I’d like to invite you to join me on a free-wheeling, all-night, live streamed video conference this coming Tuesday 25th March 2025 to help me stay awake for a sleep deprived electroencephalogram. I’ll explain more…
For the last few months I’ve been talking to a friend David Bovill about a new project of his. David is a long term wiki enthusiast who has been closely involved with Ward Cunningham’s Smallest Federated Wiki.
David is convening a group of interested parties for this project. One of the other people involved is the current guardian of the key legal rights to Douglas Adams’ Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, which I think won’t need any introduction.
The idea they have evolved is to build a community around writing and assembling Hitchhikers Guides to particular topics, with a focus on helping people take meaningful action in the world. There’s a fair amount of existing Hitchhikers Guide content on the BBC website that is not maintained or updated anymore which we will be able to use as a starting point.
The TiddlyWiki connection is that these guides will be written and published as single file TiddlyWiki’s, for all the usual reasons of resilience, future proofing etc.
David has been using TiddlyWiki for several years. Part of this project is that with a couple of other collaborators he is building a peer-to-peer cryptographic federation system with TiddlyWiki at the centre of it.
There’s a lot more to say about this project, but the particular reason for mentioning it now is that on Tuesday morning I am having what is called a “sleep deprived EEG” for my epilepsy, It is exactly what it sounds like: I’ve got to stay up for the entire night before, and then get to the hospital at 8am to be wired up to the EEG machine. The idea is that I’ll fall asleep which will make it easier to see what is going on. The catch is that I am not allowed coffee or other stimulants.
So, David has very generously offered to help me stay awake by holding a marathon Zoom session along with some of the other people involved in the project. I’ll be doing some TiddlyWiki demos, and talking about TiddlyWiki, and having group discussions with guests. David wants to explore tangents and serendipity, and so for instance he would like me to do a brief session on my interest in optical illusions. There’ll be other people talking as well, and everyone who joins will be able to participate.
David will also explain the Hitchhikers Guide project much more eloquently and in much more depth than I am able to. The whole thing will be live streamed and recorded (happily not by me, so I don’t have the details yet).
I think there’s some fun and interesting opportunities for TiddlyWiki people to get involved in this project, and I hope some of you might come along to find out more.
There’s about 31 hours until this kicks off. I will post the joining details closer to the time.
