Monday, December 7, 2009

December Events

12.05.2009 INFS 772 Research Day at Mason

2009-12-05 11.16.13

12.03.2009 Microsoft MSDN Road Show

2009-12-03 14.28.01

Thursday, November 19, 2009

DROID

This is the best phone yet!

DROID

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Blend 3 Launch with Joel Cochran

Very good and precise walkthrough. Lots of tips and tricks. Joel is an exciting and knowledgeable speaker.

IMG_1188

Thursday, November 5, 2009

Blogging from iPod Touch

Trying out the new WordPress 2 app for iPod Touch. :)

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Articulate Your Data with FluentNHibernate with Roberto Hernandez

I got to learn a lot about FluentNHibernate tonight. He made it seem really simple while powerful at the same time. He’s a good presenter. Thanks Roberto and CapArea.NET!

Data with FluentNHibernate with Roberto Hernandez

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Issue: IIS cannot display the webpage

Issue:

Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage

Possible Solution:

Make sure the following services are running: IISAdmin and World Wide Web Publising.

World Wide Web Publishing Service IISAdmin Service

Thursday, October 15, 2009

Code Camps Fall 2009

Richmond Code Camp 10/03/2009

Richmond Code Camp Fall 2009

NOVA Code Camp 10/10/2009

NOVA Code Camp Fall 2009

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Thursday, August 27, 2009

Expression Studio 3

First step - have it installed. I can see progress already. :)

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

LUCAS NGUYEN is Here

DOB: 07/19/2009. Congratulations to Will and To-Han!

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

To Hoang-Anh

You can do it!

Tuesday, June 30, 2009

To Hoang-Anh

You can do it!

Monday, June 29, 2009

To Hoang-Anh

You can do it!

Sunday, June 28, 2009

To Hoang Anh

You can do it!

Saturday, June 27, 2009

To Hoang-Anh

You can do it!

Friday, June 26, 2009

To Hoang-Anh

You can do it!

Thursday, June 25, 2009

To Hoang-Anh

You can do it!

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

To Hoang-Anh

You can do it!

Saturday, June 20, 2009

Great Chef Hoang-Anh

And she's also my girl and personal chef! :)



Friday, May 29, 2009

Sunday, April 5, 2009

Sci-Fi Books for Your Imagination

And for mine as well.

Dune (Frank Herbert, 1965)
Foundation Trilogy (Isaac Asimov, 1951-1953)
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams, 1978-2001)
Anathem (Neal Stephenson, 2008)
The Wasp Factory (Iain Banks, 1984)
Stranger in a Strange Land (Robert Heinlein, 1961)
Frankenstein (Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, 1818)

Thursday, March 5, 2009

OpenCalais Meetup

Meetup Description

Tom Tague will be presenting Calais 4.0 - and its connection to the Linked Data cloud - to reporters, editors, Semantic Web aficionados, and developers alike in Washington DC on March 5, 2009. The DC Area Online News Association Meetup will also be joining us at this event.

Specifically, Tom will address the 'Linked Content Economy,' an evolving ecosystem of enriched and connected content that puts semantic metadata and open data assets to work in everyday media, content applications and Web-based services of all kinds.

Parking is available under the building, and the location is walking distance from McPherson Square and Metro Center stations.

Refreshments will be served.

Calais: Connect. Everything.

We want to make all the world's content more accessible, interoperable and valuable. Some call it Web 2.0, Web 3.0, the Semantic Web or the Giant Global Graph - we call our piece of it Calais.

What Calais does sounds simple – what you do with it could be simply amazing.

The Core: The Calais Web Service

The Calais Web Service automatically creates rich semantic metadata for the content you submit – in well under a second. Using natural language processing, machine learning and other methods, Calais analyzes your document and finds the entities within it. But, Calais goes well beyond classic entity identification and returns the facts and events hidden within your text as well.

OpenCalais

Take a look at the Document Viewer for a small demonstration of what Calais can do.

This metadata gives you the ability to build maps (or graphs or networks) linking documents to people to companies to places to products to events to geographies to… whatever. You can use those maps to improve site navigation, provide contextual syndication, tag and organize your content, create structured folksonomies, filter and de-duplicate news feeds, or analyze content to see if it contains what you care about.

The Tools: A Growing Ecosystem of Calais-Enabled Capabilities

The Calais Web Service is a powerful capability - but using it to deliver value to real people requires applications and the tools to build them. Major focus areas of the Calais initiative are delivering the tools with which to build great applications and fostering the community of developers that will make those applications happen.

OpenCalais

To learn more about the growing set of Calais tools please take a moment to visit the Gallery and Tools sections of the site.

The "Open" in Calais

The web service is free for commercial and non-commercial use. We’ve sized the initial release to handle millions of requests per day and will scale it as necessary to support our users.

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Sunday, March 1, 2009

Diary: Week of 2/23/2009 - 3/1/2009

Sunday, March 1 -- Coupons for free small subs at Quiznos in Alexandria. Too bad one of them didn't participate in the promotion. Hoang-Anh drove back to school around 2. Finished watching 'The Express' at home - good movie. Finishing up SWE625 Stage 4 - charter, whole document. Need to prepare for Quiz #1. Excited about having the braces taken off tomorrow after 3 long years.

Saturday, February 28, 2009

SPARQL for the Pragmatic Ontologist

SPARQL

  • SQL of RDF

  • XSLT of RDF

  • JavaDoc of RDF

  • Lint of RDF

  • Unit Test of RDF



SPARQL is READ-ONLY!

Jena ARQ Extensions (SPARQL 2 Candidates)

1st Query: Find the country names
SELECT ?country ?name
WHERE {
?country rdf:type country:Country .
?country country:name ?name
}

OR

SELECT ?country ?name
WHERE {
?country a country:Country .
?country country:name ?name
}

OR

SELECT ?country ?name {
?country rdf:type country:Country ;
country:name ?name
}

OR

SELECT ?country ?name {
?country country:name ?name
}

2nd Query: Find the states and their cities sorted by ascending state, then city name, then by descending city name
SELECT ?state ?city
WHERE {
?cityR city:name ?city ;
Uscity:state ?stateR .
?stateR state:name ?state
} ORDER BY ASC(?state) DESC(?city)

Compactified Expression
SELECT ?state ?city
WHERE {
?cityR city:name ?city;
uscity:state [state:name ?state]
} ORDER BY ASC(?state) DESC(?city)

SELECT ?state ?capital ?airport
WHERE {
?stateR state:name ?state ;
state:capital ?capitalR .
?capitalR city:name ?capital
OPTIONAL {
?airportR airports:city ?capital ;
airports:airport ?airport
}
}

3rd Query: Select with UNION
SELECT ?state
WHERE {
{
?stateR state:borderstate usstate:AL, usstate:TN .
?stateR state:name ?state .
}
UNION
{
?stateR state:borderstate usstate:ID .
?stateR state:name ?state .
}
}

4th Query: Find all states that do NOT border another state

SELECT ?state
WHERE {
?stateR state:name ?state .
OPTIONAL {
?stateR state:borderstate ?borderState .
}
FILTER(!bound(?borderState))
}

FILTER means "keep".
With !bound() we effectively look for the absense of a resource.

5th Query: Find all states, and cities, where the city name begins with the letter 'Y'

SELECT ?state ?city
WHERE {
?cityR uscity:state ?stateR
?cityR city:name ?city .
?stateR state:name ?state
FILTER(regex(xsd:string(?city), "^Y"))
}

Cast untyped literals into datatype needed by function.

Filter early, near the top of an expression
-if a condition is not met the pattern match aborts immediately.

User OPTIONAL sparingly, they will slow down a query, sometimes drastically.

Use ASK when you do need the results of the match.

DISTINCT and ORDERED BY may also be slow over large result sets.

USE LIMIT and OFFSET with large result sets.

6th Query: DISTINCT avoids duplicate result sets

SELECT DISTINCT ?state ?city
WHERE {
?person uscity:address ?address .
?address uscity:city ?city .
?city uscity:state ?state
}

7th Query: CONSTRUCT Query
CONSTRUCT allows us to specify a graph to return.
CONSTRUCTed graphs are not inserted into the queried graph - but some tools allow the constructed graph to be asserted.

CONSTRUCT {
?countryR owl:sameAs ?nationR
}
WHERE {

}

Start comments anywhere with "#".
Use LET() to assign variables.

Use INSERT before DELETE to move data.
The graph can also be a variable.

TopBraid Suite Advanced Product Training
SPARQLMotion
SPIN - SPARQL Inferencing Notation (SPROC)

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

44th President Inauguration Photos Slideshow

Through my TV :)
From Inauguration

Hello President Barack Obama

Our 44th President.



Tuesday, January 20th, 2009 at 12:01 pm

Change has come to WhiteHouse.gov


Welcome to the new WhiteHouse.gov. I'm Macon Phillips, the Director of New Media for the White House and one of the people who will be contributing to the blog.

A short time ago, Barack Obama was sworn in as the 44th president of the United States and his new administration officially came to life. One of the first changes is the White House's new website, which will serve as a place for the President and his administration to connect with the rest of the nation and the world.

Millions of Americans have powered President Obama's journey to the White House, many taking advantage of the internet to play a role in shaping our country's future. WhiteHouse.gov is just the beginning of the new administration's efforts to expand and deepen this online engagement.

Just like your new government, WhiteHouse.gov and the rest of the Administration's online programs will put citizens first. Our initial new media efforts will center around three priorities:

Communication -- Americans are eager for information about the state of the economy, national security and a host of other issues. This site will feature timely and in-depth content meant to keep everyone up-to-date and educated. Check out the briefing room, keep tabs on the blog (RSS feed) and take a moment to sign up for e-mail updates from the President and his administration so you can be sure to know about major announcements and decisions.

Transparency -- President Obama has committed to making his administration the most open and transparent in history, and WhiteHouse.gov will play a major role in delivering on that promise. The President's executive orders and proclamations will be published for everyone to review, and that’s just the beginning of our efforts to provide a window for all Americans into the business of the government. You can also learn about some of the senior leadership in the new administration and about the President’s policy priorities.

Participation -- President Obama started his career as a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago, where he saw firsthand what people can do when they come together for a common cause. Citizen participation will be a priority for the Administration, and the internet will play an important role in that. One significant addition to WhiteHouse.gov reflects a campaign promise from the President: we will publish all non-emergency legislation to the website for five days, and allow the public to review and comment before the President signs it.

We'd also like to hear from you -- what sort of things would you find valuable from WhiteHouse.gov? If you have an idea, use this form to let us know. Like the transition website and the campaign's before that, this online community will continue to be a work in progress as we develop new features and content for you. So thanks in advance for your patience and for your feedback.

Later today, we’ll put up the video and the full text of President Obama’s Inaugural Address. There will also be slideshows of the Inaugural events, the Obamas’ move into the White House, and President Obama’s first days in office.

Thursday, January 15, 2009

Geospatial Semantics Meetup

What
Geospatial Semantics

When
Thursday, January 15, 2009 7:00 PM

Who
At least 45 Semantic Web Supporters.
This Meetup is full.

Where
SHRM Conference Room
1800 Duke Street
Alexandria VA 22314

Meetup Description
In this month's meeting, we discuss Geospatial Semantics. Mashups using Google Maps and other APIs have suddenly become very popular. However, this is only the beginning. As more linked data becomes available on the web, a whole new generation of applications become possible. In this meeting, we will discuss related technologies and current work that is being done in Geospatial Semantics.

Our speaker will be Dr. Yaser Bishr. Yaser is the co-founder and CTO of Image Matters LLC. Dr. Bishr has extensive experience in geospatial semantics, semantic web, and social web. In 1997, he published the first book on geospatial semantics, his Ph.D. topic, and wrote the geospatial semantic entry in the Encyclopedia of GIS. He is the visionary and architect of Image Matters' gnizr Enterprise semantic technology. Yaser is a serial entrepreneur. Prior to founding Image Matters, he founded Millennia GmbH, a German software consulting firm with clients in Europe, the US, SE Asia and the Middle East. Prior to Millennia Yaser was assistant professor at the University of Muenster, Germany. Currently Yaser is on a mission to develop a profitable business model for gnizr Enterprise. Yaser has an MBA from the Fuqua School of Business, Duke University and a Ph.D. and M.S. in Computer Science from ITC and the University of Wageningen in the Netherlands.

Image Matters LLC is a software technology and professional services company that produces software products, develops advanced technology solutions, and provides consulting services to government and commercial clients. Image Matters specializes in Geospatial Web, Semantic Web (Web 3.0), Web 2.0, Sensor Web, Service-Oriented Architectures (SOA), Geographic Information Systems (GIS), Web services, and Location-Based Services (LBS).

The meeting location and light refreshments are provided courtesy of TopQuadrant.

Friday, January 9, 2009

VietFinds Moon on January 9, 2009




First Training of the Year

We have reserved a seat for you at our One Day TDD training course. The event will be held January 10th at the HRTec Computer Technology Center in Alexandria, VA from 10:00am - 4:00pm with registration beginning at 9:30am. Breakfast and lunch will be provided.

No preparation is necessary. We will provide you with a bound copy of the course materials.

Since space is limited and this is a hands-on course, we ask that only one person from your company attends. Slides will be available on our website for you to share with your team.

Event Location:

HRTec Computer Technology Center
6416 Grovedale Dr., Suite 302B
Alexandria VA 22310

On-site parking is available

9:30 AM Registration
10:00 AM Start
4:00 PM End

Prerequisites:
Must be proficient in C#
Must have a good understanding of Object Oriented principles

Agenda:
Unit Testing
Test Driven Development
Rules and Techniques
Refactoring
Working with Dependencies
Mock based testing