I note with sadness the passing earlier this month of Dr. Karen Spärck Jones, a British computer scientist and research pioneer at the intersection of information retrieval and natural language processing.

In the mid 90s, i was a younger researcher at BBN Technologies doing government-funded work on information extraction. At that time, DARPA’s TIPSTER program was the key American funding vehicle for much research in both information retrieval and information extraction. Consequently, many important figures in the field came to TIPSTER conferences, either to report on funded research or as observers. I recall several positive technical interactions with Prof. Spärck Jones, who graciously treated me, not as the bit player i actually was, but as a potential colleague with ideas to share. Her accessibility despite her well-established (and well-deserved) reputation made an impression on me at the time.

If you can read this, you’re doing better than most. Frustratingly, my web site and blog are still fouled up after three weeks following a mistake by my hosting service. I’ve been holding off on more blog posts waiting for them to resolve things, but i’m losing hope. I wish i could say the worst is past, but now i’m a skeptic.

I’ve had good experiences for the past few years with Lunarpages, my provider, but this is just maddening: tech support says “it’s a sys admin issue”, and i apparently have no recourse other than waiting for them to fix things according to whatever timetable they choose. I’d jump ship at this point, but rebuilding elsewhere and administering the databases and third-party applications is more work than i can undertake right now, so i guess they own me for the time being.

Consider this a big negative recommendation for Lunarpages as a hosting service.