View source for ConvivialTools Blog 2007-11

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==12 November 2007==
'''Convivialtools.net is on Google'''

After months of frustration about my websites being invisible on Google, I am finally appeased. I was idly doing a Google search for "Convivial Tools," just to see what is new for these key words, when to my astonishment I found the Main Page of this website on the third page of the Google listings! How did that happen? A few days ago not a single page from this site was listed on Google. I take back all of the bad things I've been saying about Google lately....<br><br>

==9 November 2007==
'''Reading Ivan Illich in Teheran, Iran'''

I'm on an assignment for my job. I arrived in Teheran last night, and will be here a week. On Sunday (a working day in Islamic countries) I will attend a pre-bid conference with the National Water and Wastewater Engineering Company, concerning an institutional strenthening project for the Municipalities of Ahwaz, Shiraz, Mazdaran and Guilan.

I started reading [[Ivan Illich]]'s [[Deschooling Society]] in the airplane. I saw that a Wikiversity study group has formed to read and discuss this book, so I found the text online and printed out the first few chapters.

I have problems with Illich's approach in Deschooling Society, just as I do with his approach in Tools for Conviviality. This should be the occasion for me to put my fingers on what bothers me.

The first point is that Illich is too radical, and throws the baby out with the bath. He may be right that institutional education is costly and inefficient, and feeds into growth-oriented consumerism. Also that diplomas polarize society and are mechanisms of priviledge. But he then suggests passing a law against discimination on the basis of diplomas, which is an example of the same repressive approach that bothers me in Tools for Conviviality.

Schools and diplomas serve a useful purpose, and are here to stay. Rather than to interfere drastically with the existing educational system, we should try to create alternatives: new types of schools and diplomas which will better serve the purposes of the poor, or for that matter the rich, because based on do-it-yourself conviviality. In the same way, rather than banning oppressive technologies, as Illich proposes in Tools for Conviviality, we should focus on developing the libertory ones. (I am however for severely regulating pesticides and GMOs, though I've learned that it is politically wiser to avoid talking about "banning" them.) And I could make a third parallel, which is that instead of trying to ban capitalism, as the Marxists did, we should just work on developing workers co-operatives. In each case, the positive development of alternatives seems far more productive than a negative focus on repressing abuses. A certain amount of repressive legislation is necessary, but as Jefferson put it: that government is best which governs least.<br>
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==3 November 2007==
'''Reconfiguration of the toolswiki.ouvaton.org and xwiki.ouvaton.org websites'''

Having brought to this website everything dealing with Convivial Tools, I then reconfigured my other two [[MediaWiki]] websites as follows:

*http://toolswiki.ouvaton.org becomes the '''Wikis Database''' 
*the xwiki site becomes my Personal Experimental Database

I thus now have three websites running under [[MediaWiki]] software, and not one of them is a [[Wiki]]! So why do I use [[MediaWiki]]? Because I like the way that software package operates, and I now know it well....<br>
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'''Changing the Logo'''

I edited the "Crystal" image of the wrench and screwdriver, which I found on Wikipedia, using Photoshop, to add the title "Convivial Tools Database." I easily uploaded the image into MediaWiki, but then had trouble changing the Logo setting in the LocalSettings.php file. I had already done this for the Logo of the toolswiki.ouvaton.org site, but had a hard time doing it again. When I finally succeeded, I discovered that my image blocks out the background, and some day I will have to try to modify the image using photoshop so that it lets the background through.<br>
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==2 November 2007==
'''Creation of this convivialtools.net website'''

Last evening I successfully created a webspace on my server with the name "convivialtools.net." I then connected the DNS "convivialtools.net" to the webspace by configuring the DNS links from Gandi, with whom I registered the DNS.

'''Transfer of data from "toolswiki"'''

This morning I successfully extracted from "toolswiki.ouvaton.org" the pages about Convivial Tools (minus all the pages about wikis) using an XML dump, and then uploaded them here using "Special pages: import pages," while logged on a WikiSysop. Wahoo!

'''Further tasks'''

After creating user Turtle, I changed the LocalSettings.php file to configure the site so that only I can create accounts or edit pages.

In tweaking the new uploaded pages I discovered that, although they all contain a category tag at the end of the page, I have to edit each imported article at least once before the category is taken into account. I'm doing that now, and it is a pain. But I understand why [[MediaWiki]] does this: one generally wants to modify the categories on the imported pages to fit the categories of the website they are imported to, so [[MediaWiki]] waits until the imported file is edited before taking into account its category.

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