This is the complete archive for the Open content Category. [Show full posts]
I wish wikis were less collaborative! I wish they were more like software projects, where if one wants to modify anything, one gets one’s own copy and does anything at all to it. No, I’m not really saying that there should be fewer centralised places of communal effort, these things are great… I just want [...]
[Keywords: archiving, backing up, Github, notes, Printable WeRelate, Wikipedia, wikis, Wikiteam] [No comments] [Permanent link]
Printable WeRelate now will synchronize all ‘starting-points’ pages (i.e. any page with a <printablewerelate> element), rather than being required to have just a single page listed on the command-line. This means that a cron job just needs to call sync.php at some interval (maybe nightly? of course, at some unusual number of minutes past the [...]
[Keywords: backups, genealogy, Printable WeRelate, syncronization, WeRelate] [No comments] [Permanent link]
Facebook wants to get people into their clutches, and obscure the fact that there is a world-wide web of stuff out there. They will probably succeed, too; more’s the pity. Still, I’ll continue to avoid them, just in case they do require my participation to ensure full world-domination. Facebook and Google spread ‘their’ net across [...]
[Keywords: articles, Facebook, internet, John Naughton, social networking, Tim Berners-Lee, web, world wide web] [No comments] [Permanent link]
This week’s Gazette has an announcement about Freopedia and the editing sessions we’re holding at the Fremantle Library. (That QR code, by the way, goes to http://www.fremantle.wa.gov.au/home/List_of_News_and_Media/November_2012/Help_promote_your_city; the code illustrating that article is for ‘Nastco stock photos’.) Relatedly, here’s an interesting article from the Smithsonian Institute about why it’s nice to edit Wikipedia with friends, [...]
[Keywords: editing, Fremantle, Fremantle City Council, Fremantle Gazette, Freopedia, Wikimedia, Wikipedia, wikis] [No comments] [Permanent link]
I wish I didn’t know how to code. For a programmer, the solution to every problem is to write more code. But sometimes, all that is needed is to write proper words. To explain things and explore them through prose. Not to remove oneself to the meta-realm of trying to understand the general structure of [...]
[Keywords: archiving, Phoebe Ayers, printing, Programming, storage, Wikimedia, wikis, words, Writing] [No comments] [Permanent link]
The first of the November wiki-Tuesdays this evening. Four of us, and a few new articles created. No power points! But perhaps that’ll be recified by next week.
[Keywords: Fremantle, libraries, meetings, Wikimedia, Wikipedia, wikis] [No comments] [Permanent link]
I was digging through some old files, and found an episode of Behind the Lines, a political radio programme from the Canberra station 2XXFM, hosted by Theo Coulthard. It’s from 2004. I think at the time I was meant to do something with it, so I’ve uploaded it to the Internet Archive: 2XXFM_Behind_the_Lines_2004-08-13.
[Keywords: 2XXFM, audio, Behind the Lines, Canberra, podcasts, radio, Theo Coulthard] [No comments] [Permanent link]
“Make things that can be archived (databases cannot be, not if you don’t also store the application that reads them). Make it possible to change one’s data structures (the ways in which things are stored — not the file formats, so much), and leave old data alone. To update, copy and morph; don’t try to [...]
[Keywords: archiving, databases, files, storage] [No comments] [Permanent link]
I’ve been tinkering with a QRpedia ‘plaque generator’ (freo.org.au/qrpedia) that takes a list of Wikipedia page names as input and spits out a printable set of QRpedia codes with ‘Wikipedia’ written across the top, and the article name below the QR code. The printing is a bit wonky, perhaps, but works good for me in [...]
[Keywords: Fremantle, Fremantle Gazette, newspapers, QR codes, QRpedia, Wikimedia, Wikipedia] [2 comments] [Permanent link]
Because I never make the time elsewhere to get anything done, I have decided to schedule in an hour or so — just a tiny bit of time, but regular (and here I am, for the second time) — every Wednesday afternoon at the local library, to focus on Wikimedia stuff. Not that I’m very [...]
[Keywords: Fremantle, Fremantle Society, laptops, libraries, QR codes, QRpedia, Roel Loopers, Wiki Wednesday, Wikimedia, Wikipedia, wikis, Wikisource] [No comments] [Permanent link]
I’ve just put up a little script I’ve been playing with that creates family trees from werelate.org data, using GraphViz. Here’s what my tree is currently looking like (click for a clickable SVG, if you’re using a good browser):
[Keywords: family, genealogy, graphics, GraphViz, Printable WeRelate, WeRelate] [No comments] [Permanent link]
This looks great. A community Linux host for email accounts, shell access, and a pile of other uses. They stand for “free access to computers; always yield to the hands-on imperative; freedom of information; decentralization; mistrust of bogus judgement criteria, such as degrees, age, race or position; world improvement”. They seem to be keeping things [...]
[Keywords: beards, hosting, Linux, ninthfloor.org] [No comments] [Permanent link]
Wikisource has begun, at long last, to be able to produce export formats for its books. PDF and Epub have been made available in the last week or so, the first via the WMF-wide book creator tool (which has just started supporting the <pages /> markup that is used on Wikisource to assemble transcribed books) [...]
[Keywords: books, epub, exporting, PDF, Reading, typography, Wikimedia, Wikisource] [No comments] [Permanent link]
We offered unlimited storage, unlimited bandwidth, for ever, for free — to anybody who has something to share that belongs in a library. —Brewster Kahle, Entertainment Gathering Conference 2007 (republished as a TED Talk). The above quote is at 14:19. The crux of it is of course “something that belongs in a library”. If one [...]
[Keywords: archiving, Brewster Kahle, cloud storage, GLAM, Internet Archive, libraries] [No comments] [Permanent link]
I read a few posts this morning about the wonders of open software and how it can help ‘the 99%’. Nothing new there, in the techno-optimism, nor with the “yes, but” reactions to it. It’s heartening to read it, though; there’s far too many people harping on about the delights of the iPhone. One thing [...]
[Keywords: Android, Dave Winer, decentralisation, Facebook, internet, Occupy, open standards] [No comments] [Permanent link]
The OpenStreetMap of Hilton currently looks like this: [source] Which is pretty good, considering some parts of Perth; but it could be much better. So I’ve downloaded some Walking Papers (it’s rather an easy way to get a map printed on a grid of individual pages, along with an index page; here, there’s seventeen A4 [...]
[Keywords: Figo's, Fremantle, Hilton, mapping, Openstreetmap, revolution] [No comments] [Permanent link]
I’ve just returned from the official launch of Freospace, the council’s new publishing platform for precincts (not to be too alliterative about it or anything), at the North Fremantle bowling club. It’s a collection of blogs, one for each precinct, to which precinct members can post news and whatnot—mostly minutes of meetings so far, but [...]
[Keywords: Blogging, Fremantle, Fremantle Council, Freospace, precincts] [No comments] [Permanent link]
Setting up a event calendar in FreoWiki: freo.org.au/wiki/Events.
[Keywords: calendar, Coming events, Fremantle, FreoWiki, Semantic MediaWiki] [No comments] [Permanent link]
Today I joined Wikimedia Australia.
[Keywords: community, societies, Wikimedia, Wikimedia Australia] [No comments] [Permanent link]
I am trying to get my head around all of the various places that Fremantle features (regularly, topically) on the Web. I want to figure out where the Fremantle Society’s website fits in, and what it might be used for (what might be missing from elsewhere). So I started from the outside, yesterday, and moved [...]
[Keywords: Blogging, community, Fremantle, Fremantle City Council, Fremantle Society, History, journalism, NaBloPoMo, recording, semantic web, websites, Wikimedia, Wikipedia] [One comment] [Permanent link]
Last week I needed a simple, reader-focused skin for a MediaWiki install, and I figured WordPress’ TwentyTen theme would be suitable. So I ported it to MediaWiki. The skin can be downloaded from Github, and I’ve also added it to the MediaWiki gallery of user styles.
[Keywords: design, MediaWiki, porting, skinning, themes, TwentyTen, wikis, wordpress] [5 comments] [Permanent link]
I have recently started helping to maintain The Fremantle Society’s website (fremantlesociety.org.au), and it’s reminding me of why I work in IT and of how much I’ve been missing being part of any greater endevour (with people, I mean, and working together for some purpose — as I once did with the Coop, for instance). [...]
[Keywords: causes, collaboration, Fremantle, Fremantle Society, heritage, MediaWiki, technology, The Co-operative Food Shop, websites] [No comments] [Permanent link]
The news that Flickr Commons is full prompted me, yesterday afternoon, to cycle down to Cantonment Hill to get some photos to add to the hill’s Wikipedia article. Why? Because I added a short note to Wikinews the other day about the imminent return of the hill to the FCC; and because I was reminded [...]
[Keywords: Cantonment Hill, Commons, photography, Wikimedia] [No comments] [Permanent link]
The last few weeks have seen a great number of my friends turn to Facebook (and, of course, I know exactly how many). It’s great, it’s exciting, it’s suddenly become so easy to organise things and we can now all talk about Facebookwhen we meet for a coffee at the Front; however, all is not [...]
[Keywords: archiving, Facebook, Placeblogging, politics, social networking, technology] [No comments] [Permanent link]
