deuce of all trades

New Gmail themes

2008-11-20T23:11:00.001+10:00

My GMail account suddenly sprouted some gorgeous themes! This is the "candy" one, which I like coz of the awesome GMail logo. Almost as good is the ASCII art logo from the "terminal" theme. The "ninja" theme changes GMail's star icon into a ninja star.Seems like a weird thing for Google -- the lords of clean minimal web design -- to do, but whatever. I called the return of the "indulgent/ornate" design ethic a few years back, maybe this is the GOverlords catching up.

Posted by email from Daniel Baird (posterous)

This iPhone bug report is an entertaining read

2008-11-20T22:45:00.001+10:00

Either it's a bug, or her husband is cheating on her. Situations like this make me smile. http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1786497

Posted by email from Daniel Baird (posterous)

NetBeans wants to give you a T shirt

2008-10-21T20:16:00.002+10:00

NetBeans turned 10 today. And er.. like all 10 year olds, she's giving her stuff away.

http://www.netbeans.org/birthday/decathlon.html

I've used NetBeans to build (along with co-workers) an enormous graphical document editor, including subversion support. I have to say, the "Matisse" Swing GUI editor is the best GUI layout tool I've ever used.

What's Eclipse using for GUI layout these days?

Oh, and don't forget the Ruby and JavaScript support. Nice!

Schindler's Lift

2008-10-04T14:50:00.001+10:00

I can't possibly be the first person to make this joke, but here goes:
Look! Schindler's Lift!

WHitWoT #8 (Feb 20-March 4, 2008)

2008-04-27T17:05:00.002+10:00

WHitWoT #8 (Feb 20-March 4, 2008)

Welcome to the 8th edition of "What Happened in the World of TiddlyWiki", or WHitWoT for short.

WHitWoT summarises what's happened lately on the TiddlyWiki mailing list and elsewhere in the TiddlyWiki world.

The WHitWoT team has had a few weeks of too-busy, so here's a bumper two-week issue to start catching up.

News and Stuff

Major new release of TWAB (TiddlyWiki Address Book)!

Vincent DiBartolo announced version 2.0 of TWAB — the TiddlyWiki Address Book. It adds some great features such as the ability to export and import contacts to any CSV format, with preset formats for Google, Yahoo, MSN and Outlook.

TWAB's documentation is among the best I've seen for any TiddlyWiki vertical. Check it out.

[source] http://www.tiddly-twab.com
[thread] http://groups.google.com/group/TiddlyWiki/browse_thread/thread/ebc338a9aac9e7a7

In addition, TWAB 2.0 was released using the TiddlyWiki 2.2.4 core. TWAB user Yvonney requested an update to the 2.3.0 core. Vinny has since made a 2.3.0-based version of TWAB available.

[source] http://www.tiddly-twab.com/twab-tw230.html
[thread] http://groups.google.com/group/TiddlyWiki/browse_thread/thread/76323807324d3cc4

TiddlyWiki for the iPhone

TiddlyWiki uploading legend BidiX announced his new UploadTiddlerPlugin, which works like his well-known UploadPlugin but gains a huge performance boost by uploading individual tiddlers as they are modified, rather than the entire TiddlyWiki every time.

UploadTiddlerPlugin is particularly useful in BidiX's iTW. iTW is a TiddlyWiki with the look and feel of an iPhone application, built to run in iPhone Safari. With UploadTiddlerPlugin, your TiddlyWiki is usable via your iPhone anywhere, even when you're using the iPhone's slow EDGE connection to the internet.

[thread] http://groups.google.com/group/TiddlyWiki/browse_thread/thread/c8881c147f8593f9
[source] http://TiddlyWiki.bidix.info/
[source] http://itw.bidix.info/

Online Discussions

Styling buttons in a specific tiddler

Alex Hough wanted to remove the thin border around a button in a specific 'TEST' tiddler — e.g. using
<<newTiddler label:'Name_of_button' title:'Title_new_tiddler' tag: tag_new_tiddler>>
FND explained that this was a CSS specificity issue that could be solved adding a line in a StyleSheet type tiddler, such as
#tiddlerTEST a.button { border: none; }
He added that such issues were mentioned[1] in the TiddlyWiki.org community wiki.

[thread] http://groups.google.com/group/TiddlyWiki/browse_thread/thread/1b1d59437c70f7f4/
[1] http://www.tiddlywiki.org/wiki/Tiddler-Specific_Styles

Using angle brackets in macro parameters

Nicolas Syssoieff wanted to customise his newTiddler button so that new tiddlers would come with some help text inside. He had a "hints" tiddler, so adding the tiddler macro into new tiddlers would do the trick, but because of the angle brackets, it was hard to tell the newTiddler macro to include the tiddler macro properly.

Nicolas tried <<newTiddler text:"<<tiddler Hints>>">> but this didn't work. Luckily two answers to escape the >> were given:

by FND: <<newTiddler text:{{"<<tiddler Hints>" + ">"}}>>
By Eric Shulman: <<newTiddler text:{{"<<tiddler Hints>\>"}}>>

[thread] http://groups.google.com/group/TiddlyWiki/browse_thread/thread/db62515a7f510b91

Quick Shots

open a local TiddlyWiki from the command line:
http://groups.google.com/group/TiddlyWiki/browse_thread/thread/b32da7f16e1ef117

give a long tiddler a clickable table of contents:
http://groups.google.com/group/TiddlyWiki/browse_thread/thread/7682a608dce07fca

Postdrivel

Every story in this edition came from WHitWoT's contributing writer, ocalTW. Thanks, ocal!

;Daniel

About WHitWoT

WHitWoT is distilled from the social wisdom of the TiddlyWiki Google Group by the WHitWoT team. Editor Daniel is a long time TiddlyWiki fan, runs tiddlyspot.com along with Simon of MonkeyGTD and MPTW fame, and wonders if his one line contribution to the core code is still there.

Find (and subscribe to) WHitWoT at Daniel's blog:
http://blog.deuceofalltrades.com/search/label/WHitWoT
..and posted ocasionally at the TiddlyWiki Google Group:
http://groups.google.com/group/TiddlyWiki

WHitWoT #7 (Feb 13-19, 2008)

2008-03-01T18:10:00.001+10:00

WHitWoT #7 (Feb 13-19, 2008)

Welcome to the seventh edition of "What Happened in the World of TiddlyWiki", or WHitWoT for short. Yes, this edition is a week late.

WHitWoT summarises what's happened lately on the TiddlyWiki mailing list and elsewhere in the TiddlyWiki world.

News and Stuff

CalendarPlugin now has linked week numbers

(by ocalTW)

Kashgarinn asked for (and received) an update of TiddlyTools' CalendarPlugin to get a column with the week number, which when clicked would link to a tiddler for the week.
For enhanced date display (including popups), add DatePlugin.

[source] http://www.TiddlyTools.com/#CalendarPlugin
[thread] http://groups.google.com/group/TiddlyWiki/browse_thread/thread/197c5edf7f3c82a3
[DatePlugin] http://www.TiddlyTools.com/#DatePlugin

Also, a bug with years has been fixed:
[thread] http://groups.google.com/group/TiddlyWiki/browse_thread/thread/248571e4c3552c5d

Online Discussions

Using a shared drive to share a TiddlyWiki

(by ocalTW)

kdschultz wanted to place the file on a common shared drive, where his students may access it and hopefully make corrections/changes. But each time the file gets updated a whole new file is saved to disk.
A proposed solution was to install LessBackupsPlugin[1].
Setting the txtBackupFolder subdirectory for backup files on the advanced options dialog wouldn't help as the options under the options slider and in AdvancedOptions are stored in browser cookies — i.e. in each user's browser. But in order to make those options permanent and apply them to all users, it is possible to set the default options in a TiddlyWiki once and for all as explained on the TiddlyWiki wiki[2].

[thread] http://groups.google.com/group/TiddlyWiki/browse_thread/thread/b6821422fbed7061
[1] http://lessbackupsplugin.tiddlyspot.com/
[2] http://www.tiddlywiki.org/wiki/Configuration_Options

troubleshooting an UploadPlugin setup

(by ocalTW, from the TiddlyWikiFR group)

Arnaud couldn't set up BidiX's UploadPlugin[3], which lets you save your TiddlyWiki to a Web server. He'd done everything mentioned in the documentation[4].
The answer came from BidiX who asked him to browse to the store.php file on the Web server. As the result was a pop-up window with the content of the file itself, the debug was easy: PHP was not enabled on Arnaud's Web server!

[thread] http://groups.google.com/group/TiddlyWikiFR/browse_thread/thread/7effab125a4a71f9
[3] http://tiddlywiki.bidix.info/#UploadPlugin
[4] http://tiddlywiki.bidix.info/#UploadPluginDoc

Saving from Safari is still tricksy

Every now and then someone asks about getting Safari saving properly, like this thread from tonyt3. Perhaps this area could benefit from a really good wiki page. If you're a Safari user and you'd like to give back to the TiddlyWiki community, here's your opportunity!

[thread] http://groups.google.com/group/TiddlyWiki/browse_thread/thread/d8f1625a97d1ca38

Open a URL in an overlay window, lightbox style?

Hugo Pires wants to open an external window in a big popup window. He's found a sample of what he wants, but isn't sure if it's usable as a TW plugin. Jump in if you have any good ideas.

[thread] http://groups.google.com/group/TiddlyWiki/browse_thread/thread/5a39fd9eaad40680

Adding a second menu-type area

Juergen a.k.a. spacevulture asked about adding another box to the display for some fixed content, like another MainMenu. FND's suggestion hit the mark, and now Juergen has sidebar/menu areas on the left, top and right. This is one of the things I love about TiddlyWiki; things that you think should be possible, generally turn out to be not only possible, but really easy.

[thread] http://groups.google.com/group/TiddlyWiki/browse_thread/thread/5697fddf95a575c6

Quick Shots

link to local files:
http://groups.google.com/group/TiddlyWiki/browse_thread/thread/c3b2226684abf98e

escape wiki syntax with triple double quotes:
http://groups.google.com/group/TiddlyWiki/browse_thread/thread/8a7b5636b7951753

user lowercase for custom field names:
http://groups.google.com/group/TiddlyWiki/browse_thread/thread/f25428cc61786e25

Postdrivel

I'm experimenting with the coverage of WHitWoT — basically being more picky about what I include. Let me know your opinion at the address whitwot at g mail dot com.

;Daniel

Contributors

Thanks to ocalTW who contributed some stories to this issue.

About WHitWoT

WHitWoT is distilled from the social wisdom of the TiddlyWiki Google Group by Daniel Baird and others. Daniel is a long time TiddlyWiki fan, runs tiddlyspot.com along with Simon of MonkeyGTD and MPTW fame, and wonders if his one line contribution to the core code is still there.

Find (and subscribe to) WHitWoT at Daniel's blog:
http://blog.deuceofalltrades.com/search/label/WHitWoT
..and posted ocasionally at the TiddlyWiki Google Group:
http://groups.google.com/group/TiddlyWiki

WHitWoT #6 (Feb 6-12, 2008)

2008-02-20T21:57:00.001+10:00

WHitWoT #6 (Feb 6-12, 2008)

Welcome to the 6th edition of "What Happened in the World of TiddlyWiki", or WHitWoT for short. WHitWoT summarises what's happened lately on the TiddlyWiki mailing list and elsewhere in the TiddlyWiki world.

This edition includes stories from ocalTW, WHitWoT's first contributing editor! If you want to be a contributor to WHitWoT like ocalTW, please contact Daniel at this email address: whitwot at gmail, then a dot, then com.

News and Stuff

Make your dates prettier!

Simon Baird announced a new plugin, PrettyDatesPlugin. It's basically a wrapup of some JavaScript by John Resig to turn "Jan 3 2008" into "two weeks ago". That's what you really want to know anyway, right?

This would have featured in WHitWoT earlier, but the conversation about alternate names (SmartDates, SexyDates, RelativeDates..) went on for ages :)

[source] http://prettydatesplugin.tiddlyspot.com/
[thread] http://groups.google.com/group/TiddlyWiki/browse_thread/thread/a7e9fa7e9dd8b378

FND joins Osmosoft

Osmosoft is the little branch of BT that cares about TiddlyWiki, and they've just hired on FND, who is responsible for many answers on the TW mailing list and most of the wiki at tiddlywiki.org.

Hopefully some remuneration will let FND keep up the work he puts into the TiddlyWiki community.

[osmosoft] http://osmosoft.com
[thread] http://groups.google.com/group/TiddlyWiki/browse_thread/thread/ae313576850dc365

Gracefully shorten URLs

FND also found time to produce a little plugin that overrides the way TiddlyWiki displays URLs. The ShortURLPlugin snips out the middle of any superlong URLs when they are shown on screen (without changing the URL the link actually goes to). If your nice layout gets ruined by long URLs, check it out.

[source] http://fnd.lewcid.org/tmp/ShortURLPlugin.html
[thread] http://groups.google.com/group/TiddlyWiki/browse_thread/thread/e356a266c2739817

Online Discussions

Saving to tiddlyspot from Prism

Weidner asked if anyone had success uploading to tiddlyspot.com using Prism[1]. No answers for this one.. has anyone saved to an UploadPlugin site from Prism?

[thread] http://groups.google.com/group/TiddlyWiki/browse_thread/thread/bd8e3d883e88dbac
[1] http://wiki.mozilla.org/Prism

Make a link into your bug database with this: <<bug>>

Prompted by a request from Harshad, resident guru Eric Shulman explains how to use the AliasPlugin[2] to easily make links like this:
http://bugzilla.mysite.com/bug_id=100
..by just typing the bug number like this:
<<bug>>

[thread] http://groups.google.com/group/TiddlyWiki/browse_thread/thread/184537f4222b8783
[2] http://www.tiddlytools.com/#AliasPlugin

Scheduling backups of a tiddlyspot site

(by ocalTW)

XENO wanted a free solution on Windows to schedule a backup of his tiddlyspot site. The proposed solution was to use Microsoft Scheduled Tasks[3] and Wget [4].
Nevertheless, a security issue was raised, as the username and password must be written in plain text in the command line that is scheduled.
Simon Baird also suggested downloading the http://USERNAME.tiddlyspot.com/download page.
An open question was how to check that a change had been made on the TiddlyWiki page. As Bob Paige remarked, if it doesn't change often, excessive backups would be causing extra traffic for no reason.

[thread] http://groups.google.com/group/TiddlyWiki/browse_thread/thread/9bcc7ea0c3cc515e/0effad86c3ee9718
[3] http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308569
[4] http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/wget.htm

Quick Shots

Postdrivel

Thank you to contributing editor ocalTW, who actually wrote up three articles for this issue of WHitWoT, but thanks to a difference in timezone, two of them actually fall into next issue's date range. For issue #7 I plan to standardise on GMT (currently WHitWoT dates are in my local timezone of GMT+10).

If you'd like to lend a hand preparing WHitWoT, please email me at gmail.com, username whitwot and let me know.

;Daniel

About WHitWoT

WHitWoT #5 (Jan 30-Feb 5, 2008)

2008-02-12T19:47:00.000+10:00

WHitWoT #5 (Jan 30-Feb 5, 2008)

Welcome to the fifth edition of "What Happened in the World of TiddlyWiki", or WHitWoT for short.

WHitWoT summarises what's happened lately on the TiddlyWiki mailing list and elsewhere in the TiddlyWiki world.

News and Stuff

French translation of TiddlyWiki 2.3.0

Our only news of note this week comes from the mysterious ocalTW, who has translated TiddlyWiki into French. The translation is available from www.tiddlywiki.fr, and by the look of that site ocalTW is expecting to maintain his translations for a while to come. I've linked to what I think is the announcement on the French language TiddlyWiki Google Group :)

[source] http://www.tiddlywiki.fr/
[thread] http://groups.google.com/group/TiddlyWikiFR/browse_thread/thread/41a24d3a987bca28

Online Discussions

How good is TiddlyWiki for "regular" websites?

Alex Hough asked if he should use TiddlyWiki for a rewrite of his friend's site. Discussion covered all sorts of stuff about TiddlyWiki's strengths and weaknesses, including nice layout, site statistics and the like. Check this thread out if you are wondering if you should use TW for your own public site.

[thread] http://groups.google.com/group/TiddlyWiki/browse_thread/thread/6fecf9a673f5f140

Please critique Giffmex GTD

Dave Gifford, the man behind giffmex.org and its collection of TiddlyWiki resources[1] including "TiddlyWiki for the rest of us", has produced a TW GTD tool[2] he'd like some feedback on. If you're a GTD user you might like a look, and I know Dave would appreciate any comments you had.

PS: Dave already retroactively named his child after me[3], but if you provide him with good insights he might find some other kids to retro-name.

[thread] http://groups.google.com/group/TiddlyWiki/browse_thread/thread/bc9d625188aa5061
[1] http://giffmex.org/tiddlywikicentral.html
[2] http://www.giffmex.org/giffmexgtd.html
[3] http://groups.google.com/group/TiddlyWiki/browse_thread/thread/1e051928cd72e24b

Deleting tiddlers from a ForEachTiddler list

tigger6333 made a list of tiddlers using ForEachTiddler[1], and wanted to have a "delete" button for each tiddler listed. Suggestions included TiddlerTweakerPlugin[2] instead, or using a little macro FND knocked up for the occasion[3], but tigger ended up working up a solution using DeleteAllTaggedPlugin[4].

[thread] http://groups.google.com/group/TiddlyWiki/browse_thread/thread/5afa85b0a8958b78
[1] http://tiddlywiki.abego-software.de/#ForEachTiddlerPlugin
[2] http://www.TiddlyTools.com/#TiddlerTweakerPlugin
[3] http://fnd.lewcid.org/svn/TiddlyWiki/plugins/DeleteTiddlersMacro.js
[4] http://ido-xp.tiddlyspot.com/#DeleteAllTaggedPlugin

Geocaching with TiddlyWiki

Trey A wanted a neat solution for capturing geocache info into his D-cubed TiddlyWiki. After much discussion Trey figured something out and wrote it up[5].

[thread] http://groups.google.com/group/TiddlyWiki/browse_thread/thread/527e7080998bf3c8
[5] http://trey.arthur.tiddlyspot.com/#WebTripReport_FromFormsToGeocachingTiddlers

Multiple forms in one tiddler

actioncomics asked for a way to have multiple forms in one tiddler. Xavier's solution[6] used Udo's FormTiddlerPlugin[7] and added support for multiple forms. Hopefully Udo will get a chance to look over Xavier's changes soon.

[thread] http://groups.google.com/group/TiddlyWiki/browse_thread/thread/4f9e3ed1783e187f
[6] http://xdexavier.googlepages.com/FormSample.html
[7] http://tiddlywiki.abego-software.de/#FormTiddlerPlugin

A to Z tabs

Mark stores authors in a custom tiddler field, and wanted to sort tiddlers into A to Z tabs based on author's names. FND's suggested solution worked, but the following discussion covered all sorts of tweaks and modifications of the a-z tab theme. Worth a read if you want to do tabs for anything.

[thread] http://groups.google.com/group/TiddlyWiki/browse_thread/thread/6f576fa047a9c1ef

Namespaces for tiddlers

Bob Paige considered the idea of namespaces for tiddlers. This idea comes up every now and then, and it's always interesting to see it through new eyes. Bob sounds like he's made good progress on a namespace support plugin, but no links as yet. Bob, if you're reading, let us know how it's going.

[thread] http://groups.google.com/group/TiddlyWiki/browse_thread/thread/381ac7bac75098a5

Make Haloscan comments show up properly

Oscar pointed out that when a user visits his TiddlyWiki blog via a "permalink" (eg http://tiddlywiki.com/#GettingStarted ), the haloscan[8] comment button doesn't show up like it should. Oscar's idea for a fix worked with some help from Eric Shulman.

[thread] http://groups.google.com/group/TiddlyWiki/browse_thread/thread/4561c30ec2993bb2
[8] http://haloscan.com/

Showing TW Presentations on a Secondary Screen

Bob Paige asked about showing presentations from TiddlyWiki. He wanted to go full screen, and to show the presentation on a secondary screen. FND pointed out that fullscreen is possible from the browser point of view (often the F11 key does the job), but difficult to write CSS for. Xavier suggested Paulo Soares' slide show plugin[9], which almost answered Bob's question.

However the secondary screen part has largely gone unanswered. Bob thinks having a way to display the same tiddler in two different windows with different CSS applied would be very useful, and I think that's quite possible — this seems like a way to make TiddlyWiki into a great presentation tool.

Maybe Bob should tune up his JavaScript skills and see what he can throw together :)

[thread] http://groups.google.com/group/TiddlyWiki/browse_thread/thread/14ebb85d2a4494f7
[9] http://www.math.ist.utl.pt/~psoares/addons.html#SlideShowExample

Quick Shots

Postdrivel

This week the news sought me out — a pleasant turnaround that I'd like to encourage. So please feel free to email me anything you think the TiddlyWiki community might be interested in. I'm also drafting some editing guidelines for preparing WHitWoT, so all those folk who want to help out can chip in.

Finally, if you're inspired to contribute an article or something, please let me know. General praise of how awesome TiddlyWiki is completely acceptable :)

;Daniel

About WHitWoT

WHitWoT is distilled from the social wisdom of the TiddlyWiki Google Group by Daniel Baird. Daniel is a long time TiddlyWiki fan, runs tiddlyspot.com along with Simon of MonkeyGTD and MPTW fame, and wonders if his one line contribution to the core code is still there.

Find (and subscribe to) WHitWoT at Daniel's blog:
http://blog.deuceofalltrades.com/search/label/WHitWoT
..and posted ocasionally at the TiddlyWiki Google Group:
http://groups.google.com/group/TiddlyWiki

WHitWoT #4 (Jan 23-29, 2008)

2008-02-04T19:24:00.000+10:00

WHitWoT #4 (Jan 23-29, 2008)

Welcome to the fourth edition of "What Happened in the World of TiddlyWiki", or WHitWoT for short.

WHitWoT summarises what's happened lately on the TiddlyWiki mailing list and elsewhere in the TiddlyWiki world.

News and Stuff

Addition to QuickEditToolbar

Eric Shulman has added a tag filter to the "link" button of the QuickEditToolbar. This lets you filter by tag first, saving you from having to scroll through a giant list of all tiddlers.

[source] http://www.tiddlytools.com/#QuickEditPackage
[thread] http://groups.google.com/group/TiddlyWiki/browse_thread/thread/d540438f7721f1a4

SelectStylesheetPlugin becomes SelectThemesPlugin

The new SelectThemesPlugin uses functionality added to TiddlyWiki in version 2.3. And at 6K it's 11K lighter than the old one.

I wonder if tiddlythemes.com will adopt this as its standard theme system?

[thread] http://groups.google.com/group/TiddlyWiki/browse_thread/thread/acf252a008267da6
[source] http://www.tiddlytools.com/#SwitchThemePlugin

TableSortingPlugin now works in tabs

cmari discovered that TableSortingPlugin didn't work when tiddlers were displayed in tabs. Saq posted a new copy to pastebin that fixes the problem.

I think the update has made it to Saq's site, but in case it hasn't I'll post both source URLs.

[thread] http://groups.google.com/group/TiddlyWiki/browse_thread/thread/993f08b717214feb
[source] http://pastebin.ca/875619
[source] http://tw.lewcid.org/#TableSortingPlugin

[thread]

Online Discussions

Editing tags en masse

Nicolas Syssoieff asked about easy ways to edit tags across a bunch of tiddlers at once. Several solutions were proposed. MultiTagPlugin[1] might have been a solution but it wouldn't work for Nicolas for unknown reasons.
[thread] http://groups.google.com/group/TiddlyWiki/browse_thread/thread/aa1509a568b140f5
[1] http://ido-xp.tiddlyspot.com/#MultiTagEditorPlugin

Embedded images in Internet Explorer

Roger Ramjet pointed out a nice implementation[2] of the "bunch of tiny block elements" technique for embedding images. This kind of thing is necessary because IE still doesn't (even in IE7) support the "data:" URI scheme that every other browser handles. We are yet to see a robust implementation of this technique for TiddlyWiki, but I suspect that is because most TW developers have moved on to better browsers.

This story made it into WHitWoT so I can say this: if you are using Internet Explorer, please consider updating to a better web browser. Your web browsing will be safer and easier, and you can enjoy some better features in TiddlyWiki.
[thread] http://groups.google.com/group/TiddlyWiki/browse_thread/thread/b085f143328408d6
[2] http://www.bennherrera.com/EmbeddedImage/

What on earth is "RippleRap"?

Phil Whitehouse, who knows the secret Osmosoft[3] handshake, asked the community for some guidance about RippleRap's next steps.

RippleRap is a TiddlyWiki assembly that Osmosoft demoed at "LeWeb3" late last year. It does some cool stuff including a fairly robust way to share conference notes.

Phil asked people who were interested to comment via his blog[4].

[thread] http://groups.google.com/group/TiddlyWiki/browse_thread/thread/ae758d74c0e0b8d6
[3] http://osmosoft.com
[4] http://philwhitehouse.blogspot.com/2008/01/ripplerap-next-phase.html

Tinkering with CSS rules

jk/stephen asked originally about including snippets of CSS from various tiddlers, answered by Eric. The conversation then became a quite informative Q&A about using CSS in TiddlyWiki. Check it out if you want to learn how to style stuff.

[thread] http://groups.google.com/group/TiddlyWiki/browse_thread/thread/f644b880e6353182

Saving TiddlyWiki on an XO

Saq Imtiaz asked how to get TiddlyWiki saving on an XO.

The XO is the first model of the fabled "$100 laptop" from MIT Media Labs[5]. I blogged about these in 2005, when they were just a twinkle in Negroponte's eye: http://danielbaird.com/hopefulcynic/2005/10/i-want-this-megacheap-laptop-for.html
It's cool to see that good ideas sometimes work out.

Anyway there were some answers involving alternate browsers etc, but despite some promise, noone can confirm that TiddlyWiki can save properly on a regular, out-of-the-box XO. This would be a great market for TW, so if you have anything to add, please post on this thread.

[thread] http://groups.google.com/group/TiddlyWiki/browse_thread/thread/fe7c12a93bc24e12
[5] http://olpc.com/

TiddlyDesktop (tiddlers in individual little windows)

Wolfgang has been playing with the slightly aged TiddlyDesktop[6] theme by Jonny LeRoy. This theme gives each tiddler its own window that can be move around the screen just like windows in your regular GUI desktop. Wolfgang points out the little problems he came across and asks for developers to help to iron them out. So if you know any JavaScript and tiddlers-in-windows sounds cool, have a look.

[thread] http://groups.google.com/group/TiddlyWiki/browse_thread/thread/1f26e2293bb820ed
[6] http://www.digitaldimsum.co.uk/tiddlywiki/

Quick Shots

Postdrivel

Wow this takes some time. Any volunteers want to help out?

;Daniel

About WHitWoT

WHitWoT #3 (Jan 15-22, 2008)

2008-01-29T12:40:00.000+10:00

WHitWoT #3 (Jan 15-22, 2008)

Welcome to the third edition of "What Happened in the World of TiddlyWiki", or WHitWoT for short.

WHitWoT summarises what's happened lately on the TiddlyWiki mailing list and elsewhere in the TiddlyWiki world.

News, New Stuff and Updated Stuff

TiddlyWiki Vox Pop

Alex Hough started a thread on the discussion list asking what you like about TiddlyWiki, and what you use it for.

The responses are all worth a look. I especially liked Eric's "ways to explain what TiddlyWiki is".

[thread] http://groups.google.com/group/TiddlyWiki/browse_thread/thread/63c4c9d759a531d8

New theme — moz-inspired

Adrian announced a new theme "moz-inspired", modified from K2WS, that was inspired by the old Mozilla Firefox look. It may or may not make it to tiddlythemes.com :)

[thread] http://groups.google.com/group/TiddlyWiki/browse_thread/thread/76caaf803eb25df7

My Notes TiddlyWiki: new version - 2.1

Dave Gifford released a major upgrade to his "My Notes TiddlyWiki". This adaptation is great for collecting notes when doing research, and it handles bibliographic data too. Check out the announcement thread for discussion including EndNote and Zotero.

[source] http://www.giffmex.org/emptynotestw.html
[thread] http://groups.google.com/group/TiddlyWiki/browse_thread/thread/3f9caf4bf63f490a

TiddlersBar now supports keypress switching between tabs

The latest version of TiddlersBar (version 1.2.5) now supports switching to next and previous tabs with Alt + Shift + (key). The plugin has options to set the actual keys used.
[source] http://visualtw.ouvaton.org/VisualTW.html#TiddlersBarPlugin
[thread] http://groups.google.com/group/TiddlyWiki/browse_thread/thread/b637fb983e54727f

ImageSizePlugin does what it says on the box

The inimitable Eric Shulman has produced a new plugin that lets you specify image size like this:
[img(50%,100px)[image.jpg]]
I reckon there's all sorts of awesome things you could do with a percentage-sized image that adjusts to your browser size. And bonus points for a demo that appears to show a cat being sucked into a black hole.
[source] http://www.TiddlyTools.com/#ImageSizePlugin

TiddlerEncryptionPlugin can now forget passwords

Lyall Pearce's latest update to TiddlerEncryptionPlugin now offers the option to forget passwords (instead of caching them for the duration of the session). This might be useful if you want to leave your TW open all day, but only occasionally need to check your encrypted info.

[source] http://remotely-helpful.com/TiddlyWiki/TiddlerEncryptionPlugin.html#TiddlerEncryptionPlugin
[thread] http://groups.google.com/group/TiddlyWiki/browse_thread/thread/12434a89811b5e23

Online Discussions

Synchronising between TiddlyWikis

David Masterson asked about syncing between TiddlyWikis for distributing project management tasks. FND and Eric mentioned RippleRap[1] and ImportTiddlersPlugin[2] respectively, but I'm not sure they completely cover the use case David originally suggested. Hopefully the community will be able to come up with a solution for this space.
[thread] http://groups.google.com/group/TiddlyWiki/browse_thread/thread/8daf5fc88ce2210e
[1] http://www.ripplerap.com
[2] http://www.tiddlytools.com/#ImportTiddlersPlugin

Using multiple TiddlyWikis at once

Dave Gifford described his interesting arrangement for using several TWs at once. He uses a parent TiddlyWiki that contains iframes in which he loads the child TWs. Eric pointed out his FramedLinksPlugin that also uses iframes to load links.
[thread] http://groups.google.com/group/TiddlyWiki/browse_thread/thread/0528ba5b5491cd01
[3] http://www.TiddlyTools.com/#FramedLinksPlugin

Using highlighting in TiddlyWiki

Digital Doctor requested a prescription for using alternate colours when highlighting. Eric Shulman's answer would have put this into WHitWoT's Quick Shots secion, except there was a big discussion afterward about how to incorporate CSS into your TiddlyWiki that covered stuff like transcluding[4] other CSS stylesheets into the StyleSheet tiddler, and Eric was even inspired to update his QuickEdit toolbar[5] to have a swatch palette.
[thread] http://groups.google.com/group/TiddlyWiki/browse_thread/thread/bf769083afbbbf9a
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transclusion
[5] http://www.TiddlyTools.com/#QuickEdit_format

Checklists

Xavier Vergés asked about the best way to do checklists in TiddlyWiki. This is something that Simon and I have discussed in a GTD context before, so the suggestions here were particularly interesting.
[thread] http://groups.google.com/group/TiddlyWiki/browse_thread/thread/79cd4064f4005579

Custom formats for the TagglyTagging list?

Kashgarinn asked about doing a custom format for the TagglyTagging list, for example to include phone numbers in the tagglylist of your Contacts tiddler. Simon Baird proposed using HideWhen[6] to selectively replace the tagglylist with a ForEachTiddler[7] construction. This is an interesting idea, I'd like to see an working example.
[thread] http://groups.google.com/group/TiddlyWiki/browse_thread/thread/0ab6d8d9fb58671a
[6] http://mptw.tiddlyspot.com/#HideWhenPlugin
[7] http://tiddlywiki.abego-software.de/#ForEachTiddlerPlugin

Quick Shots

Postdrivel

Quite a bit of TagglyTagging talk in this edition. If you haven't tried TagglyTagging before, check out Simon's tutorial and FAQ at http://mptw.tiddlyspot.com/

;Daniel

About WHitWoT

WHitWoT #2 (Jan 7-14, 2008)

2008-01-20T16:24:00.000+10:00

WHitWoT #2 (Jan 7-14, 2008)

Welcome to the second edition of "What Happened in the World of TiddlyWiki", or WHitWoT for short.

WHitWoT summarises what's happened lately on the TiddlyWiki mailing list and elsewhere in the TiddlyWiki world.

News, New Stuff and Updated Stuff

Fullscreen bookmarklet

Eric Shulman added a new "fullscreen" bookmarklet to his collection, to show/hide the titles and both sidebars of a viewed TiddlyWiki. Also check out the others in the set!
[source] http://www.tiddlytools.com/#InstantBookmarklets

Tags Tree

Pascal Collin from VisualTW announced his new TagsTreePlugin, a plugin for generating tree-like hierarchical lists that open and close with the kind of sexy smooth animations that we expect from Pascal.
It's excellent for populating your MainMenu, and I especially enjoy seeing TiddlyWiki's baked-in TagglyTagging goodness used outside of Simon Baird's MonkeyPirateTW.
[source] http://visualtw.ouvaton.org/VisualTW.html#TagsTreePlugin
[thread] http://groups.google.com/group/TiddlyWiki/browse_thread/thread/b2f8beb2c625ff83
[MonkeyPirateTW] http://mptw.tiddlyspot.com

New TiddlyWiki Announcements List

Inspired by a request from Koen, Ken Girard created a new Google Group for TiddlyWiki announcements. This should make it easier to keep up without having to trawl through the group posts every day. Hopefully WHitWoT will help too!
[source] http://groups.google.com/group/tiddlywiki-announcements

QuickEditToolbar gets a 'sort these lines' button

Corybantic coder Eric Shulman added a new "sort" button to his QuickEditToolbar. It sorts the selected lines into ASCII order. It currently sorts capital letters after all the miniscule letters, but if you need a case-aware sort I suspect posting a request will get it.
Make sure you check out the dependencies if you are installing it.
[source] http://www.tiddlytools.com/#QuickEditToolbar

Online Discussions

In late 2007 misschilli asked about using memorizable.com from inside a TiddlyWiki. Memorizable is a flash-card type site. In the subsequent discussion Morris Grey and Eric Shulman worked out a nice solution.
[thread] http://groups.google.com/group/TiddlyWiki/browse_thread/thread/df878103a5c5c6cb

Noltdude wanted to build a search that looked inside FormTiddlerPlugin[1] fields. Eric pointed out that the FormTiddlerPlugin predates custom fields, so most current search tools can't do what Noltdude wanted. The question is still unresolved — can you pitch in?
[thread] http://groups.google.com/group/TiddlyWiki/browse_thread/thread/71883aec72327bfd
[1] http://tiddlywiki.abego-software.de/#FormTiddlerPlugin

FND asked for keyboard shortcuts to switch tabs in TiddlersBarPlugin[2]. Eric, Pascal and Saq joined in on what became an interesting JavaScript discussion on catching keypresses in a cross-browser way.
[thread] http://groups.google.com/group/TiddlyWiki/browse_thread/thread/b637fb983e54727f
[2] http://visualtw.ouvaton.org/VisualTW.html#TiddlersBarPlugin

Kashgarinn wanted to use CheckboxPlugin[3] to trigger a save in his ccTiddly[4] installation. Responses included an interesting example of CheckboxPlugin's "side effect" handlers — worth a look if you use CheckboxPlugin.
[thread] http://groups.google.com/group/TiddlyWiki/browse_thread/thread/8d6de6729de96fcf
[3] http://www.tiddlytools.com/#CheckboxPlugin
[4] http://cctiddly.sourceforge.net/

Nicolas Syssoieff wanted to keep the site subtitle from showing up on Firefox tabs. wolfgang pointed out Eric Shulman's CoreTweaks[5], which among other things allows you to specify the exact page title used by making a PageTitle tiddler.
[thread] http://groups.google.com/group/TiddlyWiki/browse_thread/thread/aaf1a7923dec6cfd
[5] http://www.tiddlytools.com/#CoreTweaks

Kashgarinn wanted to generate a full table with ForEachTiddlerPlugin, with header and footer. FND promptly supplied an solution.
[thread] http://groups.google.com/group/TiddlyWiki/browse_thread/thread/a5b51e9cbc752148
[6] http://tiddlywiki.abego-software.de/#ForEachTiddlerPlugin

Dave Parker started a long thread by asking if he could get the title selected when a new tiddler opened up for editing. wolfgang, FND and Eric Shulman eventually sorted out various plugin clashes plus a bug or two to get to a solution.
[thread] http://groups.google.com/group/TiddlyWiki/browse_thread/thread/74f9ac75fb82d430

Alex Hough asked about changing the default text for a missing tiddler — he wanted something more relevant to his context, like "You have not addressed '[tiddler name]' in this exercise yet. Please double
click and decide how you prioritise this value". Eric Shulman and FND helped out, and Alex seemed to feel a little of the lure of hacking on TiddlyWiki.
[thread] http://groups.google.com/group/TiddlyWiki/browse_thread/thread/8e7657f4a4df85bb

Mark wanted to use ForEachTiddler[7] to show a sorted list of his book titles, but he wants the sort order to ignore words like "A", "The" etc at the start of a title. Eric Shulman helped with a bit of custom JavaScript to poke into FET.
[thread] http://groups.google.com/group/TiddlyWiki/browse_thread/thread/1ad2d7c8320a4408
[7] http://tiddlywiki.abego-software.de/#ForEachTiddlerPlugin

Jabbe thought Windows Vista was stopping him from saving easily, but eventually discovered that it was a USB issue.
[thread] http://groups.google.com/group/TiddlyWiki/browse_thread/thread/79b8cf3a32bed008

Quick Shots

Postdrivel

Anyone notice how Google Groups is failing to deliver a lot of emails lately? It's making it harder to do these summaries.

Also, I'd love to hear any feedback on WHitWoT — the layout sux, summaries boring, the whole thing is too long to read.. that kind of thing. Just reply to WHitWoT on the TiddlyWiki google group, or email me directly: my name is Daniel Baird, you can email me at that name (no spaces or dots), plus @gmail.com. Don't hold back!

;Daniel

About WHitWoT

WHitWoT #1 (Jan 1-6, 2008)

2008-01-13T12:39:00.000+10:00

WHitWoT #1 (Jan 1-6, 2008)

Welcome to the first edition of "What Happened in the World of TiddlyWiki", or WHitWoT for short.

My plan is to summarise what's happened lately on the TiddlyWiki mailing list and elsewhere in the TiddlyWiki world.

So let's jump in:

News, New Stuff and Updated Stuff

tiddlyspot.com was down for a few days, from some time on the 3rd or 4th, recovering on the 7th. It appears that some update to the host's environment broke tiddlyspot's Ruby scripts. Thanks to TiddlyWiki's "all-in-one-file" superpower, viewing sites was working the whole time, but saving and other functions were down.

Thanks to Simon from tiddlyspot for finding the fix, and thanks to the tiddlyspot users for their expressions of support. Throughout the incident tiddlyspot didn't receive a single negative email or post.

Todd Chambery posted the code of an Excel macro that takes an Excel table and coverts it into TiddlyWiki markup. I haven't tried it myself but it sounds pretty good. Be sure to check the discussion thread for Todd's instructions on getting working.

[source] http://tiddlywiki.pastebin.com/f7848a6a7
[thread] http://groups.google.com/group/TiddlyWiki/browse_thread/thread/575a9789ffc0ce0b

Online Discussions

Kathy had enormous trouble getting TiddlyWiki to save on Windows XP with IE6, a setup that a lot of folk use. Helpful posts from Eric Shulman, wolfgang and Stuart Parker covered the usual suspects, and Xavier Vergés provided some interesting links on security in IE/Win, but in the end only copying the source into a new text document worked.

[thread] http://groups.google.com/group/TiddlyWiki/browse_thread/thread/aacf21729608b4a3

Sanny asked how to hide the display of each tiddler's modified date; FND and Eric Shulman replied with solutions.

[thread] http://groups.google.com/group/TiddlyWiki/browse_thread/thread/52ad30cfef6a618d

Digital Doctor asked about extracting highlighted phrases from various tiddlers into a single list. FND proposed a solution based on ForEachTiddlerPlugin[1].

[thread] http://groups.google.com/group/TiddlyWiki/browse_thread/thread/f67bd1785c80e21e
[1] http://tiddlywiki.abego-software.de/#ForEachTiddlerPlugin

nanbudh asked about using TiddlyWiki as a website. A slew of comments followed, pointing nanbudh towards resources for hiding TiddlyWiki features:

Saq's Presentation plugin[2]
BidiX's ChangeModePlugin[3], that I hadn't seen before

..customising TiddlyWiki's colours and layout:

Morris Grey's colour palette documentation[4]
FND's PaletteViewMacro[5]
tiddlythemes.com

Ken Girard also suggested using HideWhenPlugin[6] to only show editing stuff to certain users.

[thread] http://groups.google.com/group/TiddlyWiki/browse_thread/thread/92a6d2d32d2a0284
[2] http://lewcid.googlepages.com/presentation_empty_full.html
[3] http://tiddlywiki.bidix.info/#ChangeModePlugin
[4] http://twhelp.tiddlyspot.com/#TiddlyWikiColors
[5] http://devpad.tiddlyspot.com/#PaletteViewMacro
[6] http://mptw.tiddlyspot.com/#HideWhenPlugin

Digital Doctor asked about hiding certain comments from users who copy or import tiddlers from his TiddlyWiki. Digital asked for a wiki-syntax type solution, but none was forthcoming — FND and Eric proposed solutions based on hiding entire tiddlers.

[thread] http://groups.google.com/group/TiddlyWiki/browse_thread/thread/9d9f9e8b9ab769a2

Eric Pavey asked for a way to open multiple tiddlers in one click. In one of several replies, Eric Shulman proposed an interesting hack of the tiddler macro to run some code.

[thread] http://groups.google.com/group/TiddlyWiki/browse_thread/thread/ceb1473b2b2135c8

Matias Almada asked about automatically maximising images and video. Eric Shulman provided an answer for still images, while claiming that resizing video is all about the player software, not the TiddlyWiki.

[thread] http://groups.google.com/group/TiddlyWiki/browse_thread/thread/2fef317180b0767f

Viscouse asked for a tiddler link that closed all open tiddlers before opening the selected one. Eric Shulman provided some code for making such a link with embedded html.

[thread] http://groups.google.com/group/TiddlyWiki/browse_thread/thread/780d5b9b34e297e5

Fred Aerique wanted to have a way to give his friends access to selected tiddlers on his tiddlyspot site. He settled on exporting those tiddlers to another tiddlyspot site, but remains interested in a better solution.

[thread] http://groups.google.com/group/TiddlyWiki/browse_thread/thread/3e8c9eebf70cef9e

James saw his hard drive space eaten away by bacups, and asked for a flexible backup system that only made backups when he clicked "save and backup". JCO pointed him to the under-appreciated LessBackupsPlugin[7], but that wasn't quite what James was after.tid

[thread] http://groups.google.com/group/TiddlyWiki/browse_thread/thread/9b7ba24bf75ffa1e
[7] http://lessbackupsplugin.tiddlyspot.com/

Postdrivel

That's it for the first edition of WHitWoT. Thanks to the tiddlyspot outage, this one is later than I'd planned. Hopefully I can catch up a bit in the next few weeks.

;Daniel

About WHitWoT

Things that suck: TV News

2008-01-04T11:11:00.000+10:00

I've known for years that mass media news sucked. I think the first time I saw it in words was nearly ten years ago in Scott Adams' book "The Dilbert Future", where Scott describes friends who actively avoid exposure to newspapers and TV news shows.

Since then it's become clear that most people I know ignore TV and print news media, and get their news from blogs and websites like Slashdot. This week I caught up with an old friend in town visiting his parents, and he described how his parents were "news junkies", watching every minute of TV news they could, and panicking that some rare disaster that befell a complete stranger was going to happen to them.

I think this is the death of newspapers and the 30 minute TV news shows. And it's a silent death — none of my friends are complaining to TV networks, or writing letters to the editor about declining editorial standards; they are just turning away. Media outlets are left to struggle with more and more desperate strategies to keep their "eyeball count" up, but this is changing the mix of their audience, skewing towards the easily impressed. It's a short term strategy that might hold a few viewers but shuts out even more.

Anyway my motivation for this post is this article by John Hockenberry, once a Dateline reporter. It's the clearest statement I've seen describing what has gone wrong in news reporting. The conversation at the bottom of page 4 made my skin crawl.

Elsewhere, things that suck this much are often replaced with something that doesn't suck (think MP3 players before iPods, and online maps before Google Maps). Can anyone suggest what's gonna replace TV and print news media?

Crow overlords

2007-10-06T13:52:00.000+10:00

Turns out crows are the inevitable successors to homo sapiens. They are tool using, meta-tool using (as in, they will use one tool to get the other, better tool that they actually need), freaky smart feathered food-collecting machines.

Here's a video of a crow bending a straight bit of wire into a hook.

In this movie the crow is just using her hook to collect a little bucket thing, but how long before a hungry crow bends some wire into an eyeball corkscrew? I'm gonna melt down all my wire coathangers immediately. I suggest you do the same.

(thank you Slashdot)

Firm, clear principles

2007-09-11T19:17:00.000+10:00

I've been too busy to blog much lately, but I came across this in some design documentation at work and couldn't resist posting it.

Principle ET.3: The resource resolution for an action (action A) in the action Directed Acyclic Graph is defined by the resource resolution performed by the end of the execution of the action which is the deepest root of action A in the action Directed Acyclic Graph.

Now that's what I call a nice clear principle to live by :)

Love
Deuce.

Firefox on Linux: fixing the middle-click disability

2007-08-09T12:34:00.000+10:00

Firefox is awesome with making my mouse's middle-click do useful stuff. Like middle-clicking a link opens it in a new tab, in the background. And middle-clicking right on a tab closes it. Great stuff.

But for some reason, the linux version of Firefox does something spectacularly stupid when you middle-click on a bit of normal web page. It assumes that whatever is in the copy buffer, a.k.a. clipboard, is a URL that you want to go to. At least, in all the versions of Fedora in use at my work this is the case.

So I'm often scrolling a web page with my mouse wheel, engrossed in whatever I'm reading, and suddenly the page is replaced with some stupid crap like String.com (coz I copied the word "String" just before).

Anyway, enough about the pain. Here's the pain killer:

- go to the URL about:config

- scroll down to the entry middlemouse.contentLoadURL

- double-click it to toggle it to "false".

Done. You will never again see the error "www.{.com is not a valid URL".

Love, Deuce

Word 2003 in Ubuntu

2007-07-07T23:29:00.000+10:00

Check this out:

That's Microsoft Word 2003, running in it's own window on my Ubuntu Linux desktop. Sweet huh. Tell me again why you haven't dumped Windows yet?

Read this if you want to know how to do it.

The Torch Hat

2007-04-03T21:55:00.000+10:00

Last weekend I bought a 4-LED head-mounted lamp, which my 3 year old son now refers to as "daddy's torch hat". The marketing for such things seems to be aimed at ninjas who explore caves, but I just wanted to use it to read in bed -- Mrs Deuce is particularly sensitive to light when she sleeps -- so I bought the cheapest model.

It's basically a few AAA batteries and a row of LEDs mounted on an elastic headband, with another elastic strap that goes front-to-back over the top of your head. And Oh. My. God, I just can't express how spectacularly useful it is to have a torch strapped right between your eyes. Everywhere you look is brightly illuminated, with no shadows! And both your hands are free! I had it on last night when I went looking for my needlenose pliers, and I could see deep into every random nook and cranny I searched in. I didn't find my pliers, but now I know where lots of other things are!

So I can totally recommend buying a hat torch. For inside use, you want a broad beam variety -- be careful of the tight beam ones though, they're for weirdos who, like, do stuff outside. Freaks!

Empathy

2007-03-08T14:48:00.000+10:00

A friend of mine, David, wrote this email today:

Dear all,

For some strange reason I woke up this morning with this really peculiar feeling. A strange sense of self doubt that I couldn't get rid of.

Just after midnight my two beautiful boys had come to sleep in the bed with me, and when I rolled over and saw them I realised how lucky I was, and I stopped to gaze at their sleeping faces for a while.

I got out of bed and went to sort out breakfast. I normally have left-over pizza, but today that just didn't seem right. I wasn't sure what I should have but I knew it had to be low fat and low carbs. I didn't have anything like that in the fridge so I had some fruit instead. Then I opened the freezer and ate the last three Mini Magnums.

I went to have a shower, and for some reason I just couldn't get myself clean. I had to wash my hair twice, and leave the conditioner in for 15 minutes. When i got out of the shower I spend another 15 minutes looking in the mirror. I used three different towels getting dry, but finally I got out of the bathroom having applied some of every different cologne and deodorant I have. I even put gel in my hair, which I normally never do.

Then I couldn't decide what wear, and I got very conscious of how tight my pants were around the waist. I did a second trip to the mirror to try and see what I looked like from behind.

After trying on 3 different shirts I phoned Chris, who said he was having a strange morning too. He had an important meeting and was wearing his suit to work. He was no help but finally I settled for my Van Huessen shirt. When I tried on the shoes I wear every day, I realised how scuffed they were, and decided that today I'd skip lunch to look for new shoes on special.

For some reason I paid special attention to the kids' lunches and even wrote them a little note with a picture of a loveheart telling them how special they are.

I made them breakfast and woke them up. Whilst they were eating I turned on morning TV just as the celebrity gossip section came on. I couldn't believe the way they treat Angelina Jolie over her Vietnamese adoption; it's just terrible it....it brought a tear to my eye. But she is a bit of a stuck up bitch, and I bet those lips are full of collagen.

Finally I got the boys dressed and then spent 10 minutes freaking out looking for my car keys. Then I realised my phone battery was flat, but I didn't have time to charge it so I stuck it back into my pocket.

When I dropped the boys off at day care I was really torn -- I felt like quitting work to spend more time with them. As I drove off with this feeling I couldn't put my finger on, I flicked on the radio and heard something that made it all become clear.....

Today is International Women's Day.

So to all my wonderful sisters......you go girls!

He's single at present :)

Common GTD Mistake #1: Someday/Maybe does not mean just Maybe

2007-03-08T13:24:00.000+10:00

One of my many, many, ill-fitting hats is "GTD advocate". GTD is a system for managing your personal workflow. If you haven't heard of GTD before, check out this post at GetRichSlowly.org, or the more abstract description from Wikipedia.

I thought I'd start a little series of GTD tips, with this observation:

Someday/Maybe does not mean just Maybe.

GTD has a "Someday/Maybe" category, but a lot of people avoid putting their projects into that category because they think that means the project might never get done. They're imagining that Someday/Maybe is like saying, "someday, maybe, I'll do this thing". Not so! The slash means "or", so putting something in that category can also be like saying "I will (definitely) do this some day".

One of the reasons for the Someday/Maybe list is to keep your Next Action lists as short as possible. When you have a less urgent project that you know you aren't going to get to for a few weeks, you should move that project to the Someday/Maybe list. It takes away the actions you know you aren't going to do (just yet), and makes it easier to decide what you will do.

Don't be scared of putting definite projects in to Someday/Maybe. Remember that you look at every project at your weekly review, so at worst you're only ignoring the project for one week.

So use Someday/Maybe for more than just "Learn the viola", use it for your Not Until Next Month projects — your Next Action lists and your life will both get simpler!

Post consumer waste

2007-02-27T12:51:00.000+10:00

This is what I found on the bottom of a Subway "Kids' Pak" bag.

'This Bag May Contain On Average 30% Post Consumer Material'

Note they're not saying its made out of recycled material.
They're saying that the bag contains recycled material.

So what exactly did I just feed to my kid?

the Wii browser meets Microcontent

2007-02-08T15:34:00.000+10:00

I recently visited Simon's house for a poker night — tournament-style Texas Hold'em. Losers had to go downstairs to play Wii.

After I got bored coming last in Wii tennis, we fired up the Wii's web browser to see how it handled the much-loved microcontent wiki, TiddlyWiki. It's Opera, apparently, so we were cautiously optimistic.

Here's the results. Sorry about the terrible photography; I had to chose a slow shutter setting to get a good picture of the TV screen.

tiddlywiki.com:

Nice, huh.

The Wii browser has a zoom mode to actually read text:

Dropdowns etc worked fine:

To enter text on the Wii, you fiddle your pointer at a full screen keyboard:

MonkeyGTD alpha works nicely too:

A new project in MonkeyGTD. Here you can see the keyboard fading into view:

typing gets boring quickly..

Proof that the project's notes "tttt" went in. I wish I had've taken a zoomed in photo of this.

In summary:

viewing worked perfectly
didn't try to download (or save locally)
couldn't upload to tiddlyspot (seemed like the password field wasn't being stored, or something)

Overall, I give the Wii browser a C+ for TiddlyWiki support. Saving to tiddlyspot would have pushed it up to a B at least..

Why indeed?

2007-02-08T14:11:00.000+10:00

I saw this truck today:

"Why pay more for a truly quality service?"

I can't tell if these guys are claiming to be the ones doing the "truly quality" job, or if they are saying their competitors do that, and these guys do a cheaper, less good job.

But I am pretty sure they're saying I probably shouldn't pay the extra that a quality job would cost me.

Either way, they probably shouldn't have written it on their truck.

Wet school

2007-02-08T13:17:00.000+10:00

My daughter started school last week. It also rained a lot.

This is the path in to the school:

There are covered pathways, mostly, so we didn't actually get rained on. That's not always enough, though:

Not much chance of playing outside:

She was a little nervous but once she found a desk with her name written on it, she felt much better.

On the way home, I had to drive through this:

Did anyone ever want tile-able windows?

2007-02-06T15:01:00.000+10:00

Today I realised that having overlapping windows in an operating system is stupid.

I was looking at this Firefox extension that lets you split your browser window into separate panes. That lets you see multiple windows onscreen at once. Firefox has tabbed windows out of the box, which lets you have multiple full-screen pages that you can easily swap between. I suddenly realised that I want to organise all the windows on my computer into panes and tabs. I've never in my life wanted to "cascade" windows.

If my operating system let me nest tabs within panes, and panes within tabs, in any reasonable way, that would be great. Here's my list of pros and cons:

Pros:

windows that should be as big as possible, would be
windows that don't need to be big, would be exactly the size I needed them
no pixel on my expensive screen would be wasted

Cons:

with no desktop, where would you put the photo of your ugly basset hound?

Come to think of it, maybe that last thing is a pro, not a con.

In any case the conclusion is clear - the overlapping window GUI revolution that started at PARC in the 70s and spread through Macs then PCs in the 80s, got the whole thing wrong.

You can all start rewriting your OSs now. By the end of the year I want tabs and split panes on my desktop. Go!