Max Manders

I’m a big fan of Wikis. I like the idea of being able to dump my brain somewhere that I can keep organised, and access anywhere. If I don’t have to juggle something in my mind, it’s one less thing for me to worry about. There are lots of applications out there that let you manage a list of tasks, todo lists etc., but I like the flexibility a Wiki affords me to readily organise larger amounts of information.

I’ve tried various web based solutions for the obvious benefit that I can access them everywhere, however since I spend a lot of my time in Vim, I wanted something that doesn’t involve a browser, yet offers the same flexibility and access-everywhere (well, where there’s Vim) that a web based wiki offers.

That’s where Vimwiki comes in. Vimwik is a Vimball that, once installed, allows you to create linked documents using a similar syntax to Markdown, Restructed Text etc. By default, it creates a ‘vimwiki’ directory in your home directory. I simply moved that directory to my Dropbox and created a symlink to my home directory.

It also features commands to export one or all pages to linked, local HTML files and allows you to create multiple separate wikis if you want. If, like me, you’re a fan of Vim and wikis, give it a shot!

Scotland has a thriving and diverse tech community, reflected in such events and organisations as Tech Meetup; various Linux User Groups; the annual Highland Fling web conference; Culture Hack Scotland; The Turing Festival and the Edinburgh International Science Festival to name but a few.  I have been fortunate enough to attend previous Highland Flings, and I know others in the web industry who have had fun and positive experiences at other tech events hosted in Scotland.

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Over many years of rebuilding my laptop with different versions of Ubuntu, I’ve accumulated a list of useful links to save me from remembering useful repositories, PPAs and packages to install.  I’ve settled on version 10.10 (Maverick) as being the most stable for my purposes, albeit with a more recent kernel.  So more as an aid to my useless memory than anything else, collected links to jog my memory.  I could clone my package list regularly for use with ‘dpkg –set-selections’ and ‘apt-get –dselect-upgrade’ but it’s quite possible that at some point I’ll install some rubbish I don’t want.

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I had planned on selling on my current laptop to invest in something more future proof. I very much like my HP Pavillion DV6; but the build quality isn’t as good as I’d like, and although the ATI Radeon graphics would be great if I was a Windows 7 user, Nvidia seems to be better supported as Ubuntu continues to evolve, and since Ubuntu is my Linux distribution of choice, it makes sense for me to opt for something with Nvidia graphics. I’d hoped to get something around the £300 mark as the laptop is in great condition and is very well spec’d. However, any potential buyer would more than likely want the laptop restored to factory settings, with Windows 7 installed. And so begins a hellish day…

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