hypothes.is

A sidebar annotating the web, like SideWiki should have been.

Social bookmarking, tagging, annotating and note sharing of the web in public or private groups, or just for yourself.

"Our efforts are based on the annotation standards for digital documents developed by the W3C Web Annotation Working Group. We are partnering broadly with developers, publishers, academic institutions, researchers, and individuals to develop a platform for the next generation of read-write web applications. You can follow our development progress on our roadmap. Many have contributed tools, plug-ins and integrations."

https://web.hypothes.is/
https://web.hypothes.is/about/

sourcecode and other projects at https://github.com/hypothesis

A Chrome extension. Firefox and other users will have to use the bookmarklet for now - which works very well
see web.hypothes.is/installing-the-bookmarklet/

run by a public foundation apparently. source code is open but not copyleft, alas.

our tools are broken

Regular Reminder - Our tools Are Broken: social networking tools and other information infrastructure that are not publicly owned (and by that I mean licensed under the General Public License or Copylefted -see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyleft) are fundamentally broken. Because anything less than public ownership severely limits the extent to which we can use, fix, experiment, and grow these into useful universal assets .. This is especially true in the long term.
---

The list of our broken tools include Facebook, Google search, Twitter, and the operating systems Windows, Mac-OSX, IOS, and bits of Android. Linux is completely ours. Most of Android and the software that serves up and browses the world wide web is also properly public property.

Distributed/Federated social software that could easily replace Facebook and Twitter already exists (see Diaspora and Identica). Publicly owned search engines won't have to start from scratch either.

Its just going to take us some time to realise that all the complaints that we have about our social software - about the abuses of power that extend from privacy violations to the manipulation of search results and manipulation of our social signalling - all of these cannot be fixed until we switch to Free (as in speech) Software.

wikiblog ...

is coming / i'm going ... one of those

ikiwiki ?

bliki

Getting WikidPad running on Mac OS-X El Capitan

WikidPad, the excellent personal wiki tool and my knowledge-base of choice hasn't been working on my mac ever since my fresh install of El-Capitan, some time ago. There was some issue with the package installer for wxPython not running on El-Capitan, and just too much real work demanding my attention ... 

So I made do with the version on my Ubuntu desktop, and by accessing the sync'd plain text wiki files directly from my text editor - Sublime Text - on my mac. Good enough to survive with - but just barely so.

Today I decided that the time had come to end the pain, and so here is a brief log of the fix - to help anyone else that needs this, including quite possibly my future-self.

Instructions:

To start off with I chose to use an older version 2.8 of wxPython, because of numerous reports I'd seen on the WikidPad forums of errors while running under wxPython3

And as always, I use the latest release of Wikidpad - in this case version 2.3beta13_01.

1) Download wxPython from https://sourceforge.net/projects/wxpython/files/wxPython/2.8.12.0/ 

- I used wxPython2.8-osx-unicode-2.8.12.0-universal-py2.7.dmg

2) Change security on your mac to installs from all developers. You get a weird message saying that the package doesn't exist if you don't. 

3) The wxPython installer package now runs a little further before failing with another weird error to the same effect: 

The Installer could not install the software because there was no software found to install.

This apparently happens because wxPython is using a legacy script, and the bundled installers were deprecated and are (as of El Capitan release) unsupported. 

The solution was found on the following stack-overflow page: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/34402303/install-wxpython-in-osx-10-11

I'll repeat the instructions here. Use the name of your wxPython file in place of wxPython-ABC below (for the file we chose above replace wxPython-ABC with wxPython2.8-osx-unicode-2.8.12.0-universal-py2.7)

3.0) Let's assume that you have already mounted the dmg and you have moved the pkg folder to a working folder ~/repack_wxpython.

cd ~/repack_wxpython
cp -r /Volumes/wxPython/wxPython-ABC.pkg .

3.1) Use the pax utility to extract the payload file (pax.gz) from Contents/Resources to a folder that will become the root of your new package.

mkdir pkg_root
cd pkg_root
pax -f ../wxPython-ABC.pkg/Contents/Resources/wxPython-ABC.pax.gz -z -r
cd ..

3.2) Rename the bundle's preflight/postflight scripts, to preinstall/postinstall scripts, as required for flat packages, in a scripts folder.

mkdir scripts
cp wxPython-ABC.pkg/Contents/Resources/preflight scripts/preinstall
cp wxPython-ABC.pkg/Contents/Resources/postflight scripts/postinstall

3.3) Create the flat package using the pkgbuild tool:

pkgbuild --root ./pkg_root --scripts ./scripts --identifier com.wxwidgets.wxpython wxPython-ABC-output.pkg

4) Once that is complete, install wxPython from the new output package. If you use the version I did, that will be wxPython2.8-osx-unicode-universal-py2.7-output.pkg. Finally, wxPython should install!

5) Now, download WikidPad source from http://wikidpad.sourceforge.net/. The direct link for the version I used is http://downloads.sourceforge.net/wikidpad/WikidPad-2.3beta13_01-src.zip

6) Run WikidPad from source:

cd to directory where you unzipped the source - in my case:

cd ~/apps/wikidpad/WikidPad23 

then launch WikidPad with the following:

arch -i386 python2.7 WikidPad.py 

7) At this stage I got a python error from wxPython:

File "/usr/local/lib/wxPython-unicode-2.8.12.0/lib/python2.7/site-packages/wx-2.8-mac-unicode/wx/_core.py", line 3917, in Bind

    assert callable(handler)

AssertionError

8) Instead of tracking this down properly, I used a temporary fix by commenting out the assert: 

- open "/usr/local/lib/wxPython-unicode-2.8.12.0/lib/python2.7/site-packages/wx-2.8-mac-unicode/wx/_core.py", line 3917

- comment out line 3917

  assert callable(handler) 

9) Wikidpad opens and runs! .. but will only work on wikis using the Gadfly db - No SQLite wikis run. I saw the following error when trying to open my wiki:

ERROR: required data handler "original_sqlite" unknown to WikidPad

10) To fix this, I had to use homebrew to install sqlite3 with universal support:

brew install sqlite3 --universal

11) Then soft link the sqlite3 dynamic library into the WikidPad source folder

cd ~/apps/wikidpad/WikidPad23/

sudo ln -s /usr/lib/libsqlite3.dylib libsqlite3.0.dylib

12) Try running again from source ....

cd ~/apps/wikidpad/WikidPad23

arch -i386 python2.7 WikidPad.py

... and WikidPad should launch fine now.

cinnamon 2.0.12 on ubuntu 13.10

Having in the past few days heard loads of praise of the Cinnamon 2 Linux desktop environment, from both friends and strangers, and now that installing Cinnamon 2 on Ubuntu no longer breaks Unity, I've decided to try it out on my primary Ubuntu desktop.

So, using the method below, I've started testing. A review of some sort should follow...

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gwendal-lebihan-dev/cinnamon-stable
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install cinnamon

UPDATE (several hours later):

So far, I'm happy enough with Cinnamon-2.0. It seems to run with a smaller footprint, more stability and more functionality and configuration options than you get with the latest Unity and Gnome-Shell.

I did get a few random lock-ups during early reckless tweaking, but I've seen no recurrences since I stopped messing around with extensions, desklets and applets (some of them still only properly tested with earlier versions of Cinnamon).

Now, after several hours of work, the impression I'm left with is all positive.

In terms of workflow, I did find myself missing a few features of Unity's Dash and HUD, but the old desktop metaphors still seem to work better for me overall. And though this might have more to do with my long term familiarity with those, I also think it has something to do with a general lack of maturity in the newer approaches to the desktop environment being worked on.

Its still early days, but if nothing major shows up, I could very easily stick with Cinnamon as the desktop option I choose most often at login - at least until the others grow up a bit.

NEXT UPDATE (... in the morning)

I think I'm changing my mind .. The new day has found me missing Unity's simplicity and that task orientated Dash and HUD..  Ah well, I'll decide later, but just now I felt crowded and in my own way - I'm writing this after logging back into Unity ... maybe for a long while...



LATEST UPDATE (... two weeks later)

I've settled in to using and liking them both - with Unity ahead in the number of times it gets chosen at login.

fedora 17 .. todo list post install

So, a few days ago, I installed Fedora17, partly because I wanted a straight gnome-shell experience, and partly because I hadn't seriously tried a rpm based distro yet. The short of it is, that I'm really enjoying the standard gnome-shell environment - especially how customisable it is compared to Unity. So much so, that I think I'll be working off this linux partition for a while to come.

That said, Fedora did take significantly longer to get the everything installed than either Ubuntu or Mint does, mainly because it does not come standard with any non GPL'd software in it's default repository - but with a fair amount of googling, all was eventually sorted.

Now, only after all of the searching and tweaking, and more searching and installing was done, have I come across a good, comprehensive how-to that would have saved me loads of time if I had only stumbled on to it earlier.

Smashing Web's Fedora 17 Post Installation guide covers just about everything you would want to add to a fresh Fedora install. Here's a list (not complete) of the packages I've used from there:

Appearance and customisation:
yum install faenza-icon-theme
yum install gnome-tweak-toolyum install dconf-editor

installed some of the gnome-extensions listed there (will list these later.. possibly)

a better software installer:
yum install yumex

to enable the RPM Fusion repository just install (this allows you to get at some of the packages below)
yum localinstall --nogpgcheck http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-stable.noarch.rpm http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-stable.noarch.rpm

add the adobe repository for downloading Acrobat Reader, by running this at the terminal
## Adobe Repository 32-bit x86 ## rpm -ivh http://linuxdownload.adobe.com/adobe-release/adobe-release-i386-1.0-1.noarch.rpm rpm --import /etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-adobe-linux ## Adobe Repository 64-bit x86_64 ## rpm -ivh http://linuxdownload.adobe.com/adobe-release/adobe-release-x86_64-1.0-1.noarch.rpm rpm --import /etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-adobe-linux

yum install flash-plugin nspluginwrapper alsa-plugins-pulseaudio libcurl

to play various Video formats:
yum install gstreamer gstreamer-plugins-good gstreamer-plugins-bad gstreamer-plugins-ugly
yum install ffmpeg ffmpeg-libs

dvd playback / ripping / players

yum install libdvdread libdvdnav lsdvd
rpm -Uvh http://rpm.livna.org/livna-release.rpm
yum install libdvdcss
yum install vlc
yum install mplayer mplayer-gui smplayer gnome-mplayer

and my music player of choice:
yum install clementine

BitTorrent client and IM client:
yum install transmission
yum install pidgin

Tools:
yum install nautilus-open-terminal
yum install p7zip p7zip-plugins
yum install filezilla

IDE's:
yum install netbeans (no longer in repo - see below)
yum install eclipse
yum install spe
yum install geany
yum install cssed
yum install anjuta

....
To run yum you need to be in a terminal with root privileges.
just type:
su -
at a terminal, then enter your root password, and then paste in the yum install commands and wait for the installs to finish.

I found two commands that would not work from the howto. One was "yum install netbeans" - its been removed from the repo because it is no longer GPL compliant. Instead follow the instructions to install it here: http://www.matthewhughes.co.uk/netbeans-on-fedora-17/
The other was "yum install gnochm" - instead use:
yum install chmsee

universal folksonomy

This is probably not entirely new. Maybe even not new at all. In fact I've probably just joined legions of people out there who are wondering why ..

There isn't yet a simple plain-text standard for meta-data, that can be applied universally across all services and objects - from web pages and web resources, to documents and files, from books and articles to audio and video files - applied basically, to all digital resources.

Then building on top of all this tagging - all this human-computation and folksonomy - building flexible tools that mine and collate the meta-data from across all possible services, communities, spaces and contexts. Making these tools expandable, so adding another service/context/data-source is as simple as possible.

So, how is this different?

1. we use it in the same way, but consistently across all services/contexts/collections


2. we use it even when no provision is made for it - wherever we find space for plain text that can be co-opted to meta-data - like in comment fields, sidewiki entries, bookmark notes, mp3 id3 comment fields, etc


3. then we build software to collect them from both the formalised meta-data services and the informal - and shape flexible plugins to collect them from wherever the standard can be recognised

what sort of meta-data?

1. First, the simplest forms of meta-data - tags/labels - flat, informal ontologies - collections of keywords - like those used within services across the so called web2.0.
   And when using services that aren't designed to use tags/labels - co-opting plain-text fields by, say, the following:
   tags = blog, tagging, ideas, software, socialSoftware


2. Second, simple key value pairs, like author=JaysenNaidoo; date=20101113; license=gpl3


3. Keeping the set of standards as open as possible - but defining them properly in public. Adding any other std that can be represented in plain-text and gains enough ground - depicting hierarchies, semantics, etc.

.. possibly more on this later.

some almost related links:
Actually some of these suggest practical tagging standards as well:

• http://lifehacker.com/software/tags/metadata-as-a-filing-system-169971.php
• http://armchairtheorist.com/2008/05/22/top-10-tagging-best-practices-for-anything-web-20/
• http://blog.simslearningconnections.com/?p=152

emergent metadata

the idea in the general: is to continuously grow metadata from the use of the data - keeping a history of use, learning patterns, links, and contexts from that history. eventually establishing a strong semantic layer over the data.

in the specific: a plugin for my personal wiki of choice, WikidPad. The plugin, lets call it WikidPadMonitor for now, when in 'learning mode' should collect information about the wikipages you open, the wikilinks you follow, and the patterns of wiki and tag usage - and use this to grow useable metadata.

Eventually, this emergent metadata could be used to establish a new measure of the strength of the links between wikipages, make predictions about the page being looked for, and discover context..

well, thats the idea, anyhow: growing metadata in the wikigarden.

installing AVG free anti-virus in ubuntu

you dont really need this in ubuntu, but its useful if you run windows as well, or if you want to test downloaded files for windows' viruses.

just copy-paste the commands in this ubuntuforum article into your terminal. Remember to change the .deb filename to that of the more recent version you downloaded.

a basic delicious hack

a quicksearch shortcut to get to your del.icio.us tags:

1. In the firefox bookmark menu, choose Organise Bookmarks..
2. in the Bookmark Manager, click on 'New Bookmark'
3. name it something like delicious quicksearch
3. Enter http://del.icio.us/jaysen/%s in the location field (replacing jaysen with your delicious username),
4. Enter d in the keyword field.

Now, typing d tag1 in firefox's address bar will take you to your delicious pages tagged with tag1, and d tag1+tag2+tag3 will take you to your pages tagged with all of tag1, tag2, and tag3.

simple, i know, but i haven't seen it on any delicious-tool-list sites, and i use it a lot, so thought it was worth mentioning.

Gimmie, a new panel replacement for Gnome, and how to install it in Ubuntu

Gimmie looks like it has some interesting user interface innovation - checkout this blog for how to install it.

will update this post after i've tested it properly.

UPDATE:20070620: still havent tried this -fuck it- and probably wont anytime soon

writing in common (with google docs)

you getting this
Yeah very cool
this changes things, huh?
truly revolutionary bru

These were our first words on screen when sometime yesterday morning, DS - in Johannesburg - and jaysen - in Algiers - decided to check out google's collaborative authoring tools. I know what you thinking, and you right, we're are a little geeky. But now that we got that out of the way we can say, without fear of ridicule or censure...THIS SHIT IS FUCKING IMPRESSIVE. We were so impressed that we decided to test it with a joint blog.

First, We got there via http://docs.google.com. So far, google have come up with word processor and spreadsheet web applications done with some fancy AJAX. It imports/exports from/to openoffice, word, excel, html, and pdf and runs off your browser. The interface is pretty much what you get with most office applications. What makes this so cool is that any number of people, anywhere in the world, can be working on the same document at the same time with changes appearing almost instantaneously. (We did notice some delay creeping in sometimes, but not often)

The only shit thing we've found so far is that it doesn't allow footnotes. Although it transports footnotes from word documents as anchors in the text, its a bit of a pain to have create a new anchor every-time you add a footnote (DS likes footnotes).

There is an almost direct and linear progression from the wiki idea, or at least, the collaborative part of the wiki idea (not the unique funkiness of wiki's massively linked network of nodes - yes, we're both fans of wiki as well). But the collaboration with this tool just seems so much more immediate and realtime -with changes appearing almost as soon as others can make them during simultaneous use, with an excellent revision control system (the latter allows you to track changes in the document, literally, to the second. although the increments of time get larger the further back you go).
Add the extra dimension of a skypecall, and this becomes a dangerously powerful tool. Truly revolutionary. In fact, we're thinking, this might even be better than working together in the same room.

Apart from footnotes, the only drawback we experienced has less to do with software, and more to do with the singularity of each of our styles of writing and ways thinking. But the gap, if you can call it that, is the real tension that creativity springs from. Its a good thing even if takes working through

Performancing for Firefox

i'm trying this tidy firefox extension called Performancing to write this blog. Its a full featured blog editor that sits right within Firefox, and has Trackback, Technorati and Del.icio.us support. Its also been approved by the mozilla addons team, so you can lift it directly from the addons site.

UPDATE: After using it for a few posts, i think the blogger bookmarklet is all i need. its out.

Gene Pool

very funky - i've been fantasizing about a SimLife type game like this for the longest time.

From the page: "Gene Pool is an artificial life simulation in which populations of physics-based organisms evolve swimming capabilities over time. These organisms are called "swimbots". You can set mate preference criteria and thus influence what the swimbots consider as attractive qualities in potential mates. The most attractive swimbots get chosen most often and so their genetic building blocks propogate to future generations. Eventually, swimbots get better at pursuing each other, competing for food, and becoming babes to other swimbots. Local gene pools emerge which compete for sex and food (for energy to have more sex). Eventually a dominant sub-population takes over.

And sometimes, everyone just dies (but you can help keep them alive, by moving food bits and swimbots around, and constraining the migration of competing populations by using the "Great Wall")

Gene Pool is best appreciated as a virtual Darwinian aquarium in which you initiate a primordial soup, and then occasionally check up on what Virtual Mother Nature is up to - about every fifteen minutes (or every few days, if you are interested in long-term evolutionary experiments!)

The strange and unexpected strategies for swimming (and being sexually attractive) that emerge can sometimes be amusing, and a bit reminiscent of that brand of creativity known as Darwinian Evolution."


[tagged with evolution]

Python Sidebar

something useful for FireFox users/Python hackers:
Edgewall Software: Python Sidebar

wikidpad goes opensource

WikidPad has been opensource for a few months now. the group has settled on using Trac/Subversion along with two google groups (dev and user).

offline wikipedia

Wikipedia in TomeRaider format - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
you can download an offline version of wikipedia (an excellent free collaborative/open-content encyclopedia) in the tomeraider format. Its big - about 180M - but if you have the space there's a tomeraider reader for windows, pocket pcs or palms.

"The English version of the Wikipedia is easily the worlds largest free encyclopedia, a printed edition of this reference guide would fill a whole bookshelf, but you might prefer to carry it in your pocket on a memory card, or on your notebook.
Since 2001 over 320,000 articles have been written, discussed, extended and corrected by thousands of contributors, 70,000 pictures are featured."

wikipedia online is at www.wikipedia.org
the free (nagware) tomeraider can be downloaded from the tomeraider site