08/29/2011

Writing Tools — What I’m using now

Because I don’t really write, but still like to fancy myself a writer, I spend a lot of time configuring my writing tools.  Here’s the recipe for my current setup, and what’s so cool about it.

First, get yourself a Dropbox account.

Dropbox is an amazingly easy file-syncing tool. And I don’t mean easy for me — a person who requires a certain amount of frustration and anxiety to feel normal — I mean amazingly easy for you, who probably defines easy as something that works with minimal effort on your part. Install Dropbox on every computer you use, and it will create a folder on each one that’s kept in sync across all systems.  Sweet.

Next, go grab a copy of Writemonkey.

Writemonkey is one of those “distraction-free” text editors.  Distraction-free means full-screen, no menus, no other windows to pull your attention away. There are a lot of distraction free editors available,  but the key thing to this recipe is that it must run as a portable application, meaning that installation isn’t required.  All that’s required is the exe and supporting folders, all in one place. Writemonkey supports common markup standards, and has extensive keyboard shortcuts, so like writing in my beloved emacs, I don’t have to take my fingers off the keyboard for anything. Essential.

With those two applications in place, I created a Writing folder on my Dropbox, and dropped Writemonkey inside, along with a folder for each project.

Now I have a Writing Projects folder that I can access from any of my computers, with my favorite editor and my text files, all kept in sync, with previous versions intact should my revisions go horribly wrong.

So should I ever decide to actually write, I think I’m ready.

03/29/2011

Revise, repurpose…

I’ve been reading a lot more lately, mostly historical fiction. Immediately after completing the brilliantly layered The Dream of Scipio by Iain Pears, I started Ismail Kadare’s The Siege, completed this morning.  With Nighthawk Books closed on Tuesdays, I was left to my own siege dreams, and started hatching an idea which I hope to be my next long-term project; writing an historical novel set among a sect of Coptic Gnostics, some of whom lose their faith, and yet are reluctant to abandon their Gnostic values.

Here’s the hook: I’m writing the whole thing in public.  I’m going to start by building a bibliography, some technical pages about how it’s all going to get done, and then the work itself.  This project will bring together some of the work I’ve done on WiP, Git, Emacs / Muse, etc.

I’m planning a complete first draft by my 45th birthday.

If you pick up on it quick, you can say you were there.

03/24/2011

Revisions, revisions….

Ok, not so you’d notice, but the site’s been revised to focus more narrowly on writing, writing projects, writing tools, etc.  It’s a task I’m setting for myself, and I’m doing it all wrong. I’m not writing the stuff that people want to read, I’m writing the stuff that I want to write.

Crap. There go my dreams of fame and fortune.

01/18/2011

Spring Cleaning in Winter

Ok, so I spend this morning upgrading WordPress for my personal blog, and upgrading Drupal for WiP (my pet project / passion) all in service to a return / relaunch. Stay tuned, everybody.

03/22/2010

Google: Uncensored search results to China via Hong Kong servers

Ok, for the details,  I’ll direct you to Tom Krazit’s CNET article.  The sugar-packet history goes something like this:

  • January, 2006 – Google agrees to censor search results in China, thus violating its “Don’t Be Evil” mission statement.
  • January, 2010 – Google announces that it has been the victim of a cyberattack, allegedly carried out by hackers working for the Chinese government. China denies this, but a brief survey of the entire universe determines that no one believes them.
  • January, 2010 – Google announces that it will no longer censor search results in China
  • March, 2010 – Google announces that it will shut down Google.cn and redirect searches from within China to its uncensored servers in Hong Kong.

Google’s put both a moral and financial stake in the ground, and intends to continue serving Chinese users. Does Google have the will , or in fact the ability to succeed where the international community has proven impotent?

What happens when one of the world’s richest, most powerful and most liberal companies goes head-to-head with one of the world’s richest,  most powerful, and most restrictive nations?

Here’s your chance for predictions, kids.  As you might expect, I’m rooting for Google, but it will be an interesting fight to watch.

01/12/2010

Natural Intelligence and System Complexity, Part I

Lately I’ve been thinking about the expression a racehorse chained to a plow. It’s a vivid picture of a gifted actor performing inauthentic work. From the farmer’s perspective, he’s got a misused or underutilized resource. From the horse’s perspective, it’s got unrealized potential. These are fair metaphoric interpretations, answering a fair what? question.

A more interesting question may be why this should matter. If a farmer needs a plowhorse, then any horse with the capacity to pull a plow suffices. Pulling a plow is no easy job, and should offer a strong animal a fair challenge and a long life. But from the perspective matrix of natural intelligence and system complexity, it’s an utter failure.

To establish the vocabulary, I’ll state that Natural Intelligence defines one’s capacity to internalize operational information — information that one may hold and act on. It’s a static resource, not dependent on education, or specific application.

Some people have more natural intelligence than others.

System Complexity measures how much information or action is required to keep a system running. A button that’s pressed whenever it lights up is a simple system. A household is a complex system.

Again, why does this matter? If this perspective holds water, then higher natural intelligence requires one to be in control of a more complex system in order to operate authentically. This is not to be confused with capability — it’s not that actors with high natural intelligence are capable of managing more complex systems, it’s that they must manage more complex systems in order to operate authentically at all.

Unpredictable elements, like people, or other racehorses, are complexity-dense and use a high degree of natural intelligence. Same with rigid systems, like formal languages, mathematics or music. Predictable or fluid elements, like washing dishes, add effort but not complexity to systems, use no natural intelligence, and are therefore less satisfying (but still need to get done).

This interests me because when I turn this perspective matrix on myself, I see a great many of my actions motivated not by laziness or obstinacy (as originally suspected) but by a sub- or semi-conscious effort to make the systems I manage more complex. Linux instead of Windows or Mac, pushing deadlines to their limit, taking on new or additional responsibilities, learning new things, are all about adding system complexity to make use of as much natural intelligence as possible.

Some framing questions for the comments: How complex is your system? How actively do you manage it? What’s your ratio of unpredictable to predictable elements? What do you do to make your system more or less complex? What’s your natural reaction to complex vs. simple challenges? How much natural intelligence are you using? How much are you not using? How often are you bored? Thoughts?

Coming up, Part II: Downsides

10/20/2009

Google Wave — A follow-up

With invites sent, received, and a couple of actual threaded conversations under my belt, I’m now ready to share some less premature thoughts about Google Wave (VVave). Here they are, in no particular order:

* A lot of things still don’t work well, or at least not intuitively. It’s early beta, fair enough, and it’s not like they didn’t warn us. But I am a little surprised at how much they’ve let go. For example, it’s tough to delete waves, or leave public waves. I don’t mean the process is physically demanding; you just drag the object to the trash, but it doesn’t always work.

* For a web app, it’s incredibly CPU intensive. As I type this on my netbook (Asus EEE PC 1005HAB – 1.6 GHz Intel Atom running Windows 7 w/ 2GB RAM) with one Chrome window open, my CPU usage is fluctuating between 5% and 20%. Let’s open a Wave and see what happens…

Ok, CPU utilization jumps to between 60% and 80%, and that’s just opening a wave — not having a threaded conversation. Why so much? Because Wave depends heavily on Gears, so your machine is doing more of the heavy lifting than it usually does for web apps, where most of the processing takes place on the server side. This also matters because Gears performance is not the same in all browsers. Since Chrome is optimized for Gears, then one could say that Wave is optimized for Chrome.

* Conversations in Google Wave take some getting used to, and have a lot more to do with personal preferences.  IM is real-time, and email is turn-based, (for all you strategy game nerds out there), but Wave is somewhere in-between. So I’ve chatted with one person who started a new “blip” with each response. On another chat with a different person, we kept our own blips running, so it was a chat in two separate windows.

Ok, I’m over my word limit, so I’m cutting off here. Lots more thoughts to follow.

Oh, and I still have one invite left.

10/15/2009

Google VVave: The sound of one hand clapping

Google VVave  is a brilliant concept, with a simple summary; “Suppose email had been invented today.”

In short, Google VVave extends GMail’s concept of email as a threaded conversation rather than a string of discrete documents. VVave makes every email a collaborative conversation, that blends

  • traditional asynchronous discussion (I send you an e-mail, you read it whenever and respond at your convenience)
  • real-time chat (we’re both on line, and we talk back and forth, within our email thread)
  • social media (where we can embed images, videos, links, etc.)

It feels kinda like Facebook for introverts, where you might want to have a multi-media, multi-threaded conversation that evolves over time with one or a small group of users, but not leave it open to all 138 of your friends (or more, if you’re less of an introvert).

If you want the specifics of what it does and how it does it, I recommend watching the videos Google’s posted. They are fun and watchable and neither technical nor dumbed down.

I just have one problem with Google VVave, and that’s how stingy they’ve been with invites. I got my invite in the second round, and I’ve since “nominated” a few other people, none of whom have received their invites yet.

I understand that it’s beta, I understand that the kinks haven’t been worked out, and it was fun to be one of the first people I knew with a GMail account. But I could email anyone with my GMail account, not just other GMail users. I now have a ingenious collaborative tool, and no collaborators. Huh?

So yeah, Google VVave is brilliant, just not so’s you’d notice.

PS — If any readers already have VVave accounts, let me know. I’m dying to try it.

10/13/2009

Got my GoogleWave invite

I have 7 invitations. Interesting trades accepted.

Talk to me.

10/07/2009

Update on the call for guest bloggers

crickets…crickets…crickets…

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