The fields are at JJ Holland field in Kensington and having played there before I believe the location both in terms of field quality, lights, and access to public transport is the best in Melbourne. Given the new location and the fact that it is a joint venture with another group the competition will be known as Northern Touch.

If you are interested in entering a team please visit the website:

http://northerntouch.org/

Where you can find more information and the team entry process.

LH Tools is a WordPress extension that adds an (ARC-based) RDF Store and SPARQL Endpoint to the WordPress blogging system. The store is kept separate from the WP tables (i.e. it’s not a wrapper), but you can use WP’s nice admin screens to configure it, it  and embed it using the large number of developer-friendly hooks that WP offers. It is based on the original work by Ben Nowack.

If are interested you can read about it here: http://localhero.biz/plugins/lh-tools/
and download it here: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/lh-tools/. And interrogate this sites local endpoint here:

http://shawfactor.com/wp-content/plugins/lh-tools/

Whilst this can be used on a standalone basis, it is most useful when combined with the other LH (LocalHero) plugins:

LH RDF: http://localhero.biz/plugins/lh-rdf/

Which exposes a large part of the WordPress data as sematic rdf content

and

LH Relationships: http://localhero.biz/plugins/lh-relationships/

Which enables semantic linking between wordpress posts, pages, categories, and other objects. These three extensions used in combination enable a true semantic CMS and I’m curious what can be done now. I’ll add additional documentation and proof of concepts of what is possible in time.

LH Relationships is a WordPress plugin that enables the creation of true post to post relationships. More information for the rationale driving this is available here. It was built as a core part of the LocalHero project.

If are interested you can read about it here: http://localhero.biz/plugins/lh-relationships/
and download it here: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/lh-relationships/.

However due to its blogging background it has one very substantial weakness. Namely there is no way of easily relating one post to another and detailing its realationship. Of course taxonomies can be used to group posts and provide some form of relationship. However this is not an elegant solution.

This issue has been raised before by the WordPress development team here. Some use cases are outlined, however, I think the discussion (which is now closed) misses the elephant in the room, semantics. WordPress claims to be a semantic personal publishing platform but until it has the ability to seamlessly and elegantly relate one post to another it will be nothing more than a publishing platform, and until it then exposes those relationships in an unabiguous machine (and human) readable format it will never be truly part of the semantic web.

Frustrated at this weakness I am releasing a series of plugins that will truly RDF enable WordPress.

The first is LH RDF. LH-RDF is a wordpress plugin that automatically creates a SIOC compliant RDF feed of wordpress posts, categories, tags, and author ojects. It comes with embedded content negotiation thus properly exposing WordPress’s existing linked data to the semantic web.

Whilst this plugin is built on a standalone standalone it is built to work with and is enhanced by the LH-Relationships plugin. LH Relationships is a wordpress plugin that enables the creation of true semantic post to post relationships and when used in conjunction LH-RDF those triples will be published in the LH-RDF feed.

If are interested you can read about it here: http://localhero.biz/plugins/lh-rdf/
and download it here: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/lh-rdf/.

However I also pointed out to the domain name broker that given I have been using the name LocalHero in the area of local news are services for longer than 3 years I also have a common law trademark on the name in that category. She assured me she had passed this information on to her client.

A week ago I discovered that a Californian company LocalHero Inc offering local services are now trading under the name LocalHero (the same capitalization as my organization). This behaviour is likely illegal, being in contravention of my common law trademark to the term LocalHero in this category. More importantly this behaviour is definitely unethical and high hypocritical for a company for company dedicated to “helping people”.

It is likely i will be taking legal action however I have already started to prosecute this in the court of public opinion and therefore will be putting together a shame file of the people responsible. Stay tuned.

First played for in 1997, the Shaw Cup is based on a challenge system, rather than a league or knockout competition as with most trophies. The holding team must defend the cup in challenge matches, and if a challenger defeats them, they become the new holder.

The Cup is currently held by Old Xavier, who where awarded it as the then holders Dunneworthy were unable to defend it. They have sucessfully defended the Cup on 10 consecutive occasions, including some memorable games, most notably against Melbourne University on test match day in Melbourne.

Which isn’t fair, really, because (as I’ve said many a time) most people don’t actually hate JavaScript the language; they hate the buggy and inconsistent implementations of JavaScript in major web browsers and, to a larger extent, the buggy and inconsistent implementations of the DOM in major browsers.

Which is why as I have said before I do not like and do not advocate the use of JavaScript libraries. At first glance this may seem hypocriticial given you could argue that the LocalHero code repository is a JavaScript library in itself. However as I have said before LocalHero Code is not a library just a collection of useful functions and ways to harmonise browser behaviour. It is not an attempt to change the way the language should behave or abstract it.

In summary JavaScript on its own is a pretty good language. Which apart from browser inconsistent is very capable of being utilised to create some pretty sophisticated software without libraries. But if you net convinced here are some other reasons.

Why you should not uses libraries

1. Most libraries are bloated. The user may load a full library for effect, but in many cases the effect could be achieved in a few lines of code.

2. They unnecessarily abstract the code making debugging difficult. If something goes wrong it could be your code or the library code and it may be hard to determine which. Indeed libraries like prototype.js actually change the language behavior so much that people have likened prototype to crack cocaine.

3. Libraries remove the reason to learn JavaScript deeper. indeed because they may change language behaviour they may make it harder. As a result poorly written code proliferates this time on libraries.

4. It is really hard to create something really good with universal tool. A standalone script can generally be be optimized much better then library based one.

Aren’t actually faster

But my main problem with libraries are that for complex projects they slow down develpoment.

With ongoing complex projects you are generally extending and enhancing your work continuously. Because of this level of complexity you will generally find yourself having to understand how the entire code base (including the library) actually works. And in programming reconstructing somone elses logic can be more time consuming than actually writing it yourself. This can be even more unfortunate when if you discover there work is flawed and you DO have to write it yourself!

Bottom line don’t use JavaScript libraries.

Dunneworthy 2008 premiers

Winter 2008 was the 16th season for the Dunneworthy touch team. Since the 2003 Dunneworthy has known plenty of success. Playing finals in the top grade every season but two but not cracking it for success in the big one.

After a disappointing Summer beset by injuries to key players. 2008 brought a few new faces and the hope that this might finally be the year we would win another premiership. After being unsure of the skill level of the new recruits I asked for us not be be put in the top grade. After smashing opponents in the firts thfour games it quickly became obvious we were playing the wrong grade. I asked for us to be put up, we were (and we kept the points).

From there our regular season form was mixed scoring some great wins against the lower and middle teams but losing narrowly through poor defence against fellow finals teams. Our porr defence was the cause of several team lectures from your truly emphasising defence. However due to some refereeing bonus points we finished top.

In the semi after a dour first half the flood gates openned in the scond and we ran away with it. This put us into the Grand Final against the Tornadoes. Yep a team that trains, and one that beat us narrowly earlier in the season.

In the grand final we started on fire scoring the frist three tries however Tornadoes fought back (or maybe we relaxed) and it was all square at the break. In the half time speech I said to the team we just have control field position, complete our sets of 6, and work hard in defence. I was confdent we’d score enough itn the seond we just had to stop them scoring.

As “Hannibal” Smith : says I love it when a plan comes together. After an enormous amount of hard work and desparate defence in the second half against a team with plenty of subs we got the win 6-4.

Link to APT summary