Technical Stuff

Diane didn’t have to see any doctors today, so I went to work as usual, where I finished installing the Socialtext Open Wiki on a spare machine. The installation was, ummm, challenging — Socialtext says that improving it is a high priority — but possible.

The job might have been easier if I were more familiar with Perl, but I really don’t like that language — I had to use it back in the early 90’s when I was spending a lot of time on AIX (and, let’s face it, Perl is easier to deal with than ksh), but I never got into it. The syntax looks too much like random punctuation for me. I much prefer Python, which just feels right to me — it’s a worthy successor to Rexx, my first real scripting language (I refuse to count EXEC2 or CLIST, both of which I used because I had to).

But I digress.

Even though I’ve got Socialtext up and running, I’ll probably go back to MediaWiki for the project at hand. Socialtext is prettier, and probably would fit this application better, but I haven’t a clue where I could add support for using an external LDAP authentication and authorization tool — in contrast, I have that running for MediaWiki right now, exactly the way I need it. And running code is always a strong argument.

But I’m going to keep an eye on Socialtext, because it really would be nice to use. And besides, they’re hosting Wiki Wednesday tomorrow.

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.