Despite all my bitching, I managed to install MySQL and MediaWiki on my laptop this afternoon. I’ve just spent a happy seven hours transcribing scribbled notes and unwritten thoughts into my own personal Wikipedia.

Well, six hours. The first hour I spent fiddling with the color scheme.

Figure 1. No obsession is complete without a logo.

I think I can confidently say that this is the first time advancements in computers have actually gotten me something that I wanted before it was invented. (If last week’s video iPod announcement had included making it as easy to rip DVDs and play video as iTunes makes it to rip CDs and play audio, that would have been number two. But it didn’t, and anyway I never wanted that this bad.) Since college, if not earlier, I’ve been daydreaming about being able to collect and cross-reference all my character notes and story fragments and plot ideas and settings — I think I even spent an afternoon trying to cobble together a Hypercard stack for it, some time in the early 1990s. Now I’ve actually got it.

I know you don’t understand how momentous this is. That’s okay. This isn’t about you.

Figure 1. China Miéville says he’s in it for the bestiary. I’m in it for the gazetteer.

One hopes that in the long run this will be a productivity tool. In the mean time, it at least gives me something to do, excavating this box full of notebooks, on long and uninspiring winter evenings.

(And some day, when I’m implausibly successful — and also dead — future scholars and writers of tie-ins will thank me!)