Tag: xml

Semi-Structured Data and the Web – Day 5

It’s been an enlightening week on the homework front.

Having had some experience with XML before, I know how easy it is to mess up writing XML, particularly if you’re doing it by hand. Nesting wrong here, a tag misspelled there… although XML is, technically speaking, ‘human readable’, it’s not exactly human-friendly. It’s extremely precise, tends to be very verbose, and has newlines, tabs and other whitespace mixed in which tickles the ol’ natural human intuition about structure but is structurally meaningless to the machine. (Google ‘xml human readable’ for loads of articles on the subject.) Continue reading “Semi-Structured Data and the Web – Day 5”

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Semi-Structured Data and the Web – Day 3

Woah.

It always worries me a little when the greek symbols come out. So far, we’ve pretty much avoided them in the Semi-Structured Data and the Web course, so to see them today, whilst not really unexpected, did make my heart sink a little. Continue reading “Semi-Structured Data and the Web – Day 3”

Semi-Structured Data and the Web – Day 2

So, after little snow towards the end of the week, it pelted down on Sunday night, leaving the pavements and roads like an ice rink at 6am – I only narrowly avoided sliding down the hill to the tram stop on my backside. It’s at times like this I’m very glad of my thermos mug of tea!

Scheduling around last week’s coursework didn’t go perfectly – we ended up working til late on the Sunday night to finish off the last bits. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to meet up with my groupmate last week as it was quite late in the day before we actually sorted out the group assignments. It would have been handy to meet up and get a plan of attack together for the week’s coursework, and we were – perhaps – a little uncoordinated. That said, we just about made it, and everything got in on time. 08:55, for a 9am deadline kind of on-time, that is. Continue reading “Semi-Structured Data and the Web – Day 2”

Semi-Structured Data and the Web – Day 1

I was greeted by a blanket of picture-postcard pristine white snow when I stepped outside this morning. No footprints, no slush, not another person in sight… fantastic. That’s what you get for being up and out at ten to six in the morning though.

It’s the first day of Semi-Structured Data and the Web, (effectively) my first MSc module. Having learnt from my last experience, I emailed the course directors a couple of months ago with their list of recommended pre-requisite knowledge and my description of my experiences in those areas, asking for advice as to whether I was suitable for the course, and what additional preparation I could take.

As much as I’d like to make a self-deprecating quip here, I have to say that one of the two lecturers for the course responded inside of an hour, with a pretty comprehensive point-by-point rundown of my questions, recommending areas of study to concentrate on. Top marks, and I’ve had chance to learn enough to know what the words mean, at least. Continue reading “Semi-Structured Data and the Web – Day 1”