Julian's Polymath Explorations

(UPDATED May 2024)   Now that we have discussed a full technology stack based on Neo4j (or other graph databases), and that we a design and implementation available from the open-source project BrainAnnex.org  , what next?  What shall we build on top? Well, how about  Full-Text Search ?  This article is part of a growing, ongoing series on Graph Databases and Neo4j Full-Text Searching/Indexing The Brain Annex open-source project includes an implementation of a design that uses the convenient services of its Schema Layer , to provide indexing of word-based documents using Neo4j. The python class FullTextIndexing ( source code ) provides the necessary methods, and it can parse both plain-text and HTML documents (for example, used in "formatted notes"); parsing of PDF files and other formats will be added at a later date. No grammatical analysis ( stemming or lemmatizing ) is done on the text.  However, a long list of common word ("stop ...

 (Updated Nov. 2022) Wouldn't it be fantastic to have a "butler" to help us as we constantly face drowning in information? That need was crushingly pressing for me , as a polymath with a thirst for knowledge in several fields, not to mention numerous very technical jobs over the years, several complex research projects, old notes from college and grad school, an endless stream of online courses I take , a tech startup I founded and used to run, the many conferences I attend, life in general, and even hobbies that tend to generate abundant information (such as flying airplanes and studying multiple foreign languages!)   I was immensely eager for some sort of powerful assistance, something so helpful that I could poetically describe as an " annex " to my brain.. In this blog entry, I'll describe how deep frustration with existing software tools led to the start of the open-source BrainAnnex.org project, a web-based knowledge representation and manageme...

Time for the opening shot of a series about Semantic Technology , and in particular contrasting-and-comparing the opposing (but perhaps ultimately complementary) camps of:   RDF Triple Stores , aka Triples-Based Graphs.   For example, Blazegraph or Apache Jena   (Labeled) Property Graphs .  For example, Neo4j or Blazegraph (For this article, I'll assume that you have at least a passing acquaintance with both.  Here is background info on Triplestores and Property Graphs ) It’s my opinion that modeling in terms of Subject/Predicate/Object triples (aka RDF ) might be appealing to mathematicians or philosophers for its minimalist foundation (though a lot of baroque add-on’s quickly come out of the closet!) Modeling in terms of (Labeled) Property Graphs might be appealing to computer scientists, because such graphs appear more usable and less clunky once you start actually doing something with them. Perhaps because I straddle both the Math and CS camps...