TiddlyWiki!

29 03 2008

So I’ve been quite busy these past few months as our lab has been getting put together.  Now that I’m able to do actual optics work (soon), hopefully I have more time.

For some time now, I’ve been using Zim, a Desktop Wiki.  It’s a pretty slick program, but rather bare bones.  I’ve been using it as a quick place to jot down random notes.  Basically, it’s a glorified text editor (a la Notepad) that allows hyperlinks between notes.  It’s a pretty neat program, but it is limited in its wiki abilities.

Yesterday, I ran across TiddlyWiki,  which is more like a cross between a wiki and a blog.  It get’s a bit difficult to read sometimes, but it is a pretty impressive piece of software. Basically, it’s a blog + wiki (blogiki? wikilog?) all written in one HTML file.

I’d like to use my personal desktop wiki as repository for writing things down as I understand them.  That would be little notes about, say, spontaneous emission or little derivations, etc.  I can even see putting in some wikipedia pages for reference, or information from other websites (such as notes for using VIM, or Sakurai notes).  In this sense, I think that TiddlyWiki would be better than Zim.  However, I still see myself using Zim to jot little quick things down, such as To Do lists, To Get lists, and everyday notes.