Battlestar Galactica Card Game

I had the bright idea of getting a Colonial deck of hexagonal cards as a Christmas present for a friend of mine. He's a fan of the latest Battlestar Galactica re-imagining (BSG-RDM) where the Viper pilot characters play a betting card game and it seemed like the perfect gift. However, it turns out there is no official product and the show's production team have not come up with any official rules for it. So I have done some research and have to blog it here before I forget. It is important to note that the card game in the original series (BSG-TOS) was called Pyramid but BSG-RDM has called it Triad. The names have been reversed with that of the basketball/rugby sport in the show.

There are two decks that purport to be Colonial cards. One of them is a replica of a licensed product and indicates the denominations of cards using the ancient Mayan numbering system with dots representing 1 and bars representing 5, as shown at Katarra8's ebay store. The other uses triangles only to indicate a hierarchy of cards, as shown on neweyestudio item BG-19. However, I have found evidence on Battlestar Wiki that the deck with Mayan numbering was actually used in a BSG-TOS Pyramid game. I have not found any evidence that the deck using the triangle numbering system is used in the show, BSG-TOS or BSG-RDM; again Battlestar Wiki has a screen capture of Helo, Starbuck, and Boomer playing Triad in BSG-RDM but this does not show the faces of the cards.

There are some rules online for the triangle numbering deck at battlestargalactica.com and wikipedia but the lack of hand possibilities does not correlate with the hands named in the show. The Mayan numbering deck comes with 5 card draw poker rules for use with the deck but 5 card does not sit well with the Colonial Battlestar Galactica atmosphere. 5 is a pentagon and the cards are hexagon, there are 12 colonies, pyramids and triangles - not base 5.

In conclusion, it is clear that the Battlestar Galactica card game, played by Starbuck, uses a Mayan numbering deck but it is not a variant of 5 card draw poker. Therefore it must be a variant of single deck six card one draw poker with 4 jokers and hands including straights of 3 and 5 cards, called '3 on a run' and '5 on a run'. I have taken the information about hand possibilities from BSG-TOS, BSG-RDM, battlestargalactica.com, wikipedia, and Katarra8 together with the probabilities of hand combinations from a Michael Keller review of Jeff Cross' six-card draw poker and applied them to a single Colonial deck of Mayan numbering hexagonal cards to come up with 'Rules For Triad: a re-imagining'.

I printed off a batch on 90gsm paper and cut the corners off and it looks great! Hopefully it plays well too, but the inclusion of '3 on a run' increases the hand possibilities and could make it daunting and cumbersome. However, I feel that herein lies the skill of a game requiring the nerves of steel that only Colonial Viper pilots have. Comments on these rules are always welcome, email me. I have noticed a few extra points that could do with adding, like the hand summary doesn't show those that are all the same Color, but such matters can be included in rule revisions as and when new features arise during the course of the show. Here's hoping that the BSG-RDM production team come up with some official rules and a licensed product (deck, cubits, glossy fan material) becomes available soon.

Screen-scraping vs Information Extraction

There are many possible methods of text conversion and one such technique is screen-scraping. The primary use of screen-scraping software is migrating information from one computer system onto another by reading data from specific fields in the legacy system’s user interface and making the data available as objects.

It is possible to apply screen-scraping to Web documents, however its disadvantages make it useful only under specific circumstances. Screen-scraping techniques identify specific sections within single documents and extract the data contained within each section.

This is useful when the documents’ structure and layout are uniform and formally controlled, i.e. the sections are structured very clearly in a table, for example, and the layout of the table is controlled by a content management system that ensures each page is presented in a uniform style.

Cases where this would be of use are; extracting article headlines from a single newspaper’s homepage, or extracting book titles from individual item pages on a Web based bookstore, like Amazon.co.uk, because each item page is presented in a controlled uniform layout. However, the same techniques will not be portable onto another newspaper’s homepage where the headline sections may be structured differently and nor will they be applicable to any other online bookstore because the layout of item descriptions will not be the same as Amazon’s style.

This makes screen-scraping software portability more difficult because it necessitates modification for use with any documents other than the original design. Screen-scraping is also a high maintenance approach because it requires modification to cope with any changes to the original documents; if Amazon changes their presentation style then screen-scrapers targeting the original interface will have to be updated.

Although the content of academic staff homepages appears to be similar, and therefore must be governed by departmental guidelines, nevertheless it is empirically evident that their structure and layout is not uniform or formally controlled in the same way as the Web pages of their home institution. It is clear then that the domain of your project will affect your choice to implement a screen-scraping approach.

In addition, screen-scraping software does not include tasks such as co-reference recognition (CORC) that involves more sophisticated programming techniques, which make use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) practices to analyse document content and extract relevant information. CORC determines whether a piece of data refers to an item that has already been extracted. For example, screen-scraping software would not be able to determine that a professor named on his homepage is the same professor named on the homepage of a project that he is involved with. Such AI techniques are covered by Information Extraction (IE) that includes two traditions; Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Wrapper Induction (WI).

Example NLP approaches; GATE and Monrai Cypher.

Example WI approaches; WIEN, Stalker, RoadRunner, and BWI

Let Me Tell You A Story about a kid named Spidey

Thanks to Facebook I was sent an update that my cousin has left a group "If 100,000 people join, my wife will let me name my second child Spiderpig". This turns out to be a practical joke by Oli Young and demonstrates the power of modern viral marketing.

read more | digg story

Signing up for more blogs

So, the more I research my dissertation the more I find that the people I have emailed for information keep cropping up. I read more articles and the same names keep appearing. I find out about a conference and the delegates names ring so many bells, then it turns out that they are the same people that I emailed for information ages ago. It seems that the Semantic Web industry experts are a very small group of people - and I am trying to become one of them. Not a tall order at all, trying to get onto the same playing field as PhD graduates, university lecturers, company directors. Easy as pie.

I have found more ontologies that work with FOAF. One of which is BIO by Ian Davis and David Galbraith. Some more reading on Ian Davis led me to Technorati. Not sure whether Technorati is like linkedin or like blogger. We shall see by claiming this blog in the name of my Technorati Profile.

Open Source Content Management System (CMS)

Now has come the time for me to extend my online presence. The development of my website has been sidelined as a hobby because I have been focussing on the graphics. Each time I have attempted to sit down and develop some sort of content for the site I am put off by the amount of work required to produce a new page in the same design. I am constantly asking myself questions about the design I hope to achieve and which computing language to learn and technology to implement in order to best achieve my design goals.

No longer need I be so worry. A friend has recommended me to use CMS Made Simple (CMSMS). I have used EasySite at work to manage the content of departmental webpages and I looked into purchasing a CMS, like RedDot, but these are both corporate solutions with a 5 figure pricetag. I needed a CMS to make it easy to generate new webpages and manage existing pages on my own site. Friends of mine have asked me to create websites for them in the past and I have been put off with the effort involved with initial design, HTML editing, and continual maintenance. With any luck, CMSMS will fit the bill - just design some graphics, settle on a stylesheet, arrange the layout, make a few templates - then hey presto! Instant website, as easy as posting to Blogger

I had a little bit of trouble setting it up on my Yahoo! Web Host using Dreamweaver MX to FTP it onto the site. I will post some info here in the hope that it will make the process easier for me in the future and also other CMSMS users uploading pages with Dreamweaver onto a Yahoo! server. These steps are taken from the CMSMS Quick Install via FTP documentation and I have included the solutions to the problems that I encountered.

1. Download the latest stable release.
   No problem. Saved the zip file to my computer.
   
   
2. Unzip the file.
   Unzip the file to the main folder of your website on your computer. You may already have some sub-folders with the same names as the CMSMS ones. I had to rename my 'images' folder as 'graphics' and then change the existing references in my index.html file.
   
   
3. Upload to your host.
   
   Start Dreamweaver.
   
   • Open the 'index.html' file of your website. I have already setup Dreamweaver with the FTP settings to upload stuff to my Yahoo! Web Hosting service.
     
   • Go to Window>Site and this opens a taskbar for FTP upload.
     
   • Click on the 'Connect to remote host' button.
     
   • Choose 'Local View' from the dropdown list. All of the unzipped CMSMS folders should be shown in the file list alongside any others of your website. If not, then you need to copy them into this folder.
     
   • Choose the main folder in the list and press the Put File(s) button.
     
   • A message will popup asking whether you are sure that you want to put the entire website. Say yes.
   
   This took my Internet connection ages. I went away and made lunch, ate it, watched the BBC News, nipped out to the shops, talked to a friend on the phone, then came back and it was done.
   
   
4. FTP permissions
   This was a tricky one. First of all, Dreamweaver MX does not have an easy facility to change the permissions on files via FTP. Quick point of note - Dreamweaver MX 2004 version 7 and above DO have an extension that allows you to do it, but I am running Dreamweaver MX 6, so I had to do it the hard way.
   Make sure the 'Connect to remote host' button is still on (the little 'light' should be green and the cables plugged together) and go to the FTP Log. To find this, Go to Window>Results>FTP Log. To change the necessary file permissions you have to type the following script into the FTP Command one line at a time.
   site chmod 775 /tmp/templates_c
   site chmod 775 /tmp/cache
   site chmod 775 /uploads
   site chmod 775 /uploads/images
   site chmod 775 /modules
   
   After each line, press Return on your keyboard and the following message should appear in the box below the FTP Command:
   site chmod 775 /tmp/templates_c
   200 CHMOD command successful.
   
   
5. Config.php file
   Go to Start>Programs>Accessories
   Press Notepad.
   Go to File>Save As...
   Browse to the folder of your website on your computer.
   Name the file config.php
   Make sure the 'Save as type' dropdown list shows 'All Files'
   Press OK.
   
   Back in Dreamweaver with the 'Connect to remote host' button still on, go to the FTP upload task bar Window>Site.
   Choose 'Local View' from the dropdown list.
   Choose the config.php file that you have just saved.
   Press the Put File(s) button.
   Go to the FTP Log again.
   Type this into the FTP Command
   site chmod 666 /config.php
   
   and you should see a message in the box below the FTP Command
   site chmod 666 /config.php
   200 CHMOD command successful.
   
   
6. PHP Database
   Go to your Yahoo! Web Hosting Control Panel
   Go to the Create&Update tab.
   Click on the MySQLDatabase in the Other Site Building and Editing Tools section.
   This will allow you to setup the MySQL database features of your Web Hosting. Then you will need to install the phpMyAdmin facility.
   When prompted to do so, create a new directory to install the phpMyAdmin, this will make it easier for your to access the facility later.
   Choose the username cms_user as in the CMSMS instructions.
   Choose a memorable password. This does not have to be the same as in the CMSMS instructions, but you will need it later.
   After it is installed it should log you in as cms_user automatically.
   Click in the 'Create new database' box and type cms.
   Press 'Create'. The dropdown list that says 'Collation', is not important.
   In the frame on the left hand side there is a HOME button (looks like a house) that takes you back to the main phpMyAdmin page.
   Click on 'Privileges'
   There should now be two users; cms_user and yroot. Yroot is the default Yahoo! user that has full permissions. You need to give cms_user full permissions too.
   
   My thanks to cmsuser123 on the CMSMS Forums for the instructions on how to do this. Those refer to a problem in Step 10, but if you do this now, you will not have that problem.
   
   In the phpMyAdmin Privileges page, on the same row as the yroot user, click on the symbol of a human with a pencil.
   Scroll down and change the password to another memorable password. Keep this password for future reference.
   Now log out of phpMyAdmin.
   Log back in again, but this time with the username yroot.
   Use the password that you just changed for yroot.
   Go to the Privileges page.
   On the same row as cms_user, click on the symbol of a human with a pencil.
   In the 'Edit Privileges' section, Check All Global Privileges.
   Press the Go button.
   
   
7. Go to www.yourwebsite.com/index.php
   
   
8. Begin to Install CMSMS
   No problem. Everything was ticked so I pressed Continue.
   
   
9. Admin Account Information
   Choose a username for you to access the editing side of CMSMS.
   Enter your email address.
   Choose another memorable password. This is not the same as your email password. Nor the cms_user password for phpMyAdmin. Nor the yroot password for phpMyAdmin.
   Press Continue.
   
   
10. Database Information
    This is the same information from cmsuser123 on the CMSMS Forums; the "Database Host Address" should be changed from "localhost" to "MySql".
    Database name should be the one you made earlier, cms.
    Username should be cms_user
    Password should be the phpMyAdmin password you gave for cms_user.
    Leave the other information as it is default and press Continue.
    
    
11. Installation Complete
    Write down the CMS Document root, the path to the Document root and the Querystring.
    Press Continue.
    
    
12. Config.php file security
    Back in Dreamweaver with the 'Connect to remote host' button still on, go to the FTP Log again. Window>Results>FTP Log
    Type this into the FTP Command
    site chmod 444 /config.php
    
    and you should see a message in the box below the FTP Command
    site chmod 444 /config.php
    200 CHMOD command successful.
    
    Go to your Yahoo! Web Hosting Control Panel
    Go to the Manage tab.
    Click on the File Manager.
    Click on the bin image for the install subfolder.
    Confirm deletion.
    _______________
    ***IMPORTANT***
    DO NOT DELETE index.php
    
    
    
13. Installation complete!!
    You can log into CMSMS from www.yourwebsite.com/admin/
    The username is the Account Admin Username from Step 9.
    The password is the one from Step 9.
    These should both have been emailed to the address you gave in Step9.
    

This is as far as I have gotten with CMSMS. Fingers crossed that it meets my needs. I have to get my MSc project online as soon as possible.

Information Extraction (IE) implemented in Java

I found two more articles regarding Information Extraction (IE) that look really useful
Sheffield University Natural Language Processing Group's Information Extraction User Guide (2nd Ed.)
and
Cowie J., Lehnert W., and Wilks Y.(1996), "Information Extraction", Communications of the ACM, Vol. 39, Iss. 1, pp.80-91

After I have gone through these I am also going to be looking at GATE as Graham Higgins suggested.

Previously I had discounted GATE because I felt it concentrated on Natural Language Processing (NLP) rather than Wrapper Induction (WI), but I need to look into this more. I had been looking into Jena, but it looks like Jena will only be able to deal with the Template Element (TE) production part of an IE system. I got this clarification from the Jena Development Group

More info on Jena can be found at
http://www.hpl.hp.com/semweb/tools.htm
and
href="http://jena.sourceforge.net/

More info on GATE can be found at
http://gate.ac.uk/
and
http://sourceforge.net/projects/gate

Weatherboy

Holy moley!!!

Robin told me that he did a Google search for "glasgow weatherboy" and he found a piece they did killing off the weather-presenter-character I did on the University TV station, GUST!!

click here and check it out for yourselves

Honourable Ninja Farm

I saw the 1st episode of Honourable Ninja Farm on Weebls Stuff. It reminded me of Brett and his honey bees.

It's a Weebl cartoon about the everyday tails of ordinary farming ninja folk.

Written by Bizunth, Weebl, Skoo
Animated by Drewmo, Peabo, WeeblSound by Weebl

I pressed the Digg It button again so you can read the digg story too.

RSS Feeds

Now I've managed to setup syndication of this blog to Yahoo!360 and MSNSpaces. If only it were possible with all the other social networking sites I've signed up to. One blog syndicated everywhere else, that would be nice.

Blogging from Digg now too.

This is a post to my blog from Digg. It means that I can find something on the web. "Digg" it, and keep a link to it, and make a note of why it's so essential - AND also keep all this info in one handy place on my blog. Although ideally after blogging it from digg, the post does need a touch of editing.

So, G put me onto this short animation, CSI:Pie-ami. It's a CSI spoof, Weebl and Bob take on a certain ginger.
intro music : Fat Girls - Debasser

Weebls Stuff is pretty good at the best of times, but this spoof of one of my favourite TV shows is absolutley OUTSTANDING! Makes me wanna buy the CSI:Miami soundtrack!

You can find more info about what people think of the animation from the digg story.

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

signing up for more and more blogs

yet another blog for me to sign into.

no probs. makes it more exciting for people to chase out info about me.

for those people who have made it this far through the forest of blogs that i have, i will gift you with current info about where i am in my life and what i am doing with myself.

i am sitting at home trying to write my MSc project. i seem to have far too much reading material. it is getting harder and harder to string it all together into a coherent discussion that will lead to a software prototype.

as part of the research i pulled out a thesis by Ellen Spertus. a quick goggle search for her lead me to blogspot... hence my newest blog.