Category: Life

Wiki Wednesday

As I’d hoped, I did go to Socialtext this afternoon for . It had been far too long since I’d gone to an informal gathering like this, at least outside IBM; I didn’t do a good job of catching names, but I had some interesting conversations about favorite computer languages (or maybe it was least-favorite languages…the first thing I heard was “Algol 68”), as well as talking to the Socialtext folks about my experiences installing Socialtext Open and what I wanted to do with it.

The main topic of the evening, though, was TiddlyWiki. Jeremy Ruston, TiddlyWiki’s creator, showed off its capabilities, talked about its genesis and support (in large part, from Ricoh Innovations), and about the community around it. Eric Shulman was also there, and he talked about some of the plugins he’d created (as part of TiddlyTools.

There was also some discussion of the various GTD tools built around TiddlyWiki — I plan to take a closer look at a few of them, especially MonkeyGTD and d3, because I keep falling off the GTD wagon, and maybe having a tool will help me. (Yes, I know that’s foolishly optimistic.)

Eventually, the discussion turned to Open Source software licensing — soon after that, the official meeting broke up, and the aftermeetings began. I spent some time talking with Jonas Luster about Django (and discovering that he liked Rexx).

Most of the group continued on to Gordon Biersch, but I decided to go home and see how Diane was doing — she’s a bit better than she had been (she describes it as having more periods of less vertigo than before), but she’s gonna stay home tomorrow, too. Reading is still quite a challenge for her, and driving would be out of the question.

Never volunteer….

Mishkan Tefilah is the long-awaited new siddur (prayerbook) of the Reform Movement (its current planned publication date is October, 2006). Shir Hadash was one of the congregations which piloted an early draft of the book (early enough that some of the Hebrew was printed in the Dingbat font instead of in Hebrew, which made for some interesting reading), and, as a regular at Shabbat Morning minyan, I had some opinions about its usefulness and worthiness.

So I volunteered (or got volunteered) onto the Adoption Committee — our job is to figure out how to introduce the new siddur to the congregation, and what to do with the previous two versions (we probably don’t want to use three different prayerbooks!). We had our first meeting tonight, and all of us left with homework. We have to attend three different styles of services over the next month or so and “journal” our reactions (good thing we’re Reform, because the only way to do a good job of journalling is to write immediately, even on Shabbat). We also have a few articles to read and some of us (including me) have to summarize an article for the group.

The newest draft of the siddur is substantially better than the one we piloted, but it’s still a big change from the familiar “Gates of Grey” interim prayerbook, and it’s going to be a challenge figuring out how to make the transition.

In other news…

Diane went to the doctor this morning and they confirmed the diagnosis of positional vertigo; the doctor used the Epley Maneuver on her, and she said she’s been somewhat better since. But the doctor also ordered an MRI, just in case — that’s scheduled for a week from now, although if Diane gets better, she doesn’t have to go through with it. She doesn’t expect to go to work tomorrow, though — driving would still be a bad idea.