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Blog for Sunday, 9th March 2008

09/03/2008: The Semantic Web

One of my current interests is the semantic web — that is, the push to move from publishing text on the Web to publishing structured data, which can actually be understood by computers (in so far as a computer can truly “understand” anything). By publishing information so that computers can understand it, you make the Web into a huge mine of interconnected data, free to be queried by everyone.

As an example of what I mean, searching for the keyword “train” on Google brings up results related to:

  • trains, as a form of transport
  • the band Train
  • IT training courses
  • toy trains

In the semantic web, the search engine and my computer would inherently understand the difference between these concepts, so if I wanted to know about the new Train album, I wouldn’t get any result related to locomotives!

What I’m particularly interested in is ways of embedding semantic data in ordinary web pages, so that we have a single web that can be…

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09/03/2008: The Great IE8 Meta Tag Climb Down

Yeah, so I know I’m about a week late in mentioning this (I’ve been busy — let’s hope nobody is using this blog as their primary source of news), but the Microsoft Internet Explorer team have backed down on their ridiculous META tag idea.

Read about it on IEblog.

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09/03/2008: Monkfish with Pancetta, Fennel & Saffron

Here’s a recipe I’ve reverse engineered after having eaten it at the Jolly Sportsman last month.

Ingredients

  • 2 monkfish fillets
  • 8 slices pancetta
  • 2 medium potatoes
  • ¼ savoy cabbage
  • ½ bulb fennel
  • ½ tsp ground saffron
  • 30g butter
  • 2 tbsp olive oil
  • 100 mL milk
  • 100 mL chicken or vegetable stock (optional)

If monkfish is not available, any other white fish will make a reasonable substitute. Haddock works well. What is important is that the fillet must be long and thin, with a cross-sectional area of about a square inch (say, 2 cm by 3 cm), and should be boneless.

Method

Clean the fennel and slice very finely. Heat about a quarter of the butter and a tablespoon of the oil in a small frying pan, and sauté the fennel until it starts to brown. Stir in the saffron, then add the stock, or a little salted water. While the other parts of the meal are cooking, keep an eye on the…

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