writing tools

Here is some cool stuff, only some of which is tangentially related to American football. ;D

LED Football?!

Jon Weisman of Dodger Thoughts (now on ESPN LA) points to a nostalgia-inducing awesome thing: LED Football for iPhone, which is, as he puts it,

A replica of the greatest game ever, Mattel Handheld Electronic Football.

It’s also free for today only.

The more you know…

Speaking of tweeting and football, Bob Timmermann informs us,

Little known Super Bowl fact: Because New Orleans is playing in the game, the NFL rulebook will be replaced by the Napoleonic Code.

Yes, yes I am!

“Inside the Dodgers” asks the rhetorical yet vital question, “Are you ready for some baseball?”:

It’s the last official day of football season, so get it out of your system now and get ready to start watching America’s pastime.

Good gracious, yes!

Streaking Kings

The LA Kings have reached a franchise-record nine-game wins in a row and are going for 10 against crosstown rivals the Anaheim Ducks tomorrow. They’re currently in fourth place in the Western Conference.

Blaming the victims? ;)

bikecommutenews tweets,

Cyclists on busy roads a nuisance http://ow.ly/14NvT #bikenews

which prompted me to reply,

@bikecommutenews Yeah, to me, it seems like the *cars* are the nuisance on a busy road, not bicycles. :)

Noteworthy

Slashdot mentions a blog post by a computer science student who sticks with a pen and paper instead of a laptop for note-taking during class, “My Classmates Are Taking Their Notes Digitally, But I Can’t Fathom How They Keep Up”

I noticed today that as I frantically scribbled to keep up with my philosophy professor’s lecture, there was an audible hum of typing in the classroom. It was the first time I noticed that I could count more students using netbooks than notebooks to take notes in class.

Call me old-fashioned, but I like to take notes with a pen and paper. As I’ve discussed previously, the act of writing helps cement the lecture material in my mind better than passive listening does, and studies have shown that it’s not just me.[…] Still, I know that my old-fashioned ways are quickly going out of style.

I have been in the process of planning out switching to Linux in 2010 for my main development computer (a laptop), as well as for various web and database servers I am responsible for at work.

I’ve been making good use of Sun’s awesome (and free) VirtualBox program, which allows me to create any number of virtual computers to experiment on. I’ve had a couple of CLI-only server versions running (Debian and Ubuntu), as well as what amounts to a desktop system for the last three Ubuntu releases: 8.10, 9.04, and the just-issued 9.10.

My User has information that could… that could make this a free system again! No, really! You’d have programs lined up just to use this place, and no MCP looking over your shoulder.

I’ll cover the whys and wherefores of switching in the future. For now, suffice to say that the ever-increasing commercialization of Mac OS X, with accompanying restrictions, has been grating on me for some time now. I am also attracted to the notion of software freedom (having been a huge fan of the original Tron movie ;) and of course the cost savings can be dramatic. And since I work primarily in education, I think we would be neglecting our duty by not exploring the open-source world.

All that is visible must grow beyond itself, and extend into the realm of the invisible.

One of the first and ongoing steps is compiling a list of application equivalents to programs I am need of.

• Mail -> Evolution
• iCal -> Evolution
• Exchange -> Evolution \m/
• MacJournal -> Zim or RedNotebook or Lifeograph
• iPhoto -> filesystem + gThumb (still need EXIF editor: JHead?)
• iTunes (music) -> Rhythmbox
• iTunes (podcasts) -> Rhythmbox (audio ok, testing vidcasts)
• OmniFocus -> Getting Things Gnome (GTG) or spreadsheet?
• Adium -> Empathy
• Quicksilver/Spotlight -> Deskbar-Applet
• iFlash -> Mnemosyne
• NetNewsWire -> Liferea or Gregarius
• Tweetie -> Gwibber
• VoodooPad -> Zim
• MarsEdit -> Drivel, BloGTK, or Gnome Blog?
• Dictionary.app -> Gnome Dictionary
• RPG -> see http://www.shell-fu.org/lister.php?id=885
• Black Ink -> Xword
• Desktop Pictures rotation -> Wallpaper Tray (Gnome panel)
• GarageBand/podcasting -> Audacity + LMMS
• OmniGraffle -> Dia
• Minuteur/ApiMac Timer -> Timer Applet

Still looking:

• Time Machine (backup) -> roll-my-own or manual?
• Bluetooth File Exchange -> built into Gnome?

Stuff that exists in both places:

• Firefox
• MacVim -> Gvim
• Audacity
• GIMP
• VirtualBox
• ClamXav -> ClamAV
• VLC
• MySQL Administrator and Query Browser
• NeoOffice -> OpenOffice
• Google Earth
• MacNikto -> Nikto

If you’re looking into switching as well, or just are looking for new apps to try out whatever your platform, check out AlternativeTo, which provides alternatives for Linux, Mac, and Windows programs.

Note: Written before the current cold whacked me in the head and upper respiratory tract. Bits are incomplete. Suggestions are welcome.

End of line.

Aaron Peters of The Writer’s Technology Companion posted “Moving to Linux: Tools for Writers” last year, covering the basic text editors, word processors, and desktop publishing options in an article for beginning Linux users.

As an avid free and open source software (FOSS) advocate, I’ve spent some time over the last few years writing on the Linux platform. I’ve come to discover that it’s still an immature platform for certain folks, such as hardcore gamers or multimedia professionals. But for those who have their fun (or make their living) by putting words on (e-)paper, Linux offers a perfectly usable platform for doing everything a writer needs to do.

This was the first in a series of “Moving to Linux” articles, all applicable to writers:

1. Moving to Linux: Tools for Writers
2. Moving to Linux: Working with Text (Part 1)
3. Moving to Linux: Working with Text (Part 2)
4. Moving to Linux: The New OpenOffice
5. Moving to Linux: Scribus for Writers
6. Moving to Linux: The Netbook is Your New Best Friend
7. Moving to Linux: Working with the Netbook

If you’re still using a Mac, most of the tools Linux users enjoy are available, either as separate binaries, compile-it-yourself source, or via package managers like MacPorts.

Abhijit Nadgouda over at iface thoughts describes a method of using vim as a simple wiki system, utilizing its built-in “tags” capability.

One thing I have learnt from experience is that the tool to collect and organize our information must be easily available and easy to use. And that is where vim scores higher than any other tool to build a wiki.[…]

Nowadays I use the vim as a combination of wiki and outliner to record my ideas and thoughts, documentation, tasks and even contacts.

Looks very easy to set up and use — I think I’ll give it a try.

A couple of days ago, Slashdot posted a story asking about “(Useful) Stupid Unix Tricks?”:

So the other day I messaged another admin from the console using the regular old ‘write’ command (as I’ve been doing for over 10 years). To my surprise he didn’t know how to respond back to me (he had to call me on the phone) and had never even known you could do that. That got me thinking that there’s probably lots of things like that, and likely things I’ve never heard of. What sorts of things do you take for granted as a natural part of Unix that other people are surprised at?

It’s perhaps unsurprising that there have been over 2200 comments exploring the arcana of the Unix and Unixy command line. A lot of awesome lore to check out.

Yesterday came the next story, “(Useful) Stupid Vim Tricks?”:

I thoroughly enjoyed the recent post about Unix tricks, so I ask Slashdot vim users, what’s out there? :Sex, :b#, marks, ctags. Any tricks worth sharing?

570+ comments later, there’s a lot to check out there as well.

Today’s post was inevitable, “(Stupid) Useful Emacs Tricks?”:

Since the Vi version of this question was both interesting and popular, let’s hear from the other end of the spectrum. What are your favorite tricks, macros, extensions, and techniques for any of the various Emacs? Myself, I like ‘M-x dunnet’ ;-)

200 comments and counting.

One of the most enjoyable parts of the Vim story, apart from the various spiffy command tips and tricks, were links to other sites. Here are a couple, along with a few related others I’ve linked to before.

• Best Vim Tips (Wikia) (at the Vim Tips Wiki)
• Efficient Editing With vim
• GTD with Vim
• Vimperator - Firefox add-on that makes the browser look and feel like vim.
• Word War vi - “A retro styled side scrolling shoot’em up arcade game for linux. Your mission is to traverse core memory and rid the host of emacs.” (See my followup post “Compiling Word War vi on Mac OS X”.)
• 7 Habits For Effective Text Editing 2.0 - Bram Moolenaar on Google Video. (PDF of the presentation.)