Manal and Alaa's bit bucket

thin line between under and over

I have a tendency to involve myself in way too many things, natural outcome is of course not achieving anything.

the past year was unique, I was focused and determined, and managed to achieve alot, I've been generally content (even happy at times) and I'm quite proud of myself.

but I'm slipping back into my old pattern of confusion again, I don't really follow a plan, as you can clearly see from my EGLUG todo list.

so in a lame attempt to reign in and take control here is a public todo of my public activities

WebWork

eglug.org

EGLUG specific todo list

manalaa.net

• upgrade to drupal 4.6
• get back to adding WiFiHotspots (convince others to join in)
• implement multilevel navigation
• add photos to galleries
• review ancient content from the pre-drupal days, save anything relevant
• get manal to make a nice colorful theme (she is working on it but very slowwwwwly)
• get someone to make a nice pink dragon logo (this one is stolen)
• write about Annosoor and EGLUG experiments in democracy
• write some review about Creative Commons music I bought
• Add a creative commons license statement to content
• finish collecting Ahdaf Soueif's articles and publish the thing.
• add an events calendar
  • make adding events easy so others could join in
  • publish all political events there
  • maybe publish cultural events too
  • figure if this needs to be spinned off as a seperate website

bayoumia.net

• upgrade to drupal 4.6
• merge with drupal hosting platform

sajeen.net

• fix css
  • tables
  • make headings larger
• get someone to fill in the 40+ records of detainees I got
• get someone to collect more data about detainees
• put human face on detainees
  • get photos
  • interview families
• actually meet someone and discuss this thing
• find a webmaster/editor got no time to do this

harakamasria.org

• sync with latest data from crappy ASP+access website
• get kefaya to actually pay for the hosting
• let Taeema or others take over ba2a (this is taking too long)
• move the old visits counter
• clean up old HTML (fuck microsoft)
• implement mass mailer
• introduce new features slowly

e-socialists.org

• upgrade to drupal 4.6
• figure out a way to upgrade events
• migrate theme to phptemplate (manal do this ba2a)
• merge with hosting platform
• implement mass mailer

arabdev.org

• upgrade to drupal 4.6
• reimplement bilingual interface in a more robust fashion
• train Leila or someone else to take over

ageg.net

• migrate from static html page to drupal
• train someone to take over
• discuss new features

nvad.org

• figure out what features they need
• train someone to take over
• get manal to finish work on theme

Citizen journalism

drupal hosting

• test new stable modules
• check old pre 4.6 modules and port anything that could be of use
• check CVS modules and figure out what works with drupal 4.6
• Fix nasty firstline bug in Wiki module (turned out it was a silly thing caused by glossary module)
• fix export to excel bug in survey module
• document my fix to theme edit module
• Implement a mass image upload solution preferably using .zip archives (needed by misrdigital)
• finish the blogger migration script
  • convince some prominent bloggers to migrate (africano?, ebles?, R?)
• write arabic tutorials (maybe translate from bryght)
• finish arabizing drupal Amr is doing a good job so far
• get someone to translate drupal handbook
• RTLify all available themes
• migrate other themes to phptemplate
• find more themes
• clean up bidi module and move to contrib repository

wiki hosting

• settle down on which wiki to use
  • I personally like PHPWiki's feature set and syntax
  • PHPWiki syntax matches the drupal wiki syntax
  • Media wiki is the famous wiki due to wikipedia, probably the only properly arabized wiki
  • others? if so they'll have to either be using PHPWiki syntax or MediaWiki syntax no sense in supporting even more variations
• write an introductory piece about using wikis
• promote wikis
  • get someone to use them (R?, EgyTopia?)

advocacy

• organize a meeting with a bunch of interested people to discuss citizen journalism and how to promote it
• convince someone to take an active role in promoting wordpress
  • talk to blogsome about offering arabization
    • implement auto-bidi
    • implement arabic themes that don't break on bidi
• organize training sessions on CMS systems, blogs, wikis etc
• work with NGOs, political groups, artists etc to build them dynamic websites

Aggregator

• Write something that explains what is the aggregator to begin with and how it works
• turn the egybloggers.com latest blogs thing into an RSS feed
• sync aggregator with egybloggers.com
• automate synchronization between aggregator and egybloggers.com
• find more newsfeeds
• I will probably cancel the mailing lists aggregator
• migrate to a node based aggregator (aggregator2 maybe?)
• implement free tagging system
  • tag favorite blogs and favorite blog posts
• add comments on aggregator pages of blogs that disable them

FOSS

• go to Africa Source
• look at my eglug todo

ICT4D

• write more about digital divide
• write down results of conversations in Ghana and South Africa
• write down experience from Abu Al Nomros and Menia
• Explain digital divide to non techies
• criticism of typical approach to ICT4D
• elaborate on the Affordable Accessible Computing manifesto
  • derive plans for pilot projects
  • find agencies interested in implementing the projects (APC, IDRC, Arabdev, COSPE, UNDP?)

Democracy Movement

• create the why kefaya website
  • collect well written accounts on domain specific problems relating to corruption, lack of transparency, security interference etc
  • link between freedom to organize and development
• explore concept of slim government within a practical socialist context
• join in one of the elections monitoring initiatives
• convince movement to get back to escalating and street activism
• implement reasonably secure encrypted forums for groups wanting to talk secretly
• implement a secure livecd for activists using net cafes
• collect registered voters lists
  • feed data into normalized database
  • search for duplicates
  • search for tow name only records
  • search for addressless records
  • search for repeated addesses
  • figure out other queries
  • get someone to do something about the violations

WOW I'm sure I'll never get most of this done. but hey beats feeling bored (I don't remember ever feeling bored outside of school). and I might be able to get alot of the web stuff done.