Rod Page @rdmpage.bsky.social · 30/09/2026So this is a little crazy, I vibe coded a "Miller browser" to explore RDF graphs, based on an idea in iphylo.blogspot.com/2023/04/libr..., and it kinda works. Nodes as "cards", edges as "lists" (or maps in some cases), just wander through the graph. 080
Rod Page @rdmpage.bsky.social · 03/09/2026What!?!? You mean... I will have to write my code by hand? 😱 110
Rod Page @rdmpage.bsky.social · 29/08/2026Slowly images of DNA barcoding specimens are reappearing on BOLD View boldview.iphylo.org/recordset/DS.... It's a pity that @boldsystems.bsky.social puts obstacles in the way of sharing this part of their data. Biodiversity data is still trapped in silos of our own making. 071
Rod Page @rdmpage.bsky.social · 15/08/2026You didn't expect it to actually work did you? 😉 It works for me though... 100
Rod Page @rdmpage.bsky.social · 14/08/2026Just finished adding articles to @biodivlibrary.bsky.social scans of Transactions of the Zoological Society of London @zslofficial.bsky.social, which include some stunning illustrations of mammal and bird skeletons, such as these chimp and gorilla skulls biostor.org/reference/32... 1164
Rod Page @rdmpage.bsky.social · 14/08/2026Tool to display the use of a taxonomic name over time based on @biodivlibrary.bsky.social data is online at iphylo.org/bhl-name-tim..., the screenshot shows results for Physeter catodon versus Physeter macrocephalus (names for the sperm whale). This will be part of @tdwg.org workshop on BHL in Oslo. 33617
Rod Page @rdmpage.bsky.social · 24/07/2026New in @biodivlibrary.bsky.social are the chapters of "Vertebrate palaeontology of Australasia", including one of my favourite images, a giant goanna chasing a mihirung (Genyornis) www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/39941042 0185
Rod Page @rdmpage.bsky.social · 13/07/2026More #bhlsunday updates, I've now added articles to "Abhandlungen und Berichte des Königl. Zoologischen und Anthropologisch-Etnographischen Museums zu Dresden" biostor.org/issn/0233-125X, featuring a mix of anthropology, zoology, and reports on museums in the U.S. & Europe @biodivlibrary.bsky.social 091
Rod Page @rdmpage.bsky.social · 05/07/2026Argh! I posted low resolution images, these are a bit crisper. 110
Rod Page @rdmpage.bsky.social · 05/07/2026New for #bhlsunday is a volume of Arkiv för zoologi which includes "Über einen neuen Riesenkäfer (Goliathus meleagris) aus Süd-Kongo. Nebst einer Revision der Gattung Goliathus (♂♂)" with some elegant drawings of goliath beetles www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/65710175 @biodivlibrary.bsky.social 172
Rod Page @rdmpage.bsky.social · 01/07/2026I can't resist pointing out that you can see this work online in @biodivlibrary.bsky.social, e.g. www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/47135898 (Tafel 7 from v.1 of Systême silurien du centre de la Bohême). 182
Rod Page @rdmpage.bsky.social · 30/06/2026I've added nicer domain name for my "BOLD View"project which explores an alternative interface to the DNA barcoding data in @boldsystems.bsky.social, you can now view it at boldview.iphylo.org. Very much a work in progress, I keep getting distracted by how badly DNA barcode data needs curation. 060
Rod Page @rdmpage.bsky.social · 30/06/2026When querying for "bat" in a demo tool I created to search @biodivlibrary.bsky.social images I get manta rays popping up iphylo.org/bhl-image-se..., and it's only now that I see that rays resemble bats (although I can't help wonder if the underlying model has also been trained on images of Batman?) 1114
Rod Page @rdmpage.bsky.social · 24/06/2026Part of the process of generating the Darwin Core Archive for @GBIF creates a GeoJSON file, which GitHub displays as a map, enabling a quick check that the geographic coordinates make sense. 020
Rod Page @rdmpage.bsky.social · 04/06/2026I agree that search box and nothing else can be a bit daunting (e.g., OpenAlex). That does lkeave the question of what would be good starting points for browsing...? Re a Zotero-like interface, this feels a bit like a slippery slope to creating a bibliography manager online. 010
Rod Page @rdmpage.bsky.social · 30/05/2026If you are having trouble getting published, spare a thought for William Barnwell whose article "in the time oſ the Yellow ſever the copy was miſlaid and it was unavoidably poſtponed" so this is all we get www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/12181248 @biodivlibrary.bsky.social 160
Rod Page @rdmpage.bsky.social · 28/05/2026This is very preliminary, but this is an overview of every species in the Open Tree of Life, colour coded by whether their position in the tree is based on taxonomy only (dark colour) or includes phylogenetic information (blue). Phylogenetic coverage is sparse, mostly plants and vertebrates. 42710
Rod Page @rdmpage.bsky.social · 25/05/2026For "fun" I have created a MCP server for the Open Tree of Life and I asked it to interpret the definition of "Acrodonta". It found a node that matches the definition, but it is not labelled Acrodonta in the tree because Priscagama gobiensis is sister to all the other Acrodonta. 110
Rod Page @rdmpage.bsky.social · 24/05/2026Also adding more information about the studies that are relevant to each node. A lot of studies conflict with claim that rheas are sister to elephant birds + kiwis + emus + cassowaries, e.g. doi.org/10.1093%2Fsy... versus doi.org/10.1016%2Fj.... 021
Rod Page @rdmpage.bsky.social · 24/05/2026Messing about with adding PhyloPic images to the tree of life, e.g. iphylo.org/ott-viewer/i... 142
Rod Page @rdmpage.bsky.social · 13/05/2026More displacement activity, I've added a bunch of articles from Journal and proceedings of the Asiatic Society of Bengal to BioStor biostor.org/issn/0368-34..., they will be in @biodivlibrary.bsky.social in a day or so. Process is semi-automated, but those pesky plates will get you every time 😭 031
Rod Page @rdmpage.bsky.social · 09/05/2026Exploring 218,567 pages of @bhl-au.bsky.social content using a "gilbert" curve. Just some of the content added by @nicolekearney.bsky.social and her team, HT to @cajunjoel.bsky.social for putting @biodivlibrary.bsky.social images on AWS which made this visualisation possible. 2136
Rod Page @rdmpage.bsky.social · 06/05/2026More tweaks to the Open Tree of Life viewer. It now distinguishes between taxa that are placed solely based on taxonomy rather than any phyklogenetic evidence. For example Goniurosaurus is mostly based on taxonomy iphylo.org/ott-viewer/?... has shown by a polytomy with lots of dashed lines. 081
Rod Page @rdmpage.bsky.social · 04/05/2026I've released my experimental Open Tree of Life browser at iphylo.org/ott-viewer. You can navigate the Open Tree of Life synthesis tree in all its (complicated) glory. Single click on a node for information, double click to focus on that node, search for node by name. 35512
Rod Page @rdmpage.bsky.social · 04/05/2026And @rbgkew.bsky.social might be surprised that their journal "Bulletin of Miscellaneous Information (Royal Gardens Kew)" has over seven million records, mostly to do with "Magnetic confinement fusion research" openalex.org/works?filter... 010
Rod Page @rdmpage.bsky.social · 04/05/2026Anybody here from #openalex because I am seeing some batshit crazy things on the web site. For example openalex.org/works?filter... is a record for @inaturalist.bsky.social which is apparently provided by "Open MIND" and the focus of iNaturalist is "Military Technology and Strategies" Huh? 110
Rod Page @rdmpage.bsky.social · 21/04/2026Latest displacement activity is playing with an idea for showing the Open Tree of Life opentreeoflife.github.io using summary trees and animated transitions (with some help from Claude Code and OpenAI) #opentreeoflife #phylogeny 071
Rod Page @rdmpage.bsky.social · 20/04/2026"Why funders shouldn’t withdraw money from open access publishing" www.samuelmoore.org/2026/04/14/w... by @samuelmoore.org 021
Rod Page @rdmpage.bsky.social · 19/04/2026Here's another example, this time Queensland in Australia. bold-view-bf2dfe9b0db3.herokuapp.com/geo.php?coun... This time the polygon isn't a close match for the actual state of Queensland, suggesting that either some barcodes have the wrong coordinates, or they didn't come from Queensland. 020
Rod Page @rdmpage.bsky.social · 19/04/2026Inspired by an old Flickr post code.flickr.net/author/flick... I built a tool to display a polygon around DNA barcode localities in the @boldsystems.bsky.social database. For example, here is Switzerland bold-view-bf2dfe9b0db3.herokuapp.com/geo.php?coun... as outlined by DNA barcodes. 161
Rod Page @rdmpage.bsky.social · 13/04/2026Here's a screenshot of text in the PDF, I get different characters depending on whether I copy from the PDF, or from the PDF rendered in mozilla.github.io/pdf.js/. 100
Rod Page @rdmpage.bsky.social · 09/04/2026Ah, it looks like Android has the original app only, which is the same as “classic” on the iPhone, which also has a newer app, confusingly called iNaturalist, but with a different icon. 100
Rod Page @rdmpage.bsky.social · 09/04/2026Creating a map of @biodivlibrary.bsky.social geographic coverage using www.metabase.com and because the colours are pale green and red, I can't see anything 😭 What fool chose these colours?! And no, there won't be any alt text because I can't see anything to describe 🤬 000
Rod Page @rdmpage.bsky.social · 09/04/2026The bulk of @gbif.org data comes from citizen science... and people like birds... a lot 010
Rod Page @rdmpage.bsky.social · 09/04/2026Four years ago as @gbif.org passed 2 billion records, I tweeted that GBIF was, to a first approximation a database of birds x.com/rdmpage/stat.... Four years later we have nearly twice as many records (3.6 billion) and... it's still a mostly a database of birds www.gbif.org/occurrence/t... 12814
Rod Page @rdmpage.bsky.social · 03/04/2026Over in the @biodivlibrary.bsky.social forum forum.biodiversitylibrary.org/t/experiment... I’ve been experimenting with @latest.allmaps.org to georeference a BHL map. This looks like it has a lot of potential. 041
Rod Page @rdmpage.bsky.social · 20/03/2026This is the most bizarre approach I’ve seen to sharing open access data. To just view it you need to sign in doi.org/10.25919/vac... Why does Australia’s National Biodibersity DNA Library need to know who you are just to be able to view CC-BY-NC data. What are they afraid of? 162
Rod Page @rdmpage.bsky.social · 17/03/2026Messing about with #ClaudeCode, #RDF and #SPARQL, building an app that enables multiple queries in same window, geographic and network display, and exploring the "schema" implied by the entitity types and their connections. I want something like the apps we have to query SQL databases. 040
Rod Page @rdmpage.bsky.social · 16/03/2026Interesting, can you give me an example? For the default example on the site, I cropped, and the download looks fine (can also download SVG for vector image). There is always github.com/rdmpage/simp... if you want to go into more detail. Below is app screenshot, and downloaded JPG. 110
Rod Page @rdmpage.bsky.social · 15/03/2026The extra step is to open Terminal and run "xattr -cr GISLookApp.app". The reason for this is that although the app has been signed with my Apple Developer Certificate, it hasn't gone through the App Store. If your icons for GIS files don't change, you may have to log out and in again. #GISChat 100
Rod Page @rdmpage.bsky.social · 15/03/2026I've realsed GIS QucickLook, a macOS app that enables Finder to display previews of your GIS files, such as ESRI shape (.shp) files and GeoJSON files. Your file icons now show the corresponding maps! See github.com/rdmpage/gis-... (note that installation requires one extra step) #GISChat 2103
Rod Page @rdmpage.bsky.social · 14/03/2026The latest journal in @biodivlibrary.bsky.social to be partitioned into articles is "Brimleyana", named after the brothers en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert... and en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clement.... Articles are in BioStor biostor.org/issn/0193-4406 and BHL www.biodiversitylibrary.org/bibliography... 010
Rod Page @rdmpage.bsky.social · 12/03/2026The problem with @anthropic.com Claude Code is that you start foolhardy projects such as porting github.com/berniejenny/... to more recent macOS. A day of the most obscure debugging I've ever seen... but it works* - Finder can display a preview of the shapefiles (.shp) beloved of #GIS folks. 030
Rod Page @rdmpage.bsky.social · 11/03/2026One of my favourite scenes in “A Very Peculiar Practice” … I think of this every time I am reticent about going to what feels like yet another conference. 020
Rod Page @rdmpage.bsky.social · 11/03/2026I wonder if the length of time it would take to expose the @xkcd.com "imposter" is a good predictor of how a field reacts to generative AI? The easier it is to "fake" it, the more worried you might be about AI. xkcd.com/451/ 010
Rod Page @rdmpage.bsky.social · 10/03/2026And the hemipteran hosts do get pretty stuffed full of ♀ strepsipteran parasites, as Fig. 14 from doi.org/10.1071/IT98... shows 6/n 110
Rod Page @rdmpage.bsky.social · 10/03/2026Why @gbif.org? Well the map for the barcodes in the BIN had a wide geographic distribution, despite Elenchus varleyi being described from Australia. 110
Rod Page @rdmpage.bsky.social · 10/03/2026I gave Claude a tree for the barcodes, and also a copy of a paper describing the strepsipteran species Elenchus varleyi that was often identified as the source of a barcode 2/n 110
Rod Page @rdmpage.bsky.social · 09/03/2026With a little help from Claude Code, BOLD-View now display maps for #dnabarcode BINs based on @boldsystems.bsky.social data. Here is a geographically structured group of millipede barcodes bold-view-bf2dfe9b0db3.herokuapp.com/record/GBMNF... belonging to "Cherokia georgiana"... 240
Rod Page @rdmpage.bsky.social · 06/03/2026The International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN) is calling for nominations for new members doi.org/10.21805/bzn... The call is behind a paywall 🤦♂️ but text is below. Current commissioners are listed here www.iczn.org/about-the-ic... #taxonomy #iczn 134