Bob DuCharme
@bobdc.bsky.social
Senior Technical Writer at Graphwise (opinions mine, not theirs). Wrote O'Reilly's "Learning SPARQL" and some other geeky books.
Pinned
Bob DuCharme
@bobdc.bsky.social
· Sep 28
Let's stop saying 'semantic web'
Like a startup pivot, the technology turned out to be great for things other than a new kind of 'web'.
www.bobdc.com
New blog entry: Let's stop saying "semantic web" — like a startup pivot, the technology turned out to be great for things other than a new kind of "web". www.bobdc.com/blog/stopsem...
What does it mean to claim that a SPARQL benchmark proves that one engine is faster than another? A passionate debate about one case is going on at www.linkedin.com/feed/update/...
November 4, 2025 at 1:33 PM
What does it mean to claim that a SPARQL benchmark proves that one engine is faster than another? A passionate debate about one case is going on at www.linkedin.com/feed/update/...
The published lyrics of the 1967 Rolling Stones song “2000 Man” (later covered by KISS) include the line “I am having an affair with a random computer”. Wouldn’t “RAND computer” have made more sense in 1967?
October 25, 2025 at 6:04 PM
The published lyrics of the 1967 Rolling Stones song “2000 Man” (later covered by KISS) include the line “I am having an affair with a random computer”. Wouldn’t “RAND computer” have made more sense in 1967?
@theatlantic.com Is it possible for authors to look themselves up in the books3 database without giving a credit card number to The Atlantic first?
September 29, 2025 at 11:59 AM
@theatlantic.com Is it possible for authors to look themselves up in the books3 database without giving a credit card number to The Atlantic first?
New blog entry: Let's stop saying "semantic web" — like a startup pivot, the technology turned out to be great for things other than a new kind of "web". www.bobdc.com/blog/stopsem...
Let's stop saying 'semantic web'
Like a startup pivot, the technology turned out to be great for things other than a new kind of 'web'.
www.bobdc.com
September 28, 2025 at 2:34 PM
New blog entry: Let's stop saying "semantic web" — like a startup pivot, the technology turned out to be great for things other than a new kind of "web". www.bobdc.com/blog/stopsem...
New blog entry tomorrow: Let's stop saying "semantic web" — like a startup pivot, the technology turned out to be great for things other than a new kind of "web".
September 27, 2025 at 4:52 PM
New blog entry tomorrow: Let's stop saying "semantic web" — like a startup pivot, the technology turned out to be great for things other than a new kind of "web".
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” - Arthur C. Clarke
September 21, 2025 at 2:07 PM
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” - Arthur C. Clarke
Gotta love a comic strip that uses XOR as part of the punch line. www.smbc-comics.com/comic/chew
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - Chew
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - Chew
www.smbc-comics.com
September 6, 2025 at 1:32 AM
Gotta love a comic strip that uses XOR as part of the punch line. www.smbc-comics.com/comic/chew
"Top 10 Query Languages Every Developer Should Know in 2025" including, of course, SPARQL www.analyticsinsight.net/amp/story/pr...
August 31, 2025 at 2:53 PM
"Top 10 Query Languages Every Developer Should Know in 2025" including, of course, SPARQL www.analyticsinsight.net/amp/story/pr...
“Journey” is the new “experience” to make the use of your simple product sound like a bigger deal than it actually is.
August 17, 2025 at 3:14 PM
“Journey” is the new “experience” to make the use of your simple product sound like a bigger deal than it actually is.
What are some currently running SPARQL endpoints that people like besides Wikidata and DBpedia?
August 7, 2025 at 9:39 PM
What are some currently running SPARQL endpoints that people like besides Wikidata and DBpedia?
New blog entry: Correcting some outdated "Learning SPARQL" examples www.bobdc.com/blog/updatin...
Correcting some outdated
Revising some queries to accommodate revised data.
www.bobdc.com
July 27, 2025 at 4:19 PM
New blog entry: Correcting some outdated "Learning SPARQL" examples www.bobdc.com/blog/updatin...
New blog entry tomorrow: Correcting some outdated "Learning SPARQL" examples
July 26, 2025 at 3:10 PM
New blog entry tomorrow: Correcting some outdated "Learning SPARQL" examples
Speaking as a tech writer, I just love the Performing Directions of Terry Riley’s seminal 1964 music piece “In C”: thirdcoastpercussion.com//downloads/2... (second and third page of the PDF)
thirdcoastpercussion.com
June 22, 2025 at 3:07 PM
Speaking as a tech writer, I just love the Performing Directions of Terry Riley’s seminal 1964 music piece “In C”: thirdcoastpercussion.com//downloads/2... (second and third page of the PDF)
From "Model Once, Represent Everywhere: UDA (Unified Data Architecture) at Netflix" netflixtechblog.com/uda-unified-...: "UDA is a Knowledge Graph... We chose RDF and SHACL as the foundation for UDA’s knowledge graph."
Model Once, Represent Everywhere: UDA (Unified Data Architecture) at Netflix
Introducing UDA, the knowledge-graph-based architecture that translates conceptual domain models into consistent schemas and data…
netflixtechblog.com
June 15, 2025 at 2:57 PM
From "Model Once, Represent Everywhere: UDA (Unified Data Architecture) at Netflix" netflixtechblog.com/uda-unified-...: "UDA is a Knowledge Graph... We chose RDF and SHACL as the foundation for UDA’s knowledge graph."
With all the new information processing algorithms that are popping up and fading away these days, I love how one of the most popular ones continues to be an algorithm developed over 50 years ago by British computer scientist Karen Spärck Jones en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tf%E2%8...
tf–idf - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
June 8, 2025 at 3:51 PM
With all the new information processing algorithms that are popping up and fading away these days, I love how one of the most popular ones continues to be an algorithm developed over 50 years ago by British computer scientist Karen Spärck Jones en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tf%E2%8...
The reason that I switched from DOS to MS Windows 3.1 many years ago.
June 1, 2025 at 5:34 PM
The reason that I switched from DOS to MS Windows 3.1 many years ago.
Bitbucket forcing us to upgrade from the free plan to a plan that they say costs $3.30 per month? Not so bad. Oh wait, they were dividing the actual price by 5 to make it look more appealing. They're really charging $16.50 per month.
May 31, 2025 at 11:53 AM
Bitbucket forcing us to upgrade from the free plan to a plan that they say costs $3.30 per month? Not so bad. Oh wait, they were dividing the actual price by 5 to make it look more appealing. They're really charging $16.50 per month.
New blog entry: ChatGPT and Copilot as OWL processors — pretty impressive. www.bobdc.com/blog/chatgpt...
ChatGPT and Copilot as OWL processors
Pretty impressive.
www.bobdc.com
May 25, 2025 at 4:05 PM
New blog entry: ChatGPT and Copilot as OWL processors — pretty impressive. www.bobdc.com/blog/chatgpt...
New blog entry tomorrow: ChatGPT and Copilot as OWL processors — pretty impressive.
May 24, 2025 at 5:19 PM
New blog entry tomorrow: ChatGPT and Copilot as OWL processors — pretty impressive.
First Draft Note of RDF 1.2 Primer is now available from the W3C at www.w3.org/TR/2025/DNOT...
RDF 1.2 Primer
This primer is designed to provide the reader with the basic
knowledge required to effectively use RDF. It introduces the basic
concepts of RDF and shows concrete examples of the use of RDF.
Sec...
www.w3.org
April 18, 2025 at 3:50 PM
First Draft Note of RDF 1.2 Primer is now available from the W3C at www.w3.org/TR/2025/DNOT...
I had a great idea for a domain name, but I was 67 days too late.
April 12, 2025 at 5:53 PM
I had a great idea for a domain name, but I was 67 days too late.
"On two occasions I have been asked, 'Pray, Mr. [Charles] Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' ... I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." (from en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garbage...)
March 29, 2025 at 2:49 PM
"On two occasions I have been asked, 'Pray, Mr. [Charles] Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' ... I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." (from en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garbage...)
New blog entry: Converting RDFS schemas to SHACL constraints — with SPARQL, of course. www.bobdc.com/blog/rdfs2sh...
Converting RDFS schemas to SHACL constraints
With SPARQL, of course.
www.bobdc.com
March 9, 2025 at 3:29 PM
New blog entry: Converting RDFS schemas to SHACL constraints — with SPARQL, of course. www.bobdc.com/blog/rdfs2sh...
New blog entry tomorrow: Converting RDFS schemas to SHACL constraints — with SPARQL, of course.
March 8, 2025 at 4:20 PM
New blog entry tomorrow: Converting RDFS schemas to SHACL constraints — with SPARQL, of course.
Out of curiosity I let gmail's "AI" rewrite something I wrote and it replaced the word "features" with "functionality." I guess I'll wait a few years before I try that again. www.bobdc.com/blog/writing...
February 23, 2025 at 3:10 PM
Out of curiosity I let gmail's "AI" rewrite something I wrote and it replaced the word "features" with "functionality." I guess I'll wait a few years before I try that again. www.bobdc.com/blog/writing...