#Tools

(posted via a Dashboard widget no less!)

OK, so at this point you could probably slap an i in front of anything with an Apple logo and I’d buy it, but I did go out 15 minutes after it was possible to get a retail version of tiger and plunk down the cash for the install.

Due to family obligations, I didn’t get to install it until late last night (after backing up to my very handy iPod) and Tiger installed things in the usual effortless way that Apple seems to excel in, while I played Monopoly against my nephew.

Since I’m moving moved to new digs in a new city, one of the first thing I had to do was to get a new borrowing card for the Vancouver Public Library before a scary portion of my disposable income ended up in Amazon’s pockets.

Out on the internet though, where I basically live most of my professional life, people point at Amazon when they want to reference a book - not the library. What’s a poor, environmentally and cost-conscious book lover to do ?

The mighty Matt articulated the full changes made to Wordpress 1.5 for the Strayhorn release . You’ll notice AWWS is already up and running with 1.5.

Cliff Notes version for the ADD afflicted:

• Easier template and theming system
• Gorgeous new default template (Kubrick !)
• More robust content management beyond blog content
• Great comment management (and better spam blocking)
• Refined administration
• Faster, more secure, smaller, cuter, etc (overall size less than 1.2 !)
• Still free (as always)

I’ve had the release up from about an hour after it was in the wild and I’ve noticed (or perhaps imagined) that it seems to run much smoother. Cleaner code, faster execution, and maybe it’s just my imagination but I actually detect a hint of lemony freshness too.

One thing I’m finding a little difficult since I’m used to develop enterprise wide interoperability options for large organizations and companies is that scaling down to very small workgroups is much harder than it seems in terms of getting them to collaborate but still stick to standards that will allow the group to grow over time.

I mentioned the other week about chucking MediaWiki in favour of the much, much more stripped and simple Dokuwiki for my non-tech-savvy and predominantly dial up enabled political organization here in the Okanagan. That was a major coup. It’s scary how suddenly even luddites are using it. I love the fact they are though. I feel it’s made the whole group much more productive. Oh yes, and free – important for a group on an IT budget of zero.

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.

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.

I’ve been getting a lot of questions from friends again about what I’m using on OSX. A friend just had to switch over to a government provided Powerbook (yes, I hate her), I managed to switch several other friends to Firefox on a bunch of platforms, and another friend is thinking of retiring her ailing NT laptop for a shiny new iBook.

So, thought I’d better update the previous list , flesh it out, and structure it a little. Only desktop apps. If I’ve missed any categories or there is other stuff you think I should have in there (or apps I should know about), please let me know. Virtually all this software is free or open source.

I was kind of sad to read the review of the latest Carmen Sandiago game this morning.

First off, I remember the original game, Where in the World is Carman Sandiego ? from Brøderbund which I thought was a fantastic platform for teaching kids geography.

It was great fun and educational. It was not just a “memorize the capitals” flashcard type thing, but taught you some details about the country and culture there and allowed you to use deductive reasoning to figure things out. It also taught you the value of researching, going and looking up something, and in a lot of ways, was an inspired title educationally. You’d use the clues, research and storyline to determine where Carmen had escaped to in the world and then track her down there and recover the artifacts. OK, it was never that big a challenge to me (I am scarily good at world geography) but after having an adult last month ask me where exactly the Netherlands were, I definitely think that some people could use it even now. The things I loved about it were that it was engaging, played well and was chock full of educational content (I can still remember that is where I learned whose currency the zloty was).