September 29, 2004

Pepys-Map : 27th - 28th September 1661

In the entry for 27th September we find a form of gift event. Lady Montague receives grapes and melons sent by her husband and brought by Captain Country. This is modelled as a gift-event, with a new role of 'courier' added which is played by Country:

[event-16610927-05 : gift-event = "Richard Country brings exotic fruits from Sir Edward Montague (27th September 1661)";"16610927-05"]
occurs(event-16610927-05 : event, today : on)
participation(event-16610927-05 : event,
  jemima-montague : recipient,
  richard-country : courier,
  sir-edward-montague : giver,
  melons : gift,
  grapes : gift,
  wardrobe-court : place)

A similar form is used for the melons delivered to Samuel - although in this case the courier is not known.

The entry for 28th September is very straightforward with only four events modelled. The play "Father's Own Son" is a comedy written by John Fletcher and also known as "Monsieur Thomas".

New and updated topic maps:
Topic map for 27th September.
Topic map for 28th September.
Core ontology for the diary.
Culture in the diary.
People in the diary.
Places in the diary.

Posted by Kal at 08:41 PM | Comments (0)

XML Schema To XTM

A while ago I started work on some XSLT transforms for creating a topic map of a W3C XML Schema. Its definitely not a straightforward task, just handling nested includes and class hierarchies is hard from XSLT.

Anyway, I haven't had a chance to work on these stylesheets for a while, so I'm posting them under the Reciprocal Public License in the hope that some one else (LMG ? ;-) might pick them up and contribute more to them. There are two stylesheets:

schema2xtm.xsl works on the schema file directly. This is probably the least-finished of the two.

psv2xtm.xsl works on the PSV output generated by the XSV schema processor. To use this stylesheet, you must first validate your schema with XSV, requesting the PSV output as XML, then run the stylesheet against that output.

Posted by Kal at 10:05 AM | Comments (0)

September 27, 2004

Pepys-Map : 26th September 1661

A short entry today. In which:


  • Samuel works at the Navy Office.

  • Samuel dines at home.

  • Samuel and Elizabeth go to the theatre to see 'A King and No King' performed. The diary mentions that they travel each way by coach so this is captured as two separate travelling-events preceding and following the performance.

  • Samuel works at home on his correspondence. No details about the work are given, so this is modelled simply as a generic working event.

It is worth noting that the play is one of several collaborations by John Fletcher (already encountered as writer of 'The Tamer Tamed'), and Francis Beaumont. This is modelled in the topic map by using a single 'written-by' association with two players of the 'writer' role.

New and updated topic maps:

Topic map for today's entry.
Culture in the diary.

Posted by Kal at 08:53 PM | Comments (0)

September 26, 2004

Pepys-Map : 24th-25th September 1661

Two entries uploaded today.

In the entry for 24th September, events modelled are:


  • Samuel and Elizabeth return home from Welwyn.

  • On the way, they stop off at the Mother Red Cap tavern in Holloway for a drink (the name of the tavern is provided by a note on the PepysDiary.com site.

  • Samuel receives a letter telling him of a naval action that Sir Edward Montague has been involved in. The action is given a subject indicator to allow reference from later diary entries.

  • Samuel visits Jemima Montague.

For the 25th September, the events modelled are:

  • Samuel and William Penn take a coach to Covent Garden.
  • Samuel visits his cousin Thomas and discusses country business with him.
  • Samuel meets Robert Slingsby in St. Martin's Lane
  • Samuel and Slingsby take his coach to Whitehall.
  • Samuel visits William Coventry.
  • Samuel dines with John Crew.
  • Samuel attends a performance of "The Merry Wives Of Windsor" at the Theatre Royal. It being Shakespeare, Sam hates it.
  • Samuel goes drinking with William Penn and Sir G. More (a person not encountered before in the diary).

New and updated topic maps:
Topic map for 24th September 1661
Topic map for 25th September 1661
Core ontology for the diary.
Culture in the diary.
Dates in the diary.
People in the diary.
Places in the diary.

Posted by Kal at 02:36 PM | Comments (0)

September 24, 2004

Pepys-Map: 16th - 23rd September 1661

Catching up with a number of entries missed due to a combination of slackness and being at XML Open this week. To comment on all of the files would probably be as tedious to read as it would be to write, but you can always read all of the entries on PepysDiary.com.

One interesting addition to the ontology is a pair of events. I've added a "borrowing" event with roles "borrower" and "lender". I've made the existing "loan" event a subclass of borrowing on the principle that a loan event is a borrowing event where the borrower agrees to repay some interest as well as the borrowed amount. I've also added a "hiring" event, which I have made a subclass of both "borrowing" and of "purchase" - topic maps does not restrict you to having a single class hierarchy, although this could cause problems later on so I'll plan to revisit this when I get a chance to tidy up the ontology.

Another item that will need tidying is the addition of a topic for "horse". Currently this is made a direct subclass of "creature" which puts it on the same level in the ontology as "primate". My feeling is that it is not wise to have "primate" and "horse" at the same level of the hierarchy and again, this part of the ontology will need revisting during any cleanup.

New and uploaded topic maps:
16th September
17th September
18th September
19th September
20th September
21st September
22nd September
23rd September

Artifacts in the diary.
Culture in the diary.
People in the diary.
Places in the diary.

Posted by Kal at 07:02 PM | Comments (0)

September 16, 2004

Pepys-Map : 15th September 1661

Today's entry is another straightforward one in modelling terms. The events modelled are:

  • Samuel goes to the late Julian Kite's home to meet with his uncle Thomas Fenner and make arrangements for the burial. This is modelled as a visiting event with Thomas Fenner as the "visited" and the Kites' house as the place.
  • Samuel dines at home.
  • Samuel and Elizabeth go to their church.
  • The funeral of Julian Kite. I have included Thomas Fenner and Margaret Kite in the mourners. The diary says that there is Fenner's family present, but I have not made an exhaustive list of them here. This may be added later if it becomes important.
  • Samuel and Elizabeth accompany Margaret Kite back to her house.
  • Samuel, Elizabeth and William Joyce travel back to the Pepys' home.
  • Samuel and William have a drink back at the house.

New and updated topic maps:

Topic map for today's entry.
Core ontology for the diary (only a minor editorial to a comment).
Places in the diary.

Posted by Kal at 11:52 AM | Comments (0)

September 15, 2004

Pepys-Map : 14th September 1661

Today's entry has the following events modelled:

  • Samuel does some work at the Navy Office.
  • Samuel visits the Royal Exchange.
  • Thomas Fenner visits Samuel at his home.
  • Robert and Elizabeth Slingsby (and unidentified others) call for the Samuel and Elizabeth.
  • Thomas Fenner and Thomas Pepys are left at Samuel's house to dine.
  • Samuel and Robert Slingsby and their wives go to see four yachts on the river.

For the moment, I have modelled the last event as a generic "recreation-event" and made the yachts the "subject" of that event. When the ontology is reviewed it might be worth seeing if there is a subclass of recreation-event that can be extracted from this perhaps "viewing-event" ?

New and updated topic maps:

Topic map for today's entry.
Culture in the diary.
People in the diary.

Posted by Kal at 04:44 PM | Comments (0)

September 14, 2004

Pepys-Map : 13th September 1661

Today's entry has a couple of interesting points to the model.

In the first event of the day, Samuel is called to his uncle's house to discuss arrangements for the burial of his Aunt Kite who died yesterday. There are two things to note here. Firstly, we don't need to model the death as an event, because that was already entered in the biographical topic map when Aunt Kite was first introduced about a week ago. Secondly, we need to model the event of Aunt Kite's funeral in advance of its occurrence. To facilitate the merging of the event information that we have from todays entry (which is scant) with information we will probably get when the funeral takes place, I have created a subject identifier for the funeral event.

The second item of note actually comes from annotations on the PepysDiary.com site. The annotations for Doctors Commons (both the map referred to from the annotations and the text of one annotation) describe the geographical location of the Doctors' Commons by the streets that form its boundary. This seemed like a good thing to model. So I have created an association type "bounded-by" and role types "bounded" for the place whose bounds are described by the association and then north-bounds, south-bounds, east-bounds and west-bounds for the four compass points (all that I need for now). The association itself is expressed as a 5-way relationship between the Doctor's Commons and the four streets that form its boundary:

bounded-by(drs-commons : bounded,
  great-knightrider-st : north-bounds,
  st-bennets-hill : east-bounds,
  addle-hill : west-bounds,
  thames-st : south-bounds)

My reason for doing this (rather than four binary relationships) is that I want the single association to capture all of the information about the boundary - in practice there can be no boundary without all of the sides being enumerated, so to my mind it doesn't make sense to have four separate partial descriptions.

I could have chosen to create a "borders-with" association, which would make sense to be modelled as four separate binary relationships as the fact that X border's Y is not dependent on the fact that X also borders Z.

The association and role types are all defined in the "places" topic map.

New and updated topic maps:

Topic map for today's entry.
Artifacts in the diary.
People in the diary.
Places in the diary.

Posted by Kal at 08:44 PM | Comments (0)

September 13, 2004

Pepys-Map : 11th -12th September 1661

Entries for the 11th and 12th September posted today. Both entries are relatively straightforward to model. There is much discussion with regards to money owed to Tom Trice. I have classified all of this under the subject of "Robert Pepys Estate" as this is where the debt has arisen from.

New and updated topic maps:

Topic map for 11th September
Topic map for 12th September
Culture in the diary.
Places in the diary.

Posted by Kal at 09:04 PM | Comments (0)

September 11, 2004

Pepys-Map : August Roundup

The second monthly milestone in the topic mapping of Pepy's Diary has been reached! As Stuart did last month, I've created a single merged topic map for the diary to date (July and August plus a few days from June).

The zipped XTM file can found here.

Update: I've now posted HTML pages generated from the XTM file for July and August.

See the about page and the help page for more details.

Posted by Kal at 01:37 PM | Comments (0)

Visual cooking

Slashdot had an article on the site Cooking for Engineers which has recipes written for the analytical mind (as opposed to lists of recipes of flat foods).

What interested me was the presentation of the recipes. After the standard prose description, is a table of the ingredients and the method. Simple, but effective presentation. For example, check out this
recipe for tiramisu
- scroll to the end first and take a look at the table - it gets the whole process across incredibly easily.

Tufte for food addicts :-)

Posted by Kal at 12:15 PM | Comments (0)

Pepys-Map : 10th September 1661

Today's entry is relatively straightforward to model. The events we find are:

  • Samuel works at the Navy Office.
  • Samuel dines at home.
  • Samuel and Elizabeth buy a chest from an unamed vendor in Wood Street.
  • Samuel and Elizabeth make more purchases at Thomas Fenner's.
  • Samuel visits his brother Thomas.
  • Samuel visits Lady Jemima Montague at the Wardrobe.
  • Samuel dines with the 'young ladies of the wardrobe' -- it is not clear who these ladies are. I have assumed that at least Paulina Montague is one.
  • Samuel returns home by foot.

Also in this diary entry, a name is given for the maid mentioned on the 7th September as being hired from William Joyce. I have added a topic for this maid, Mary, and modified the topic map for 7th September to reference this topic. The start date of her employment is also recorded in a new office-holding event.

New and modified topic maps:

Topic map for today's entry.
Topic map for 7th September 1661
People in the diary.
Places in the diary.

Posted by Kal at 11:47 AM | Comments (0)

September 10, 2004

Pepys-Map : 9th September 1661

Today's entry is something of an instruction in how Mondays should really be approached. The events modelled today:

  • Samuel goes to Privy Seal to get some work done, but finds the Lord Privy Seal not arrived yet.
  • Samuel meets Captain Robert Morris (with the superb office of Upholsterer-extra-ordinary to the Royal Household), and the two have breakfast togther at the King's Privy Kitchen. During which Samuel drinks too much wine (for breakfast!)
  • Unable to do any work, Samuel goes first for a walk in Westminster Hall and then to the theatre.
  • Finally, Samuel returns home, finding that Williams Penn and Batten had called for him. He catches up with them and several others at the Dolphin to round of the day with some more drink.

New and updated topic maps :

Topic map for today's entry
Culture in the diary
Dates in the diary
People in the diary
Places in the diary

Posted by Kal at 09:40 AM | Comments (0)

September 09, 2004

Pepys-Map : 7th - 8th August 1661

Catching up again with two entries posted today.

The entry for the 7th September introduces one modelling issue, when William Joyce arrives to discuss the hiring of one of his maids. For this, I have modelled the two offices held by the maid and made the office to be held with the Pepys as the subject for the conversation with William Joyce. Once again this makes use of the "trick" of making on event the subject of another. Another possibility would have been to model the hiring of the maid as an event in its own right.

Topic map for 7th September
Topic map for 8th September
Culture in the diary
Core ontology for the diary

Posted by Kal at 07:03 PM | Comments (0)

September 07, 2004

Pepys-May: 5th-6th September 1661

Catching up with two entries today.

For 5th September, the following events are modelled:

  • Samuel visits his mother.
  • Samuel does some business at the Privy Seal.
  • Samuel travels from the Privy Seal's chambers to Thomas Fenner's house, by boat.
  • Margaret and Paulina Pepys leave London for the Pepys' farm.
  • Samuel, Elizabeth and some others take a drink at an alehouse.
  • A footman approaches Elizabeth Pepys with a message. This is modelled simply as a meeting-event.
  • Dinner at Thomas Fenner's - we only know that Samuel and Elizabeth are guests, we are not told who the hosts are.
  • Samuel receives the news that his aunt, Julian Clarke, is ill, which prompts an argument with Antony Joyce.
  • Samuel and Elizabeth go to Bartholomew Fair and see performances by acrobats and tumblers before returning home by foot.

For the 6th of September, we have:

  • Thomas Fenner joins Samuel for his morning draught.
  • The pair then go to visit Julian Clarke during which she expresses her wishes with regards to her estate. The estate of Julian Clarke is introduced as a new topic and made the subejct of a conversation.
  • Samuel and Thomas go for a drink at some unamed alehouse and then call in at Fenner's sister. The only name we have at present for the sister is given by Pepys as "Utbeck".
  • Samuel attends a performance of 'Elder Brother' at the Theatre Royal.
  • Samuel and some friends met at the theatre go drinking at the Ship tavern.
  • Samuel and William Penn return home by coach.

Updated and modified topic maps:
Topic map for 4th September (fixed an incorrect reference to the PepysDiary.com site).
Topic map for 5th September.
Topic map for 6th September.

Artifacts in the diary.
Culture in the diary.
Dates in the diary.
People in the diary.
Places in the diary.

Posted by Kal at 02:47 PM | Comments (0)

September 05, 2004

Pepys-Map : 4th September 1661

Today's entry is a relatively straightforward one. The events modelled are as follows:

September 04, 2004

Pepys-Map : 3rd September 1661

The main event in today's entry is the christening of Catherine Montague. This is modelled using a new event type "christening" subclassed from "church-service" (although it actually takes place at the Wardrobe and not in a church).

Two other events require extensions to the ontology.

Samuel takes delivery of some furniture from Richard Howells - using the existing "purchasing" event type for this does not work as there is no exchange of money at this point.

The other event is Sam's argument with his mother. The "argument" event type is subclassed from the "discussion" event type. I've added an occurrence to this event that gives Samuel's side of the story at least.

New and updated topic maps:

Topic map for today.
Core ontology for the diary.
People in the diary.

Posted by Kal at 05:58 PM | Comments (0)

Pepys-Map : 2nd September 1661

The entry for today is quite a long one, although much of it describes rumour and gossip which at present we are not modelling in the topic map.

The events that are modelled are as follows:

  • Samuel has a discussion with his cousin Thomas about is uncle Thomas (presumably something to do with the will of Robert Pepys, as cousin Thomas is the executor of the will, but this is not made explicit).
  • Samuel goes to the chambers of the Privy Seal (who is not there).
  • Sam meets Mr Battersby in Fenchurch Street and the pair share some wine at the chambers of the King's Apothecary (presumably just for medicinal purposes then ;-).
  • The pair then take a boat to Blackfriars Stairs where Samuel disembarks and proceeds to the King's Great Wardrobe for dinner. He does not say who he dines with.
  • After dinner Samuel and Captain Ferrers return to Whitehall and meet Mr. Pickering at Westminster Hall.
  • This trio then go off drinking at a wine house called Prior's.
  • Samuel and Pickering stroll around Westminster Hall, Samuel gets gossip from Pickering which is modelled simply as a discussion event for now.
  • Samuel takes his leave and goes to the Mitre where he meets the Wight's.
  • Samuel returns home and writes another spoof letter to William Penn about the stolen tankard in which he demands a ransom for the tankard's return.

This entry also relates two events involving Elizabeth Pepys. She meets the "Ladies of the Wardrobe", by which I have assumed Pepys means Jemima Carteret and Paulina Montague, at the Royal Exchange. She also meets Thomas Somerset, a son of Lord Somerset (and possibly the man from 30th August?) who gives her a bracelet as a gift.

New and updated files:

Topic map for today's entry.
People in the diary.
Places in the diary.

Posted by Kal at 05:05 PM | Comments (0)

September 02, 2004

Pepys-Map : 31st August - 1st September 1661

Two entries posted today.

In the entry for 31st August, Samuel describes his visit to Bartholomew Fair. The fair is an extended event starting on 23rd August and ending on 6th September. Within the span of this event, today describes a number of separate events that involve Samuel directly. To model this, I have created one recreation-event topic for the fair itself covering the complete 23/8-6/9 timespan. Then each event that occurs at the fair is created as a "subevent" of the fair event. This requires a new association type for relationship between an encompassing event and the events that it encompasses (which I've called superevent and subevent as a shorthand).

For example a performance by dancing monkeys (no, really) at the fair is modelled as:

[event-16610831-06 : performance = "Performance by dancing monkeys at Bartholomew Fair (31st August 1661)";"16610831-06"]
occurs(event-16610831-06 : event, today : on)
superevent-subevent(event-16610831-06 : subevent, bartholomew-fair : superevent)

This type of relationship could also be useful for other spanning events, and could be treated as hierarchical. For example a war could be a spanning event (superevent) with each battle as an encompassed event (subevent). Then within the battle, each charge or manoeuver could be modelled as a subevent of the battle event.

Another slightly odd construct in the topic map for 31st August is the modelling of Samuel buying a bauble for each of three ladies in his company at Christ's Hospital. This is modelled as a single purchasing-event where three separate items are purchased, followed by three separate gift events, each with one of those purchased items and a different recipient:

[event-16610831-09 : purchasing-event = "Samuel buys baubles for the ladies (31st August 1661)";"16610831-09"]
occurs(event-16610831-09 : event, event-16610831-07 : during)
participation(event-16610831-09 : event,
  samuel-pepys : purchaser,
  bauble-1 : purchased,
  bauble-2 : purchased,
  bauble-3 : purchased)
[bauble-1 : bauble = "A bauble for Jemima Carteret"]
[bauble-2 : bauble = "A bauble for Paulina Montague"]
[bauble-3 : bauble = "A bauble for Mlle Le Blanc"]
[event-16610831-10 : gift-event = "Samuel gives a bauble to Jemima Carteret (31st August 1661)";"16610831-10"]
occurs(event-16610831-10 : event, event-16610831-07 : during)
participation(event-16610831-10 : event,
  bauble-1 : gift,
  samuel-pepys : giver,
  jemima-carteret : recipient)
etc.

In the entry for 1st September, an interesting revalation is made. The tankard that was stolen from William Penn and which Sam wrote a joke confessional for a few days ago, was actually stolen as a joke by William Batten. So we have a bit of new information to add to the theft-event that was created in the topic map for 28th August 1661. To do this, I have added a subject indicator to the original theft event so that it can be imported into the topic map for 1st September. I can then use that imported topic to create a new association and an occurrence that describes the theft in Sam's own words. Although the topic map standard does allow me to simply refer to the address of the original event topic rather than do this import trick, using a full URI subject indicator is a bit more robust and won't break if the files are moved into different relative paths (e.g. split into separate directories for each month).


New and updated topic maps:

Topic map for 31st August 1661
Topic map for 1st September 1661
Modified topic map for 28th August 1661
Core ontology
Artifacts in the diary.
Culture in the diary.
Dates in the diary.
People in the diary.
Places in the diary.

TEASER: Look out for another month-end merged topic map tomorrow!

Posted by Kal at 09:24 PM | Comments (0)