Announcing Super Multi Notes

Some of you may have noticed the lack of posts here since, ooh, a year ago. A large part of the reason for that is I don’t like writing a blog post about a thing unless I can cover the thing totally comprehensively, which always feels like a huge undertaking when it’s something like a console with 200 games built in, and I’ve decided I want to take a screenshot of every single one of them, delve into the history of the company that made it, take photos of it from every angle and do a bunch of other stuff on top of that. But with that coupled to my limited free time lately, it just seems overwhelming and I end up never doing it. Which is not ideal! Because I think this stuff is interesting and I want to share my knowledge about it with the world - I don’t want to turn into some cranky old dude with an attic full of weird shit that nobody else knows or cares about. I want to turn into some cranky old dude with an attic full of weird shit that a handful of people on the internet know about!

To that end, I’m launching my new project - unimaginatively called Super Multi Notes, because I literally can’t name things for shit - which is basically a single-editor wiki for my own discoveries, notes, pictures and other stuff. The idea behind this is, when I find something interesting, I can immediately create a page for it there with some basic details - instead of putting it aside for a blog post I will never write - and flesh out the article later, as and when I have time to do so (or when I make relevant new discoveries). Like any wiki, every page will always be a work in progress, and some will no doubt reach more advanced stages of progress than others; it’s entirely possible some will consist solely of a title followed by "uuuuugh" and/or a string of random characters and/or expletives. But at least you’ll have that title!

It's running on MediaWiki software (as used by Wikipedia, Wikia and like 98% of other wikis) with the Semantic MediaWiki extension installed, which will hopefully allow me to make more interesting use of data than I could otherwise. It's also using a completely new theme; this is still very much in beta, so please let me know if you encounter any problems or have any feedback.

While (for now at least) I’ll be the only person allowed to edit the wiki pages proper, anyone is welcome to leave comments on articles or edit discussion pages. I’m also releasing the whole thing under a Creative Commons license, so you can reuse the content in other wikis or sites, provided you give credit.

Does all that mean this blog is dead? I hope not! I just have to decide what I want to do with it now. Maybe I’ll highlight interesting things from the wiki here, or use it for more in-depth articles that don’t really lend themselves to wiki format, or something else entirely. But whatever I do or don’t do with this blog, hopefully the wiki will be an experiment that pays off.