6 Aug
2004
6 Aug
'04
1:50 p.m.
Hi folks. I just joined the list because I've long held a dream of
building a specific site.
What I'm talking about is a geek/engineer tourism site. I'm one of
those sad types who, when touring around Vietnam, stops and gawks at big
(http://www.rumble.net/travel/photos/vietnam/nw/thumb/nwdamfish-9-0.html)
and small
(http://www.rumble.net/travel/photos/vietnam/nw/thumb/nwhydro3-9-0.html)
engineering marvels.
So I'd like to have a site that collects information about this kind of
thing. Power stations, significant dams, historic sewage system
features, giant tunnels, spy stations, bomb shelters, architectural
marvels and follies, engineering accidents, atomic bomb test sites etc
etc. The site would include photos, historical information, transport
information, opening hours and prices, details of preferred viewing
sites and GPS coordinates.
So it occurred to me that Openguides has already achieved much of this
in a suitably open and geek-ready format. However, it doesn't fit your
ontology. Your site gives guides for a particular city or region,
whereas this idea would work best as an integrated, global site. That
way you could look at a meta-topic on an area of interest (say, atomic
test sites).
I can see this cross-guide linking is probably a problem you've already
encountered (compare the tube networks of London and New York) and
discussed, so I'm curious to hear your thoughts.
So is this something Openguides would be interested in pursuing? Of
course, I'm offering to maintain the content.
--
Rev Simon Rumble <simon(a)rumble.net>
www.rumble.net
"Which is more musical, a truck passing by a factory
or a truck passing by a music school?"
- John Cage
7 Aug
7 Aug
8:39 p.m.
On Fri 06 Aug 2004, Rev Simon Rumble <simon(a)rumble.net> wrote:
What I'm talking about is a geek/engineer tourism
site. I'm one of
those sad types who, when touring around Vietnam, stops and gawks at big
(http://www.rumble.net/travel/photos/vietnam/nw/thumb/nwdamfish-9-0.html)
and small
(http://www.rumble.net/travel/photos/vietnam/nw/thumb/nwhydro3-9-0.html)
engineering marvels.
Neat. I can't work out what the second photo is though.
So I'd like to have a site that collects
information about this kind of
thing. Power stations, significant dams, historic sewage system
features, giant tunnels, spy stations, bomb shelters, architectural
marvels and follies, engineering accidents, atomic bomb test sites etc
etc. The site would include photos, historical information, transport
information, opening hours and prices, details of preferred viewing
sites and GPS coordinates.
That sounds great.
So it occurred to me that Openguides has already
achieved much of this
in a suitably open and geek-ready format. However, it doesn't fit your
ontology. Your site gives guides for a particular city or region,
whereas this idea would work best as an integrated, global site. That
way you could look at a meta-topic on an area of interest (say, atomic
test sites).
So, what sort of thing do you need from us? Are you wanting a way to
customise the openguides software to your needs, or are you wondering
about ways to connect up the guides a bit more, so say the London
guide would automatically have links to the London bits of your guide
in the right places and vice versa?
I can see this cross-guide linking is probably a
problem you've already
encountered (compare the tube networks of London and New York) and
discussed, so I'm curious to hear your thoughts.
From the start I've wanted different Open Guides to
be able to talk to
each other - the ordinary Oxford Guide and the vegan one, and
the
London and Oxford ones for example (say you search for something in
the Oxford guide and it isn't there, London may be close enough).
Tell me more about what you're thinking of.
Kake
8 Aug
8 Aug
11:59 p.m.
This one time, at band camp, Kake L Pugh wrote:
It kinda loses something without the context. It's a
micro-hydroelectric plant we stumbled upon in a village in NW Vietnam.
We followed the spiderweb of cables strung from all the houses to this
stream, which emerged from a cave, to find sluices going into oil drums.
The turbines are hand-carved bamboo and the genrators are motorbike
alternators. I was well impressed.
(http://www.rumble.net/travel/photos/vietnam/nw/thumb/nwhydro3-9-0.html)
engineering marvels.
Neat. I can't work out what the second photo is though. So, what sort of thing do you need from us? Are you
wanting a way to
customise the openguides software to your needs, or are you wondering
about ways to connect up the guides a bit more, so say the London
guide would automatically have links to the London bits of your guide
in the right places and vice versa?
Well all of the above, I guess. For starters, I'd love to have
somewhere to host it. I have a (user mode linux) server but it's
kinda RAM-limited, and I suspect a busy Wiki would bring it to its
knees.
But more importantly, how does it fit in with the whole Openguides idea?
And how do you bridge the gaps between them? You end up with all kinds
of metadata problems if you expect each guide to use the same kinds of
categories, geographical standards etc (e.g., UK postcodes are unique in
the world for the way they work).
--
Rev Simon Rumble <simon(a)rumble.net>
www.rumble.net
Given the choice between two evils, I pick the one I haven't
tried before.
- Mae West
11 Aug
11 Aug
12:46 a.m.
On Sat, Aug 07, 2004 at 08:39:39PM +0100, Kake L Pugh wrote:
From the start I've wanted different Open Guides
to be able to talk to
each other - the ordinary Oxford Guide and the vegan one, and the
London and Oxford ones for example (say you search for something in
the Oxford guide and it isn't there, London may be close enough).
Another thing I've thought of recently: it would be nice to have a
UK-wide openguides that serves as a place to put content for places that
don't have their own city guide. This could be made powerful by a few
technical measures, such as being able to automatically transfer content
(ie export) to another guide and set up redirects, so that, for example,
if I make some nodes near Cambridge and then at some future point
someone goes to set up a Cambridge Open Guide he can talk to the UK-wide
guide and ask for an export of all the nodes within a certain radius,
and set up redirects to the Cambridge guide. This could of course be
hierachical to the extent that there is a global Open Guide. Describing
all this in code seems quite complicated and subtle, and there are
probably other interesting things along the same line that could be done
with a nice interwiki API <insert buzzwords of choice here>.
This is just wild speculation at the moment, and it's probably beyond my
abilities as a programmer to implement, but I thought it was worth a
mention as a point in this discussion.
Cheers,
Dominic.
6874
days inactive
6878
days old
openguides-dev@lists.openguides.org
3 comments
3 participants
participants (3)
-
Dominic Hargreaves -
Kake L Pugh -
Rev Simon Rumble