Before the Mesh Conference last week, I ordered a copy of Bob Young's book Giving It Away, through lulu.com. It came in the mail today -- a 15-page pamphlet in about 10x the mass of packing material, cardboard, styrofoam and customs forms. The worst part being that after I ordered the book, I read the downloadable PDF version in about 20 minutes. What a waste of paper! I'm kind of embarassed.
Today's my first full day working on Wikitravel bugs and issues in more than a week. It'll be good to dig into the code again, since I'm eager to get some interesting things working. There are a number of bugs that need work, and a bunch of new features I want to get going.
One thing I'd like to do is make the siteinfo.xml file, as described at http://siteinfo.a9.com/ , work through the wiki, so that admins can edit it. I'd also like to do some content negotiation based on language, but I'm not sure that's going to work too well.
Another thing that's pretty crucial is to get some sort of single-signon going. I'm very interested in OpenID, which I think is an elegant, realizable distributed login system. I think that if users on Wikitravel have a "home" wiki (like en:, fr:, etc.) they could log in to other wikis with that user name, using OpenID. Theoretically, they could also log in to other MediaWiki installations, or other OpenID sites... I think it's a powerful system, and getting some MediaWiki momentum behind it would be a good thing.
tags: openid wikitravel lulu.com environment a9.com
I quote myself, part II: Me on Blogs
People who know me know that I've got a real bad relationship with blogs. Here's a quote from Pigdog Journal in 1999, when I started reviewing some of the proto-blogs that were around then. The "blog" name wasn't invented yet -- it was created a month or two later by the guy whose page I was linking to! -- so I called the ones that were around "links-to-links" sites:
"I hope my apoplectic hatred for this kind of site goes pulsing through the link below at the SPEED OF INFORMATION to EVERY SINGLE LINKS-TO-LINKS SITE IN THE WORLD and CLOTS there like a FIREBALL of HATE until the single author goes dicking around tomorrow morning to add more INSIPID CRAP to their site and then it goes TEARING DOWN THE WIRES like an INFARCTION of the ASS and burns through their fingernails like BAMBOO into their nerves and squats in their SPINAL COLUMN like an ANGRY RETARDED MONKEY and THUMPS THEM hard OVER AND OVER AGAIN FOREVER."
Pleasant fellow, eh? Anyways, Wikipedia's blog article is informative on history. I guess I missed the blog boat the first time around -- livejournal, blogger.com, and pitas.com all started just a few months after I wrote the above article.
tags: self-reference me mister bad pigdog blogs old school
Travelpig
My friend Dan Sneddon is in Peru for a 5-week trek. I'm pretty psyched he's writing about it; Dan is one of my most interesting friends, and he always seems to have fascinating things to write about.
tags: dan sneddon pigdog friends blogs
Leapfish
So, I was just looking at the Movers and Shakers on Alexa, and I saw this site called Leapfish.com. They seem to do some sort of automated domain name evaluations, and they've been moving up the Alexa ranks rapidly (probably because of blog posts like this).
I was interested to see that prodromou.name might garner $2400, but I was especially interested that pigdog.org could be worth more than $100K. I'm not sure any of this makes sense, but it's kind of interesting to see these automated estimates.
tags: leapfish domain names money
Wikipedia-bashing
I'm not sure I understand why so many people are so ugly and averse to Wikipedia. I mean, isn't it a little early to declare the death of Wikipedia?
Probably the biggest social problem that wikis face is the idea that the purpose of wikis is open editing. It is not; the wiki technique is a means to an end, not an end in itself. (Well, OK -- the most successful wikis have a separate goal. Some wikis do exists just to have open editing, but they don't seem to last long.)
SuperordinateGoal has some nice discussion on the matter.
Wikipedia continues to advance towards its goal of creating a free encyclopedia. I'm not happy about the fact that its culture is so conflict-based, but then again I haven't had to deal with that volume of edits.
It's nice that folks like Nicholas Carr can make some hay from Wikipedia-bashing, but doesn't the largest free reference work in the world deserve a little better?
tags: wiki wikipedia nicholas carr bashing
Biella -> Edmonton
I was pretty psyched to see that my friend Biella Coleman is moving to Edmonton. She's a really good thinker about free software and freedom and society and economies and all, and I hope this postdoc works out for her. Worse comes to worst, we'll have someone to visit in Edmonton. I mean, it's no New Brunswick (New Jersey), but it's something.
tags: biella coleman edmonton canada postdoc academics
Republic of Safety and World Provider at Club Lambi
Apparently the sleeping powerhouse of outsider rock, Ta-da Records, is releasing two new records from Republic of Safety and The World Provider, and they're having a release party at Club Lambi on Friday, May 26.
I'll be honest: I don't know jack about this Club Lambi, and Republic of Safety is a total null-entity to me (although Anne-Marie says they're the latest and greatest from T.O.). But the World Provider is, in my opinion, the most lovable kook in Montreal music. The fact that he's got a new record out is incentive to get me out of Dad Mode and go to a club on Friday.
Ta-da is a collaboration of friends Jeff and Patti, who are both smarter about music than I'll ever even get near to thinking about, so I bet this RoS is good, too.
tags: montreal rock club lambi world provider ta-da records jeff patti anne-marie republic of safety
Speaking of Republics
From Martin Krafft's note about using an unofficial ID at DebConf6, I found out about the interesting group called the TRansnational Republic (I think I capitalized that right). Interesting... I might get myself one of those ID cards.