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I have just started reading the most lovely book that I would like to recommend: William Winstanley, The Man who saved Christmas by Alison Barnes.

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Tiny Wiki, Tiddly Wiki, Taggly Wiki - all forms of the same thing - a personal wiki you can run on your desktop. Just download the file from tiddlywiki.com and away you go. You do need to run it in Firefox however. It didn’t work in Safari for me.

TiddlyWiki is still fairly new and the help wiki link I looked at was practically blank. It took me some while to find any useful help and I finally found this pdf Tiddlywiki cheat sheet at nothickmanuals.info

However because it took me so long to get started I thought I would keep a note here of my progress with Tiddlywiki for reference. So here goes.

Getting started

Getting started actually wasn’t too bad as there is a ‘tiddler’ (an entry) already made called Getting started and you just click on the links within it to update the name of your wiki, subtitle etc.

What is a tiddler?

A tiddler is each one of the entries that you make in your wiki. When you click on a link to them in one of the menus, or linked from another tiddler, then they open up on screen, if they are not open already. They will then stay open until you close them. There is a link in the right menu to close all the tiddlers (which is a bit scary when you first start as you will give yourself a completely blank screen! Put one or two things in your Main Menu first!).

Saving

You do need to save changes to the wiki once you have entered something (not something I am used to doing as I did expect that to be done automatically). It gives you a message to say that it has been backed up and it will create a backup file in the folder where you are storing the wiki.

Changing the theme

Tiddly Themes and Tiddly tools. OK, I’m lost at this point. I’m just trying to change the menus really and have got carried away with changing the whole design. Will come back to this bit later.

Main Menu

Click on your Getting Started link and that will give you a link to your “Main Menu” (the one down the left hand side if you are using the standard Tiddlywiki design, and it only has Getting Started in it to start with). You can add any of your tiddlers to the Main Menu using the link text of two square brackets [[ your text for your link, the pipe character | and then the name of the tiddler you are linking too, closing with two square brackets again ]].

Default Tiddlers

The Getting Started tiddler also offers you the opportunity to list your Default tiddlers or those you would like to open up automatically when you open the file.

Cheatsheet

Tiddly Wiki Cheat Sheet

Get a cup of tea (or juice) and a biscuit, put on “The Magic of Making” DVD and sit back and relax. Be transported away to beautiful countryside where sheep are sheared. Grimace at the washing of the lanolin (grease) and dirt from the fleeces and marvel and how clean they come out and are spun, finer and finer until they are made into beautiful jumpers. Or watch the felling of a large conifer tree, trimmed, tidied, and munched down until it is so fine it can be mixed with water among other things. Then see the moment is it born into its new life as paper, squeezed and lifted gently off a huge roll. The Magic of Making takes every day things and makes you think about them again in a completely different way.

The Magic of Making is currently James’s favourite DVD and it’s one of those ones that even Mum and Dad are still watching, no matter how many times a day it is played in the Gant household.

The Magic of Making is all about how things are made. On the first DVD there are bottles starting with the sand and cullet, woolly jumpers starting from the sheep and even church bells. Each process is explained with easy to listen to and easy to understand narration and is clear but not over basic. So it is appealing to James’s ears as well as ours. And the filming has been beautifully done so you can see the paper when it is very first formed and picked from the felt roll that has helped create it.

Have a look at the MOM (Magic of Making) website for a preview of one of the films and details on how to order. The DVDs are available from the Early Learning Centre and Baby IQ. But we bought ours at the Black Sheep Brewery in Masham, who feature in the films. And as a lover of the Yorshire Dales I would of course recommend this is the best place to buy it!

I know there is another DVD coming out shortly and I hope there will be a series of these fascinating, educational and yet, relaxing to watch, films.