I was up late last night upgrading Wikitravel from MediaWiki 1.8.3 to the new 1.9.3. It took a long while, since the 404-handler caching extension that I built for MediaWiki a couple of years ago (which keeps Wikitravel running on a single, albeit quite big, server) is pretty invasive, and a lot of things had changed with the way users and stuff worked, so I had a lot of hacking to do. But it's stable now, even if some watchlist stuff is a little funky.
Doing major upgrades is a real bear for me, but I'm happy when it's over.
tags: mediawiki wikitravel caching extension 404 handler
Home people
Maj had her final oral exam in her French class tonight, which left me and Amita June home alone to fend for ourselves. We had a lot of fun.
First, I had to do the day's dishes (lunch and breakfast) that were sitting in the sink. I brought the footstool around to the sink from our laundry room, and she stood on it and helped me with the dishes. After I'd finished washing a dish, she'd carefully fill it up with water, dump it out, then put the dish in the dishrack next to her. Pretty good for 18 months old.
That went so well that I moved the stool over to the kitchen table where I cut tofu and vegetables for dinner. I gave her pieces of pepper, cabbage, and carrot while I was working, and she nibbled on them a bit and then practiced chopping them... with the handle of her mother's toothbrush, which she'd stolen out of the bathroom earlier in the day.
After dinner, we had a bath, then we read some books, and then she went to sleep on my shoulder while I walked around her room and sang, like she's been doing for the last 2 months. It was another good night.
tags: home amita june dishes home with papa
Soft launch
We launched two new Wikitravel versions overnight, too: Catalan Wikitravel and Finnish Wikitravel.
Catalan recently, uh, catalyzed from a blog post by Carme Pla¹. Readers and the Catalan-speaking community rallied to our Catalan Wikitravel Expedition and got the project rolling. I got the site set up last night and they've started translating key help, style manual and policy guidelines already.
Mean, Finnish had been simmering on the back burner for a while, so we got it launched at the same time. My friend and colleague Jani Patokallio is a Finn and a longtime and well-respected Wikitraveller; I'm glad he's taking leadership of the project. Finns have such disproportionate contributions to Free Software and Free Culture; I'm glad to have that Freedom Powerhouse Country all working together on Wikitravel now. And, y'know, I'm going to totally rack up a ton of HugAFinn points off of this.
¹ Actually, now that I think of it, I have no idea if "Carme Pla" is a real name or even a plausible personal name in Catalan. It sounds like it to me, though.
tags: fi ca expedition finnish catalan wikitravel
coComment
A couple of months ago Don Marti recommended that I check out coComment, and I made a mental note and then forgot to follow up. But I started using the system a few days ago, and now I wonder how I ever lived without it.
coComment is a Firefox plugin that keeps track of when you post a comment on a blog or some other comment-handling system. It then keeps track of the conversation that happens after you comment.
I have a lot of standing keyword searches on Technorati and Google Blog Search, and if people are talking about a subject I'm interested in, I'll usually jump in and talk about it. But sometimes I'll go back months later and see that people asked me questions and continued the conversation without me. So coComment is exactly the kind of cross-the-Internet aggregation service I need.
tags: cocomment comment blogs firefox
Sage
Speaking of keeping up with blogs, I've realized in the last week that I've outgrown Live Bookmarks for following RSS feeds. Rather than going with a Web-based RSS reader like Google Reader or Bloglines, I opted instead for the in-browser reader, Sage.
It's simple, it does what I need it to do, and it supports OPML so I can move my subscriptions somewhere else if something better comes along. Good piece of software.
My best candidate for something better coming along? Probably if I get my Netvibes home page customized well enough to handle my 50-60 feeds. And maybe when Netvibes gets smart and becomes and OpenID identity provider (or at least figures out a way that you can log into your ID when you start a browser session).