What is in Kelvin's Head?

  • Jericho, Berlin and what wall next?

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    I remember going on a school trip to Germany when I was a young teenager. I don’t remember that much about the visit to be honest, but I do remember the wall.

    We were not in Berlin but we were staying near enough to the border between East Germany and West Germany to warrant a visit. Indeed the teachers organising the trip clearly thought that it was something that we all needed to see.

    It made a big impression. I can still remember being told that we all had to behave – no larking around and no running into the grass near the wall lest we risk being shot.

    That in itself was shocking.

    I remember the stillness around as we climbed up a lookout tower to look over into this other country – a strange place which you could be shot at for meddling with.

    And looking into the other side, we could see members of the military looking back out at us in the West.

    What were we really each looking at?

    In many ways I think that the anniversary this weekend of the fall of the wall should have been more of a celebration for the whole of Europe. Even those tiresome Eurosceptics in the Tory party might have been expected to have got on board for a celebration of the end of the Cold War and the fall of repressive communism.

    The incredible thing to my mind is that something which seemed so fixed, so immovable has gone. How often we need to be reminded that things can change.

    The Berlin Wall wasn’t just a physical wall, it was something which existed in the politics of Europe and something which existed in our minds too. The physical represented something much more.

    So, what walls need still to fall. Where does Joshua’s trumpet still need to sound?

    Inevitably, thinking about the Berlin Wall one’s mind turns to the wall separating Israel from Palestine and cutting right through people’s lives. Thoughts turn too to Korea.

    Berlin reminds us that such divisions are not eternal and that things can change utterly.

    And there will be mental walls which we can barely recognise that will yet fall too.

    Freedom isn’t just a passport to the West.

     

    [Photo Credit: Gavin Stewart – CC Copyright Attribution 2.0]

4 responses to “Wiki?”

  1. Tim Avatar
    Tim

    Experience here is
    a) TWiki is amazingly awful to migrate between versions, requiring a fair bit of Perl knowledge
    b) Dokuwiki might be only written in PHP, but it’s an absolute joy to use, especially the plugin system (paste URL to zip-file into box, it downloads and unpacks it for you!)

    One of these I use for work, the other is rapidly becoming my general to-do-list / organization / life at home. Major plug for dokuwiki 🙂

    Reply
  2. Avatar
    Anonymous

    Docuwiki
    I’ll have a look at Docuwiki though I do have a working version of TWiki currently running at the moment. I know no Perl, and it was a bit of a challenge installing it in the first place.

    Reply
  3. Avatar
    Anonymous

    Docuwiki

    Well, I’ve looked at Docuwiki but can’t install it.

    Life is just too short for this:

    • Set up the correct permissions
      • Usually the webserver runs as a unprivileged user eg nobody, www-data or apache
      • The webserver needs to be able to write to some files and directories (so change the chown nobody to match your configuration e.g. chown apache …)
      • If you’re using access control, you need to change the group ownership permissions on the appropriate files and make them writeable by the web server user’s group (use group ownership, because as a user/web site admin, you’ll need to edit the files directly) – otherwise, users won’t be able to register, and you won’t be able to set ACL controls via the web interface, and you’ll get error messages; I always forget these steps when I do an install using ACL features, so that’s why I’m adding them here.
      • The group name the web server runs as is usually identical to the user name, except in the case of the “nobody/nogroup” combo – but check your server config just in case (just a user, TL)

     

    Reply
  4. muratore Avatar
    muratore

    molella discotek people molella discotek people serx serx midi file graqtis midi file graqtis cenangium cenangium sansui amplificatore sansui amplificatore le ragazze di viterbo le ragazze di viterbo nissan terrano autocarro nissan terrano autocarro torturatore torturatore akg terni akg terni mercedes 270 serie c mercedes 270 serie c rokepo zola predosa rokepo zola predosa totò peppino e la dolce vita totò peppino e la dolce vita la rubrica di costantino e alessandra og la rubrica di costantino e alessandra og effects processor pro 2 2 effects processor pro 2 2 ludmila radchenko ludmila radchenko officer officer ospedale umberto primo ospedale umberto primo le tre demo di lords of everquest le tre demo di lords of everquest magicolor 2450 magicolor 2450 santo domingo viaggio santo domingo viaggio back street boys non mi lasciare cosi back street boys non mi lasciare cosi haiduchii din tei dragostea haiduchii din tei dragostea comunita economica comunita economica tm net my tm net my paradise cracked trailer paradise cracked trailer lettori cd gemini lettori cd gemini consultazioni provinciali 2004 consultazioni provinciali 2004 at 160ml siracusa at 160ml siracusa certificazioni di qualita certificazioni di qualita ipod 20 accessori ipod 20 accessori forbidden colours forbidden colours depurazione delle acque depurazione delle acque limpbizkit behind blue eyes limpbizkit behind blue eyes localizzazione localization localizzazione localization snow bo snow bo diablo editor diablo editor speed (lazy dog software) v1 0 speed (lazy dog software) v1 0 shakira screensaver shakira screensaver scuole di regia scuole di regia computer cable computer cable siti lesbici siti lesbici maradino maradino milano teknival 05 milano teknival 05 prg torino prg torino trasporti piemonte trasporti piemonte honsen honsen trenet charles trenet charles chi ti dice chi ti dice testo e traduzione emon testo e traduzione emon muratore muratore muratore

    Reply

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