uncommon for commercial organizations in chemoinformatics to make any of their material Open Source. (Unlike the contributions of many IT companies – e.g. Eclipse, Netbeans, etc.) So I was very pleased to see an announcement of open … Continue reading →

Posted in "virtual communities", chemistry, open issues, programming for scientists | 1 Comment

Chemistry Theses: How do you write them?

Posted on October 25, 2006 by pm286

As I have shown it is hard and lossy to recover information from theses (or anything else!) written in PDF. In unfavourable cases it fails completely. I have a vision which I’ll reveal in future posts, but here I’d like … Continue reading →

Posted in chemistry | 3 Comments