Author: Roger HyamPage 3 of 4

I'm the Digital Information Development Officer at The Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh

Actionable, long-term stable and semantic web compatible identifiers for access to biological collection objects

Happy to see our paper on the use of internet technologies to mobilise specimen data finally in “print”. We are hoping this will add traction to the adoption…

How Green Is Edinburgh Really?

I’ve spent the last few days working on the data pipeline I first mentioned in The Cloud Lottery that is Scottish satellite imagery. This pipeline consists of a…

Automated sampling of perceived naturalness across Edinburgh

We instinctively know that a walk in the garden or somewhere else filled with natural beauty is good for us but it is difficult to justify expensive or…

The Cloud Lottery

I’ve been looking at producing a good quality Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) dataset for central Scotland so that I can investigate correlation between green space, biodiversity and…

Biophilomatics: A new field courtesy of IKEA?

At the end of last month I spent a Thursday evening at IKEA Edinburgh, not for the usual reason of eating chips in the café with my daughter…

Make a Bee Line for our Bees

A group of dedicate activists lead by Meg Beresford and her dog Pollaidh are setting off from the Botanics to walk to Wiston Lodge in the Scottish Borders to…

The first photographic portrait of a professional horticulturist?

This is the first professional photographic portrait of a professional horticulturist, the last horticulturist to live in the Botanic Cottage and the man who left the cottage behind….

Two Feet, One Mind – A contemplative walking workshop

We know that spending time in beautiful green spaces is good for our mental and physical well-being but there are things we can do to make the most…

Water of Leith Walkway Audio Tour

This week the Water of Leith Walkway Audio Tour app went live in the Apple iOS app store and the Google Play store. We have produced this in…

CETAF Specimen URI Tester

Back in July 2013 we held a workshop here at RBGE on the use of HTTP URIs (also known as URLs or just plain web addresses) for specimens….

First Audio Leaflet: Dawyck Scottish Trees Trail

Apps Apps Apps For several years now we have been looking for a way to make appropriate use of mobile phones to deliver interpretation material. Smart phones really…

Birds of Peramagroon: First of a series of guides?

This week saw the approval of the Birds of Peramagroon identification app in the Apple iTunes app store. It had been approved for the Google Live Android app…

Loveliest of trees the cherry now

LOVELIEST of trees, the cherry now Is hung with bloom along the bough, And stands about the woodland ride Wearing white for Eastertide. Now, of my threescore years…

Campbell’s Magnolia – What a treat!

 This last week we have all been enjoying the Campbell’s Magnolia (Magnolia cambellii ‘Charles Raffill’) that stands next to Inverleith House. It has been spectacular. Our specimen is…

Viburnum furcatum

The garden is really coming alive despite the cold weather. This Viburnum collected in Japan in 2003 caught my eye and the iPhone 6 camera does a really…

Fresh Green Southern Beech

 

Rhododendron X praecox

Despite the cold weather colour is coming into the garden.  This is Rhododendron X praecox growing by Imverleith House. The photo above was taken on an iPhone and…

How big was our garden?

It has become second nature to look to Wikipedia for a summary of a subject. So when I was looking for a brief paragraph on the history of…

The Tjipetir mystery and plant taxonomy

Peter Wilkie, intrepid Sapotaceae botanist, has been blowing the trumpet for plant taxonomy in an article entitled What’s in a name? A mass of analysis in The Scotsman…

Magical Autumnal Mandala Images

Just like last year I missed the construction of the mandala which makes it even more magical to stumble on. It was constructed on Monday and these photos…