Tom Morris http://blog.opiumfield.com Sat, 13 Oct 2007 16:01:49 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.0.4 en ©Tom Morris 2003-2006 bbtommorris@gmail.com (Tom Morris) bbtommorris@gmail.com 1440 OPML, geek, XML, blogging, technology, UK, RSS, ideas Geeky observations A podcast about all the technology that interests me - a British web developer and geeky student. Tom Morris Tom Morris bbtommorris@gmail.com No no http://www.opiumfield.com/tom/img/podcast_small.jpg Tom Morris http://blog.opiumfield.com 144 144 Podcast #1: Semantic Web and RDF http://blog.opiumfield.com/2006/12/03/podcast-1-semantic-web-and-rdf/ http://blog.opiumfield.com/2006/12/03/podcast-1-semantic-web-and-rdf/#comments Sun, 03 Dec 2006 18:42:36 +0000 Tom Morris Podcast http://blog.opiumfield.com/?p=9 Here’s my first new podcast. It’s a kind of waffly monologue about the SemWeb and RDF space. I’d say it’s pretty good for my first proper podcast.

Some links are necessary, no?

]]> http://blog.opiumfield.com/2006/12/03/podcast-1-semantic-web-and-rdf/feed/ 00:01:01 Here's my first new podcast. It's a kind of waffly monologue about the SemWeb and RDF space. I'd say it's pretty good for my first ... Here's my first new podcast. It's a kind of waffly monologue about the SemWeb and RDF space. I'd say it's pretty good for my first proper podcast. Some links are necessary, no? Shelley Powers' Practical RDF (Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, blog) XML.com - What is RDF? XML.com on SPARQL Morbus Iff on RDF Planet RDF Guide - a list of resources about RDF The RDF Layer Cake (ignore the authentication request - it should work) Podcast Tom Morris no No XPath: UCL Admissions http://blog.opiumfield.com/2006/11/26/xpath-ucl-admissions/ http://blog.opiumfield.com/2006/11/26/xpath-ucl-admissions/#comments Sun, 26 Nov 2006 20:26:41 +0000 Tom Morris XPath Universities http://blog.opiumfield.com/?p=8 I’d like eventually to have a simple way of getting data from all the UK universities admissions departments. Considering that I’m not particularly bothered about getting any more degrees, I’m not totally sure why. But it certainly would be useful.

So, here are some XPaths for one college - namely, UCL.

First up, the undergraduate page:

Course Titles: //tr[count (td) = 5]/td[1]/a
Course Type: //tr[count (td) = 5]/td[3]
Course Code: //tr[count (td) = 5]/td[5]

Secondly, postgraduate admissions:

Courses: //tr[count (td) = 3 and @height = '12' and td/@height != "25"]
Links: //tr[count (td) = 3 and @height = '12' and td/@height != "25"]/td[1]/a
Qualification: //tr[count (td) = 3 and @height = '12' and td/@height != "25"]/td[3]

Now, universities. Get your act together and make all this information available in an open XML format and stop me having to write these blog entries!

]]> http://blog.opiumfield.com/2006/11/26/xpath-ucl-admissions/feed/ XPath: MySpace http://blog.opiumfield.com/2006/11/26/xpath-myspace/ http://blog.opiumfield.com/2006/11/26/xpath-myspace/#comments Sun, 26 Nov 2006 20:16:20 +0000 Tom Morris XPath MySpace http://blog.opiumfield.com/?p=7 Want to get data out of MySpace? Here are the XPath strings you need to extract data from a MySpace profile:

Top friends:
//table[4]/tr/td/table/tr/td/table/tr/td/table/tr/td/a/img/../@href
Name: //*[@class='nametext']
Status: //*[@id='ProfileStatus:']
Religion: //*[@id='ProfileReligion:']
Zodiac Sign: //*[@id='ProfileZodiac Sign:']
Smoke / Drink: //*[@id='ProfileSmoke / Drink:']
Children: //*[@id='ProfileChildren:']
Education: //*[@id='ProfileEducation:']
Number of friends: //*[@class='redbtext']
Schools: //a[contains (@href, "InterestType=SCH&")

And if you want to get the friends from your friends page:

//a/img/../@href

The problem with this is that MySpace uses a paging mechanism written in JavaScript (just to switch the pages - it doesn’t do anything funky or AJAXy to get the data down and switch it dynamically - it’s just bloat basically) - it is probably easy enough to skip around, but I haven’t spent the time to look under the JavaScript hood since the crazy HTML was enough for me!

When running XPath queries over MySpace, it’s probably a good idea to set your parser on the most ultra-liberal mode you can find, because MySpace is probably the most expensive pile of non-validating crap around.

]]> http://blog.opiumfield.com/2006/11/26/xpath-myspace/feed/ YouTube and the future of television http://blog.opiumfield.com/2006/10/06/youtube-and-the-future-of-television/ http://blog.opiumfield.com/2006/10/06/youtube-and-the-future-of-television/#comments Sat, 07 Oct 2006 00:54:53 +0000 Tom Morris Video http://blog.opiumfield.com/?p=6

Alan Yentob asked “why is YouTube important?”Here’s what I think.
Formats available: Quicktime (.mov)
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]]> http://blog.opiumfield.com/2006/10/06/youtube-and-the-future-of-television/feed/ Why the iPod will continue to dominate http://blog.opiumfield.com/2006/09/15/why-the-ipod-will-continue-to-dominate/ http://blog.opiumfield.com/2006/09/15/why-the-ipod-will-continue-to-dominate/#comments Fri, 15 Sep 2006 19:34:56 +0000 Tom Morris Video http://blog.opiumfield.com/?p=5

With all the hype now arriving about the Zune and how the iPod is dying because hipsters don’t want to be associated with a product their parents now use or white-earphone-phobia, here’s exactly why I use the iPod. Until someone replicates this functionality, they’re not even in the running.
Formats available: Quicktime (.mov)
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]]> http://blog.opiumfield.com/2006/09/15/why-the-ipod-will-continue-to-dominate/feed/ Tom’s PalmCast http://blog.opiumfield.com/2006/09/10/toms-palmcast/ http://blog.opiumfield.com/2006/09/10/toms-palmcast/#comments Mon, 11 Sep 2006 01:44:55 +0000 Tom Morris Video http://blog.opiumfield.com/?p=3

Following Dave’s lead with his Blackberry video, I thought I’d do a little demo of some of the things I do with my Palm TX. It’s shot on the crappy little camera on my Mac, so I apologise if it looks a bit ropey. I hope I got my message across though.
Formats available: Quicktime (.mov), Flash Video (.flv)
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