Argh... trying to get caught up on this journal in the wee hours of the morning here in Odense. I've had pretty bad jet lag this trip -- I've never been particularly good with time changes, and the North-America-to-Europe switcheroo really throws me off. So by 2PM I'm falling down on my feet, but at 4AM I'm rarin' to go.
Odense has been a particularly nice place to visit. We got into Copenhagen a few days ago, and crashed at the Airport Hilton there. It's actually attached to the airport -- you can just walk right in. Maj got a good deal on a room, and we figured it would make sense to sleep with the baby right there, rather than fight the train system to find another hotel in the city centre.
After a free brunch including many different kinds of pickled fish, and a looong nap, we took the train into the Central Station in Copenhagen, right by Tivoli Gardens. There were lines around the block for the amusement park, but we skirted them and headed into the pedestrian area near City Hall.
Based on a recommendation in Wikitravel, we went to the line of cafés and restaurants off of Nyhavn, a sliver of water poking into the heart of the town. It was a great walk, and we had a casual sidewalk dinner at a place called Carl's Corner. The canal was lined with boats that had been converted to restaurants -- we may try one when we go back to Copenhagen this week.
tags: travel copenhagen jetlag nyhaven
Wikisym
The next morning I got up at dawn and got on a train to Odense for Wikisym. I missed my connection at the Central Station, and all the trains were running late, so I got real confused about where to go. The fact that I was carrying all of our luggage didn't help matters. But a few false starts later, I managed to get myself oriented and on my way.
The train ride was beautiful -- Denmark is a very pretty country, with rolling grassy hills and clusters of small, peak-rooved houses by the tracks. The trip from Copenhagen to Odense takes you from Zealand to Funen, across a long rail bridge. Very impressive.
Once I'd landed in Odense and got myself organized, I slipped into the back of the room for Wikisym to catch the last few minutes of Angela Beesley's keynote address. Angela might be the hardest-working person in Wikidom -- she's a tireless community organizer not only for the Wikimedia Foundation sites like Wikipedia but also for Wikia's sites.
After her talk, we did an Open Space session, which continued throughout the day, interlaced with the academic presentations. I'm getting to be a big fan of Open Space; it was really effective for RecentChangesCamp, and I think it works well for organizing a conference. Ted Ernst led the sessions, with the help of Gerard Muller of the Danish Open Space Institute.
Probably the most productive Open Space session for me was the one about non-text wikis -- using wiki techniques for video, audio, image and visual language editing. I'm fascinated by this stuff, and it's great to hear that some people are working with SVG and SMIL to do in-browser multimedia editing. The consensus is that the technologies Aren't There Yet but are around the corner.
The other major thing I think I picked up from this session was Eugene Eric Kim's discussion of Wiki Ohana. Ohana is the Hawaiian word for family; the Wiki Ohana is a project to develop some interoperability and a transmission of our Wiki principles to new members of the family. I think it's a great idea and I'm going to try to get involved further.
tags: wikisym2006 wikisym open space wiki ohana
Odense
We had a great walk around Odense's core pedestrian area. It's not exceptional for Northern European towns -- it reminds me of the Netherlands, and Maj of Switzerland -- but the car-free cobble-stone walking areas are a real relief after years in North America. We have some pedestrian areas in Montreal, of course, but not in the same way.
Odense is the childhood home of Hans Christian Anderson, and the city is decorated with statues of HCA, and of characters from his stories (the Tin Soldier, Thumbelina, etc.) It gives a kind of fairy-tale air to the town. I'm not sure they should feel so proud of being Anderson's childhood home, though -- from everything I've read, his childhood was nightmarishly cruel, and his abysmally poor family was harshly treated by the society here.
But, of course, that's in the past. Now, we had a real nice time walking around. Amita June likes tottering along on the cobblestones, and shouting really loud in the small streets to hear the echos. We ended up having dinner in a place called the Cuckoo Café -- great food under a spreading tree in a little square.
This morning -- no, yesterday morning -- Maj got up and took the first sessions, and Amita June and I slept in. We went off into town again to find a bakery, and shared a chunk of brunsviger, a sugary pastry that will probably rot out her tiny teeth. I had a cup of tea, which was less than satisfying. I've been trying to cut caffeine out of my life, so we've been having decaf at home, but they don't seem to serve it in cafés here. I'm a creature of habit, and I like the taste of coffee even if it doesn't have the caffeine oomph.
tags: odense amitajune decaf hca
CAPS LOCK SUCKS
In response to Lars's defense of CAPS LOCK: Lars, you ignorant slut. Caps lock has been the bane of online culture since the invention of mixed case in the late 1960s. It is a hallmark of clueless newbie-ism for people who are too analphabetic to remember the exceedingly simple English capitalization rules.
The only legitimate purpose for CAPS LOCK is for doing C macros and defines, but hey, who writes in C any more? Anyways, that's just lazy programming. A real programmer would write a macro to capitalize the names of other macros where used. That's just good programming practice.
Another important point is that CAPS LOCK is Eurocentric and imperialistic. What value does CAPS LOCK have for someone writing in Eritrean, Malayalam or Ojibwa? None at all. Yet dead white males like Lars Wirzenius want to force their CAPS LOCK cultural hegemony on an increasingly global culture. For shame.
The worst thing about CAPS LOCK is that it squats in the middle of the most important letters on the keyboard, like a rat trap waiting to spring. Big and ugly, it always catches your left pinky when you're reaching for Ctl or Shift or Tab or A or whatever. Key-chording is here to stay, and CAPS LOCK not only ignores this important UI development but actively interferes with it.
Modal interfaces are rightfully extinct, and CAPS LOCK needs to go the way of the dinosaur. It's time to eliminate this obsolete key once and for all.
(This message brought to you by The Taxpayers Against Caps Lock Coalition. I, Evan Prodromou, endorse this message.)
tags: caps lock ignorant slut