Adam Engelhart

Personal Wikis: the Modern Commonplace

December 5th, 2008

I’ve kept many notebooks in my life, but I’ve never collected them all in one place–I’ve generally scribbled whatever I was thinking about on whatever piece of paper was handy (yes, the backs of many envelopes have been so abused). However, I’ve recently started implementing a solution to make all the things I’d written on paper available in a digital format.

I have established a personal Wiki, which I think is the modern equivalent of the commonplace book. I now have a place to put all the things I think about when I’m not thinking about other things, which seems like a rather stupid thing to say once I’ve written it, but it made sense when I thought it. I suppose that would be better put in my personal Wiki . . .

In any event, I keep it using TiddlyWiki, which has the advantage of being contained in a single HTML file and having a very simple installation procedure:

1. Download the HTML file.
2. Open it.
3. There is no step 3.
4. Nor 4.
5. Nope! You’re done!

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