Basics, Interests
- print/copy editor
- linguistics, language contact
- literature, foreign language, LangueFrançaise
- knitting, making
- amateur radio http://www.n2nly.com
- "networked information" a la YochaiBenkler, wikis, messageboards, email lists...
- musical performance, experimentation, enjoyment
- too much else!
I run a couple of small wikis. Not much has happened with the PatternToss site described below, but I've been building up a small UseMod wiki based around my amateur radio activity at http://www.n2nly.com/ Wikis seem to be a relatively new format for the ham radio community (although there are a couple running on MediaWiki), and I'm interested to see how it is received by other hams. --JasonConklin 15 Feb 2007
I am one of two (we hope) BenevolentDictator''s in the early SeedPosting stage of work on PatternToss -- http://www.patterntoss.org/wiki -- a collaborative reference and free pattern repository for knitting, crochet, and other such crafts, fiber arts, pastimes, or whathaveyou.
Among other things, I find it hilarious that the fount of WikiCulture and WardsWiki itself is/was "Pattern Oriented Stuff," and here I am starting a wiki oriented toward a completely different set of Patterns, another sort of Language. But how much different, really? A lot of this got going in my mind when I recognized some analogy between knitting patterns and source code -- a rough pattern:garment::code:binary kind of thing -- and a potential opening for knitting collaboration and modularization and community enhancement through some of the principals of the free software movement.
...which may be more or less appropriate an analogy, I recognize, but we may as well run with it. Comments on and critique of the notion, as well as the wiki itself, are welcome. A lot of what I've found here on MeatballWiki has been inspirational and helpful thus far. Thanks!
-- JasonConklin
Jason, welcome to MeatballWiki. By patterns, do you mean patterns in the fashion sense or the Christopher Alexander sense? -- SunirShah
Thanks! Although I have been peripherally exposed to the PatternLanguage sense in the past, I suppose I'm properly referring to the "fashion sense" of pattern, rather than Alexander's. It was really just an amusing coincidence, when reading Benkler, thinking about wikis, and perceiving a lack of collaborative design when it came to knitters' culture on the Internet, to learn that the wiki concept was originally developed with regard to a term that encompassed those two compelling words pattern and language.
Interestingly, though, the patterns that some knitters (crocheters, whatever) use to make things are enchiphered sets of instructions -- k2, p2, yo, k2tog, etc -- and that, in turn, reminded me of scripting languages and source code. In considering what little I know about Alexander, though, there may be some parallels to note. On one hand, knitting patterns need to efficiently produce a topologically possible (as well as useful or attractive) fabric, and on another -- the proper "fashion sense" -- the piece(s) one knits up has to produce, say, a wearable sweater, one that conforms more or less to some variation on standard human-body shapes.
Having said as much about knitting and patterns and architecture and computers, another thing I'm especially interested in is Linguistics, and there opens a whole nother floodgate. I might also add that, since getting MediaWiki started, I've been enjoyably toying on the side with both UseMod and OddMuse. --JasonConklin