NoteStorm

NoteStorm is a specially configured TiddlyWiki, with some great extra features. It is, in developer Dave Gifford’s own words,

a TiddlyWiki adaptation that lets you add topics to a treeview index with one click, then lets you add subtopics and notes with one click as well, so that as you take notes they are automatically added to the correct place in a hierarchical index in the MainMenu.

NoteStorm is the successor to No-Brainer Notes, also a project by Dave Gifford. But it is also the result of the ongoing work of the TiddlyWiki Group at GoogleGroups. Gifford himself is very active in this community, but he received also some input from other members of the group. Not from me, btw; I’m only a lurker, interested in the TiddlyWiki project and using the good things that emerge from it. I became interested in the TiddlyWiki project from the first time I heard about it – june 2006 – and I tried to use it for almost every aspect of my life, including my work as a music-teacher. Unfortunately, the TiddlyWord-format was not accepted by my students, and I must admit that it doesn’t look good in my language (Dutch). So I changed to a CMS, TikiWiki, that is no longer maintained, and later MOODLE. However, there are some examples of the application of TiddlyWiki in education. See for a showcase Gifford’s “TiddlyWiki in Action“.
Okay, back to the central topic of this post: NoteStorm. An introduction to NoteStorm is presented in this slideshow:

An older project of Gifford is BibblyWiki, a TiddlyWiki that lets you manage your personal library. I tried it when it became available, but for this purpose I prefer LibraryThing, an online service, to organize my personal library. You can still download the project from Gifford’s website, but he has no plans to develop it further.
Gifford’s page with his other TiddlyWiki projects is also very interesting: a great tutorial (“TiddlyWiki for the rest of us“), and TiddlyVault, a “mère a boire” of plugins, macros, and other TiddlyWiki extensions. Of course there is also the help file at TiddlySpot, with lots of information, but, despite the promise in the subtitle to be a help file for beginners, it may be too overwhelming for starters.
Finally, Gifford also uploaded an Introduction to TiddlyWiki for newbies at Slideshare.

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  • The Aesthetics and Beauty of Knowledge

    Shih was the opposite of facts and raw information; shih was the elegance of knowledge, the insight and skill to organize knowledge into meaningful patterns. As an artist chooses colours or light to make her pictures, a master of shih chooses textures of knowledge – various ideas, myths, abstractions, and theories – to create a way of seeing the world. The aesthetics and beauty of knowledge – this was shih.

    – David Zindell, The Broken God, 1993

  • Geek Attitude

    The attitude thing is about flexibility, portability, creativity, sociability and jamming (ran out of suitable “ity” words!). It’s about improvising – in the practical and musical senses of the word; not getting tangled in boundaries and the “right” way to do things.
    Definitely the only way to travel.
    Martin Delaney – “Laptop Music”.