Janne, author of JSPWiki, reveals what is going on at the bleeding edge of Wiki-Blog hybrid technology.

"First, a short explanation on the tech behind this weblog: This is an instance of JSPWiki, where each entry is a separate WikiPage?. The Main page aggregates then all of the pages which have a certain signature in their name onto the front page, producing the weblog you see right now. This allows cool stuff like doing collection pages, such as Ropecon2003, or EGC2003, where I just insert a string like [{WeblogPlugin startDate='310103' days='31'}] to get all of the entries from January 2003, for example." - Butt Ugly

In essence, JSPWiki is a Wiki with the ability to pull together a blog-like page out of Wiki pages.  Throw in page template to add style and other blogging essentials like calendar and blogroll, you got a blog.  Neato.

Janne also talks about his XML-RPC-based API for JSPWiki.  JSPWiki also supports MetaWeblogAPI.  Les Orchard, Mr. 0xDECAFBAD, has implemented the API for TWiki, UseModWiki, and MoinMoin.  Les is considering REST version currently.

On the syntax front, Janne mentioned the WikiML initiative by Eric van der Vlist, an old pal from my XML/SML days.  There is also WikiXmlDtd effort by UseMod folks.  Wiki Interchange Format page is also worth a read.

Based on my recent scouring of the Wiki technologies, JSPWiki (Java/LGPL) and TWiki (Perl/GPL) are worth keeping an eye on, JSPWiki on the wiki/blog/api front and TWiki on the extension front.  There is also SocialText, of course, but I don't know what differentiates their commercial Wiki implementation from popular free open source Wiki implementations other than service.  Perhaps Ross or Peter can explain.

Check out this post by James, the model middle-aged minority.  It has a funny cartoon about software business and some photos to pick you up if you are depressed about your current job.

After reading posts by Scott Loftesness and Tim Oren on deterioration of California business environment, I was suddenly gripped with the certainty of Republican Future for California.  Democrats are out of control and Republicans are charging in with the Terminator as the point man.  Interesting times we live in.

I frequently think about human mind works because I am always looking for a better handle on my own.  A better handle in real term is a good model.  My latest model is a pipe organ with a thousand keys.  BTW, one thousand is just a number I picked.

Imagine a huge pipe organ with a row of just ten keys.  Each key represents a part of a mind and pressing it evokes thoughts or emotions.  Since it's a pipe organ, pressure matters.  Now replace the row of keys with a table of 100 keys.  Easy so far.  Take one more step and imagine 10 stacks of keys.  Now you have a cube of 1000 keys.  At this point, you have to lose rest of the organ, and keep just the keys.

Keys on the outside of the cube are pressed by what goes on outside the mind.  Pressing a key cause other other keys within the cube to be pressed, creating a sequence of notes and cords of thoughts, a music of sort.  Some relationships between keys are inherent, but most are learned.  Relationship also depends on the amount of pressure applied to a key and what keys were pressed before.

It doesn't really matter whether this model is valid or not.  What matters is what new music it will play as I hold the model in my mind.  At this moment, I am playing a slightly funky music in my head.