Last night was my first time at the Cluny 2, which used to be the Round, as some of the signs inside still claim. It’s not round any more, having a conventional stage. There is still noise from the Cluny 1 upstairs and the occasional flushing of toilets; I guess that they can’t complain about this anymore.

There is a mystery behind Brains SA; what exactly does it stand for? Among those who know, it is universally revered as skull attack. I’ve reasonably fond of it, but tonight, perhaps, I finally understood how it came by it’s moniker.

Beginning of term, so I guess it’s not too much of a surprise that I haven’t blogged for ages. Life does get slightly swamped by work at this time of year; yesterday, I was so tired after working at full-tilt for two weeks that I even took most of the day off.

At Neuroinformatics 2009, David Sutherland and I talked about the problems of ontology building. One of the current (and past!) difficulties is to choose an appropriate language for representing the knowledge in your ontology. I thought I would write my thoughts up as a post; this will probably result in the most boring thing I have ever written (I am sure someone will point out worse offenses); syntax is dull but distressingly important.

This is the third year in a row that I have been to Neuroinformatics (or it’s forerunner, Databasing the Brain). It’s still turning out to be an enjoyable meeting, even though there is still lots of it that I don’t understand. Come to think of, perhaps because there is lots of it that I don’t understand.