Posts

But mostly just about the Word2DokuWiki macro.

Part of the interesting thing about working with a group I’m working with is that many of the users are substantively non-technical. In order to allow people to collaborate together I had installed a wiki and in fact, had chosen the most feature robust one I could think of, MediaWiki< - the same software that runs the mighty, mighty Wikipedia .

Not smart. Basically, even though a wiki is a pretty simple concept the interface and software and extra features were a little too much for the team(s). Concepts like watchlists and a need to have flexible ACL and easily administered security as well as occasionally restructure the wiki made MediaWiki, for all its power, a mistake. So, I looked for the most stripped down, pure wiki I could find and stumbled across Dokuwiki . Less is more. DokuWiki uses simple text files and directory structure and a simple ACL and security structure to provide a robust minimum of wiki features and does it well. It also allows quite easy restructuring of the wiki since you’re not using a database (ie. simple moving of pages between directories). Very, very handy and easy to understand and hack. Quite taken with it actually. Oh yeah, and backups are a simple tar and gzip of the root directory. Put that on a cron job and you’re set. Sweet.

Bit of a tardy post, but considering the time of year and the fact that we should be thinking about the less fortunate at this time of year, definitely topical…

A really fantastic and financially responsible organization, Architecture for Humanity recently announced its finalists for the Siyathemba project (dead link) whose aim is to battle AIDS in Africa with a low cost, combined sports facility and healthcare project. The finalists are linkied from the front page.

One of the scary things I find missing from people discussing the issue of our movement to new energy sources is the simple concept of the net energy argument. Simply put, this generally means that any system for generating power must yield more energy out of the generation than you put in to get it.

And while I do hold out a lot of promise for microgeneration (ie. a wind turbine or solar cell in every home), the fact is there are serious issues for large scale power generation currently.

I’d just like to applaud the Canadian Supreme Court for making what I consider a swift, wise and judicious ruling on constitutionality of same-sex marriage and defending the cause of human rights and equality in Canada.

I haven’t read the full ruling or opinions yet (this is all that is posted at time of writing dead link), but in summary :

1. Same-sex union is constitutional under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms
2. The high court also recognizes the religious freedoms of those who may be opposed to the idea of same-sex marriages religiously, clergy and groups can not be compelled to perform those marriages
3. Perhaps most importantly, the definition of marriage is a Federal responsibility and provinces are only concerned with the civil ceremonies surrounding the solemnizing of the union, thus preventing province’s from invoking the notwithstanding clause (and knocking down Alberta’s against same-sex union legislation)
4. The Supreme Court did avoid ruling on the traditional definition of marriage as a union between a man and woman and punted that down to Parliament

The ruling now paves the way for Parliament to introduce same-sex marriage legislation (which the PM has announced will happen rapidly). If the legislation passes Parliament, this means that Canada would join the Netherlands and Belgium as the third progressive country where same-sex marriage is legally recognized by the state.

Much like every other child of my generation that grew up in this hemisphere, Sesame Street was unbelievable formative. Not just educationally, but also in terms of constructing a worldview for an entire generation of a friendly, helpful and interesting universe (rather than the one Fox News seems to be constructing based on hyper-competitive, fearful, violence that rewards stupidity and bigotry).

So, I’m reading The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell at the moment, which is absolutely fascinating and insightful in its characterization of word of mouth epidemics, fads, and other social “flash fire” phenomenon. I cottoned on to it in doing background reading on the DeanSpace software and the Dean campaign phenomenon in the run-up to the last democratic candidate nomination.

I’ve been doing some pro bono work lately for (what I’m going to call for the sake of their stealth) a campaigning/advocacy organization which is trying to get off the ground and giving them some advice as to how to set up IT systems to make sure they can leverage their rather sparse human resources. It’s been interesting. Some choices have already been made at other levels as to what things should and shouldn’t be used and I have to admit that I’m not always in agreement that the best of breed things are being used.

SimplyMEPIS is a masterpiece of desktop usability. I have to say I am very impressed with it as a simple, immediately useful, and rock solid desktop Linux system that “just works.”

One of the reasons I switched to OSX was because I was constantly fiddling with Linux desktops on various distros and forever attempting to get them to work to the point where a lay person like my family members who are not computer literate could be installed and up and running with little difficulty. Until I’d encountered SimplyMEPIS it was like hunting the Grail.

If, like me, you worked for an NGO under constant surveillance by large governments and an under-assault investment bank, you’ve tended to become a little paranoid about security over the years.

The Spooks, the US NSA, actually has some excellent guides on securing systems, software, databases and hardware . Good stuff and very useful and practical.

I’m currently going over their recently released OSX Security Configuration guide redacted (pdf) and have to say it is quite impressive. Excellent stuff on the usual unix security and some excellent coverage of OSX specific stuff (beyond its excellent default security config) like FileVault and Keychain. Especially good if you’re a security whiz on Linux but need to know details on the differences with OSX.

As mentioned in the previous post, Flickr kind of rocks as a photo sharing community. Besides the taggability of photos and creation of feeds, you can even mark up photos and add notes for emphasis inside photos, tag and comment on them which is the bomb. Oh, and it has easy posting of photos to any blog service as well as creating arbitrary xml rss feeds. Quite cool.

Besides the fact it is a great little Canadian company out of Vancouver, BC they also use one of my favourite languages, PHP to get a lot of their functionality in place.

Highly informative, useful and beautifully designed Pushing Your Limits presentation by Doug Bowman for the Sydney 2004 Web Essentials conference.

Basically, tells you why and how you should design with CSS, Cascading Style Sheets. If you don’t know, Cascading Style Sheets, while it won’t save you and is not a solution for every interface problem you have, is this simple, almost boring technology which allows you to separate the presentation of your site from the actual data in it. Fantastic for design and allows almost effortless changing of site design.