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pcplantdb - Re: [pcplantdb] .l.a...v.i.s.i.o.n.

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  • From: Richard Morris <webmaster@pfaf.org>
  • To: pcplantdb@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [pcplantdb] .l.a...v.i.s.i.o.n.
  • Date: Tue, 03 Aug 2004 00:09:16 +0100

Chad Knepp wrote:

Richard Morris writes:
> Stephanie Gerson wrote:
> > > Allright folks.
> > > > Here's the vision, as promised.
> > > > *Please* take the time to read it and respond - this is a
> > discussion that must be had early on. We ought to establish our
> > vision and high-level goals, and I present the following as a
> > part of this discussion.
> > > > .l.a...v.i.s.i.o.n.
> > > > I understand Permaculture as a systems science, seeking to weave
> > meaningful relationships between system components in order to
> > create self-regulating and regenerative systems. System
> > components may be plants ,Ab??(B woven together to create
> > guilds, people/organizations ,Ab??(B woven together to create
> > communities, or otherwise. Basically, Permaculture to me is a
> > form of ,Ab??(BBiomimicry,,Ab??(B applying the principles of
> > inherently- sustainable ecosystems (waste-as-resource, stacking
> > functions, etc.) to potentially all realms of human activity
> > (although it has thus far been primarily focused on those which
> > satisfy basic human needs).
> > > Snip snip snippidy snip
> > Great stuff, things are become clearer and I think I could
> see a way in which things could work together.
> Attached is quick picture of a posible top level
> graphical interface and below are the some of the topics
> discussed on the permaculture mailing list, the number is how
> many posts there were under that subject.
> > 53 where you from?
> 39 Pc slammed in Whole Earth Review
> 36 creating online plant database
> 23 For the survival thread...
> 21 Where are you from?
> 20 Yeomans Keyline Plow Use
> 20 Worms
> 19 the hydrogen argument
> 19 planting bamboo over septic field
> 18 Out of Control
> 18 (Fwd) Interview with Bill Mollison Part Two
> 17 Permaculture wiki & wikipedia
> 17 Killer Coke
> 17 Black Locusts, more....
> 16 aquaponics
> 16 Ferrocement Building Project
> 15 Worms eat my crap?
> 15 Reed bed filtered swimming pool
> 15 Re:The American view of the world
> 15 RE: Major histocompatibility complex (MHC)
> 15 Biogas digester plans

Wow interesting stats!

Yep I think it helps to get a feel of the sort of questions
people ar interested in.

Simply generated. I've been saving permaculture posts in a folder
since 2001 and

grep "^Subject" permaculture\ digest | sed "s/Re: //" | sed "s/\[permaculture\] //" | sed "s/Subject: //" | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | more

gives the list. The unix commands grep, sed, sort, uniq, cut
give a great db query language.

> With a bit of thought and a lot of discussion
> we can try to put these into some sort of graph structure.
> With each node as a specific topic.

Also think of the relationships themselves as atomic elements, like
for example, the kind of relationship worms have with soil and the
relationship worms have with compost/vermiculture. The relationship
itself is information, not just a link.

Indeed, it would be possible to give relationships a class.
Theres several systems out there which does this.

> I also think that things can
have the relationship of being similar to other things (a set) such as
animals or annual garden plants... sort of categories. I think this
relationship would be helpfull in generalizing some relationships such
as chicken --> annual garden plants is largely the same as chicken -->
cabbage and doesn't require just duplicating the same thing in chicken
--> broccoli, chicken --> kale, etc.

First though was that you have really got
chicken -> brassica
and the other links are really specialisations of the above.
Theres a very good case for data at the genus and family level.

However
chicken --> annual garden plants
does not work so simpily as annual garden plants cross over many families.


> After a lot of work organising we could probably come up with
> a network representing much of permaculture.
> A touch graph type interface could make it fairly quick to
> navigate to the particular topic of interest.

Speaking of TouchGraph, have you looked at it?

Yep see

http://www.ibiblio.org/pfaf/pcplantdb/PlantFamilyTree/PlantFamilies.html

which is a touch graph map of the plant kingdom.


I did some poking
around it seems to have slowed/halted development sometime back in
2002... not that this means anything bad, it just isn't under active
development. It is also written in Java which means we could (if it
doesn't already) pack it into a .jar and run it on a browser. It does
however mean that we are going to need to muck around in Java a
bit... not that I mind though, Java used to be my favorite langauge.
Actually Java and perl were my two favorites until I met python which
is like the best of both.

Good to hear your into java, my fav language.

> In each topic we could have:
> links to wiki pages
> links to mailing list discussions
> links to plant database
> links to other resources, videos
> links to other websites
> links to a google search
> > The yemoans keyline plough is an interesting example.
> Few people not in the know will have heard about this
> so they will not search directly for it, however
> they may be introduced to the topic if they browse to
> a water systems topic.

Yes, this seems to be the beauty of Steph's vision.

Indeed.

ttfn

Rich
--
Plants for a Future: 7000 useful plants
Web: http://www.pfaf.org/ same as http://www.comp.leeds.ac.uk/pfaf/
Post: 1 Lerryn View, Lerryn, Lostwithiel, Cornwall, PL22 0QJ
Tel: 01208 872 963 / 0845 458 4719
Email: webmaster@pfaf.org
PFAF electronic mailing list http://groups.yahoo.com/group/pfaf






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