Pawfaliki is one of the easiest server-based wikis to get going – it’s a single php file and yet it’s very featureful – RSS feed, table of contents, access control and more. Chances are very good that if your webhost supports php, all you need do is upload this single file to their server and you’re in business.
Online version of one of the finest boardgames ever made
Diplomacy has been around forever (well, since 1959 to be precise) and is often named as one of the finest board-games ever made. There have been tools to play it online since before the WWW, and there have been a couple of (abysmal) computer games based on it, but now there’s a reasonably good graphical, www-based version in development on sourceforge. You can check out the official homepage, which has some screenshots to give you a sense of it. Anyone interested in playing if I bring up an installation of this on my server? I’d love to get a game going. The rules are drop dead simple and if you like something like, say, Axis and Allies but without the luck and dice rolling, chances are high you’d really like it. Any takers?
Everyone loves the magnetic poetry
Don’t they? I’m on a bit of an AJAX kick the past week or so and happened across magnetic ajax demo. Unfortunately they’ve since had to decouple the database because of bandwidth usage but actually if there’s any interest I’ll get this running on metamusing just because it’s clever and au courant. It’s an AJAX app that models the magnetic fridge poetry that’s fairly popular, in case you’re not interested in clicking through.
Every web development link you could ever want
A Skidmore student recently asked me how I learned what I know of web application development and we talked about learning by doing, dissecting other folk’s code and so on, and at the end of the discussion he asked if I could share some of the links I use. I started to pull together a list of the most useful sites, like a list apart and Westciv’s css tutorials, but as I was doing this Vitaly Friedman’s fantastic essential bookmarks for web designers and developers showed up in my feeds. I poked around and quickly concluded he had done a better job pulling together all the best resources on the subject than I could and sent that link along to the student. Now I’m passing it along to you all to enjoy.
Alternative free open source 3d modeling software
Anyone interested in 3d modeling has no doubt heard of blender, which has been around for quite a while. Art of Illusion showed up in my RSS feeds last week and I checked it out – this is a decent, free, java-based 3d modeling and rendering tool. If you’re looking to experiment with 3d modeling and are overwhelmed with Blender’s interface you might find Art of Illusion will fit the bill. I could also see this used as a teaching tool where the budget doesn’t allow for a lab license for Maya or 3d studio max.
Lesson to the wise: connect your webserver to a UPS
When I moved to New York the layout of my office caused me to skip hooking my server to a UPS. Somehow I concluded that my gaming rig was more important in the scheme of things. No idea what I was thinking. Anyway last week I really got bitten by this decision as I lost power at least 15 times over the course of three days. Mostly it was for only a few minutes at a time, but twice it was long enough to cause the UPS to go down as well. All this is by way of explanation – this is why my site was down for a good piece of last week. After the third or fourth time of bringing the server back up I simply gave up and waited out the power losses. I stopped by Home Depot this weekend and got a long extension cord and now the server is on the UPS, so hopefully no more nonsense like I just went through. This also means I’m about to bombard the site with a bunch of posts I stored in my backpackit account.
Slashdot for the attention deficit crowd
Do you Digg? Think community tech news aggregation with commentary and a karma system, then go check it out. What it lacks in thoughtful commentary it makes up in volume and verve. Worth adding to your rss feeds if you want a constant stream of tech news and links, and if you’re inclined you can participate and help shape the flow.
More excellent javascript interface stuff
Ajax is all the rage these days. Check out Rico, another collection of ajax/javascript widgets. Some really great stuff to be found here. Check out the accordion demo, I could actually use that for a project I’m working on right now.
It’s funny. 5 years ago I was so disgusted with the state of javascript support in browsers that I started actively avoiding using it. Things have come around though. There are still issues but the tradeoff is how cool and useful the things you can do are, and the issues mainly have to do with IE and its crap standard compliance which should hopefully be fixed in IE 7.
Free zombie fun
I’ll admit it, I have a minor fascination with all things zombie, err, excepting Rob Zombie that is. I recently happened across Monster Island. It’s a full novel that the author published using a weblog, a trilogy actually. Tolstoy it ain’t but if you like zombie action in the George Romero mold, this is the stuff for you. The author has also made it available for cell phones and ipods if you’d prefer to take your zombie brain munching action on the road with you.
Easy ad-hoc mailing lists
Ever need a temporary ad-hoc mailing list? Check out conversate. The characteristics that make it more convenient than simply emailing a list of folks is that it generates a web archive of your discussion, it generates an RSS feed you can subscribe to or link folks to, you can open it to participants beyond the initial group easily, and it has a handy browser bookmarklet. It’s really more of a hybrid – depending on how you configure your preferences, this could be used as web-based discussion tool or you can conduct the conversation solely through your email client. At any rate it’s free and has a clean easy to use interface.
Dave's Place/Metamusing 