Dance descriptions, while not really in English do have a regular structure and can be thought of as a sub-language with full set of syntactic, semantic and pragmatic levels.

There are basic words of the language (move names), correct ways of putting them in a sentence (a routine) and all the way up to good flowing text (classes that do not hurt the participants).

I was thinking about relationship between dance instructions and computational linguistics in context of Scottish Country Dancing for at least a year. My imagined benefits were that codified dance instructions would allow for automatic dance animations, superior teacher aids and other applications that currently require a lot of sweat and toil. Dance evening programmes that are currently put together manually for each event, could be assisted with automated evaluation pointing out awkward sequences of dances.

Unfortunately, my attempts at explaining the connection made no sense to the people around me. So, I was ecstatic to discover that such a link was already discovered by others before me.

Adam Bull, more than 10 years ago, has tried to apply principles of computational linguistics to Aerobics for his MPhil degree in the paper entitled The formal description of aerobic dance exercise - a corpus-based computational linguistics approach. While, the report is not complete, it puts down many of the same arguments I have tried myself.

Unfortunately, the electronic copy of the document was not available. After some effort, I got in touch with Adam and he send me the copy of the report with the permission to distribute. I have put a copy of it on my own server.

I hope his research will get rediscovered and improved upon. That way when I get some time to apply my own PhD skills to Scottish Country Dancing, there will be more than one person on whose shoulders I would be able to stand.

I believe into podcasting’s future because it is here already for me. I have a 40 minute walk to work each day, so I have over six hours of content a week I can consume. And being quite busy during days, nights and weekends, I try to use that walk time constructively as well. I have been listening to the podcasts from before they were called that and, so, had some time to get my bearings. And they are basically aligned with what the concept of Long Tail teaches us.

Strangely enough, BusinessWeek did not even mention any of the concepts that are important for me and my podcast consumption. That’s how I know the article is missing many points. It is not really unexpected, as it takes a while to get past the beginner’s understanding and actually see the real depth of the concept.

My current collection is at 25 podcasts and I have discarded over time probably twice that number. Less than a third of the podcasts on the list would be considered even vaguely popular by normal measures, the rest are plainly hyper-specialized to my needs and interests.

Over time, I had dutifully sampled and eventually discarded Adam Curry, Dave Winer and Gillmor Gang podcasts. They sporadically have some interesting content, but so infrequently that I find myself frustrated with all the filler. Gillmor Gang specifically I have given 3 or 4 tries over years, but I think they were most interesting during their ITConversations’ days.

I also don’t have any popular radio podcasts. I find the latest news to be easiest to consume in an aggregated or RSS format on my computer. That way if a news item is interesting, I can follow up on its references or setup keywords alert for the future notifications. Podcasts, in my mind, are much more suitable for content that has already undergone some thought process by its producer. I know that for some people, the reasoning is different but just as valid (for them).

I break my subscriptions into roughly 5 categories:

• Technical News - In my industry (IT) it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. Without these podcasts I feel that I would not notice what is coming down the line until it would be too late and I would be stuck maintaining Cobol-equivalent systems forevermore.
• Trend watching - Many interesting things are happening in the world if one just happens to be in the right place at the right time. These podcasts put me into that place and do it very early in the ideas’ lifecycles: somewhere between a cutting edge and an early adoption stage. I may not have time to participate, but sometimes the knowledge I get allows me to leapfrog the conventional process. For example, I have been on a cheap Voice-over-IP service (Lingo) for nearly two years and saved myself money and hustle of dealing with Verizon and its ilk.
• Learning new skills in a background - I may not have time to allocate several active hours a week on a useful, but not currently essential skill, but podcasts in these category allow me to learn something through osmosis over time. Later, when I would need those skills, I would have already absorbed enough to be a very quick learner.
• Language learning - I am studying Spanish now and before that I was learning French and Esperanto and there is always some improvement I could do to my English. These podcasts provide additional learning (or meta-learning) material. Some of them are also good edutainment.
• Entertainment - Some podcasts are just funny or interesting or have my friends in them. They round up the collection nicely.

My full list is available publically, but here is the breakdown by the categories as I see it:

• Technical news and interviews with people I could learn from
  • IT Conversations - The best podcast feed ever. I subscribe to full collection and listen to everything, but some of the biotech items.
  • The Java Posse - Good and often funny Java news source. I listened to them since before the JavaPosse name. I even went to their BOF session at JavaOne 2006.
  • Venture Voice
  • TalkCrunch
  • PodLeaders - Thought Leaders podcast
  • Interviews with Innovators: Jon Udell’s Friday Podcasts
  • O’Reilly Web 2.0 Summit Podcasts - This is one-off single-conference feed. Eventually, it will get dropped when the content stops arriving.
• Trend watching
  • Distributing the Future - O’Reilly in general and this podcast specifically is definitely reporting from the cutting (and sometimes bleeding) edge. This podcast often points at a meme, before it even spreads.
  • Lulu Radio - Lulu is worth watching for Print-On-Demand market, though I am thinking that their new weekly format might be too much information for my needs. Monthly news would have been enough for me at this stage.
  • TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home - I like the blog (I even contributed once), but I am not so sure about their podcast yet. This one is on trial currently.
• Learning new skills in a background
  • this WEEK in MEDIA - Couple of old-hands talk about video-production, 3d, future of the media on the web and lots of other non-mainstraim topics that I think are getting more and more mainstream with each passing week. The 2nd half of the 27th episode was absolutely brilliant as they started to reminiscence about how things used to be. It brought back lots of good memories (of uphill both ways kind).
    
  • Woven Shadows: Digital Photography Tutorials (Video Podcast)
  • Izzy Video: DV Tutorials (Video Podcast)
  • 43 Folders - Ideas around Getting Things Done, the workflow I am trying to implement.
  • ONTOLOG forum podcast - Semantic web discussions. The sound quality is not great, but the content is really deep.
  • SLHS227 BoilerCast! - This is actually a lecture podcast on Elements of Linguistics from Purdue University. That’s a little hard to find-out from either title or even the linked-to page. I found it via the Free Academic Podcasts blog entry. (Feb 2007 Update: Dead link. Try here instead).
    
• Language learning
  • Trying To Learn Spanish
  • Notes in Spanish Intermediate
  • NW Spanish News - NHK World Radio Japan
  • Rolling R’s: Free Spanish Lessons (Video Podcast)
  • Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing - funny and interesting tidbits on English grammar and writing style.
    
  • podictionary weekly - etymology of english words; lots of interesting little stories.
• Entertainment
  • The Onion Radio News - 1 minute segments that really brighten the day.
    
  • TEDTalks (audio) - TEDTalks are more inspirational than entertaining, but they are really well done and always have interesting topics.
    
  • Diffusion Science radio - Science radio show! from Australia! Done with irreverence and quirkiness! Has people I know in it! How could I not listen to this.

Are there more podcasts I would have liked to listen to? Certainly. I would love a podcast on computational linguistics. At the moment, even the bloggers on the topics are extremely rare.

I would also love a podcast on Scottish Country Dancing. There is just so much one could do with that. I know that at least one person have thought of it and given up as unsustainable, which is a real pity. I am tempted to start one myself just to prove her wrong.

Finally, I think there is a way to make a better language-learning podcast/video cast than the ones I found so far. I have mentioned some of the ideas to at least one person in a position to do that. Nothing happened yet, but such things take time. I will wait a while and, if nothing happens, will blog it here instead. I don’t mind prividing competitive advantage to a company that deserves it through good service, but will not sit on the ideas forever either.

To summarise the long post, I think that podcasting has legs and will succeed in the content niches that appeal to people based on their individual interests and needs. There is a lot of fluff and junk podcasts on the web at the moment, but it is getting better and, as with blogging, the absolute number of interesting podcasts is growing fast. It takes some time to find good content, but it really pays off in a long run.

This is the next step after the redesign of the society magazine to move forward in times, while preserving the original goals of the Society.

It is good to see the society recognising that internet is worth putting time and effort into, especially with members and branches all over the world.

Worth a browse.

While the rules for normal sports are easy to find, the ones used for two team competitive Scottish Country Dancing are somewhat harder to come by. Fortunately, I have the description here, courtesy of Roger Picken:

Two teams at a time are taught a simple dance (like Dunnet Head) during each “match” and the winner is the team which performs it best.

Apparently, this is a very popular activity. And, as described, capable of demonstrating that even a simple dance can present challenges by drawing upon one’s pattern memory, one’s sense of timing and distance and above all one’s ability to apologize after stomping on the partner’s foot during one of those advance and retire figures.

The floors at United Nations are not all that good to dance on (marble), but it is for a good cause. And it certainly gets a lot of attention from the UN visitors, as Saturday is an open day and we dance right in the main visitors area.

I have uploaded some of the pictures from the dance event to Flickr.

My weekest point was marked to be the description of positioning and formations. Not surprising, considering that they are described in a text form, but to understand them one has to imagine them visually. But maybe the technology could come to the rescue there. We shall see.

The next stage is Part 2 and 3. This involves actually teaching dances and learning to do crowd control keep dancers’ attention. I am sure that will be fun to practice (eventually).

Until then, I am still just another teacher-wannabe.

Tags: rscds

Tags: rscds

I am using flashcards to help me remember the facts. I have free software installed on my computer (Pauker) for the best results, but I also have an online copy to quickly practice at work. That stack is publicly available on Flashcard Exchange website, so anybody else could use it as well.

Alex.