MIT's Simile

MIT stands for 'Massachusetts Institute of Technology', right? That's widely known.

But what does Simile stand for? If you don't already know you will never guess, it stands for 'Semantic Interoperability of Metadata and Information in unLike Environments'.

Sooo... why exactly am I interested in this? It has something to do with my day job.

A portion of that day job is hunting for useful technology for the web development team I'm part of, we create intranet websites for Unilever. The thing is, MIT's Simile project 'seeks to enhance inter-operability among digital assets' and is 'fully committed to the open source principles of software distribution and open development'. To put this another way, they develop some very cool applications that work together and they release them for use and adaptation by anyone, anywhere, for any purpose.

The application that first caught my eye is called 'Timeline' and it is amazing. The code is stored on MIT's servers so there's nothing to install and download. The data is stored locally as an XML file. If you're not a techie person and you're still following along, just take a look at a couple of their example timelines, one on religions, the other on dinosaurs. They are so cool. Just drag them sideways with the mouse.

The other applications are good too, if you develop websites many of these may be a perfect way of making your site truly impressive, just by embedding stuff the way you would with Google Maps or You Tube.

• Timeline - timeline generator, described above.
  
• Timeplot - is a similar application but generates time series graphs from the data.
• Exhibit - displays data as presentation graphics.
• Gadget - summarises large XML datasets.
• Welkin - displays data in mathematical graph form.
• Fresnel - is a developers' tool, a vocabulary.

And there are many other projects and services available, just take a look at the Simile home page.

Quite apart from the effectiveness of the individual offerings and the fact that they are free to use, the Simile project showcases how web components should be designed and built. Congratulations and thanks to MIT and to everyone working on aspects of the Simile project.

Great Doddington - Table and vine

This was a great evening. At one point Jody brought oil, feeling we should anoint Peter - so that's exactly what we did.

Rachael decribed a vision of a long, long trestle table in what appeared to be a mediaeval castle hall. The table had an almost completed jigsaw laid out along its entire length. The jigsaw was composed of many scenes from life, and each scene contained something of Jesus. At a time of particular difficulty there was a beam of light or a glass containing the water of life, and in a scene when all was well there was a little bird sitting in a tree or some other little, joyful feature. The long jigsaw represented a person's lifetime, from birth to death.

At the end, the man making the jigsaw had only a few pieces left to add.

Chris saw that there were many tables and they all centred on Jesus and each long jigsaw was actually joined into him. So the place where the jigsaw ended, the point of death, was also the place where it joined with the centre and in reality connected fully with Christ.

We reflected on these pictures and considered again how we are grafted into the one true vine (John 15). We really are a royal priesthood!

Love song of the Welsh Revival

I've just read a post on the Koinonia Life Discussion Forum (KLDF). Someone has recently heard this wonderful Welsh hymn for the first time and was deeply moved by the words and music. A hundred years ago it was popular in the Welsh Valleys during and following the great revival of 1904.

Here it is, explained and sung by Huw Priday, first in Welsh and then in English. The words are very, very moving. They capture so eloquently the purpose in Yahshua's heart, his love towards us.



Here is Love, vast as the ocean,
Loving-kindness as the flood,
When the Prince of Life, our Ransom,
Shed for us His precious blood.
Who His Love will not remember?
Who can cease to sing His praise?
He can never be forgotten,
Throughout Heaven's eternal days.

On the mount of crucifixion,
Fountains opened deep and wide;
Through the floodgates of God's mercy
Flowed a vast and gracious tide.
Grace and Love, like mighty rivers,
Poured incessant from above,
And Heaven's peace and perfect justice
Kissed a guilty world in Love.

There are four verses, you can read all of them on Steph's Blog along with some further thoughts.

The Welsh Language
Welsh is a lyrical language, a beautiful language. It's said to express emotion and poetry more richly and naturally than English. The Welsh are great singers too, wonderful male voice choirs are traditional in the villages of the south, and at the Eisteddfodau (music and poetry festivals) there are competitions for choirs, harpists, and male and female solo singers.

Here are are the first two lines of the Welsh version of the hymn.

Dyma gariad fel y moroedd,
Tosturiaethau fel y lli.

The Welsh Revival
Perhaps this has been forgotten in recent years, but in its time it was a great move of the Spirit just like Lakeland or Toronto. There is plenty about the revival on the web, the Welsh Revival website covers it well.

What does it take to bring about revival? The first requirement is to recognise that there is nothing we can do to cause revival. We could exhaust ourselves with the effort of trying, yet still get nowhere. A revival is a work of the Almighty, not the work of men and women striving. Prayer is surely a good preparation, but quite simply when people put Yahshua in his rightful place at the centre of everything, and when hearts are overflowing with love for him and for one another, then we may see revival. Love must always be at the heart of it because the Father and the Son are Love and the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Love. There can be no hint of revival unless Love himself is personally present amongst his people. He is the cause!

It's amazing how many of the old hymns were written during times of personal revival or widespread public revival. We should sing them more often! There are many wonderful songs being written today too, but why throw away yesterday's treasures just because we have found further treasures in our own day?

Thanks for raising this topic. You know who you are.

There are several more versions of 'Here is Love' on You Tube. All worth hearing. There's a delighful recording by the famous singer, Katherine Jenkins, one by Matt Redman, and another by a Welsh male voice choir. (Note: the images in this last video may distress some people.)

Astronomy

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Why am I interested in astronomy? I think it's because I'm fascinated by the vastness of the Universe and the amazing variety of objects it contains - including, of course, the Earth.

I don't remember when I developed this interest. I do remember being 14 or 15 years old and saving my pocket money to buy 'The Observer's Book of Astronomy' (I still have it), and around the same time I remember watching 'The Sky At Night', a monthly TV program that is one of the longest running series ever. It was (and still is) presented by Patrick Moore whose enthusiasm was intense and exciting. That was in the days when TV was only available in black and white.

I remember being even younger and looking at a nearly total eclipse of the Sun through heavily smoked glass, it was 30th June 1954, just a few weeks before my sixth birthday. Dad wanted me to see the eclipse because there wasn't going to be another like it in the UK until 1999!

I also remember projecting an image of the sun with an old telescope, and drawing the sunspots when there were any to be seen. I used the same telescope at night to look at Jupiter and the four Galilean moons.

The fascination has never left me. The more you learn about distant objects, the more you understand about the structure of the Universe, the more amazing it all seems. When I was a small child space exploration was the stuff of science fiction, but when I was nine the Russians launched Sputnik and space became a real place that could be visited. The world had changed, and so did astronomy.

To me it seems an immense priviledge to have witnessed the beginning of spaceflight and the blossoming of modern astronomy. Astronomy had blossomed once before with the invention of the telescope in the early 17th century, but the flow of new information slowed to a crawl once resolution of the instruments reached the limits imposed by the Earth's shimmering atmosphere. But now we could image and measure from outside the atmosphere and a whole new series of possibilities opened up. I drank it all in.

For me, astronomy is special amongst the sciences. It's special because it reveals how vast and how old the Universe is; it gives a better perspective of our own smallness. So there is a tangible link with my Christian beliefs, astronomy helps me to understand that bringing the Universe into existence was a task requiring unimaginable authority and imagination.

Then there are links with photography because imaging is such an important technique in astronomy. Many astronomical images are breathtakingly beautiful, if you want to enjoy some you can do much worse than visit the 'Astronomy Picture Of The Day' (APOD).

Computing is essential in modern astronomy, and computer simulations of the night sky are interesting and instructive. There are clear links between astronomy and other sciences such as physics, chemistry, and even biology. And there are links with technology too, how would you do astronomy without a spacecraft, a telescope, a camera - it's a long list.

There are powerful links with history and archaeology, astronomy allows dates to be tied to recorded events like solar eclipses and planetary conjunctions. If a Chinese, Egyptian or Sumerian record says there was an eclipse on the 12 day of the eighth month of the third year of so-and-so's reign we may be able to lock the ancient calendar onto a date in our own calendar.

I could continue, but I think you get the idea. We live in an amazing place, so big that this Earth of ours is just a tiny speck. Astronomy shows us how small we truly are. It gives us a sense of proportion. And it's connected with almost everything we are and do.

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What's the purpose of the Scilla blog?

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Most blogs focus on a particular topic, but this one covers all sorts of topics. One reason for this is that to post enough items to keep a blog interesting takes time. Posting to two or three more focused blogs would take two or three times as much effort, otherwise they would be updated two or three times less often.

I have lots of interests, lots of stuff to share. I want this blog to reflect real life, I want it to be a way for my friends to keep track of what I do and also perhaps an introduction to areas of my life they might know little about.

Do you compartmentalise your life? I do. Not deliberately, but when I'm with scientists we talk science, when I'm with Christians we talk faith, when I'm with photographers we talk about images. It's natural. To help you I've provided a tag cloud at the top of the left hand column, click on topics that interest you and you will only see posts on those topics.

Over the next few days I plan to begin posting brief introductions to each of those topic areas explaining why I'm interested, what it involves, and how it affects my life. These are not going to be technical posts, they'll be light and easy to follow - for anyone. I promise!

Have you ever thought that there must be connections between all the different things you do? If in no other way they are linked because they're all things you enjoy, or else you do them because something else about your life demands it. Either way, there's a link.

I'll try to draw out some of the links I see as I go along. Some are clearly linked, like astronomy and photography, or photography and garden, or transport and environment. But what about garden and persecution?

I plan to work through in alphabetical order so I'll be starting with astronomy and working right through to underground church.

These posts will be interspersed with others. There are bound to be items just waiting to be written on a host of other things.

Watch this space...

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Photography, something I love

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We should all find, make, or steal the time to do at least one thing that we really, really love. Come on now, you know I'm right. In this modern age there are so many pressures on us that sometimes we struggle just to get from one day to the next. The trouble with that is simple. You will only live this day one single time, you have just one bite at it. So spend part of it doing something fun, or rewarding, or delightful. It's not decadent to do that, it's an expression of who you are, to yourself, to your family, to friends and aquaintances, and to the King of Creation too. Unless of course you think he's not interested in who you are, or think he doesn't exist. But even then, you still owe it to yourself and to those around you to express the real you.

Something I love is to capture images of things that impress me by their beauty, things that amaze me.

Here's a slideshow of photos I took during the last two months. I hope you enjoy viewing them as much as I enjoyed taking them. Leave me a comment and tell me which image is your favourite (and why).

You can also open the full version of the gallery with options for viewing the photos at much larger sizes, or even downloading the originals. Each picture tells a story, can you work out what it might be? Once you're in the full gallery you can comment on each picture individually if you want to.

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