tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13915328113606901822024-02-18T18:47:12.363-08:00ThricebergDavidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14238189232799757651noreply@blogger.comBlogger182125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1391532811360690182.post-31992159143436061672012-07-31T20:27:00.000-07:002012-07-31T20:27:12.425-07:00Announcement announcement!So here's my deal: I'm really wordy. I have a lot of thoughts in my head and I'm a fast typist, and I end up writing quite a lot.<br />
<br />
I write quite a few blog posts. You wouldn't know it from looking at this site, but I do write a lot of them. Most of them don't get published. Why not? First line, second sentence. I'm a wordy guy. Shouldn't that work for my post count, not against? Well, in theory...<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
I sit down to write a quick post. It ends up being many, many thousands of words long. It rambles. It becomes muddled. I've ended up saying everything I wanted to say and then some, which is at least three times more than what I actually needed to say. There are many digressions along the way. Usually I finish a post, go back to re-read it and realize it needs a lot of work...realizing that I don't really have the time for it. On top of that, by this point I've gotten it all out. Kind of like that whole, "Write a letter and don't send it" thing, I already feel better for having written it.<br />
<br />
I'd like to post it and share my thoughts, sure, but having written it was ultimately the point. Even if it did come out muddled, even if I originally intended it to be a public blog post. By the end of that first draft I've made my point, or supported my point, or completely disproved my point. In the process I got what I really wanted out of it. Understanding? Analysis? Self-coddling? I don't know, whatever it is, it's usually enough.<br />
<br />
Before I publish a blog post, I do a lot of revisions. A lot of self-editing. That's for everything I write though. Emails to friends and family, a quick handwritten note to my boss before leaving work. Everything I write usually gets at least two or three revisions before I let it go. Even text messages to anybody about anything are read and re-read. I hesitate to use the term "agonized over"--there is no agony, I do it because I want to, because I enjoy the process. "Analyzed" is a much better term.<br />
<br />
For instance, even now I'm mulling over part of a sentence a from a few paragraphs ago:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
...realizing that I don't really have the time for it. </blockquote>
As opposed to the alternate:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
...realizing that I really don't have the time for it.</blockquote>
I could spend an entire blog post on similar differences. In short (hah!), the first instance says that I could make time if I needed to, but I choose not to. The use of "really" weakens the phrase. In the second sentence, "really" is an emphasis. No, I'm not joking here, I <u>really</u> don't have the time for this. Of course, there's always:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
...realizing that I don't have the time for it.</blockquote>
No "really" in this sentence at all. This last sentence is the rock, take it or leave it. I don't have the time. The first sentence is almost a plea, I don't "really" have the time. You could argue the point, but the speaker is almost asking you not to. The second sentence would most likely be used in the middle of an argument, or right away if the speaker suspects an argument is coming and acts to head it off. I "really" don't have the time. Don't even start.<br />
<br />
<i>BUT I DIGRESS...</i><br />
<br />
If I do so much re-reading and revising, why then do my blogs, emails, texts, etc., still have typos and grammatical errors? One, I'm not perfect. I may have thought I phrased or spelled something correctly even if it's wrong. More likely though, it's because I do all this in a short span. You write a text and then you send it that minute. You write a blog post and it should probably go out that day, because things of that nature quickly become irrelevant. I know from working on more serious writings that any editing done immediately will always miss something. The mind doesn't fret over things it perceives as familiar or known. It knows these words--it just produced them after all--so it just skims them.<br />
<br />
Three ways to get past this problem:<br />
<ol>
<li>Change the formatting. Change the font type, size, column width,
whatever. An easy way to do this in Blogger is to preview the article.
Proofread the preview, switching tabs to change any errors you find. </li>
<li>Read it slowly, word-by-word, aloud. Actually aloud, and very slowly. Force yourself break your natural rhythm, and examine each and every word. </li>
<li> Set aside your writing for a while. Ideally long enough to forget about it as much as possible.</li>
</ol>
These techniques are usually too much work for a simple blog post, text, or email. There's a fourth and easier option: Have someone else proofread it, though it would be a hassle for someone else to proofread everything, even if you only limit it to blog posts.<br />
<br />
It's all more trouble than it's really worth, because there will always be mistakes if you don't have a lot of time or a dedicated editor. I accept that. I just hope for a good level of clarity to come through where I've left neither brevity nor immaculance. I'm pretty sure immaculance isn't a real word, but I'll live with it. Immaculateness? Hey, the spellchecker says immaculateness is the right word, but I like immaculance better, so there.<br />
<br />
So, the reason for mistakes? I'm proofreading myself, creating many blind spots. I'm doing it immediately after writing it, creating even more blind spots. Last and most humorously, a lot of mistakes are inserted in the last few revisions. For example, I decide a sentence is too long and cut it in half, and in the process I leave a duplicate of the same word, or cause another phrase that's grammatically incorrect or has a completely different meaning than what I intended.<br />
<br />
Even so, I still do a lot of re-reading and revisions, because habits from the aforementioned more serious writing compels me to. That's cool, I'd rather keep my good habits around, even if they cost me in time and posting frequency. Well, no 'if' about it, they do reduce my number of posts.<br />
<br />
Oh wait, is that what I'm supposed to be talking about? Post frequency? Right, right.<br />
<br />
After the first draft, if I decide to revise and actually develop it into something I will post, a lot of the time I end up wiping it clean and starting over completely. That's because I've already got all my "and another thing"'s out of the way, and the second time I have a lot less patience for all the digressions and anecdotes. It's still all about me telling you things, you see, but the second time around it's me, <i>the increasingly bored writer</i>, and not me, <i>the attention-hungry speaker</i>. Hard to balance those two things, really, because they're just different concentrations of the same impulse.<br />
<br />
Objectively I think that, while blogging, the most sense I can make with the least amount of words the better. That almost always means removing myself from the article. Not removing my point of view--that would be largely impossible--but removing all the bits that try to turn every blog post into another encyclopedia entry about myself. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with a little vanity or self-explanation (I mean, look at this post), but it's almost always excessive.<br />
<br />
If I'm writing a post about DRM, you maybe need a little background on me as a consumer. You don't need a dozen anecdotes going back to the first video game I ever played. Ultimately I'm going to want to cut a lot out, and unless it's a more personal post (like this one), any tangentially-related anecdotes should be the first to go.<br />
<br />
Anyway, for a post to get published, here are the hurdles it has to leap over:<br />
<ul>
<li>I have to finish a first draft.</li>
<li>I have to re-read it a half-dozen times.</li>
<li>I probably have to re-write the thing one or two more times, each time starting a new cycle of revisions.</li>
<li>I have to not have changed my mind on the issue while writing it out (which happens a lot).</li>
<li>I have to not have been interrupted by a phone call, or an email, or remembering that thing I was going to look up earlier but forgot--all of which completely distracts me from the task at hand.</li>
<li>Oh, and when I finish it, I have to read it and decide it's worth the space it takes up on my site.</li>
</ul>
I know that last one's a bit of a stretch. This blog used to mostly house reports of how I struggled to keep my sleep schedule intact without a steady nine-to-five job to get me out of bed at the same time every morning.<br />
<br />
It occurred to me a while ago that my biggest problem with blogging is I don't constrain myself enough. Nine times out of ten, I need to just wrap it up. On the other hand, as this post shows, I do like to write long posts where I give myself permission to digress every few paragraphs. I enjoy writing it, even if there's only a handful of people out there who might enjoy reading it.<br />
<br />
I need to post more. I have things I want to say, but I'm tying my own hands by using so many freaking words.<br />
<br />
In short (hah! again), I'm starting a <a href="http://www.bzknz.com/">new blog</a>. I'm going to try and keep the posts smaller, a couple paragraphs apiece. I hope that'll keep my frequency up. The general ideas is that it will exist more to point at other things. Not necessarily just other blogs or websites like people tend to use tumblr, but more things in real life. IRL. Less topical things perhaps, but things I at least find worth mentioning.<br />
<br />
The idea came months ago when I was driving a rental car around while mine was in the shop. The cupholders in that car fucking sucked. I understand that it's odd for anybody to have a strong opinion of cupholders--that's just how terrible they were. I've wanted to post about it since, but every time I start to, I see the hundreds (literally) of unfinished posts and I end up looking at them, slapping one or two of them up, but usually leaving them behind to finish at another time. A silly little rant about bad cupholders gets shuffled to the back of the pile, even though I could probably have written and posted it in all of five minutes.<br />
<br />
I'll be exercising my point of view at this other blog, but I'll try to leave the more personal ramblings over here. That's right, I'm not abandoning thriceberg.com. It'll still be here, getting the same occasional overlong posts. My new blog will just be more of an exercise in brevity and frequency. Hopefully.<br />
<br />
Signed,<br />
<br />
DavidDavid (thriceberg)http://www.blogger.com/profile/00355486508251553094noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1391532811360690182.post-53122883730011027532011-12-07T16:21:00.000-08:002011-12-07T16:21:00.298-08:00More on the Galaxy NoteI've seen mention of Samsung's Galaxy Note in a few places online, and people seemed to look at it like it was a joke. Reminded me of the way that reviews treated the HTC Flyer. They looked at the specs and didn't understand the price, failing to see the value that a stylus could add. I'll admit, I wasn't sold on a 5" stylus-bearing device, until I saw this:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIMfciTT7NJZo6a8dbd07dKLxPmJjDPAGPeb9rW2RxGP_P2uFRvfm1THCiLrNdEKgNpEXYce0yKpl_GFWeNjq9-6jyU5tiHhkxQlmcdsHE4bknxiw72gpHQ_p_ON4S0eanyAuL-gmc-gw/s1600/GalaxyNote.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIMfciTT7NJZo6a8dbd07dKLxPmJjDPAGPeb9rW2RxGP_P2uFRvfm1THCiLrNdEKgNpEXYce0yKpl_GFWeNjq9-6jyU5tiHhkxQlmcdsHE4bknxiw72gpHQ_p_ON4S0eanyAuL-gmc-gw/s400/GalaxyNote.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Image blatantly copied from Samsung's site (<a href="http://www.samsung.com/global/microsite/galaxynote/note/index.html?type=find">this page</a>), which I assume they're fine with because a large chunk of advertising for the Galaxy Note involves the phone's users copying and pasting images from the web.</i></div>
<br />
Look at the right side of the image. The phone appears to be on a Moleskine-style notebook. Brilliant. That's what this phone is trying to replace. Sold. Right there, I get it.<br />
<br />
For those of you scratching your heads right now, Moleskine notebooks are those little leather-bound ones you've probably seen art students writing in furiously while out and about. They're resilient. They come in a variety of shapes and sizes, and a lot of different configurations. They make books with blank pages for sketching, books with music staffs, books for graphing. See image below (nabbed from <a href="http://www.moleskine.com/catalogue/classic/notebooks/ruled__notebook__pocket.php">this page</a> on Moleskine's site).<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjk5ICEmFsmY1vdXiL2ypWz1GYYgIDJa_GM730WezakWWFfXCs71niGgIlfHQeu0wW7PC6ihWnFGawRrNe3J0vYwCgCB3tJXpGDkb-xlvKmjkDz00CDDqYZM6LM2hyvF0xmSNqRQdQeaj0/s1600/moleskine.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="227" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjk5ICEmFsmY1vdXiL2ypWz1GYYgIDJa_GM730WezakWWFfXCs71niGgIlfHQeu0wW7PC6ihWnFGawRrNe3J0vYwCgCB3tJXpGDkb-xlvKmjkDz00CDDqYZM6LM2hyvF0xmSNqRQdQeaj0/s400/moleskine.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
I was once given a Moleskine notebook from a very close friend. I liked it so much that I can never use it. Too much pressure. I do too much crossing out, I throw too many pages away. I prefer to type now, but when I wrote, I did it on legal pads, then later I collected individual pages in folders. I write too much shit to put it in rugged notebooks with archival ink, saved forever as reference material.<br />
<br />
I liked the size of the notebook, though. I am a big fan of the form factor. Hey, for years I've been begging for a phone the size of the Nokia N800 (5.7 x 3 inches, pictured below), except all screen, no buttons or speakers on the face. The Galaxy Note is almost dead on (5.74 x 3.266 inches).<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjT37Nqcqqgw7qIkMMITo6zoxlqQ8Zm-h3TsXoThVw3JWFr8PrZOCvxTU_E7eKYL3Of6zfx-bbvHV0mef7oi7fwx0AeNUBuyWEUJUTcywS_blokJG4zp69w7ZN35MuckLfgYhOIzVRNNe8/s1600/800px-N800_frontside1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjT37Nqcqqgw7qIkMMITo6zoxlqQ8Zm-h3TsXoThVw3JWFr8PrZOCvxTU_E7eKYL3Of6zfx-bbvHV0mef7oi7fwx0AeNUBuyWEUJUTcywS_blokJG4zp69w7ZN35MuckLfgYhOIzVRNNe8/s400/800px-N800_frontside1.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<i>Wait a second.</i> I haven't seen a Galaxy Note in person, I didn't realize that their dimensions were so close until I just now looked it up. The Galaxy Note is pretty much the same freaking size as the Nokia N800---THAT IS SO FREAKING COOL!!! Bravo Samsung, you just made a 29-year-old boy's dream come true!<br />
<br />
<i><b>Anyway</b></i>, the Galaxy Note is almost the same size as the N800, but it comes with an additional feature I don't think I would have asked for from a phone--an active digitizer.<br />
<br />
There are some problems. For one, it hasn't been released in the US. It's rumored to be slowly making it's way here, but it needs to be sooner rather than later. Processors are getting outdated faster than ever. Also, I understand a delay of a few weeks or even a month, but why a delay of many months between releasing a device in one country and then another? Wait, they have to physically manufacture these devices to work with different regional networks? And there are oceans IRL (<a href="http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/03/22/no-oceans-call-for-worldwide-release-dates/">unlike in cyberspace</a>)? Okay then.<br />
<br />
Another potential problem would arise if they don't stand behind this phone in the US. Look, I have this phone I might have mentioned a few times, the Nokia N900? Well even though it was fully compatible with T-Mobile's network, potential customers had to find this out through their own potentially complicated research. This phone wasn't available in any T-Mobile store. There were no tv commercials that I'm aware of. It was Nokia's first (and now only) Maemo 5 device, and they dumped it. That's right, for some reason manufacturers don't always stand behind their devices. The N900 was kind of an odd duck (and an ugly duckling, thinking of it), but it could have done great with some muscle behind it.<br />
<br />
The Galaxy Note may not be the jack-of-all-trades that the N900 was, but it still fulfills a lot of roles one wouldn't expect of a phone, and people need to see that in their advertisements. The videos on Samsung's web site are doing a great job of showing the Note's capabilities, but if the phone is released in the US those ads need to be everywhere. I'm not too worried in this regard, because reports from people in other countries say this phone is well advertised and it seems to be selling well.<br />
<br />
Hey, even if the phone doesn't get released in the US, even if they don't stand behind it, I can still buy one. I'm just thinking of the future. If this gets mishandled, what about the next generation's stylus phones? Will there be any? Will there? Think of the children!!!<br />
<br />
Very rarely I see a device and it's love at first sight, so to speak. Most of the items in my "<a href="http://www.thriceberg.com/2011/09/things-that-i-have-loved.html">Things I Have Loved</a>" post fit that bill. The Galaxy Note hasn't been love at first sight--I saw it weeks ago and wasn't impressed. It's been love at first advertisement, strangely enough. Usually I skip the marketing bullshit and go straight to the specs. This time, I actually needed the marketing bullshit to make me see the potential.<br />
<br />
Now I wonder how long it'll take for me to actually get my hands on one. Ho hum.<br />
<br />
Till then,<br />
<br />
DavidDavidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14238189232799757651noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1391532811360690182.post-90488711023988781922011-12-06T17:33:00.000-08:002011-12-06T17:33:00.286-08:00Samsung?<br />
There was a time during and directly after high school where I
used Minidiscs (and for a while, they were the best portable music
solution). Then, all of the sudden, nobody else seemed to be using CDs
either--except they had all migrated to iPods.<br />
<br />
I never bought a classic iPod. I like the way the click-wheel works but I hated the look of them. They looked like retro washing machines. I ended up buying a Cowan X5.<br />
<br />
Now I find myself looking around and seeing Samsung everywhere. True, the Galaxy Nexus looks cool, all my friends and family have heard me talking about it for the past few weeks, I'm sure. Still, I haven't really considered Samsung past the coolness of that one phone and the Ice Cream Sandwich update. I mean, they look cool, but I'm not into Android phones, so whatever.<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
In my mind, I realize that I've been seeing most
Android manufacturers as the same, to a point. HTC, Motorola, Samsung,
etc, have been interchangeable in my mind. If asked to pick an Android phone a week ago, I probably would just line them up according to screen size and grab the one on the larger end whose style I liked the most (probably a HTC, to be honest).<br />
<br />
I mean, I know a little about them. I know about their custom UIs. When I had a HTC Touch Pro their custom UI was TouchFLO, and I hated it. Now they have SenseUI, which I have never used but looks a little better. Samsung has TouchWiz, and everybody says it's slow and laggy. I don't really understand the need for a custom UI on Android. Windows Mobile 6 without a custom UI bordered on unusable. It was necessary if you wanted to sell a Windows Mobile smartphone to re-skin it. Android isn't that bad, is it?<br />
<br />
I have to admit, I must be missing something. When my roommate's phone broke, he temporarily used a MyTouch, and kept complaining about the UI. When his newer phone came back from the shop, he showed me the two phones in action side-by-side, and didn't I see how much better the new version is? I couldn't see any difference. I haven't used an Android device for more than a few minutes at a time, so I guess it all looks the same to me.<br />
<br />
TouchWiz aside, I've started hearing more and more about Samsung phones. I try to follow tablet news, but the Galaxy Tab line never really got my attention. Maybe that's because I'm more interested in tablets with active digitizers, like HTC's Flyer and Jetstream, and Lenovo's Thinkpad Tablet. If you're not interested in digital styli, at least you'd have to pass up something like the Tab for something like the Asus Transformer, with it's cool netbook dock, right? Right? If only the Transformer had an active digitizer...le sigh.<br />
<br />
Anyway, less than a week ago this same friend made a comment that Samsung has suddenly become the new Sony. I took this to mean they have good reputation, market penetration, and a nice, somehow classic style. I doubt he was implying that Samsung was throwing piles of money away in order to win a format war.<br />
<br />
I have to agree, Samsung has done a great job getting the Galaxy line out there. To be honest, I much prefer angular designs to their rounded edge. For example, I like the eeePC 701's beveled looks compared to the rounded 901. I'd prefer a device to look like it'd double as a door stop rather than a skipping stone. Look at the Nokia N8. Okay, rounded, I know, but less skipping stone, more doorstop. That's what I like, that's all I'm saying.<br />
<br />
That said, I think I know what my next phone will probably be, and it will be a Samsung. Probably. I mean, it's not available in the US. It looks like it may show up eventually, but no announcements have been made. Okay you guys, stop asking, I don't want to jump the gun. Why pine over it before it's even available to me? Ok, you pressured me into it. It's the Samsung Galaxy Note. That's the phone for me. For many reasons, some I've known, and some I just discovered as I was writing a post about it earlier today. A post which I'll put up in a day or so. Promise.<br />
<br />
Till then,<br />
<br />
DavidDavidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14238189232799757651noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1391532811360690182.post-39585194035977648042011-12-04T14:32:00.000-08:002011-12-04T14:32:00.542-08:00Time for Android? Part Two<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0X604Rspij9KzwakbH4DnxlV24Z81Z4OFwqmvNdLkyQTIoVbNmXdkQDlaHjiDSAMPSPbOGKto28CuE9wF5oMPVTrvL-tdG3kRmm41Od5T1RR-3oZxuv95zoM17oOGXHnh_wFDGpWT8bQ/s1600/switch.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="208" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0X604Rspij9KzwakbH4DnxlV24Z81Z4OFwqmvNdLkyQTIoVbNmXdkQDlaHjiDSAMPSPbOGKto28CuE9wF5oMPVTrvL-tdG3kRmm41Od5T1RR-3oZxuv95zoM17oOGXHnh_wFDGpWT8bQ/s400/switch.png" width="400" /></a></div>
I touched briefly on why I'll probably switch to an Android phone soon, though really all I said was that Maemo and Meego are dead, and that Android can do most of what my N900 can, hardware limitations aside.<br />
<br />
Wait, there's Windows Mobile 7, which I've heard is a decent OS, Sorry but it's not for me. Android is more open. For all it's faults, it has a good community and a lot of apps. It's maintained by Google, and I use and like a lot of their products and services (this blog is currently hosted on Google's Blogger, for instance). I use Windows, I liked my old WinMo 6.5 phone, I just like what I've seen and heard of Android more.<br />
<br />
Okay, okay, here's why I'm really considering the switch:<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
The truth is, Android has grown up. I remember when my friend got the G1. It didn't have an on-screen keyboard. It didn't have a lot of things I'd expect from a smart phone. I was curious, perhaps a tad jealous, but the only appeal was in Android's newness, not in it's lackluster (at the time) feature set. <br />
<br />
Cut to the present, a few years later. I'm sick of scrolling through the hundreds of albums on my phone to find the one I want. It's the year 2011, I should be able to say the name of the band and have that album be first on the list. Oh shit, it looks like Android can do that. It looks like any music app that allows searching can use Android's voice keyboard.<br />
<br />
I've had my eyes on the Nexus Prime (now dubbed the Galaxy Prime) for a little while, curious what cool new bells and whistles it would bring with it. Watching it's announcement video, also the announcement video for Android 4.0 (aka Ice Cream Sandwich), I saw a lot of things that impressed me.<br />
<br />
It looks like Ice Cream Sandwich is bringing better multitasking with it (Maemo 5's great multitasking is one of the things that keeps me using it). I don't know how browsing the web compares, but no doubt Android has more options than the N900 does.<br />
<br />
One of the things that kept me loving the N900 was the preservation of my workflow. I use a lot of open source, cross-platform apps and I don't like the idea of settling for closed sourced solutions.<br />
<br />
Well, Notecase Pro has an android version<a href="https://twitter.com/#%21/NotecasePro/status/141797911490068480"> coming soon</a>. LibreOffice is said to be working on some Android apps, though they're years away. Firefox Mobile seems to be ignoring the N900 from now on, which I can understand, but they are still churning out Android updates. <a href="https://market.android.com/details?id=com.write.Quill">Quill</a> is a decent (and open source) alternative to Xournal. I'm looking at my workflow, then looking at the Android Market, and I'm not seeing many problems right now. Ppen formats are being more widely adopted and that helps a lot--I don't have to use an official LibreOffice app to edit a LibreOffice file, for instance.<br />
<br />
Looking back at my N900, I know for a fact that it doesn't have a voice keyboard. And it doesn't handle Dropbox as well as Android looks to. And the N900 is a little chubby, with a small screen to make it worse of all. Sigh.<br />
<br />
Okay, so I'm probably going to switch to Android. But which phone? I'll have more notes on that later, I'm sure.<br />
<br />
Till then,<br />
<br />
DavidDavidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14238189232799757651noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1391532811360690182.post-24926343800814327912011-12-02T13:55:00.001-08:002011-12-03T20:21:04.731-08:00Time for Android? --Nokia Troubles<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0X604Rspij9KzwakbH4DnxlV24Z81Z4OFwqmvNdLkyQTIoVbNmXdkQDlaHjiDSAMPSPbOGKto28CuE9wF5oMPVTrvL-tdG3kRmm41Od5T1RR-3oZxuv95zoM17oOGXHnh_wFDGpWT8bQ/s1600/switch.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="208" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0X604Rspij9KzwakbH4DnxlV24Z81Z4OFwqmvNdLkyQTIoVbNmXdkQDlaHjiDSAMPSPbOGKto28CuE9wF5oMPVTrvL-tdG3kRmm41Od5T1RR-3oZxuv95zoM17oOGXHnh_wFDGpWT8bQ/s400/switch.png" width="400" /></a></div>
I have a Nokia N900. It is one of the greatest phones ever made. I wish that the mobile phone industry were moving in it's direction, but they aren't. Still, I'm going to need a new phone sooner or later, probably sooner. Not only that, I find myself wanting a new phone. I want a bigger screen. I want better battery life, and okay, better compatibility with a multitude of cloud services.<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
The N900 is the Swiss Army Knife of phones. It has a FM receiver, a FM transmitter, an IR blaster (you can use it as a tv remote), a slide-out keyboard, blah blah blah. I gush all over it in this "<a href="http://www.thriceberg.com/2011/09/things-that-i-have-loved.html">Things I Have Loved</a>" post.<br />
<br />
Its OS, Maemo 5, is very similar to desktop Linux. A lot of really cool desktop apps have been ported to the N900. Abiword. Transmission. SMPlayer. Comix. Evince. Notecase Pro.<br />
<br />
Using Easy Debian, you can install many desktop Linux programs on the N900. There will be UI problems, because those programs were probably written for a bigger screen and a keyboard/mouse combination, but it's possible in a pinch.<br />
<br />
Besides all of that, Maemo has one of the greatest communities ever. The N900 shipped without MMS capabilities. The community implemented it. The N900 shipped without the ability to assign different ringtones to different contacts. The community took care of it. Better FM transmitter performance, brought to you by the community. More apps, more ports, more hacks, brought to you by the Maemo community. And the contributors are still there, working away on it. They're still writing apps for the N800, and that's older than the first iPhone.<br />
<br />As I said earlier, I want a phone with a bigger screen and better battery life, among other things. I love the N900 and it's community, but I've made no secret on this
blog that I do not agree with Nokia's decision to switch to the Windows
Mobile 7 OS. I have no interest in using Windows Mobile 7. Nokia isn't putting anything out that I'm remotely into.<br />
<br />
I don't know if there are really any other choices than Android for me at this point. It's got a few good communities. XDA Developers is a great forum. Rootzwiki is really cool too, I hope that site takes off in a big way.<br />
<br />
Most of the kind of apps I need, I can get for Android. There's a Dropbox app for the N900, but it's outdated, and Dropbox integration in Android seems much more productive. For nearly everything I want a phone to do, an Android phone can handle it, with the exception that I don't think there's any new phones on the market with a FM transmitter. That's disappointing, but I can deal with it. Back to headphones when driving other people's cars, I guess.<br />
<br />
I wish Maemo or Meego would have taken off. I wish Nokia would have thrown their weight behind the N900. Oh well.<br />
<br />
I'll post more later with more specifics on why I'm seriously considering Android.<br />
<br />
-DavidDavidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14238189232799757651noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1391532811360690182.post-69091104158643310012011-10-12T20:37:00.000-07:002011-10-12T20:41:03.736-07:00I seriously can't be the only one, can I?Whether I'm in Chrome or Firefox, and in a dozen different sites, I click in a search box, type in my query and hit enter. The result ends up a little like this:<br />
<br />
<blockquote>Type yFinnegan's Wakeour search here.</blockquote><br />
I would be hypothetically searching for info on Finnegan's Wake, for some reason the default text in the search box doesn't disappear like I assume it should, and I get twenty seconds of my life wasted. Not a big deal, the first dozen times it happened. Now it seems to happen at least a few times a day.<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
On my banking site, on forums, looking for a specific article on my blog. It happens everywhere, it seems, but Google and Wikipedia, and Wikipedia has the worst search capabilities on the internet in every other regard.<br />
<br />
It's happening to me on multiple computers, on multiple browsers. It has to be happening to everybody else, yeah? So why hasn't it been fixed, or at least why aren't pre-filled search boxes being done away with?<br />
<br />
Seriously guys, it can't just be happenning to me, right? Right?<br />
<br />
Shit.<br />
<br />
<br />
DavidDavidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14238189232799757651noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1391532811360690182.post-90049343795738942392011-09-14T22:48:00.000-07:002011-09-14T23:27:59.591-07:00Consider the Minidisc... I know it sounded like I was paraphrasing the Bible, but in fact I was paraphrasing <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjrn4dXE2yI">TMWRNJ</a>.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOlldgzyd11bTVEiWMT1M0c5Fb7as6-UtS13W1UnqtPsXac5Dz1KyjIWFtbMzDGgYa6l8g1Kjky2IJbkFuiLNzhdZ75ioXEUU1iavP6zoXMf3csBfuJTDFDX4ViVlBHWK_gtqgZUUEx4w/s1600/Md-yellow.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOlldgzyd11bTVEiWMT1M0c5Fb7as6-UtS13W1UnqtPsXac5Dz1KyjIWFtbMzDGgYa6l8g1Kjky2IJbkFuiLNzhdZ75ioXEUU1iavP6zoXMf3csBfuJTDFDX4ViVlBHWK_gtqgZUUEx4w/s320/Md-yellow.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
As I mentioned in my previous <a href="http://www.thriceberg.com/2011/09/things-that-i-have-loved.html">article</a>, I got a Minidisc player because of an absence of technology to fill a certain need. Mp3s were starting to get popular. When I bought my MZ-R50 (just about to get my wisdom teeth pulled before getting braces, I remember that much), I lived up in a fairly small town. There were two places in town where one could buy CDs, if I remember correctly, and they were general stores. The nearest decent record shop was an hour away. Downloading mp3s was pretty much the only way I could get music at that time.<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
Then the question was, how could I listen to them? My workaround pre-minidisc was to plug my brother's FM transmitter into the back of our PC, and then record the songs off the radio using my dad's portable stereo. We didn't have any cassette recorders with a line in that I was aware of.<br />
<br />
When I decided to get a minidisc recorder, I had to get permission from my parents, because it was a lot of money to be spending for a kid my age. My dad asked me how I knew it would still be any good in a few years. What if the minidisc format didn't take off?<br />
<br />
Well the joke's on him. Look at our world today. Nearly all music bought and sold is on a minidisc, so we certainly proved him!<br />
<br />
Look, I didn't know whether or not minidiscs would take off, and I didn't really care. That was beside the point, and didn't factor into my decision at all. I wasn't planning on buying any minidisc albums. This isn't because I was just going to pirate music--I did manage to make it to that decent record store every now and then, and all my CDs were ripped and put on minidisc immediately.<br />
<br />
It was it's own ecosystem. I had enough blank minidiscs to last me a while, and if I started to run out I could phase out music I wasn't listening to anymore.<br />
<br />
This just pops in my head because I've been looking at tablets a lot lately. The truth is, I can live with Android, but I still don't <i>know</i> about it. I mean, it seems limited as a platform, compared to Maemo/MeeGo, which I unfortunately will be comparing every mobile OS I ever see for the rest of my life to.<br />
<br />
I don't care about user adoption and the number of apps, I care about whether or not I can someday soon use a tablet instead of a pen and paper without ever looking back, the same way I've never looked back to cassettes. If I can, then I don't care about future updates or upgrades. It's an investment. I used minidiscs long after mp3 players became prevalent. Minidisc worked for me at the time so I didn't have to look around for a better system.<br />
<br />
Are tablets at that point yet? I feel like they almost are. They just...almost are.<br />
<br />
Somebody give me a thousand dollars and I'll find out for sure pretty damn quick.<br />
<br />
Til then,<br />
<br />
DavidDavidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14238189232799757651noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1391532811360690182.post-84745486210216623382011-09-03T16:09:00.000-07:002015-09-20T11:47:31.468-07:00Things that I have loved...Hello there, faithful web audience. Or not-so-faithful web audience. Hello there me, the only person who regularly reads this blog.<br />
<br />
I'm thinking about pounding out a few blog posts about things I want. I've done similar posts in the past, about certain<a href="http://www.thriceberg.com/2010/02/viliv-s10-i-guess-not_2651.html"> netbooks</a> or <a href="http://www.thriceberg.com/2009/09/how-about-that-n900_3864.html">phones</a>. Today though, I'm writing about things I have owned and loved. Not romantically, just out of the utility they brought into my life. Sure, I'm a weirdo, but not one of <i>those</i> weirdos...<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9_kZ9XvjRS-4p-qae3JqeA9S_mco6GRyYotTT8RUN5gKLIw9Kjn1mzcAw8iSk3HEbqC-DX-cwjEtBvXNHQNyzmdbLLC1qfONqnYGFjHwY2H3MNn2G5oykTyZtsObN9WAqHYHrHyjbXb4/s1600/365px-Nintendo_Gameboy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9_kZ9XvjRS-4p-qae3JqeA9S_mco6GRyYotTT8RUN5gKLIw9Kjn1mzcAw8iSk3HEbqC-DX-cwjEtBvXNHQNyzmdbLLC1qfONqnYGFjHwY2H3MNn2G5oykTyZtsObN9WAqHYHrHyjbXb4/s320/365px-Nintendo_Gameboy.jpg" width="194" /></a></div>
<br />
I've recently written a <a href="http://www.thriceberg.com/2011/07/super-mario-land.html">post</a> that touched briefly on my love for the Game Boy. As I said in the article, the Game Boy was perhaps the first piece of technology that was real that I desperately wanted (I was a little kid at the time, desperation came much easier). It was portable gaming, something I seem to still value, as I own a M11x, Alienware's 11" gaming netbook.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEid1DuP6i3hckvt0tjKRaLjk8MY5MWR6kCvVg13GRfSUXmBdJXMvhPKmdRWKp65Q55SkJkqIV4qLxqy-9fAoKXgOG2u6pTV0a9UWQaGhZcqJk-KSJOLzdjwQf1213zTvc1GgE1fflautQA/s1600/mz-r50.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="235" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEid1DuP6i3hckvt0tjKRaLjk8MY5MWR6kCvVg13GRfSUXmBdJXMvhPKmdRWKp65Q55SkJkqIV4qLxqy-9fAoKXgOG2u6pTV0a9UWQaGhZcqJk-KSJOLzdjwQf1213zTvc1GgE1fflautQA/s320/mz-r50.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
(<a href="http://www.minidisc.org/r50_manual/index.html">image source</a>)</div>
The Sony MZ-R50 portable minidisc recorder.
Probably the second electronic device I desperately wanted. Mp3s were
just getting big, and cassettes recording from my computer's line out jack
seemed to be the bast way to play them anywhere away from home. I
bought this to take my mp3s--and my CDs too, with me everywhere. I still love this design. I don't know why, I just love the way it looks, I have since the time I first saw it. Beautiful.<br />
<br />
I've owned three minidisc players in my life, all portable, all recorders. Minidisc never caught on in the US, though there was a time you could buy a player and discs at any Wal-Mart or Target in the US. I didn't need them to catch on to work for me though. They were small, and they allowed me to carry most of my music with me on a few discs. The last minidisc player I bought used discs that could hold a gigabyte of data, impressive at that point, and they were dirt cheap, like $10.<br />
<br />
The minidisc did had one huge advantage that current formats haven't replicated. Its disk wasn't exposed. It had a little door like floppy disks that only opened if you inserted them into a drive (or jimmied them open with a pin or something). I don't know how we went from CDs to DVDs to Blu-Ray, and all of these formats have the disk exposed. That still pisses me off, it's probably planned obsolescence. I'm cool with disks, but put them in enclosures like the minidisc had. Keep me from constantly needing to tell people not to set discs aside silver-side down.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfmI4nEayqw8EDf3pj5m83lgmdWpJiKTuBUeZ08rqhQqsXMRM4uGEkO14mRiIWoL3uSb0wtabtBLjD_NwKTf3PN-aK4qg7VbNNvvA75qRWEq2IYfrxM4k6pzaxxlGBXNgGknYUEj3PMPQ/s1600/Tapwave_Zodiac2_640.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfmI4nEayqw8EDf3pj5m83lgmdWpJiKTuBUeZ08rqhQqsXMRM4uGEkO14mRiIWoL3uSb0wtabtBLjD_NwKTf3PN-aK4qg7VbNNvvA75qRWEq2IYfrxM4k6pzaxxlGBXNgGknYUEj3PMPQ/s320/Tapwave_Zodiac2_640.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
Oh look, another mobile gaming device! The Tapwave Zodiac was a gaming PDA. It had an analog joystick, shoulder buttons, and a few decent games. Some devoted community members even got Game Boy, NES, SNES, and Genesis emulators running on this bad boy. This was, and still is in my book, the ultimate portable gaming device.<br />
<br />
The Zodiac also came through on the PDA side though. If you held it sideways it looked like any other PDA, with a few extra buttons. It had handwriting recognition, which was generally as spotty then as it is today. It had a calendar and other basic office apps. It had an ebook reader, which I used all the time reading public domain books, the same as I do now on my Nokia N900. It was a great device, and another one I fell in love with just by it's visual design alone.<br />
<br />
The Zodiac also brought my attention to a certain type of finish--anodized aluminum. That device did not scratch, and let me tell you, the way I treated it, it should have. It looked cool, it felt cool, and it was practically indestructible. Why isn't everything anodized aluminum? Why are manufacturers sticking with brittle, glossy, fingerprint-magnifying plastic?<br />
<br />
I really liked this device, and I still have it, thought the LCD screen broke on me. It was stepped on. Ok, I stepped on it. If it wasn't broken, I guarantee you I'd still be using it today, playing my favorite Game Boy or Genesis games on the go.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKexGo0THhyphenhyphen2hKJnuWLXefsi3lmK2h-HLhDfyazeQhkHO1YZa26zS62Jtr8fs92NAyphXKB-da2o2vJrG02VMPdbkkfl1YUv4WQJt6Yxrv1e9qj08tE2m1J-diSxSdXLqsYQ5IfxwAEtk/s1600/800px-N800_frontside1.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKexGo0THhyphenhyphen2hKJnuWLXefsi3lmK2h-HLhDfyazeQhkHO1YZa26zS62Jtr8fs92NAyphXKB-da2o2vJrG02VMPdbkkfl1YUv4WQJt6Yxrv1e9qj08tE2m1J-diSxSdXLqsYQ5IfxwAEtk/s320/800px-N800_frontside1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
My
Nokia N800, the internet tablet that helped me get by when my laptop
broke and my house didn't have internet access (it was a temporary residence), so I could drive to various
cafes and surf there. Still use it occasionally. Pretty good
sound coming from those tiny speakers. People are still developing for it
too, which gives me some confidence that my N900 will still amaze me for
years to come, even though Nokia has abandoned it and it's OS.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjr2AJCCUWKS0eEfiQ66waZqQBuQbD04xOz3BHd-r8nb6ktyZY62LdL7Jusr4fzT9Z0IcPLr9r-dOEFZ8gvMtjT1Ak56d1NKsm2wYHi0G_kvqLSnnxhG8IF6a4vrnk8NeUylQYCZL1VuFY/s1600/788px-Nokia_N900-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="243" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjr2AJCCUWKS0eEfiQ66waZqQBuQbD04xOz3BHd-r8nb6ktyZY62LdL7Jusr4fzT9Z0IcPLr9r-dOEFZ8gvMtjT1Ak56d1NKsm2wYHi0G_kvqLSnnxhG8IF6a4vrnk8NeUylQYCZL1VuFY/s320/788px-Nokia_N900-1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
The <b>Nokia N900</b>. It's ugly. It doesn't give a shit. It's a Swiss Army knife. It's a FM transmitting, IR blasting, <a href="http://thehandheldblog.com/2011/08/02/cleven-aircrack-ng-n900-wifi-hacking/">wifi hacking</a>, keyboard having, multitasking, flash photographing (with sliding lens cover), Flash media playing (before it was cool), 32GB powerhouse.<br />
<br />
It has a full office suite, maybe multiple ones. It has NoteCase Pro, Dropbox, SMPlayer, Spideroak, Abiword, Xournal, Rockbox and Transmission. And that's just off the top of my head. You can listen to your music in your friends car over the radio--no cables needed. You can use it as a universal remote. You can blog from it or write whatever you want--I can write 40wpm on that tiny keyboard, I swear it. Wears my thumbs out but comes in handy when I'm far from home.<br />
<br />
It is the best phone ever, and Nokia practically threw it in the garbage. Find it in a store in the US, I dare you. I double-dare you. It takes full advantage of T-Mobile's cellular radio spectrum, but good luck finding that out without doing a little detective work online. Hey, you know what would fit in here well? A mini rant:<br />
<br />
<begin mini-rant><i>Hey, we're Nokia, we've just spent years developing the very best mobile OS ever, Maemo 5. Then we struck a deal with Intel to broaden Maemo's scope and get it on more devices: the Meego project. Oh, you know what, this isn't working for some reason (possibly because Maemo 5 is only on one device and you can't buy it at your local cellular phone service provider). Here's a great idea--Microsoft is famous for great mobile software, right? Okay, well all the Windows Mobile versions sucked, every phone manufacturer that used it was so embarrassed by it they had to design their own UI to go on top of it. Oh, and the Zune software is the worst media player software ever, and the device's UI was atrocious (</i>even worse then the Creative Zen Touch, which I owned and you'll notice that it's NOT on this list<i>). You know what, who cares? Let's put Windows software on all our phones anyway. No one knows what the hell Maemo/Meego is--I mean we didn't advertise it or anything, but still it's a failure. A failure of marketing sure, not engineering or design, but that's splitting hairs. Why even try to make it work? Fuck it, let's just partner with Microsoft, whatever. We designed the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_9000_Communicator">world's first smartphone</a>. We built Maemo 5, the world's best mobile OS, from the ground up. We've been around since the late 1800s, but what the hell--let's partner up with Microsoft and just go out as a big pathetic joke. </i><end mini-rant> You could have switched to Android Nokia, and at least saved a little public opinion. You could even have promised to provide hardware drivers to people who would try to port Meego to your new (invisible) line of Windows 7 phones. Nope, you just had to blow it every way you could, didn't you? <b><okay NOW end mini-rant></b><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhekGJ1m2o4sA28NxiLVOb3B0g2Xffxc8BjZaNwXkWk8f3Yx6xIWL2V40dmIjbYTIH418zWvC0EdqDvtp4UODpu4OW95hFd9krGyXx2l0-9ObvZelFTBlwgwHqKFCZO5XXrb46dwVu8-gg/s1600/800px-2007TaipeiITMonth_ASUS_EeePC.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhekGJ1m2o4sA28NxiLVOb3B0g2Xffxc8BjZaNwXkWk8f3Yx6xIWL2V40dmIjbYTIH418zWvC0EdqDvtp4UODpu4OW95hFd9krGyXx2l0-9ObvZelFTBlwgwHqKFCZO5XXrb46dwVu8-gg/s320/800px-2007TaipeiITMonth_ASUS_EeePC.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
(<a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2007TaipeiITMonth_ASUS_EeePC.jpg">image source</a>)</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<a href="http://www.thriceberg.com/2008/05/now-i-know-how-king-arthur-felt.html">Netbooks</a>. I've owned three, all Asus EeePCs. A 7" 701, a 9" 901, and a 9" T91MT.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
They all have their own benefits and limitations. I still like the look of the 701 best, a flat finish with beveled corners. The 901 and T91MT are glossy finish. Portable devices should not have glossy finishes in my book. Fingerprint magnets.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
The 901 had a bigger screen, and the T91MT is a netvertible, the touchscreen swivels and folds back so you can use it like a tablet. The T91MT also has two SD slots, which is really, really awesome for memory expansion on the (relatively) cheap. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
I was surprised how quickly I could type on these devices eventually. To be honest, the 701 drove me crazy at first, I felt like my hands were crippled. I forced myself to use it though, and for a while I could type faster on it than I could type on a full sized keyboard. In fact, typing on a full sized keyboard became a bit of a strain, I think because I had to move my hands around a lot more to type.<br />
<br />
<b>Hmm. What have I learned?</b><br />
<b> </b><br />
Well, looking at all of these together, portability was always a big thing for me. My parents didn't travel much, but we did go on some vacations. They did drive around a lot, looking at cars lots and houses for sale, and I was constantly kicking myself for forgetting to bring a book along, or bringing a book along that I was so far into I'd finished it before the end of the trip.<br />
<br />
I really like the idea of doing what I want to do anywhere. Being able to write on a netbook no matter where I was, though it's still a bit troublesome in a car or on a plane. Still waiting for tablet people to have their epiphany and work out a brilliant new way of entering text on a touch screen that's faster, or at least comparable, to typing on a keyboard.<br />
<br />
We still don't have one device that can replace all of these though. The Zodiac is still kind of irreplaceable, having dedicated gaming buttons attached (although I am curious about the Xperia Play). It'll probably be a long time before another phone is released that does all the N900 can, and I doubt it'll be released by Nokia and run Maemo/Meego, so hopefully Android has its stuff together by then.<br />
<br />
I really am waiting for a better text entry system for tablets. I'm sure as multi-touch screens become more popular, someone's going to have a "Eureka!" moment and throw something brilliant together. Keyboards are the only reason I'd choose a netbook over a tablet, and it seems I can type fairly quickly on a tablet, though it's a bit awkward.<br />
<br />
I do have my eyes on a few more devices, though cash is a little tight so it's killing me that I won't be able to buy any of them for a while. For the time being, I guess I'll just write about them, and that will have to tide me over.<br />
<br />
DavidDavidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14238189232799757651noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1391532811360690182.post-6459868213878125592011-08-31T23:45:00.000-07:002011-08-31T23:45:34.632-07:00What is uTorrent doing? (I like it)Just updated uTorrent, which I haven't done since probably January of this year. First, as I installed it, it asked me if I wanted to download some album for free, a sponsor of uTorrent I'm assuming. I clicked yes, I'd download it. That in itself is a really cool idea, a far better idea than browser toolbars and the like.<br />
<br />
I can see this working in better ways too, if they get a lot of sponsors they could give you a list of albums or shows you could download for free for promotional reasons. Or perhaps a "One day only, get this album for free!" type of deal. (I listened to the album by the way, or a little of it. Not for me, but still a cool idea)<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
uTorrent itself looks a bit different. It can stream videos you're downloading? It has apps? And it's still ridiculously small?<br />
<br />
Something clicked for me when I saw this. I'm going to assume that the apps are reasonably easy to throw together. If we ever get to the point where someone does a really good online show that's ad-supported, would this app be a way to distribute it? Could uTorrent perhaps automatically downloaded new episodes? What a really cool idea.<br />
<br />
I don't know what's ultimately going to come from this, but I feel like it's another step in the right direction. Like when the next big online video push comes, this will be in place to help with distribution. I see Make and TED both have videos you can download via an app, so maybe it's already happening. <br />
<br />
Or maybe it's just late and I'm really tired.<br />
<br />
I don't know...<br />
<br />
DavidDavidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14238189232799757651noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1391532811360690182.post-55580580481989796752011-08-31T23:30:00.000-07:002011-08-31T23:45:47.826-07:00Added AdsLogged into Blogger to write a post, which I will do next, I promise, but I got distracted from writing by looking at my traffic. Just making a note for my future self as well as all of you, finally got around to enabling ads for this blog. More of an experiment than anything else.<br />
<br />
I had ads enabled on this blog on my old site, and never earned enough to justify getting any payout. Not that it mattered, this blog is an occasional distraction more than anything else, and now it doesn't even cost me anything for hosting.<br />
<br />
Just the same, if you've just stopped by and realized something is different, it's the ads.<br />
<br />
DavidDavidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14238189232799757651noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1391532811360690182.post-26504997289112648402011-07-20T20:44:00.000-07:002012-03-23T12:40:54.268-07:00Super Mario Land<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuATmYy7SrboRypWRkAVmqJvjOxd51B0hkyD33M9cxcLqvYxD1forkAh71l0jw_S7IsVLDY2CswVLdjYOGzWO_rIreChyphenhyphenO5i8GQ61QL1B9e4ckhv875NokorXY-IScPqxrtKO7pBPhQsM/s1600/bgb00004.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuATmYy7SrboRypWRkAVmqJvjOxd51B0hkyD33M9cxcLqvYxD1forkAh71l0jw_S7IsVLDY2CswVLdjYOGzWO_rIreChyphenhyphenO5i8GQ61QL1B9e4ckhv875NokorXY-IScPqxrtKO7pBPhQsM/s400/bgb00004.bmp" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
It might have been the retro warp levels in Super Meat Boy. It might have been my listening to random Gershwin pieces(one piece of music in Super Mario Land 2 really reminds me of a song from <i>An American in Paris</i>). Maybe it was just time to swim through some memories. Whatever the reason, I dug out and started playing some Game Boy games tonight.<br />
<br />
Not Game Boy Color games, or Advance games, or DS games. Classic black and white (or yellowish and black) dot matrix Game Boy games.<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
I am a self-proclaimed gadget freak. It occurred to me as I dug all of this stuff out that the Game Boy was the first electronic device I wanted. <i>Really</i> wanted, besides perhaps the fictional computer book Penny had in <i>Inspector Gadget</i>. I think I might have begged everyone I knew for one (Game Boy and/or computer book) at the time.<br />
<br />
My parents gave me one for my birthday. We were visiting my grandparents, who lived out in the country. It came with Tetris, but I was given Super Mario Land as well. My parents said they got it free with the Game Boy because it was an opened return, but I think perhaps they knew how boring it would be to have one game, yet wanted to cover up how much they actually spent.<br />
<br />
I just looked and a Game Boy cost $90 on release. That's surprising. I remembered it being much more expensive, but perhaps my expectations have raised over time. $250 3DS, anybody?<br />
<br />
I've had two Game Boy classics (the first one was dropped a few too many times, and eventually each successive drop meant another row across the screen would go blank), a Game Boy Pocket and a Game Boy Color. By the time they got to the Game Boy Advanced I had kind of moved on to more adult toys, like the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tapwave_Zodiac">Tapwave Zodiac</a> (a gaming PDA, brilliant design and easily my favorite gadget of all I've owned--really released 2 years after the Game Boy Advance). The Zodiac ran Palm OS, and it had a few good emulators that could handle most Genesis, SNES, and Game Boy games.<br />
<br />
Anyway, the point of this post is: I don't believe I've ever beaten Super Mario Land. I could get to the last boss, but I could never beat him. Like Fry, I would have my older brother take care of him so I could see how the game ended. I have all the music memorized, I know most if not all of the invisible bridges and secret elevators, but I'd never actually beaten the game. Until tonight.<br />
<br />
Funny thing is, I remembered the game being a long and painstaking process. It's only 12 levels, that's it. I beat it in about 45 minutes, give or take. I beat the boss on my first try. What was wrong with me back then?<br />
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
Well, I decided to dig through my past a bit. I've heard people say they don't want to go back to places they spent a lot of time in as kids, because it looks completely different. Houses seem smaller, the smells are different, and most times that piece of your past just doesn't belong to you anymore. I enjoyed this little regression. I finally beat Super Mario Land. I bet I could probably beat up my dad now too, if I wanted to.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
No, probably not. Still,</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinBuMnhV9cNfNP2vyk2bSYJpJky117LD9ZpK-qYfwk-FLUxK0MUkhX_WCwhaj_xs8UABsga1383ZXsucVBWSIjTqZcc2IUP2L2oQjbg96KS0jccBFy6QZPyWg08HPfQ5nt7GsxdzA8Nos/s1600/bgb00005.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br />
</a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinBuMnhV9cNfNP2vyk2bSYJpJky117LD9ZpK-qYfwk-FLUxK0MUkhX_WCwhaj_xs8UABsga1383ZXsucVBWSIjTqZcc2IUP2L2oQjbg96KS0jccBFy6QZPyWg08HPfQ5nt7GsxdzA8Nos/s1600/bgb00005.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br />
</a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinBuMnhV9cNfNP2vyk2bSYJpJky117LD9ZpK-qYfwk-FLUxK0MUkhX_WCwhaj_xs8UABsga1383ZXsucVBWSIjTqZcc2IUP2L2oQjbg96KS0jccBFy6QZPyWg08HPfQ5nt7GsxdzA8Nos/s1600/bgb00005.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br />
</a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinBuMnhV9cNfNP2vyk2bSYJpJky117LD9ZpK-qYfwk-FLUxK0MUkhX_WCwhaj_xs8UABsga1383ZXsucVBWSIjTqZcc2IUP2L2oQjbg96KS0jccBFy6QZPyWg08HPfQ5nt7GsxdzA8Nos/s1600/bgb00005.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br />
</a></div>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinBuMnhV9cNfNP2vyk2bSYJpJky117LD9ZpK-qYfwk-FLUxK0MUkhX_WCwhaj_xs8UABsga1383ZXsucVBWSIjTqZcc2IUP2L2oQjbg96KS0jccBFy6QZPyWg08HPfQ5nt7GsxdzA8Nos/s1600/bgb00005.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinBuMnhV9cNfNP2vyk2bSYJpJky117LD9ZpK-qYfwk-FLUxK0MUkhX_WCwhaj_xs8UABsga1383ZXsucVBWSIjTqZcc2IUP2L2oQjbg96KS0jccBFy6QZPyWg08HPfQ5nt7GsxdzA8Nos/s400/bgb00005.bmp" width="400" /></a><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
-David</div>Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14238189232799757651noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1391532811360690182.post-37511050127527655742011-05-21T21:21:00.000-07:002012-03-23T12:40:35.741-07:00Something More My SpeedIt was about time for me to re-stage my netbook, and I've been looking around for more lightweight distros. In an ideal world I'd go with Arch and LXDE or something lightweight. In an ideal world I'd have time and energy for all that.<br />
<br />
In this world I decided to go with <a href="http://lubuntu.net/">Lubuntu</a>. I have to say, I like it a lot.<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
I like regular Ubuntu, I dual boot into it on my laptop (Windows 7 for gaming, until PC game studios come around...), but it has a few annoyances. The 2 toolbars on the screen. The giant menu. The shortcuts differing from the windows shortcuts that I'm used to. Some of these may be qualities of Gnome, Ubuntu's desktop environment, and not Ubuntu proper, but just the same, it's annoying.<br />
<br />
Lubuntu has one toolbar, and one button instead of three big menus. It's keyboard shortcuts are the same as in Windows: Home Key + E for file explorer, Home+D to show or hide the desktop, Home+R to open the run program dialog.<br />
<br />
It comes with audacious, my choice in audio players, pre-installed. It comes with Chromium, Chrome's pure Open Source cousin, which I prefer to Firefox at the moment.<br />
<br />
I'm still trying to figure out how to create custom shortcuts, but I'm sure it can't be too difficult. I hope not, anyway.<br />
<br />
Just glad that I tried something new, and for one purpose--it should be faster and use less resources--and that move ended up benefiting me in other ways. Lubuntu out of the box is pretty much how I want an OS set up, and switching to it for my laptop too next time I restage <i>it</i> will save me some tweaking and key binding.<br />
<br />
Til then,<br />
<br />
DavidDavid (thriceberg)http://www.blogger.com/profile/00355486508251553094noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1391532811360690182.post-41064206157315306312011-04-30T22:33:00.000-07:002012-03-23T12:40:39.278-07:00Weekend Update...WitcherWeekends are for playing video games and catching up on a few small chores, <b>not for painting</b>, which is something key members of my family can't seem to wrap their heads around. All joking aside, I was hoping to give The Witcher a significant portion of my weekend, seeing as the more I hear about it's upcoming sequel the more interested I am. Looks like that's not going to happen.<br />
<br />
I've only gotten an hour or so into it so far. No impressions, except that it took quite a while to get cutscenes to show properly. They were black (but I could hear sound) on my M11x R1. To solve this, I had to find witcher.exe, right click it, and go to Properties. Then I found settings to run in compatibility mode for XP Service Pack 2, checked "Run in 640x480," and checked "Run this program as administrator."<br />
<br />
I don't know which of the three setting changes solved this problem, but it works now. My problem was specifically presenting, by the way, as a black screen with text over it in the first cutscene. Not the initial pre-game cutscene (which played fine), but the first cutscene after you start a new game. There should be trees and stuff behind the text, not a black screen,<br />
<br />
Hope this helps somebody out there,<br />
<br />
DavidDavid (thriceberg)http://www.blogger.com/profile/00355486508251553094noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1391532811360690182.post-41402712640425647072011-04-25T08:21:00.001-07:002012-03-23T12:40:44.562-07:00Nokia App of the Day - Calendar Home WidgetOne thing I'm constantly trying to describe to people about the N900 is the amazing community surrounding it. It may not have as many apps as the iPod, but there's enough programmers using the N900 that if there's something I don't like about it, someone else surely has done or is doing something about it.<br />
<br />
Case and point, Nokia shipped the N900 without the ability to send or receive MMS messages, nor could you set a different ringtone for certain contacts. Both those things are possible now thanks to community development. Looking at the fact that people are still tweaking and developing for the 4 year old N800, I doubt my N900 will ever stop surprising me.<br />
<br />
Hey, do you have problems with the N900's calendar desktop widget? Me too!<br />
<a name='more'></a>What's wrong with it? It insists on opening into the agenda view, which I strongly dislike. I also dislike the agenda view itself, as is doesn't list everything on your calendar, it only lists what's coming up in the next few weeks. I'd like to be able to scroll through all my appointments for the next few months, but that's a different matter.<br />
<br />
<br />
In addition to opening the calendar in the Agenda view, the default desktop widget also only shows future events if they're within a week or two.<br />
<br />
<br />
My big beef is that it simply isn't customizable. Well there's another widget to use, called the Calendar Home Widget (in extras devel, I think). It is customizable. It will let you choose what view it launches the calendar in. It will show you all the appointments it can fit on that tiny widget, whether they're a day or a year away. It will even show you day of the week those appointments fall on, if you so desire. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
I like it. I am happy.<br />
<br />
<br />
DavidDavid (thriceberg)http://www.blogger.com/profile/00355486508251553094noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1391532811360690182.post-34400816973993710942011-04-08T16:21:00.000-07:002012-03-23T12:41:04.942-07:00KompoZer as an outliner...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrYg3qkaXJ_fclKUCqCFdeFAdhpIVWlDxSHqpoKGRVw41b89OxGdaVF9YIBBYLVyy9GERY7XVuBhyygR7AfjHlwWOL19HzGeWeNiKbm43k-0sRoooUxYGTMR_-CUlXklNmmY78JInnjIIY/s1600/KompoZer.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrYg3qkaXJ_fclKUCqCFdeFAdhpIVWlDxSHqpoKGRVw41b89OxGdaVF9YIBBYLVyy9GERY7XVuBhyygR7AfjHlwWOL19HzGeWeNiKbm43k-0sRoooUxYGTMR_-CUlXklNmmY78JInnjIIY/s320/KompoZer.png" width="320" /></a></div>
I told you in my <a href="http://www.thriceberg.com/2011/04/outliner-rundown.html">last article</a> that I'd found a new outliner-style-thingy that gives me rich text options and even allows screenplay formatting, though it brings with it a few limitations. Here's the story:<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
A friend of mine and I have been looking into the possibility of putting something together for the Amazon Kindle. You don't format Kindle files and send them off to Amazon though, you format html files and send <i>those</i> off to Amazon, which <i>they</i> turn into Kindle files. I started looking for a good WYSIWYG (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WYSIWYG">what you see is what you get</a>) html editor. I found a few, <a href="http://kompozer.net/">KompoZer</a> being the one I landed on. I noticed after poking around a bit that it's site manager could be pointed to a local directory, so that you're able to browse those files and folders as if they were nodes on an outliner.<br />
<br />
KompoZer is an Open Source, Cross-Platform html editor/website manager (it can transfer files to and from your remote server). It has multiple views for documents (I believe it can only open html files): "Design" (WYSIWYG), and "Source," (plain text, html code and all). I tend to spend the most time working in it's design view.<br />
<br />
It handles html and css very well, so I can display screenplays exported from Celtx. Celtx screenplays are html files with css definitions stored within. I edited one of these files to use as a template for create new screenplays within KompoZer. It works well, though there are some problems.<br />
<br />
<b>Problems with KompoZer specifically:</b><br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>No right click context menu in the site manager. You can rename and delete files and folders, but you have to click icons on the toolbar, you can't just right click to change things.</li>
<li>No drag and drop. It would be cool if you could drag html files to a different folder from the site manager, but it's not possible.</li>
<li>KompoZer crashes a lot. This is a big deal. A really big deal, but at the same time, not a big deal at all. Since you're using html files, and it only saves if you tell it to, nothing gets corrupted. You might lose changes if you save, but being a long-time computer user I hit CTRL-S quite frequently. Compulsively, even.</li>
<li>KompoZer doesn't save your open tabs when it closes. Also not a big deal, but it'd be nice if it did, so it doesn't take as long to get your workspace back to where you had it yesterday.</li>
<li>It's can bit of a pain to apply style to a new screenplay. I mean, click on text, click on drop down menu, select style. Easy, right? Now repeat 500 times for each scene heading, character name and block of dialog. Would be nice to have a format painter or shortcut keys to apply different styles. Can just copy styles in the source view, bit it's still a bit time consuming. Workaround - write the script in Celtx, then copy and paste it into KompoZer. All the formatting should remain intact.</li>
</ul>
<br />
The above was about the application KompoZer specifically. Now I'll discuss the benefits and limitations of this system in general, regardless of what app you may find to do this with.<br />
<br />
<b>Benefits:</b><br />
<br />
<ol>
<li>Html editors can handle a lot of what most browsers can. This means css, which is all I need to edit and format screenplays. You can do quite a lot of custom document formatting with html and css. The setup I use has the css bits contained in the document itself, so no external stylesheet needed, though I'm sure you could use one if you thought it'd be easier.</li>
<li>Easier analysis of conflicted revisions. I use Dropbox to sync a lot of my documents. A lot of times I'll leave Notecase Pro open on one PC and then edit the same document on another PC. This means there's now two documents edited at the same time (because I turn autosave on) on two different PCs. This will cause Dropbox to rename one of them as a conflicted document and let me sort out which to keep and which to discard. If I changed a handful of nodes in both versions, I can't easily tell what is changed between the two. Well Dropbox marks single files as conflicted, which in my new folder-based method means it will mark single documents as conflicted. That makes it a lot easier for me to investigate what's been changed and what hasn't. See Limitation #2 to see the negative side of this.</li>
<li>I can sync my outliner folder with Dropbox, which means I can view these notes in my phone's browser or edit them with any plain text editor. There's still some code in each document to sift through, but if you have a text editor that has line wrapping <i>and</i> respects proper line spacing you'll have no problems. I use Leafpad on my N900, works great.</li>
</ol>
<br />
<b>And the limitations:</b><br />
<br />
<ol>
<li>Files are listed alphabetically by name, so if I want one file to always be on top of the list I have to preface it with numbers. I'm currently ordering them like this: '01-ThisFile.html', '02-AnotherFile.html', and so on. For similar projects I actually have a method where the actual text of the project is always '#00', general notes and ideas in progress are in '#01', timelines are always '#02', etc.</li>
<li>All the notes and documents are contained in one folder, as opposed to one file. Copying files on a computer as a general rule takes much longer for smaller files than it does for larger files, as in one 100MB file copies a lot faster than a folder holding thousands of small files totaling 100MB. That means a large Notecase Pro file would probably copy faster than all it's nodes saved as separate files would. See Benefit #2 to see the positive side of this.</li>
<li>Folders are not nodes. Most outliners have a hierarchy, and each node can have subnodes. Generally, the parent nodes can themselves hold text. So if I had a node titled "Recipes" with a bunch of subnodes all containing recipes, the parent node, 'Recipes' could itself have a note in it, fir instance listing more recipes that I need to find. In Komposer there are no nodes and subnodes, only folders and files. Only files can contain text, not folders. It's an easier problem to visualize if you've used a two-pane outliner before. It's not even a big deal, just something to consider as you organize things.</li>
</ol>
The only cross-platform and open source program I can find that works for me is KompoZer, with one exception I'll go into in a minute. KompoZer, as I said earlier, crashes occasionally. It has a few bugs. The last version was released over a year ago. Some people might not want to base their workflow around this particular program. It's cool, there is another option. Well, there will be.<br />
<br />
One of the developers (maybe more?) of KompoZer has been working on a new piece of software called <a href="http://bluegriffon.org/">BlueGriffon</a>. It uses the most recent rendering engine from Firefox (version 4 as of this writing). It does a lot of other really cool stuff. I mean a <i>lot</i> of cool stuff. It has a built-in svg editor, for example. It will save your open tabs when you close it so you can easily resume your work later. It has a plugin (you have to buy it) that keeps a running word count for you. It does spell checking as you type, red underlining and all.<br />
<br />
It also has some plugins you can buy, with more to come I'm sure. If you buy their plugin pack before version 1.0, you get access to all of their future plugins for free for life. They're on version 9.1, so it won't be long before version 1.0 comes out.<br />
<br />
There's just one problem right now, and it's that they don't currently have a "Site Manager". What KompoZer calls a site manager BlueGriffon calls a "Project Manager", and the project manager won't be released until BlueGriffon reaches version 1.0. I think you'll also have to pay for it--as you will most other plugins. All I can say is, if you have high hopes for this application, drop the $43 on the <a href="http://www.bluegriffon.com/">addon pack</a> before version 1.0 comes out.<br />
<br />
That's pretty much it. KompoZer as an outliner for now, hopefully BlueGriffon 1.0 as an outliner if the Project Manager meets my reasonable expectations.<br />
<br />
Til then,<br />
<br />
DavidDavid (thriceberg)http://www.blogger.com/profile/00355486508251553094noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1391532811360690182.post-64093617927362536272011-04-08T11:09:00.000-07:002012-03-23T12:41:07.968-07:00Outliner Rundown<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_KTuXUPB5Z8UhD2ZFIMBSKBxrNc-qd6SHkRiQ5eaZSS7J93tyLPKkHP0F6w14HAmiWAfFnpY8QG5mNNY8pGEktqjnhRR0UVpIuU9fzUfLjhXzT6WtK2L0Wt4eYqh6DfdC2nCQbIbbZ3Gs/s1600/theguide.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="236" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_KTuXUPB5Z8UhD2ZFIMBSKBxrNc-qd6SHkRiQ5eaZSS7J93tyLPKkHP0F6w14HAmiWAfFnpY8QG5mNNY8pGEktqjnhRR0UVpIuU9fzUfLjhXzT6WtK2L0Wt4eYqh6DfdC2nCQbIbbZ3Gs/s320/theguide.png" width="320" /></a></div>
I've been using outliners for years now. I could probably track down when I first started using them by looking at my backups and seeing when my first outliner files started showing up, but I won't. It's not important.<br />
<div>
<br />
I don't remember exactly what I was doing when I discovered the concept of software outliners. I remember I was looking for a tabbed interface in word processors, ideally something that would allow me to have a different document open in each tab as well as letting me have the same document open in different tabs, each tab open to a different part of the document. Great for writing long documents or reports (table of contents in one tab, bit currently being written in another tab, bibliography in another tab, for example).<br />
<br />
Somehow in this search I stumbled across the idea of an outliner, and I've been a devoted user of them ever since. Continue reading for a list of the outliners I've used and what I eventually landed on.<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
I started with <a href="http://theguide.sourceforge.net/">The Guide</a>, which is a good program and I'm still kind of fond of it. I started getting back into Linux and The Guide won't run in Wine (environment to used to run Windows programs in Linux). Some other developer(s) have started working on a new, cross-platform version of The Guide but I'm not sure what state their development is in.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I switched to <a href="http://www.tranglos.com/free/keynote.html">Keynote</a>, an old program (resurrected by someone else as the also-good <a href="http://code.google.com/p/keynote-nf/">Keynote NF</a>), because it could run in Wine.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Then I switched to <a href="http://www.virtual-sky.com/">NoteCase Pro</a>. It's cross-platform. Ridiculously cross-platform. Almost as ridiculous as Blender's cross-platform availability. The big selling point for me, it has a build for Maemo 5 - which means I can run this program on my N900. That's a big selling point. You can use the program for free, but in order to do some advanced things you need to buy a license (which I have). The developer is very nice and receptive to feature suggestions.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Somewhere in this time period I started using <a href="http://celtx.com/">Celtx</a>, which I tried to use as an outliner for a little while but ended up just using it to write screenplays. It has a really good, intuitive method for formatting screenplays as you type. Unfortunately, each release seems to get more sluggish, and each release takes longer to save files (up until I stopped using it altogether, I can't really speak to the most recent versions of it). I do the bulk of my writing on a netbook, so I prefer light applications.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I started looking around for another outliner because I wanted something that can handle screenplay formatting. It would be nice to have all my notes and my scripts in one place so I could refer back and forth between them without switching applications.<br />
<br />
Other outliners I've checked out in my pursuit of better screenplay formatting:<br />
<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li><a href="http://keepnote.org/keepnote/">KeepNote</a> - Free and Cross-Platform. Saves projects as a directory of files. It's nodes are html-based but can't handle CSS, so no screenplay formatting. I emailed this developer and he said in the future he plans to allow for more and different formatting options. </li>
<li><a href="http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivenerforwindows/">Scrivener</a> - Designed for screenplay and novel writing. It has a Windows and Linux version, however it's <i>really</i> slow on my netbook. It's kind of slow on my PC too, when handling large files. The last time I used it was a few months ago, when Scrivener for Windows (and Linux) was in open beta. I think it might still be. Perhaps the stable release will be much faster. It's not free or open source but it's quite good. Well worth the $40 license fee if it runs well on your computer.</li>
<li><a href="http://www.giuspen.com/cherrytree/">Cherrytree</a> - Open Source and Cross Platform. A relatively new outliner but it's quickly become one of my favorites. The developer is also very nice and receptive to feature suggestions, although just look at his todo list and see all the things he has on his plate. Worth a look.</li>
<li><a href="http://projects.gnome.org/gedit/">GEdit</a>. Open Source, Linux and Windows. In Linux I noticed that gedit has a file browser pane that lets you find files to edit. This is when I got the idea to use files organized in folders with some sort of text editor with a browser pane in place of an outliner.</li>
</ul>
Unfortunately gedit doesn't handle rich text (it really shouldn't anyway), and I couldn't find one single rich text editor that has a file-browsing sidebar. Not one. This is pretty much where my search ended.<br />
<br />
Almost immediately after I ended my search though, I found something quite accidentally that had a browser-pane and gave me access to rich text options. It even handles screenplay formatting! The really messed up thing is <i>I'd stopped looking.</i> I gave up. I seriously found this program the same day or the next day after I'd given up.<br />
<br />
Some of you out there might already know what kind of program I used. I'll let the rest of you in on it soon. This article is getting pretty long, and I have a lot more to say about my new method. Look for my next article later today or perhaps tomorrow.<br />
<br />
Til then,<br />
<br />
David</div>David (thriceberg)http://www.blogger.com/profile/00355486508251553094noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1391532811360690182.post-76327174974771670202011-03-30T14:30:00.001-07:002012-03-23T12:41:13.268-07:00Testing an app.<div style="text-align: center;">
<img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmNnhIqrHP2srzpvsVr4SCqgVuFTfg1sq4Exo950UHsvsP7BFnpk7s5xiHwqeOSLAfmyZv0AKcn3Ioter90gr2F94xgayAT8FBqd3gxytUVf_BOlsAMh8dAOjxG6645yFzgkSJxWes1ln7/" /></div>
<br />
<br />
Testing this app on my N900, called <a href="http://maemo-wordpy.garage.maemo.org/">MaStory</a>. It's awesome, at least if this post works it is.<br />
<br />
To be honest, I would be happy with an app that just pushes posts from my phone to my blog. MaStory is quite a bit cooler. It lets you view and edit old posts. You view and edit the post as plain text (WYSIWYM), but it makes a handful of often-needed codes easily accessible through the GUI. It will upload images from your phone. It's linking is very intuitive ( select some text, hit the link icon, enter in the URL, it will apply the link to your selected text).<br />
<br />
You can schedule posts to appear in the future!<br />
<br />
It even has a preview--not a true blog preview, but a formatting preview that even shows embedded images. Really helps proofreading a lot.<br />
<br />
One thing so far is missing. One thing.<br />
<a href="" name="more"></a><br />
That's right, dear readers, it's missing the tags for the "read more" link that keeps things short on your front page. Not a big deal. Makes no difference to the rss feed readers, but I'd like it.<br />
<br />
Oh, also would be nice if CTRL+I made highlighted text italic, and CTRL+U for underlining, CTRL+B for bold. That would make things a bit easier as well. Maybe I'll send in a feature request.<br />
<br />
All in all, if MaStory works (and you're out there reading this right now), I'm sure I'll be using it quite a bit.<br />
<br />
David<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">This post was written on my N900 (duh).</span>David (thriceberg)http://www.blogger.com/profile/00355486508251553094noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1391532811360690182.post-743291545450293512011-03-28T10:54:00.000-07:002012-03-23T12:41:32.838-07:00As it should be...Finally got a replacement N900 today. Was planning on hastily throwing up some whiny posts trying to decipher tracking info, but didn't have the time. Rest assured, I handled the wait childishly.<br />
<br />
So now I'm going through, changing all the settings back to what I'm used to and installing all my favorite apps.<br />
<br />
Just started walking to a PC to do a quick Google search, remembered I had a N900 again, then instead made my search where I stood.<br />
<br />
As it should be.<br />
<br />
David<br />
<i><br />
</i><br />
<i>PS - This post was typed on my N900.</i>David (thriceberg)http://www.blogger.com/profile/00355486508251553094noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1391532811360690182.post-90351077750235904672011-03-24T12:00:00.000-07:002012-03-23T12:42:18.369-07:00WAIT!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWhzneko14XiPkIGoOUbovjXee3flUDRlF3JK__vDziVp9XxdGbdV-qraGxmfxUYj31qUWmhL7PvgifNHiQ-Dquok1VvG1ztuGOevHspPm7-MzYmDthqSjScmCSv3hX7eTaZhHC4AUKQ71/s1600/crying_baby.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWhzneko14XiPkIGoOUbovjXee3flUDRlF3JK__vDziVp9XxdGbdV-qraGxmfxUYj31qUWmhL7PvgifNHiQ-Dquok1VvG1ztuGOevHspPm7-MzYmDthqSjScmCSv3hX7eTaZhHC4AUKQ71/s1600/crying_baby.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
You know, it was only a few posts ago that I mocked my earlier self for freaking out over confusing tracking info. You know, because I was really anxious to get my N900. I have to say, some of those posts are embarrassing. I was acting rather childish, right?<br />
<br />
<i>Except</i> here I am again, waiting for payment from a warranty company who I <i>will</i> name and <i>will</i> talk all about in a future post, just not until we've actually finished our little transaction.<br />
<br />
So I'm checking both my email and my dashboard on their site every few minutes. Refreshing Gmail even though I don't think it needs to be refreshed anymore to update it. I'm generally freaking out. There's a 6pm cutoff here. If I don't order a new phone before 6pm on amazon, I won't be able to get that phone next day. No sir.<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a>And I've learned something. My previous behavior wasn't embarrassing. It wasn't childish. Is was pretty fucking appropriate, because I WANT MY FUCKING PHONE. WAAAAAH! WAAAAH! That's right, I'm a baby. So what? You wanna fight? Could you hit a baby?<br />
<br />
Didn't think so. Call me when you grow some real balls. The kind of balls that involve you making an ass out of yourself in a public forum over a phone. Or the kind of balls that would enable you to hit an infant child.<br />
<br />
Till then, <br />
<br />
David<br />
<br />
<i>Top image obtained from <a href="http://www.wpclipart.com/people/baby/crying_baby.png.html">WP Clip Art</a>.</i>David (thriceberg)http://www.blogger.com/profile/00355486508251553094noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1391532811360690182.post-53164531244018548102011-03-19T03:37:00.000-07:002012-03-23T12:42:30.690-07:00What the hell?Anyone looking at my blog in the wee hours of the night might have noticed a bunch of gibberish-y posts disappearing and reappearing.<br />
<br />
That was me, I admit it. Admin stuff. Oh, what was I doing? Only this:<br />
<br />
(this probably won't work if you're viewing this in a feed reader)<br />
<br />
<a href="javascript:doExpand("example");">Click me</a><br />
<span class="expandText" id="example">A sentence magically appeared!!!<br />
<br />
</span><br />
If that worked, then you're looking at the product of hours of work. A sentence was supposed to appear under "click me" btw. If you click on "click me" again, then the sentence should disappear. Why hours of work, you ask?<br />
<br />
Because, dear reader, I don't know javascript. The last few hours involved me cutting and pasting bits from different scripts that basically worked but had little problems. Most required a different script for each block of text. For example:<br />
<br />
<a href="javascript:doExpand("xample");">Click this one now</a><br />
<span class="expandText" id="xample">Some scripts required multiple embeddings of the same script in order for multiple blocks of text to be shown or hidden in one post. With the script I have now, all I have to do is keep a unique id in the text's wrapper (a new unique id for each block of text)<br />
<br />
</span><br />
It wasn't easy. I honestly can't believe it worked. I literally tried one last thing, saying to myself "If this doesn't work I'm going to bed". And I meant it this time.<br />
<br />
Another good thing about this script versus others: Other scripts will expand the text once the link is clicked, but if said link is at the bottom of a post, the browser will for some reason jump to the top of the page, losing your place. This one doesn't. Or shouldn't. Hopefully it works for all of you like it does for me.<br />
<br />
Well, bed time for me. Time to get up I mean, but I think I'll go to bed instead.<br />
<br />
DavidDavid (thriceberg)http://www.blogger.com/profile/00355486508251553094noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1391532811360690182.post-6125376322171710022011-03-18T22:52:00.000-07:002012-03-23T12:43:19.024-07:00Welcome to the BlunderdomeBlog migrated? Yes! YAY!!!!!<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrRSKeyQMdNaJwzhq-IzexuVDidecw7V15MPQZTBPylkjP1pP_tVioWbmcPPAitArKgAUwUImWcvXOfLgNxzWNR6_7udvF43v9JLu8AyxXAAq4LWoKxLiHrIzDAdfsC0mvxY6nYi7rHGjw/s1600/ThumbsUp.png"><img alt="" border="0" height="200" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5585676596820508482" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrRSKeyQMdNaJwzhq-IzexuVDidecw7V15MPQZTBPylkjP1pP_tVioWbmcPPAitArKgAUwUImWcvXOfLgNxzWNR6_7udvF43v9JLu8AyxXAAq4LWoKxLiHrIzDAdfsC0mvxY6nYi7rHGjw/s400/ThumbsUp.png" style="display: block; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;" width="400" /></a><br />
Okay, here's the deal:<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
My blog is "officially" migrated to Blogger. This was a financial decision as well as an ease of use decision. Now I don't have to waste time on CMS updates and double-checking plug-ins (then searching out new plug-ins when my favorites have depreciated), and I don't have to pay for server space or worry that this site would be toast if, god forbid, I ever post anything that gets really popular.<br />
<br />
I've got the favicon sorted. I've got thriceberg.com AND www.thriceberg.com working. Google, of course, doesn't seem to be aware of the change yet so Google searches of my site bring up dead links (Blogger uses a different url creation scheme than my Wordpress install did).<br />
<br />
My feeds are being weird. My old feed link that shouldn't work does work, and my new feed link that should work, doesn't. I think. I'll get it sorted out eventually.<br />
<br />
Images in older posts are broken now, because I'm stupid. I can probably fix them, but will I? Will I? Doubtful. They are <span style="font-style: italic;">old posts</span>, after all Also some internal links will be broken, for the same reason Google's links don't. Internal structure has changed.<br />
<br />
Those things aside, I'm liking Blogger. One benefit I cannot stress enough is the theme editor. I haven't tweaked my theme yet, I'm using one out of the box at the moment, but one problem I had with Wordpress is how boringly deep you had to get into html and css in order to mess with a theme. You'd think they could at least come up with a simple program to design and edit themes, kind of like Blogger has in it's dashboard. I haven't messed with it too much, but you get access to a visual theme editor (somewhat limited but all I'll need) as well as the actual code that you can muck about in and insert hidden tags or whatever. ANYWAY...<br />
<br />
There are a few problems I have with Blogger:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-weight: bold;">The lack of the ability to change a post's author.</span> The easiest way to do this is to delete the post and have the right author re-post it (copy and paste the text), but every other multi-user blog I know of has a simple drop-down menu so the author of any given post can be changed. <span style="font-weight: bold;">Why one would need to do this:</span> a contributor wants to fire off a post but can't remember their password, or have gotten locked out, or this site is blocked by their business' network. There's a hundred reasons they could lose access to this particular site. They could simply email the post to me (the admin), then I could post it and make sure that they are credited as the author. As it is whatever I post is credited to me and there's no way to change it. <span style="font-weight: bold;">Another example</span>--a friend, on a whim, wants to write a post while at my place. He's on my computer, which is probably already logged in, so he forgets to sign me out and sign himself in. He posts the piece, credited to me. See the problem, Blogger? <span style="font-weight: bold;">One more example:</span> I want to write a post under a pseudonym, or under a fake character as part of a concept piece. Bit of a chore doing that now--sign up for new email address, add myself, sign out of my account, sign in as fake dude, etc. <span style="font-weight: bold;">It's for comedy's sake, damn it!</span><br />
</li>
<li><span style="font-weight: bold;">Only 10 static pages</span> (the "About" page, or a contact page, copyright page, or site map are examples of static pages). Not that big of a deal, and I can already see a potential workaround by creating past-dated blog posts (so hopefully they won't show up in feeds) and just treating them like static pages (linked from other posts or static pages). I don't yet have a need for more than 10 static pages, but I soon might, and 10 seems like an arbitrary and low limit. What are they trying to prevent from happening?</li>
<li><span style="font-weight: bold;">No ability to set the URL for static pages. </span>This is a pretty big one. What if I want to have a page about puppies, and set it up so people can go to thriceberg.com/puppies to access that page? Makes sense, no? I'm not going to have a page about puppies, but you get the gist.<br />
</li>
<li><span style="font-weight: bold;">No Sub-Pages.</span> This one's not a big deal, especially with a limit of 10 static pages, but there's no ability to have sub-pages. I mean, you can see links to my pages under the header. Just "Home" and "About" at this particular moment. What if I wanted 2 sub pages, "About me" and "About this site?" on a sub-menu that popped up when you roll the mouse over "About"? Once again, I don't want to do <span style="font-style: italic;">that</span>, but there are things I'd like that functionality for. I don't even care about a proper hierarchy like Wordpress has, just the ability to organize multiple pages under one menu item (to save horizontal space).</li>
<li><span style="font-weight: bold;">Tags, but no categories</span>. (except Blogger calls them "labels", not tags) Tags are metadata for reasons of search engine optimization. They're supposed to list the subjects or point of a particular post. Categories, on the other hand, are an organizational tool that allow you to keep similar posts together. For example, I used to have categories about "Technology" and "Open Source" (and so on). They're generally broader than tags, and if someone likes a few posts I've written about, say, open source software, they can click that category's link and read everything I've written about it. Tags generally work in the same way, you can click on a tag and see all posts with that same tag, but it's not as clean. Not a big deal, but categories would be nice.</li>
<li><span style="font-weight: bold;">No rollover text for pictures and stuff.</span> What? Why not? I could have used rollover text to attribute the photo above to it's source, but now I'll have to hide a link at the bottom of this post. Ew. Seriously Blogger, what's the deal with that? Are you afraid of rollover text? Coward! I could do it, but I'm not too keen on learning javascript at the moment. Kind of why I'm not using Wordpress anymore. No time for code.<br />
</li>
</ul>
I think that's it for now. All I can think of anyway. I'm sure as I try to do more I'll find more problems, but I'm pretty easy at the moment. If Blogger keeps improving, with any luck it'll continue to be what I want it to be when I want it.<br />
<br />
Till then,<br />
<br />
David<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">(Thumbs up image from </span><a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:US_Navy_050124-N-5345W-061_A_U.S._Marine_Corps_pilot_gives_a_thumbs-up_signal_prior_to_launching_from_the_flight_deck_aboard_the_Nimitz-class_aircraft_carrier_USS_Harry_S._Truman_%28CVN_75%29.jpg" style="font-style: italic;">Wikimedia Commons</a><span style="font-style: italic;">.)</span><br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">(Just under 1200 words. Learn to shut up, David)</span><br />
<span style="font-style: italic;"></span>David (thriceberg)http://www.blogger.com/profile/00355486508251553094noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1391532811360690182.post-45351079552664993502011-03-17T23:22:00.002-07:002012-03-23T12:43:22.111-07:00Announcement!Those of you who have an eye for drastic changes may notice there's something different about this here blog. That's right, I've switched over to Blogger.<br />
<br />
<i>Note to self, how are rss feeds being handled?</i><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjozDRYgDlJslj-I8aiHlU3pdREnDd89F0Bl3fizibFHOqV8PQjTPWoUOj244UMedBgWhyAXq11vIu32t_jClS5eqw_3MQaXx0hcWDKRtfnp-nfIG9keP92Cr0LXHyos9SrGdKq115JTQc/s1600/favicon.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjozDRYgDlJslj-I8aiHlU3pdREnDd89F0Bl3fizibFHOqV8PQjTPWoUOj244UMedBgWhyAXq11vIu32t_jClS5eqw_3MQaXx0hcWDKRtfnp-nfIG9keP92Cr0LXHyos9SrGdKq115JTQc/s1600/favicon.png" /></a></div>
Still working on getting the favicon to work (this little gem here )<br />
<br />
Some internal links may not work. Still need to work on a few things. Content form perhaps? A little theme tweaking? For now I'm just happy to have something reliable that I don't have to worry about as much.<br />
<br />
DavidDavid (thriceberg)http://www.blogger.com/profile/00355486508251553094noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1391532811360690182.post-63578057493529935132011-03-15T23:48:00.002-07:002012-03-23T12:43:31.839-07:00Thinking about thinking about thinking about moving to BloggerI suppose I will, seeing as how I just transferred all my posts from my old Wordpress blog to this Blogger one. Why? Perhaps more on that later, but for now a few observations:<br />
<br />
I have, not counting this post, 154 posts published, and 69 drafts drafts for potential posts saves. I have at least 60 more drafts in my outliner (which is <a href="http://www.giuspen.com/cherrytree/">Cherrytree </a>by the way). Seriously. Probably 40 more scattered across my PCs saved as plain text files. And another dozen in my phone.<br />
<br />
<a href="" name="more"></a><br />
Well, they were in my phone. My N900 is dead. Got wet. Just did my absolutely final, last-ditch effort to revive it with no success. Needless to say I'm fairly depressed. A friend of mine is graciously loaning me his old MyTouch. I must say, having used Android quite a bit over the past few days, I can confidently say Maemo is the best game in town. Which just makes me more pissed off at Nokia for screwing over MeeGo, which could have been even better.<br />
<br />
So I imported my blog posts, and I had to go through and re-publish them on blogger. I stumbled across <a href="http://thriceberg.blogspot.com/2010/01/package-has-arrived.html">this one</a>. The post I hastily threw up when my N900 arrived in the mail. A bit of salt in the wound. The N900 did live up to the hype, by the way. Worth the god-awful obsession over UPS tracking info voiced <a href="http://thriceberg.blogspot.com/2010/01/foreign-language-lessons.html">here</a> and <a href="http://thriceberg.blogspot.com/2010/01/ping-pong-ups.html">here</a>. Not going to lie, the supposed N9 prototypes looked awesome (another thing the MyTouch has shown me is that I need a physical keyboard), the mock-ups looked way better than the ugly N900 (it is ugly, but it's useful in a way no other phone is), but if the N9 isn't on the table I'd still pick the N900 over any other phone out today.<br />
<br />
Anyway, looking through all my old posts, what did I see?<br />
<br />
A lot of talking about the N900, mostly speculative. A lot of talking about netbooks. A lot of posts about my sleep schedule, which maybe I shouldn't have bothered keeping in the move but whatever. I'll let someone out there be bored beyond all belief if they want to read them.<br />
<br />
I saw a lot of extremely long posts. I do go on. Really. I should be writing novels or something. I should take all my draft posts about Asus netbooks, replace all the individual model names with "Thomas Crescent" and pretend like it's a cyber-novel about an android on a quest to reduce his size so some boring blogger somewhere can type on him. That novel would be doubly-awesome because I would be in it (the boring blogger!!!).<br />
<br />
I would take the time to count the number of words those draft posts would net me, and I'm sure it's 5K-10K+ words, but I should probably go to bed instead. Then again...NO LARK!!! DO NOT START ANY MORE PROJECTS!!! The filing cabinets! For the love of god, just look at the filing cabinets!!!<br />
<br />
<br />
Looks like it's time for me to go to bed. Links may be broken for a while, or forever, once I switch the new blogger blog to my thriceberg.com domain. I'll try to fix them but, you know, Thomas Cresent. HE WANTS TO HELP ME TYPE ON THE GO!!! It's got action, it's got drama, it's got me typing on an android's impossibly strong pectoral muscles (but not at all in a gay way) (Wait, why do I have an erection right now? Maybe it is in a gay way) (Oh never mind, that erection's left over from me thinking about walking around with the N9 and N900 in the same pair of pants. Mine.) (You think I'm joking).<br />
<br />
Oh wow, it is late. Apologies, mostly of all to myself. Good night.<br />
<br />
DavidDavid (thriceberg)http://www.blogger.com/profile/00355486508251553094noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1391532811360690182.post-71622843753884951512011-03-02T03:52:00.002-08:002012-03-23T12:43:45.810-07:00Switching BrowsersI've been a fan of Firefox for a long, long time. Way longer than <a href="http://twitter.com/eusticestalin">this guy</a>, I'm sure. Look at him. He probably thinks Firefox is an animal from one of his precious Harry Potter books.<br />
<br />
Let's be honest though, Firefox is getting a bit slow. It's bulky, it's sluggish, it takes up a lot of screen real estate for itself rather than the web pages it's meant to be displaying. It is, I've decided, no longer what I'm looking for in a browser.<br />
<a href="" name="more"></a><br />
I've played with Google Chrome a bit in the past, but there were always a few things keeping me from switching over. For instance, the last time I tried it out, there was no plugin support (was there, or was it just that no Firefox plugins I used had Chrome corollaries? I'm not sure.)<br />
<br />
Well now my two major Firefox plugins, Xmarks (for syncing bookmarks) and LastPass (for managing passwords) both work in Chrome.<br />
<br />
And Chrome is <i>so</i> much faster at everything! Of course the Google suite of products,which I use quite a bit, works much faster, they'd be stupid not to optimize for each other. Google Reader, Gmail, Google Calendar, all are pretty snappy. Even Google Instant, which usually slows my netbook down to a crawl, is practically usable!!! I'm smitten!<br />
<br />
Okay, not entirely smitten. It is just a browser after all. Hold on, I'm going to install Xmarks in Chrome real quick so I can get a link I'm going to put in a future post, Of course, I'll have to restart Chrome before I can start the plugin, and it'll be a bit messy, with pop-up windows all over the place...WHAT!?! I don't have to restart Chrome in order to use plugins I've just installed. I"M OFFICIALLY SMITTEN!!!!!<br />
<br />
Also, What!?! no stream of annoying pop-ups about installing a plugin, just a bit of text that shows up at the bottom and walks me through it?<br />
<br />
This, ladies and gentlemen, is why I scoff at people when they say that Apple has too large a foothold in the smartphone market, and that Google has too large a foothold in the search market, for either to ever be dethroned. Firefox has been around for quite a while. It has been awesome for a large portion of that while. But it's gotten stuck in a rut, and it's user base slowly being usurped (as Android is usurping iOS and a handful of search engines are slowly chipping away at Google).<br />
<br />
Case and point, the plugin system. Firefox has one. It's great. Better, I think, than Chrome's in some way because I still don't believe there's anything like NoScript for Chrome, nor is it possible to make something like that for Chrome. Or so I hear.<br />
<br />
On the other hand, on the usability side, Chrome is way better. No popups! That's so much easier. No restart needed to activate plugins. That is a much bigger deal than it sounds.<br />
<br />
You can imagine someone looking at Internet Explorer (or more appropriately, Netscape) and ending up with Firefox, a much better and much more advanced browser. You can then see how Google looked at Firefox, threw that dawn-of-the-internet bullshit UI away, optimized the hell out of it, and ended up with Chrome.<br />
<br />
So yeah, I'm a bit excited. And happy. For now.<br />
<br />
DavidDavid (thriceberg)http://www.blogger.com/profile/00355486508251553094noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1391532811360690182.post-75035590597610807582011-02-05T04:21:00.002-08:002012-03-23T12:43:48.875-07:00Liking XMPlay<img ."="" alt="" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1232" euphoria"="" from="" height="135" http:="" image="" skin,="" src="http://www.thriceberg.com/tip/wp-content/upload/euphoria.gif" taken="" title="Euphoria skin, image taken from http://www.un4seen.com/." width="260" www.un4seen.com="" /><br />
<br />
Winamp's been my default mp3 player since I discovered mp3s, but it's been getting ahead of me over the past few years. I think it started one time when I updated it and it made itself the default video player. It pretty much sucked as a video player then and as far as I know it sucks as one now <i>(see the bottom of this post for my default video player)</i>.<br />
<br />
Winamp's been adding more and more new features, some of them cool, most of them annoyances. How sick am I of clicking away the dialog that pops up every time I plug in an USB drive, flash or otherwise, asking me if I want Winamp to manage it. <i>I'll tell you if I want you to manage it, Winny Old Chap.</i><br />
<br />
I've been looking for a player on and off for years now. The trouble is I love Winamp's interface, I just hate all the extra bullshit they've started shoehorning into it. I used <a href="http://www.foobar2000.org/">foobar</a> for a while, it's nice and super-customizable, but perhaps a bit too advanced for me and takes up a lot of screen real estate unless you want to install a dozen plugins.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://snackamp.sourceforge.net/">SnackAmp</a> is interesting but a bit dated. In Linux I use <a href="http://audacious-media-player.org/screenshots">Audacious</a> and it's awesome, but there's no windows build available. <a href="http://www.videolan.org/vlc/">VLC</a> can kind of work as a mp3 player and even has some skins that seem to be dedicated to that function but the playlist editing isn't as capable as I'd like it to be.<br />
<br />
Well I finally stumbled on the perfect program. <a href="http://www.un4seen.com/">XMPlay</a> (you have to click on "XMPlay" in the sidebar to get to it's page).<br />
<a href="" name="more"></a><br />
So what's so great about it? It's small, a downloadable zip file weighing in at 330KB. It's very customizable. I set the playlist to shuffle and I noticed when I try to go forward or backwards a track it goes in their proper order. That's right, you can have it shuffle when tracks are continuously played but seek tracks in their order in the playlist. That's pretty cool, though I don't use it that way.<br />
<br />
It also has fully customizable global hotkeys--global hotkeys allow you to control the player no matter what application you're in. I have it set up so I hit ctrl+alt+z to skip back a track, ctrl+alt+x to skip forward, and ctrl+alt+space to play/pause a song. In XMPlay you set individuals key bindings as global hotkeys, which is a pretty cool idea.<br />
<br />
The Euphoria skin (pictured above) is pretty awesome--you'll find it on XMPlay's download page. There are playlist and equalizer windows you can show and hide at will. To shrink the whole thing, player and all, you just double-click anywhere there aren't any buttons. By default it stays on top of other windows in this "mini" mode, but not in full mode. You can change that in the settings too, making it always on top or never in both modes.<br />
<br />
In all honesty I've only been playing with this for less than an hour, and barring a lot of terrible bugs cropping up, I already like it a lot better than Winamp. It's lighter weight, no install process (compared to Winamp's minefield install process), and I like it's mini mode way better than Winamp's.<br />
<br />
It took a handful of years, but I finally found a replacement for Winamp, one that is in no way a compromise.<br />
<br />
Who says I never did anything with my life?<br />
<br />
David<br />
<br />
<i>P.S. - I use <a href="http://smplayer.sourceforge.net/">SMPlayer</a> as my default video player btw, I like having audio track and subtitle selection panels embedded in the skin, and it's cross-platform (I even have it installed on my Nokia <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N900">N900</a>, yes I am a tool). I also keep <a href="http://www.videolan.org/vlc/">VLC</a> and <a href="http://mpc-hc.sourceforge.net/">Media Player Classic</a> (via <a href="http://www.cccp-project.net/">CCCP</a>) handy on all my PCs just in case though.</i>David (thriceberg)http://www.blogger.com/profile/00355486508251553094noreply@blogger.com0