Designing a global knowledge base (by alaric)

Continuing from my previous posts on HYDROGEN and IRON, I suppose the next thing I can talk about is CARBON.

One thing that users expect out of a system is some form of navigational structure. All but the simplest embedded computer systems have some kind of menu structure; while workstations often have several somewhat confusingly overlaid structures (menus in applications, a "My Documents" hierarchy full of personal stuff, a "Start Menu" or "Applications Folder" full of system-wide resources, and a "My Computer" hierarchy with things like removable drives and their contents, printers, access to the internals of the system, mounted network drives, and the like; then, via a Web browser, a hierarchy of bookmarks and then whatever navigational structures different Web sites out in the world present to you.

So, I clearly needed some concept of "large-scale organisation of resources" in ARGON. After much deliberation, I came up with CARBON. But, as usual, I like to kill several birds with one stone.

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Generic Functions (by alaric)

When most people think of object-oriented programming, they think of the interpretation of it that originated in Simula, that has since bubbled into Java, C++, and so on. Or maybe the prototype-based variant found in Self or JavaScript.

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1000th Blog Post!!! (by sarah)

Yes that's right this is our 1000th blog post on this blog!

Imagine streamers and balloons and glasses of fizzy stuff and cake!

To the first 10 people to comment on the this post there will be a 1000th blog post limited edition Wiggly Pet! The only condition is that you actually have to come and visit us to pick the Wiggly Pet up though there is no time limit on this 😉

The Wiggly Pet will of course be glittery!

(@ndy you still need to claim the Wiggly Pet you won from me ages ago over Percival the mouse)

The blog is of course 5 years old as well so there will be a further 5 purple and blue sparkly Wiggly Pets with 5yrs of Snell-Pym on them 🙂 (tacky I know but hey its me!)

We origonally started this blog up as a notice board to say how the wedding went as we got frustrated having to keep typing the same stuff over and over again in emails then Al made it so it was easy for me to add photos and from here my blog empire has arisen! 🙂

I hope we are still an interesting read - it was actually a bit of a shock to us when we found that lots of random people read the blog but they do and it has provided useful information for them and sometimes they give us useful information about a problem or crisis we are having which is all good.

I at least am now addicted to blogging so will no doubt continue to bore you all with family events and Jean cuteness and musings and ramblings on philosophy, society, science and art, and I'm pretty sure Alaric will continue with all his technical posts.

I have the other blogs out of nessecity as I found I was creating too much content which could be split into various catagories plus I love setting up blogs and making/fiddling with themes making each blog look like its subject matter 🙂

As a chronic diary writer (thanks to Aunty Lizzy and a Christmas presant when I was like 12!) blogs are the perfect medium for me to whitter in and as for Al it is an over spill of his note books - somewhere he can share his ideas and the like 🙂

We hope to continue boring you for the fore seeable future.

Sea Themed Party! (by sarah)

As always we are having a party for Jean's birthday.

Due to various reasons I'm not going to put the detials of when and where on here but most of peeps who we actually know have other ways of contacting us - if not leave a comment and we'll email you back.

Anyway - it's sea themed fancy dress though adults don't have to dress up!

I have a selection of kids crafts including volcanos, telescopes, parrots, fish, pirate hats and treasure making!

Hope to see peeps 🙂

The Cat that Thought She was a Shoe (by sarah)

Dad went to the shoe rack in the kitchen to change into his slippers to go upstairs and read to Jean when he noticed that I had a new pair of fluffy black boots that I had inconsideratly placed upon his slippers.

He grabbed hold of said boots to shift them only to find he had a hand full of a very miffed Mini. To make things worse - he had hold of the the bit with teeth in it!

It made him jump and go 'arg!' and Mini retreated further into the shoe rack where she still remains pretending to be a shoe! Albeit a very cross shoe.