Tech Tuesday: Getting Your Outline into Scrivener (pt 2)

In last week’s post, we saw how you can import an OPML outline directly into Scrivener. For those of us who use an outliner for more than the barest-bones plotting, it’s rather limiting. Fortunately, Scrivener has another way to import. It requires an extra step, but Tines (the console-mode outliner I use and maintain) can do the work.

So let’s go…

No Extensions Required

OPML entries have a type attribute associated with them. The standard deliberately leaves the content of type undefined, except it’s some kind of text to describe the entry.

Tines supports two type definitions: "todo," to give an entry a checkbox, and "text" to mark entries as content (non-text entries are assumed to be headings). Tines assigns the F3 key to toggle between text and heading types. A lowercase t to the left of the bullet gives a visual indication. So now, let’s add some more info to the first scene:

Nothing like a little slapstick to start a story, huh?

Note the t at the beginning of each entry under Scene 1. Those are text entries. Other entries will become documents in Scrivener.

Now here’s where the magic happens. In Tines 1.10, there’s an Export->XSLT function that allows exporting through xsltproc. Since OPML and Tines’s native hnb format are XML files, it’s easy to convert them to just about anything. Press ESC to bring up the menu, and go to the File menu…

Changes to the look and feel are due to experiments with the configuration.

Scroll down to Export->XSLT, press Return, then press M at the next prompt to choose Markdown. When prompted, enter a name for the Markdown file (I used storymap.md). If you want, have a look at the Markdown file to see how it does things—a # character at the beginning of a line is a heading, and the number of # characters says what level heading it is. Other lines are body text. Easy, huh?

Now let’s load it into Scrivener. There’s two ways to do that.

Import and Split

I don’t really recommend using File→Import→Import and Split. It works as advertised, importing your Markdown file and splitting it up, but it doesn’t build a hierarchy. It might be useful for importing an outlined chapter into an existing project.

Import as MultiMarkdown

MultiMarkdown is, as one might guess, an extended version of Markdown. Since it’s an extension, you can import plain Markdown as MultiMarkdown without a problem. So try File→Import→MultiMarkdown File instead. Here’s how it looks:

Now this looks pretty close to what we want! Everything is in a nice hierarchy, content is content, and we’re ready to get the story knocked out.

Until next time… keep writing, and keep geeking!

Tech Tuesday: Getting Your Outline into Scrivener (pt 1)

Part 1 of a two-part series

I’m a pantser by nature. I like to get the story started, then let the characters tell me what happens. But that doesn’t always work. Sometimes, in the heat of composition, you get ideas for side-stories, sequels, and completely different worlds. You can sometimes placate the plot bunnies by giving them a little attention, taking down a few notes and promising to come back when the story at hand is done. Of course, an outliner is one of the best ways to organize notes and plot a story—in the 8-bit pre-DOS days, an early vendor was pleased to call their offering an “idea processor” (and an outfit called Axon uses that label for their mind-mapping tool today).

Scrivener’s Binder pane can be used as a crude outliner. But when you’re trying to bang down some ideas before you forget them (or get distracted by a family member), you want the speed and smooth operation that you get from a dedicated outliner or mind-mapping tool¹.

Fortunately, most outliners and mind-mappers support OPML (Outline Processor Markup Language), a very simple XML document type—and so does Scrivener, at least for import. So you can knock out your outline in your favorite outliner or mind-mapper, export as OPML, and pull it right into a new Scrivener project with the hierarchy in place.

Tweaking Scrivener

Before you import, though, you should review Scrivener’s OPML Import settings to make sure they’ll work the way you want. Open Scrivener’s preferences and follow the red numbers:

There’s not much to change. Creating a folder is needed only if you’re importing notes rather than your story line. If you have a “root” entry, with everything else as a lower-level entry, then you already get what amounts to a new folder.

Dealing with notes may or may not be an issue for you. The commercial OmniOutliner added a “note” extension to OPML, for reasons unknown to me, and other outliners (including Tines) now include at least token support for it. Creating a note, and telling Scrivener to import them into the main text of each document, is the only way to pull in content (other than chapter and scene names) using OPML import. Other options are to put notes only in the synopsis, or add them to document notes.

Pulling It In

Maybe an example would help. Thus, a generic story called The Importing, a slightly filled in outline (Trevor McPherson’s StoryMap for Freemind, converted to OPML for this job). I added a note to the first scene in Tines, using an experimental OPML-centric configuration file:

The note content is at the bottom of the screen. Internally, notes use a _note attribute, in parallel with the entry text. Imported into Scrivener, we get something that looks like this:

As you can see, every entry in the outline becomes a document. Notes are extremely limited for writers who want to put in more than one line of content in a scene. I don’t know about anyone else, but I often want to add bits of dialogue, maybe some descriptions of the setting, who’s making an appearance, how the scene wraps up… you get the idea.

Fortunately, there’s another way to get your outline into Scrivener, one that lets you include all the content you feel like adding in the outliner. We’ll take a look in Part 2.

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¹Think of a mind-mapping tool as a graphical version of an outliner. Each entry is a bubble, centered around a root entry, and can be arranged to suit your needs. Freemind is an open-source example, and runs on all platforms (needs Java though).

Tines 1.10 (Tech Tuesday)

Friday night, after a few rounds of testing, I decided Tines 1.10 was ready to go and uploaded the source code.

Tines is primarily an outliner, but has functions that make it useful as a planner, organizer, and notebook as well. The code is based on hnb (Hierarchical NoteBook), which I used quite a bit 10 years ago. It runs in a console (terminal, shell, what-have-you)—so it’s plain-text all the way. It can be customized every which way by editing a configuration file, so you can pretty much have everything but a graphical interface. :-) I kept trying different outliners, and kept coming back to hnb because I could make it work exactly the way I wanted.

I mostly lost track of hnb 8 or 9 years ago, after getting a new MacBook Pro at work. The Pro came with OmniOutliner, a very popular MacOS outliner, and I started using it. Then when I got pushed onto a Dozebox, I didn’t have a decent outliner and basically gave up. But late last year, I started looking for a decent outliner to use for both work and personal writing projects. Given that there’s a well-known interchange format for outliners, OPML, having the exact same outliner on all three platforms isn’t a necessity. But I remembered hnb and decided to give it another try.

Technology moves on, and hnb compiled okay, but crashed immediately when starting. I hadn't messed with C code much in years, but it came back to me quick enough. Looking at the source code, I realized it was using 32-bit integers for pointers and modern computers use 64-bit pointers. After fixing all those, it had it running again. I posted to the mailing list on SourceForge and offered patches. One correspondent pointed out that mine was the first legitimate post on the mailing list in years, and suggested I just fork the code and take it over. As if I wasn’t crazy-piled with projects already… but I did it. Thus was Tines born. And Charlie moved into FAR Manor not three weeks later.

Enough of that… what’s it like?

The screen shot here should give you a pretty good idea what Tines looks like. It uses color where available, so it’s not completely boring. It doesn’t use the mouse (yet), but it has menus, function keys, and highlighting.

If you don’t specify a file, Tines opens its “default database” (specifically, .tines in your home directory on OSX and Linux). This is handy for brainstorming stuff, keeping notes and other useful tidbits, or using Tines as a planner. It can import OPML files, save all or part of an outline as OPML, and works with several other file formats. But you can open hnb files (the native format), OPML files, and tab-indented plaintext files as well.

You can use the arrow keys to move around, and use keyboard shortcuts (or press ESC to open the menus) to make changes.

The Planner menu helps you set up a planner, according to David Allen’s Getting Things Done methodology. One powerful new feature in v1.10 is the today command (mapped to “Today’s Agenda” in the Planner menu). If you have set up a calendar using the Planner menu, this command jumps to the entry for today’s date and displays all the items under it. This lets you computerize your tickler file, at least for to-do items and other things that don’t require paper.

If you have a large outline, and you probably will if you keep everything in the default database, you can search for buried treasure… I mean, items that you can’t quite remember where they are. The Level menu lets you sort items in a particular level, which might be useful for notes. There’s also a “shuffle” mode, to randomly disorder items in a level. I’m not sure why you would want to use that, except it might help you to discover relationships between items, but it’s there if you need it.

All well and good—how do you use it for writing?

I’ve long been a pantser, but as I continue writing I find I like to loosely plot my projects so I don’t forget things. Plotting isn’t as fun as letting things happen, but it’s a lot less scary when you have people asking you when the next book is on the way. (And for those of you who have been patiently waiting for The Blood of Heroes, the first draft is almost done. Finally.)

But I digress. An outliner is a good way to plot out a novel or a work of non-fiction. Instead of stifling creativity, it lets you think about other creative things by capturing your thoughts about how to organize your work. I have a memory like a steel sieve, and it frankly scares the crap out of me when I depend on remembering details of the Accidental Sorcerers series—about 200,000 words total published, and more coming. The amazing thing is, I haven’t forgotten anything crucial… so far. But Tines is more than an outliner, and that means you can use it for both your outlines and your story bible without switching applications or even files.

Now here’s the fun part: you can export all or part of your database as OPML. Scrivener reads OPML files, and can create chapter folders and scene documents for each entry. It recognizes the _note attribute extension, and can (by your preference) insert those notes into either the Synopsis or the document proper. So you can add the following code to your .tinesrc (default configuration) file to edit notes:

bind ^N "macro edit_note"
macro define edit_note
 att_get _note
 getquery "Replace _note with:"
 att_set _note $query
end

Press Ctrl-N to create or edit a note. That will end up in the next release, v1.10.1, before too long.

Where do you get it, and what’s next?

Next, I plan to create packages for MacOS X and Linux. Then, I want to get it ported to MS-DOS or FreeDOS and create packages there as well.

Right now, you have to download and compile¹ Tines. That certainly limits its extent, even more so than it not being readily available on Doze right now, but that too is on the list. Please give it a try, if you’re inclined, and let me know how it works!

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¹Compile: from the Latin “com” (together), and pile (a random heap, or possibly hemorrhoids). Thus, “compile” means either “throw things together in a random heap” or “a multifaceted pain in the ass.”

Do you use an outliner? How? Sound off in the comments!

Protect Yourself from Ransomware (Tech Tuesday)

Welcome to Tech Tuesday, my new occasional column covering the nuts and bolts of writing, publishing, and keeping your tools sharp. There’s likely to be what my redoubtable co-op partner Angela Kulig calls “Finnish,” but I’ll try to keep it accessible.

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You’re working away one evening, when your computer locks up and shows you something like this:

Bad news. Really bad news.
Image source: fbi.gov

Unfortunately, it’s not the plot of a bad cyberpunk novel. It recently happened to an acquaintance. Last year, I wrote about Three Ways to Crash-Proof Your Writing, and the tips are still useful. But you might need a little more caution when it comes to ransomware.

What’s Happening In There?
In short, a PC infested with ransomware establishes a connection with its operator. The PC might run normally for a while after getting infested, but at some point the ransomware begins encrypting data files with common extensions like .doc, .psd, .jpg, .zip, and so forth. When it’s done, it displays a ransom note like the one shown above. Operators usually demand Bitcoin payments, because they can’t be traced. Some ransomware allows you to decrypt a single file, thus proving they have the key, and usually give you a few days to get the Bitcoin you need to pay up. If you wait too long, the ransom goes up or the operator destroys the key (which means you're permanently hosed). Scary crap.

Unfortunately, Dropbox is not a failsafe. Ransomware encrypts everything on your hard drive, and if you have Dropbox mirrored, it nails your files there as well.

George R. R. Martin famously does his writing on an air-gapped (i.e. no network connection) PC, running WordStar on MS-DOG [sic]. While he uses WordStar for its simplicity, he also has little to fear from most stripes of malware. Such a setup works well in the traditional publishing realm, where they still prefer to start from paper drafts, but it’s not a bad idea for indies. One might balk at the expense of a second computer—but the typical ransom these days is $500, and you can get a netbook for half that. It’s not bad insurance. Remember, if you’re trying to make money at writing, this is a business. Ransomware is one more disaster to plan for.

Let’s assume that, because you have no room or money for an air-gapped computer, or need to have a browser handy for research, that’s out of the question. What else can you do? Read on…

GROW
Right now (May 2016), the most effective way to avoid ransomware is to GROW (Get Rid Of Windows). Move to MacOS, Linux, or OpenBSD if you possibly can. This is likely a temporary advantage, but it may be a couple of years before ransomware goes beyond Windows. And if the techie press breathlessly reports every minor instance of MacOS malware found in the wild, they’ll be so beside themselves over MacOS ransomware that we’ll never hear the end of it. In other words, it won’t sneak up on us. Actually, I expect iOS malware first, because iDevices are so popular.

As a possible workaround, install a virtualization tool such as VirtualBox, VMware, or Parallels and run a separate operating system inside the virtualizer for Internet access. This isn’t foolproof—ransomware can encrypt virtual drives at a stroke, if you make a mistake—but it’s a little safer.

Stay Up to Date
That should go without saying, but it’s so easy to skip those updates in the middle of a project. Sometimes, there’s good reason for that; updates have been known to hose a working PC. If you’re doing your backups, though, you should be able to revert when needed. Don’t forget to check the backups, on occasion, to make sure important data is still good.

Don’t let your virus/malware protection slide, either. Keep them updated.

Avoid Common Attack Vectors
Currently, there are several common, well-known ways malware (including ransomware) can infest your system:

• Dodgy attachments in spam
• Compromised ad servers
• Websites with infectious Javascript or Flash

Thus, installing ad-blockers and Flash blockers in your browser(s) can offer protection from so-called “drive-by” attacks. Turning off Javascript, once a common trick to speed up browsing and stop useless visual effects, is making a comeback as well. Try it with your favorite websites and see if you can live without it. You can certainly live without it trying to download garbage onto your computer.

Spammers will never go away, even if there’s a special place in Hell for them. They are paying more attention to grammar these days, so you can’t always catch them out by stilted language anymore. Some spam is really phishing, attempting to get you to click a link or open an attachment that Does Not End Well For You. If you’re not expecting that payroll statement from someone you’ve never heard of, don’t open it. If your bank sends you a report about fraudulent activity about your account… it’s not really your bank. A real bank fraud department will call you, verify your identity, then go over a few transactions. (I’ve been there.) In short, don’t open attachments you aren’t expecting.

Pull a Dirty Trick
Since ransomware only encrypts files with known extensions, consider renaming crucial backup files. Instead of GreatAmericanNovel.zip, rename it with a random extension like GreatAmericanNovel.e7b. If you have a thousand photos you don’t want to lose, copy them somewhere else now. Anything your computer can’t access directly, as if it’s on your hard drive, is safe. To be honest, I’m not sure how Google Drive works with saving local copies on a computer; I do know you have to start the Drive app to get the latest onto a tablet or phone, though.

In short, the goal is keeping your computer clean. Failing that, you want to recover with as little hassle as possible. Anticipate the disaster, have a plan, and execute.

References
If you want to dig a little deeper, here’s a couple of links that might be useful:

• Sophos: The Current State of Ransomware
• HEAT Software: How Do You Protect Your System from Ransomware?

Your Turn
Have you been clobbered by ransomware? Do you have some prevention or recovery tips? The comment section is open.

Writing Wibbles: Is B&N Flirting with Vanity Publishing? Yes. (UPDATED)

We—that is, those of us at Green Envy Press—are making the push into print this year. This came about a year after what I had planned, but we’ll have some very nice-looking books indeed. Since most of our eBook income is from Amazon, using Amazon’s CreateSpace service was the first and obvious choice. But being an indie author is about anything but the obvious choice, so we started poking around. I remembered hearing that B&N’s Nook Press had set up a print on demand (PoD) service, and I thought, “hey, that’s a no-brainer… maybe people can order books in the store for pickup.”

Well… no. In their own words:

Well, crud. Seems like they’re missing out on a really good opportunity to skewer Amazon here. Amazon can’t say “hey, order this book and have it shipped for free to your nearest brick-and-mortar for pickup… and while you’re there, check out the thousands of titles” etc. And while Amazon can’t, B&N simply won’t.

Okay, maybe there’s some stuff happening behind the scenes, something beyond the usual hidebound “we ain’t never done that way before” you see in lots of old-guard businesses. Maybe their suppliers (aka big publishers) are leaning on them to stifle competition, they way they tried (and failed) with Amazon. Or maybe they consider it too big of an expense or something… who knows? If they wanted to limit this to “serious” authors, they could easily require an ISBN.

But I got an email from B&N recently that, in combination with the above, got my alarm bells ringing. I guess it wasn’t enough to have a PoD service that they won’t help you sell, now they have author services as well:

Now those prices are in line with what I’ve seen from freelancers, but the whole thing smacks of a vanity publishing setup, especially if you scroll down to see their “packages.”

I emailed B&N to ask them about these issues; their auto-responder said “we’ll get back to you in 24 to 48 hours,” and that was a week ago Tuesday. If they do respond, I’ll update this post.

UPDATE: OMG. B&N still hasn’t responded, but Katherine Hajer pointed me to an article at Nate Hoffelder’s Ink, Bits, & Pixels. It’s worse. Much worse. They’re using the well-known scam factory Author Solutions, and trying to hide it. No wonder they ignored my request for info.

Other reading at:
David Gaughran’s Let’s Get Digital
The Passive Voice

So… thanks, but no thanks. We’ll stick with CreateSpace for now to test the waters, and maybe move to Lightning Source or another printer later if the sales warrant it.

Everything from here on out is speculation and opinion from yours truly, so adjust your filters accordingly:

Amazon may not have created indie publishing, but (like Apple with computers) they made it work for a lot of people. And yes, CreateSpace offers author services, but they also provide you with a marketplace to sell your books. I guess the point is, Amazon is trying to make money with indies, while B&N and vanity presses try to make money from indies. One treats you as a partner (however junior), and the other as an income source. I hasten to point out that there are plenty companies with a similar outlook to Amazon’s (Smashwords being one of the most obvious), but there’s one company that most of us think of first, at least in the Western Hemisphere.

Too bad, B&N. You coulda been a contender. Your brick and mortar stores give you an advantage that Amazon (or even Apple, who isn’t likely to start selling fiction in their stores any time soon) can’t easily match. You just needed the will to buck the system, instead of crawling into bed with the scummiest of scammers. You could have built a solid business with indies, but instead you treat us as marks to suck dry.

Writing Wibbles

I always feel like
somebody's watching me
(And I have no privacy)
—Rockwell

I had a couple of things to share this week—an interview with the creator of the #amwriting hashtag was at the top of the list—but something else reared its ugly adobe head, and vaulted to the top of the list.

Nate Hoffeider at The Digital Reader broke the story a little over a week ago. Adobe Digital Editions (ADE) version 4 “[seems] to be sending an awful lot of data to Adobe’s servers.” Most EPUB-based eBook readers on the market use some version of ADE, although I’m not sure whether any are using ADE4 just yet. Older versions are less intrusive.

How intrusive is this? Let me quote Mr. Hoffeider here:

Adobe is gathering data on the ebooks that have been opened, which pages were read, and in what order. All of this data, including the title, publisher, and other metadata for the book is being sent to Adobe’s server in clear text. …

Adobe isn’t just tracking what users are doing in DE4; this app was also scanning my computer, gathering the metadata from all of the ebooks sitting on my hard disk, and uploading that data to Adobe’s servers. …

And just to be clear, this includes not just ebooks I opened in DE4, but also ebooks I store in calibre and every Epub ebook I happen to have sitting on my hard disk.

(emphasis mine)

The Passive Guy, a lawyer who writes on self-publishing issues, has an excellent summary and links, both in the article and from readers in the comments.

Much of the outrage in the tech side of the community focuses on Adobe’s use of plain text. That is a little disturbing, yes—it means anyone who can put a packet sniffer anywhere along the path between you and Adobe can see all this data. But for me, it’s what the people owning the servers are doing that’s more important. Scraping your hard drive for eBooks makes ADE4 spyware, in my opinion.

When pressed for an explanation, Adobe finally said (in the typical corporate lawyer speak of any company caught with their hands in your pockets) that it’s part of their DRM, and they gave themselves permission to do it through their “privacy” policy.

Now I can already hear the Kindle haters shouting “Amazon does it, too!” Well, yes, Amazon does send some information back to the mothership, but there are (as I see it) three important differences:

1. Amazon is pretty up-front about what their Whispersync feature does, and it gives back by letting you sync your books across devices. Adobe gives you nothing (or maybe they use the info to target advertising at you, who knows?). You can also turn it off at any time.
2. Whispersync isn’t a DRM mechanism, at least primarily. It works just as well with non-DRM books sold through the Kindle store.
3. Amazon doesn’t presume to scrape your hard drive, looking for any MOBI or AZW files you might happen to have, just because they feel like it.

To Panic or not to Panic (probably not)

Since I handle all eBook formatting for Green Envy Press, and I work in EPUB format, I’m pretty sensitive to the idea of some corporation scraping my hard drive and looking over works in progress. Fortunately, I don’t use Adobe software in any part of my production toolchain.

But this is the problem: if people with access (legal or otherwise) to Adobe’s servers were to target a publisher’s typesetting department, they could get advance notice of upcoming titles or other intelligence. Or they could target individuals for blackmail purposes. I find it quite likely that Adobe’s legal department will use this info to shake down unfortunates who land in some kind of piracy profile (whether they’re actually pirating eBooks or not)—or sell the info to large publishers, so they can do the shaking down. I also expect Adobe to “share collected information with our third-party partners” (i.e. sell information about your reading habits to anyone who wants to spam you to death).

On the other hand, this affects only a small but growing number of individuals—those who have been suckered into installing ADE4 on their computers. I don’t know whether any eBook readers use ADE4, or will load that Trojan Horse in a near-future update. Obviously, people in the Kindle ecosystem are immune (beyond the Whispersync issues I mentioned earlier). Apple’s iBooks ecosystem is also Adobe-free, or so I’ve read. Earlier versions of ADE are not nearly as intrusive, so you’re safe in that case as well.

Fortunately, and I’ve said this before, eBook DRM is ridiculously easy to disable. Buy your eBooks from any authorized retailer, strip the DRM, and use Calibre or a third-party eReader to read on your computer. Or buy from those of us who make sure the “use DRM” selection is turned off when we publish.

And then, there’s the technical fix: block the IP addresses assigned to Adobe’s servers at your router. Whether you use DSL, cable, or fiber to get your Internet fix, your router has a fairly simple way to set this up. Look for something like “outgoing filters” and add the addresses shown in the image below. Here’s what I’ve added to my DSL router, just in case:

That won’t stop ADE4 from getting all chatty if you take your laptop outside the house, but it’s a start.

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If you haven’t tried my eBooks—DRM-free, available for both Kindle and the rest of the world, and priced to move—why not check them out? The Crossover is free, and the rest are cheaper than a large latte. And unlike a latte, you can enjoy them again and again.

Sideloading EPUBs into iBooks

Sideloading: the process of transferring data between two local devices, in particular between a computer and a mobile device [such as an eReader].
— Wikipedia

While a backlit LCD isn’t the best kind of screen for reading eBooks, Apple does make the experience as pleasant as possible with its iBooks app. On an iPhone, it hyphenates long words, to avoid making the margins too horrible. While Stanza is growing ever more outdated, there’s still a need to load EPUBs into a reader, just to make sure they’re right if nothing else. And sometimes, you might buy an eBook from Smashwords that you still want to read on your iOS device.

Fortunately, the process is straightforward.

1. Find your eBook.
When you download an eBook, whether on MacOS or that Microsoft thing, it usually ends up in your Downloads folder. Leave the folder window open on your desktop.

2. Open iTunes.
If you’re like me, you already have iTunes open in the “mini player” view. You need to open the expanded view. If you’re using the latest version, display the sidebar and look for “Books.” Select it to see the books in your library.

3. Drag and drop.
Arrange your Downloads window, and the iTunes window, so you can see them both. Drag your book file into a blank area of the iBooks window. It may take a few seconds for the new book to show up in your library, be patient.

4. Sync and go.
Plug your device in and let it sync. It will automatically copy your new eBooks over.

You can actually do the first three steps in less time than it takes to read this blog post… although the sync process will take a while longer.

Writing Wibbles

Between the day job and the family, sometimes I have to snatch writing time when and where I can find it. I’ve done plenty of handwriting onto notepads and journals, but then I have to type it all up again. Sometimes, it’s the right thing to do. Sometimes, it just feels like a hassle.

Technology is a wonderful thing (as long as the batteries hold up, of course). If there was a way to have something about as portable as a writing journal, but doesn’t force you to write it twice, why not use it?

Behold, it really does exist!

The required ingredients are a smartphone, a Bluetooth keyboard, and +Evernote. I have to take off my glasses to read, so they make a fine phone stand. As you can see, the A key on the keyboard has gone to the Great Computer Room in the Sky, but it only took a little adjusting on my part. All of the components here can be substituted—use a tablet instead of a phone, use whatever Bluetooth keyboard will pair with it, use Dropbox or Google Docs instead of Evernote. The whole point is to have something you can type into, then copy/paste from Evernote into your normal writing tool.

This rig does get some attention when I’m at lunch. People come by to see what I’m typing into, or just what it is I’m doing. They want to know how it works, and sometimes what I’m writing.

Changin', Arrangin'

The wife asked me to clean off the computer desk in Mason’s room, because she wants to move her video editing system in there. Then the old office will become a guest bedroom. So in I went, with trash bags, vacuum cleaner, and a rag with a can of Pledge. The dust bunnies were large under there, but not overly aggressive. I think I bagged about a pound of them, along with a half-ton of trash and a new (and unused) power strip.

With that done, I hung the DSL box on the wall next to the router, and neatened up the UPS position. Then it was time to unhook everything in the office and drag the computer stuff over. That went as well as could be expected, dusting each item as I brought it in. There are plenty of dust bunnies in that room, too, but the pile of papers on that desk is close to approaching critical mass and creating a black hole like the one we had in our college dorm room. She knows what the papers are for, so I’ll let her deal with them. :-)

So after I got Mason down for a nap, and the girlies took off, I finally got to relax. Then I got a text from Daughter Dearest: Go ahead and clean off your desk, so we can move the one upstairs downstairs. So there were more oversized dust bunnies, more trash, and then I hauled the old desk into the living room. With that space open, I cleaned out behind the dresser before moving the new desk into position.

Then… I started loading it up. The new desk has both more and less space, both due to the shelf. The laptop and monitor couldn't both be up there, so I moved it as shown here. But there’s room for the microphone, and (with a little more arranging and dust bunny eradication) I managed to get the laser printer in place. The printer was displaced by the wife’s DV deck.

I got smart and zip-tied the power strip to the framework on the back of the desk—now, it’s out of the way but reachable. The UPS is on the bottom shelf, and the desk is on rollers, so cleaning behind it won’t be an ordeal. Maybe the dust bunnies won’t have a chance to proliferate this time.

Multitasking

Last week, I wanted to get some writing done, but the wife was glued to the TV and Mason wanted attention. We played in his room for a while, then the old evening refrain…

“Watch George.” (i.e. Curious George)

“Grandmom’s watching something,” I said. “You can watch George when her show’s done.”

“Watch George!”

I suddenly realized: there’s a way that all three of us could be happy. I plucked a Curious George DVD off the stack and put Mason on my lap in front of my MacBook. I plugged in the outboard monitor, moved Scrivener over to it, then put the DVD in.

Soon, Mason was watching George on the laptop screen, while I was typing away onto the other screen (and balancing a toddler on my leg). Both the computer and the granddad managed without anything falling over. All too soon, Mason decided to go back to playing.

I’ve been promising the MacBook a memory upgrade for some time. But a recent update got the computer into constant swap mode, warming things up and getting the fans going, so now it was past time. I went hunting on lowendmac.com for info, and found that my MacBook was manufactured between May and October 2007. So… if it hasn't happened already, its fifth birthday is imminent. The memory came in yesterday, and it took less than 10 minutes to install. Not only did it cure the fan-spinning problem, the whole computer feels a lot snappier. No bop-to-swap when changing apps!

The MacBook continues to be plenty fast for my needs, even at age 5. It will keep going until a major hardware failure or until too many apps require Cougar Mountain Lion to run (and in the latter case, I could just go with Linux and run Scrivener in emulation).

With tablets as capable as they are, I may make my next computer an iMac or Mac mini, with an iPad paired to a Bluetooth keyboard. (That is, if I can keep Mason from stealing the iPad… that’s a problem with the current one.)

Wednesday Wibbles

As always, let’s start by welcoming the new followers:

• Alan W. Davidson 
• Jamie DeBree 
• Tamara Rose Blodgett 

Three writers — go check out their blogs, and give them a follow if you like what you see!

Since I got Scrivener a while back, I’ve been making some pretty good progress on the White Pickups series and have produced a fair amount of shorter work. While I have an outboard hard drive that automatically backs up my system whenever I plug it in (Time Machine is one of those cool things Apple does right), it wouldn’t do me a whole lot of good if a fire or tornado creamed laptop and hard drive alike. I’ve been wanting the same “do it for me” convenience, just for backing up Scrivener projects off-site, so if Something Really Bad happens I won’t lose my work.

At first, I thought maybe the Amazon Cloud Drive would be the solution. If you have an Amazon account, you automatically get 5GB of “cloud” storage for free; if you buy an album from their MP3 store, you get a one-year upgrade to 20GB. Amazon’s S3 protocol is well-documented and supported by all sorts of software, but unfortunately there’s no S3 API to the Cloud Drive per se.

That’s when I remembered, I already have a Dropbox account. While you “only” get 2GB for free, they make things really easy with a driver that integrates your Dropbox with a folder on your hard drive. MacOSX has a nice little scripting hook called Folder Actions, that runs a script when something happens to a folder (say, a file is added to it). Since Scrivener makes a ZIP file of a project in Home→Library→Application Support→Scrivener→Backups whenever you close that project, you can attach a Folder Action to the Backups folder and have it copy new files to the Dropbox folder. Dropbox takes it from there, and automatically copies it to the cloud. Peace of mind!

So: Here’s the script. Create a folder called Scriv_bkup in your Dropbox before trying to use it.

Dropbox also came in handy yesterday, when I realized my beta readers hadn’t received the manuscript. I guess the attachments got trapped in some spam filter along the way. So I just dumped the files into my Public folder and sent the links. They got the files, problem solved.

Now if I could just get more time to write as easily…

A Little Quiet

I took the day off work today to help Daughter Dearest head back to Reinhardt for her junior year. Mrs. Fetched also enlisted Panda to help with various items. Last night was a bit of a crisis; she had some hard drive corruption and her MacBook suddenly decided to refuse to boot. Then Disk Utility said it couldn’t fix the problem. DD said I spent five hours on it altogether, but that was because I didn’t want to invoke the nuclear option (but had to in the end): copy her home directory to an external drive, reformat the internal, then copy her files back after installing Snow Leopard.

I got her refrigerator out of the studio first thing this morning, just to make it easier to move. Then I found an inch of ice in the freezer compartment, so I let it sit outside with the door open. A couple hours later, it hadn’t thawed much, so I took a hammer and chisel to the ice. A spray and PSHHHHHHHH let me know I managed to knock a hole in a freon area… dammit. I took the beer out of my fridge and let her take it instead.

There was a 40% chance of rain today, and light sprinkles were already starting just as we finished loading the truck. Panda tied a tarp over the back, and off we went — and the rain quit a few miles away, naturally. We both managed to find parking slots in front of the dorm and started hauling. For some reason, Mrs. Fetched insisted on bringing Mason with us, so the first few trips up I had Mason in the sling and what little loads I could carry with my free hand. Finally, I wised up and gave him to Mrs. Fetched and I was pulling full capacity for the last two trips.

Two females in a tight space means not a whole lot of room… but after about 20 minutes of putting stuff away, there was enough floor open to move around a little. Once it was slightly more under control, the rest of us bailed for home… and that’s when the rain really started coming down. Mrs. Fetched’s car has some tires on the back that are really prone to hydroplaning on certain roads, and she thought we had a flat tire. She wanted me to stop NOW, but we were going down a hill and I didn’t want to change a tire on a slope. “I don’t care, you could damage the rim!” she yelled. Oh yeah, really nice, the rim is more important than my foot getting crushed when the car falls off the jack. My mind tends to shut off input when it gets that irrational… and of course, none of the tires were flat when I got out in the rain to have a look. We continued on, slowly, until the roads cleared up.

So DD is gone all week and many weekends to come. Fortunately, Snippet has been stepping up a bit in the last week, getting up in the mornings and taking care of business — and DD has been visibly more pleasant to Snippet in response.

Plenty of stuff to do tomorrow, some work-related. I’ve also done some writing on the White Pickups sequel… and did I mention I had a couple ideas for spinoffs?

The Cluster-Post

Since I can’t seem to get to these nearly as often as I’d like… they all get rolled up into one big post.

I’ve only had it for a few days, and I’m finding the new iPad is a game-changer, at least as much as moving from desktops to laptops was. It’s already changing how I read email, use Twitter, read blogs, and play games. Once I get a Bluetooth keyboard for it, I expect that I’ll be on it more than I am the MacBook since I’ll use it to blog and work on stories too. Actually, in landscape mode, the on-screen keyboard is big enough to touch-type on. I have to look at it though because I have no idea whether my fingers are drifting off their correct position, though.

I really wish Google would come up with a way to allow writing and editing in Google Docs with the iPad. But until they get it figured out, I’ve found that Yahoo Notepad at least works for tapping out something into the cloud. Obviously, I’d settle for limited functionality with Google Docs.

Mason had his 9-month checkup this week. He hasn’t gained any weight, but our doc didn’t seem too concerned about that since he’s so active (which he demonstrated quite well in the exam room). She said his iron’s a little low, feed him some baby vitamins… and meat, if we can find any he’ll eat. Actually, there’s an organic turkey w/vegetables combo that he seems to like OK.

As you can see in the pic here, he: 1) is constantly in motion; 2) has figured out how to carry something around when he has his hands otherwise occupied. He’ll be walking pretty soon — this afternoon, I watched him get to his feet “open-field” (that is, not pulling up on anything), so he’s getting a little more confident with his balance. He has also taken a couple of steps, ran three more and dropped to his hands and knees once he realized what he was doing… looks like all he needs a little more confidence. I’m rediscovering how one can turn stuff laying around into instant baby toys: large pill bottles are just the right size to hold (but not eat) and can really be interesting with a few beads or jingle bells inside; cardboard boxes and upside-down laundry baskets are perennial hits; even a stack of old magazines can be a happy distraction for pulling down and strewing around.

One of the downsides of Mason’s continued development is that he’s learned how to cut loose with this blood-curdling screech when he wants attention. I guess I’d better warn the Wicked Stepfather to turn off his hearing aid when we go visit.


Reality is stranger than fiction, at least around FAR Manor, and the two sort of came together this weekend at church. The little teen girl who sings in the choir introduced me to her friend Caitlin on Sunday morning. And… Caitlin is this little redhead, just like Caitlin Cooper in White Pickups (the one with the gigantic crush on Cody). The real-life Caitlin is fairly slim, but the chubby fictional Caitlin is slimming down what with… well, some upcoming episodes will explain. I have to say, meeting one’s own characters IRL (when they more or less introduced themselves from thin air to begin with) ranks right up there with some of the weirder writing-related things I’ve run into. Speaking of writing, I’ve been making pretty good progress on the story lately… I have episodes sorted through #60 and have about eight more that need to be ordered and laid out (with one more to insert). From there, I know how it’s going to end and mostly how to get there… and the details tend to be there when I need them. Then it’s on to Book 2!


And… what would a week (or a day) at FAR manor be without some TB/SN/TS errors? Snippet has constantly been throwing SN06 errors lately (sleeping all morning, sometimes into the afternoon); her excuse is (SN05) she can’t deal with Mrs. Fetched or Daughter Dearest. Seeing as DD is in Florida this week, she should be getting up twice as soon since she only has half the can’t-deal-with to deal with.

Yesterday, she wanted to go tubing on her off-day, leaving Mason with us (of course) and Mrs. Fetched vetoed it. Snippet, of course, got all defiant and threatened to “take Mason and she won’t see him for a long time.” That qualifies as an SN08, because she can’t usually get her skinny little @$$ out of bed before noon — what makes her think (if one can call it that) that she’d be able to do even a halfway job of taking care of an active baby?

The Boy, meanwhile, has been indulging in multiple instances of TB03 (not coming home) and TB21 (in bed half the day). And several TS03 (bring weird friends over) — one of them was here all weekend and wasn’t out until Tuesday. Despite the uglification he’d obviously worked hard at, he wasn’t all that bad… he would keep Mason entertained and watched over, and was a fair hand at the piano. Snippet doesn’t like him, so that’s maybe one more thing in his favor.

Oh, and I’ve been continuing to work on the wood spill. More later…

From the “Holy Crap!” Department…

OK, I know I gripe a lot about stuff in my life. Then something like this comes totally out of right field…

Mrs. Fetched’s older sister came to visit today, bringing much food for me to grill. She handed me this iPad and said, “I thought you might like to play around with this for a while.” Oh, but of course! “This isn’t the 3G kind, just wifi,” she added… no problem, we have wifi here. (I sometimes like to think of FAR Manor as a tiny oasis of civilization in the midst of cultural darkness.) But there was much grilling of food to be done first, naturally. I got to fiddle with it a little, anyway.



She’d loaded several eBook readers and music streamers on it, and more than a few ebooks, videos, music tracks, and so on. Our media preferences don’t intersect all that well, but who cares? It was fun to fiddle with. There was “only” 20GB left (on a 64GB iPad)… I learned a while ago that an 8GB iPhone fills up pretty quick, so I figure to get at least a 16 or 32GB version next time (which may be soon, as my iPhone craps out when it gets warm now).

Then we brought to the food down to the in-laws’ place for lunch. She hugs me and whispers, “Since I didn’t get you anything for Christmas this year, I figured you could have that.” [FARf→floor]

Yeah, I complain a lot about the stupid stuff that goes on around here, but sometimes… something like that happens. Like winning a Kindle at Christmas. Okay then: the Ultimate eReader Smackdown is about to begin!

Xtreme Beige G3 Makeover

I mentioned last week that my MacBook was going in for a new LCD. Well, it went as expected: I got to the Apple Store, they looked at it, and sent it off.

“How long?” I asked, already getting the shakes (it was an hour past lunch time and my sugar was crashing).

“Worst case, five to seven business days,” said the Genius. “We’ll ship it back.”

So my beloved Lapdancer went on to Memphis, and I went to get some lunch and tried to figure out how I was going to spend the next howmanyever days without a laptop. I decided it wasn’t like losing a limb… more like spraining an ankle; really painful, but it would be better in a week. I had some White Pickups stuff on Google Docs, and it worked with Mrs. Fetched’s G4 dualie, but it whined about the outdated Firefox. Then it hit me: I have a beige G3 in the room where DoubleRed sleeps, except that she’s been at her dad’s place for a while, and it has an old Linux on it — maybe I could update that to something more recent. I then wouldn’t have to worry about waiting for Mrs. Fetched to get stuff done, and The Boy and Snippet could use it to access Facebook and not have to bump me off my own laptop. Turned out the last time it had been used much was when Daughter Dearest’s pal from Norway came and wanted a Linux box so he could connect to the cluster under his bed back home… nearly a year and a half ago.

Looking at some of the options, I settled on Xubuntu as it combined at least “community” support for beige Macs and I found a how-to for getting it going. I burned a “live” CD Monday night, knowing it only worked on non-beige boxes, and the G4 dualie did a fine job of booting and displaying. Just for grins, I tried it in the beige box and it got as far as loading the RAMdisk and couldn’t find the CD. I downloaded and burned the “alternate” CD, which doesn’t try to do fancy stuff with graphics until after you have it installed, and found that the G3 wouldn’t even recognize it. I threw up my hands and went to bed.

Yesterday, I suddenly remembered that Daughter Dearest’s G4 PowerBook was laying around waiting for a new hard drive. I thought, why not just boot the live CD on that and use it? FAIL… I got it to boot after several attempts, but couldn’t get it to start the wireless interface. Not much use in having a laptop without wireless, especially when the place you’re using it doesn’t have easy Ethernet connectivity.

Then I remembered… Xubuntu is a Debian derivative, and I net-installed Debian on an ancient NEC laptop many years ago. Why not just net-install the G3? So I went hunting, found some directions, and soon had the beige box chugging away at the DSL and pulling down its packages. I decided to allocate a couple of existing Linux partitions to it, saving my old home directory, and let ’er rip. It ran on past 1 a.m., but that’s when I figured I could finish my end of it in the morning and went to bed.

And that’s exactly what I did. I had to copy the kernel and RAMdisk from the /boot directory back to the Mac partition, but that was fairly easy and I soon had it cleanly switching over to Linux. Firefox 3 is rather slow on this computer, mostly for typing, but I can type into a text editor and paste as needed. Snippet used it to check out her Facebook stuff and it did a fine job of pulling down and displaying pictures from her friends. “It’s a little slow,” she said, “but not that bad.” Considering this computer was new in 1998… not bad at all.

With the beige box now providing a reasonable backup for keeping up with my blog-buddies and getting some writing done, I decided to check the repair status of my MacBook. Lo and behold, they got it Monday, fixed it Tuesday, and put it on the plane for Wednesday delivery! It arrived back at the manor around 5 p.m. Apple replaced the LCD (still looked a little fuzzy, but it got better after a couple hours), the top cover, and cleaned the keyboard… it looks (and smells) like a new computer now, even being nearly three years old.

Now to get the PowerBook fixed.

So Happy It’s Thursday

It’s been a week, and it’s not done yet. ;-) After the TS01 error that they managed to not clear from Friday night until Tuesday morning (technically Tuesday morning, 1:30 a.m.), today brought on a TB21/SN06. Snippet especially claimed to not have been able to sleep until like 3 this morning; The Boy pretended to have had the same issue, and they both laid around in bed well past noon. I brought Mason up to them on a couple occasions, since I was supposed to be working at home today and had stuff I needed to get done. Now I can bring myself to believe someone could have trouble sleeping — I’ve been up to 3 a.m. myself a couple of times — but that doesn’t excuse the need to get up and get on with your life. Unless it’s a chronic problem, you shouldn’t have much trouble getting to sleep the next night.

Not long ago, I mentioned that Panda found a more lucrative position than helping Mrs. Fetched with the chickens. Well… that didn’t work out so well. Panda tells us that the guy worked him for two days, then neglected to pay him. So he’s back to helping with the chickens. Good timing — they needed some wiring done, and I was going to have to do it Saturday.

Mason continues to bounce along. Yesterday morning, I was holding him on my lap while working the computer one-handed… I thought he was getting kind of quiet when his head dropped and he sagged out. I put him on my shoulder, and he was limp — yup, he went to sleep without my even trying, and slept most of the morning away (kind of like his parents, huh?).

He’s working really hard on turning that scootch thing he does into mobility. I put him on the bed this evening, and he was trying to move around. I got on my hands and knees and showed him how to push both ends of himself up, and he at least tried it. He’ll be 5 months old on Saturday! He’s getting to where he can work the bouncy swing pretty well — he was hopping all over the place this evening while I was getting some pizza on the table. He also has a high-swing that plays music… when The Boy was his age, he had a high-swing that you wound up, no batteries required. 'Course, it didn’t play music and stuff either. High tech is a wonderful thing…

Until it starts getting wonky. For a while now, I’ve thought my eyes were getting a little boogly during the evening. I assumed it was my eyes working their way out from under my glasses prescription, but Tuesday night I noticed that the screen was only blurry along the edges and sharp in the middle. Thinking it was dust, I wiped it off with no change. Fortunately, the MacBook still has a month or two left on AppleCare (can’t believe this sucker’s almost 3 years old now!) and I put in a trouble report on the website. A few minutes later, Kendra was walking me through a few steps and then got me an appointment at the Apple Store Saturday afternoon.

So the good news is I can expect to have this thing fixed… the bad news is that it may or may not take a while to get it back. I backed up the most important stuff — photos and writing — to the outboard drive that used to be in my iBook, then copied the next four episodes of White Pickups and some in-progress stuff to Google Docs. So there shouldn’t be any interrupt in postings, and (I hope) very little interrupt in further work. I guess I should make sure that Mrs. Fetched’s G4 dualie (running an older OSX) can work Google Docs with Firefox. I know I can blog from there, anyway.

Funny thought… everyone was once up in arms over Amazon’s “one-click” patent, but what’s really costing them in terms of publicity — and perhaps financially as well — is an ill-conceived attempt at strong-arming a supplier, followed by a bone-headed blog post over the weekend that the legal beagles didn’t have a chance to vet. I’m not exactly planning to run out and buy an iPad, although I plan to play with one while I’m at the Apple Store on Saturday, but that couldn’t have happened at a better time for Apple. Now all I have to do is hope I come home with a good sharp LCD display this weekend…

Hardware, Mason, Hardware

We had a holiday party at work yesterday afternoon — good excuse to knock off for a couple of hours and nosh on some horsey-doovers. In the past, the company would rent out a club and invite spouses along; with the economy the way it is, they decided to dial it back… only a little. The big pile of geek-compatible door prizes was still there, though (the smallest prize was an iPod nano, or maybe a digital photo frame). For the first time in like, ever, my name got pulled out of the hat! The way this works, you come up and draw a number out of a second bag; they match the number to your prize. I got a Kindle and a $50 Amazon gift certificate.

While I was aware the thing existed, I’d seen a Kindle in meatspace only once, in the hands of a co-worker taking a break outside. The second one I’ve seen is sitting next to my keyboard on the desk. I haven’t registered it yet, still going through the user manual. (Professional courtesy, don’t you know.) Amazon says it’s about the size of a paperback — which is true, if you’re talking trade size:



I found myself surprised at several things as I unpacked the Kindle and got it going: on the display is a brief set of instructions telling you to plug it in and turn it on (with illustrations). I assumed that there was a transparent overlay on the screen, and actually tried to peel it off with my thumbnail before I realized the display was showing it. They claim their “electronic paper” display doesn’t require much power once it’s showing the page. The display is 16-shade greyscale, and it looks really clear and sharp. It’s not backlit, which means you can’t read in the dark, but that’s what wind-up flashlights are for; they claim you can read in bright sunlight, and I’m not too skeptical about that claim. Other surprises include a rudimentary MP3 player, web browser, and data access over the Sprint cellular network (on Amazon’s dime)… Sprint’s signal out here at the manor is better than I expected; I usually get 3 or 4 (out of 5) bars. It’s supposed to hold about 1500 books, which would keep me busy for a long time were I stranded on a desert island with the Kindle (and a solar panel to recharge it). Sleep mode displays random woodcut-like graphics: portraits of classic authors, ancient manuscripts, and so forth.

Like the iPhone, Amazon has built an ecosystem around the Kindle. Unlike the iPhone, Amazon is providing other means to access that ecosystem: Kindle readers for iPhone, PC, (eventually) Mac, and so forth. This makes sense; Apple is about selling hardware and Amazon is about selling books. Both companies are using the ecosystem they’ve built to sell more of their product. One thing the Kindle store does that I wish the iTunes store did: keep a record of your purchases and let you re-download them if necessary.

Downsides? The Kindle doesn’t feel like something you’d spend $259 on. It’s light, almost airy, and (despite the brushed metal backside) doesn’t give me the impression that it’s rugged enough to live the hard life of a mobile device. The buttons are probably better than they feel, but I wonder how long it will be before the labels wear off. The Kindle is too big to fit in a pocket, even a cargo pants pocket, but it could go in a purse or briefcase (or courier bag). Finally, I have to wonder how long Amazon will allow free data access beyond the confines of their store, especially since it has a lightweight web browser.

The geeks are already hacking away at the device; it runs a version of Linux and some folks have managed to install software needed to make it a more general-purpose computer. Amazon has wisely taken a hands-off stance, although I suspect they would get rather exercised if people were to pound on the network too much. This is something I wouldn’t have bought for myself, but now that I have it I’m interested in seeing what it can do.


Mason was not in a wonderful mood much of yesterday. He woke up twice last night, maybe more… I got up with him twice anyway. Mrs. Fetched took him to the doctor today, and she suspects he has rotavirus, aka “baby flu.” Here’s hoping he gets over it soon. He tries really hard to be good-natured, and nothing brightens up a house like a baby laughing. Mrs. Fetched and Daughter Dearest got the tree put up and strung some LED lights on it, and he loves looking at all the colors.


Since Mrs. Fetched needed the car to take Mason to the doc, I ended up on the motorcycle. It was one of those mornings where I put in all the linings in the jacket, added more layers underneath, cranked up the heated gloves, and only my feet froze. I’m working at the office all week since we have a new contractor in and I need to throw all the stuff I can’t get done on him (and help him get started doing it). He and I worked at the same place about 12 years ago, and dimly recognized each other at the interview… he likes his motorcycle too, and was glad to see mine.

New Toys in the Manor

As part of Daughter Dearest’s preparations for college, she decided she needed a new laptop. The used G4 PowerBook we got her a while back is getting creaky, and (as G4s do) runs a bit hot. Fortunately, she had been saving her money for a while and realized she had enough for a new MacBook… especially since the stars aligned and she could get a $100 student discount, and Planet Georgia is in its “tax-free weekend” phase where they waive sales tax on school supplies (including computers). Apple is also running a rebate program in which they’ll rebate the entire price of an iPod nano or touch if you buy one with a computer. She is happy with the nano she got for Christmas, and I’m happy with the 5G iPod I bought a couple years ago, but I have no problem getting a Touch if I only have to temporarily pay for it.

So DD is migrating her files over to the new computer, and I’ve been fiddling with the Touch’s wifi capabilities. She’s going to pass the PowerBook to The Boy, who has been wanting a laptop “for school” and has borrowed both the PowerBook and my own MacBook on occasion.

iPhone-mania; or What I Really Want

Vacation starts tomorrow. I’m momentarily resurfacing to cover the technology story of the week. I had a productive writing night last night, here’s hoping for more…

Like many long-time Apple users, I was keenly interested in the iPhone and how it would turn out — but (again) like many, had no plans to buy one any time soon. I got a Samsung Sync at the beginning of the year; it’s no iPhone but does a fair job getting online and can even play music and (some) video. Still, I’m glad that the iPhone has done so well so far — by the time I’m ready to replace the Sync, the iPhone should be a good bit more affordable (even after the reduction Steve announced this week) with the more serious complaints (no 3G, for one) ironed out.

A couple of musings about what I’d like the Sync (or the iPhone, for that matter) to do, began to crystallize when I read a MacObserver forum discussion about what a sub-notebook should look like. But it took the introduction of the iPod touch to put the last piece together.

What I really want is something CS (my college roomie) and I brainstormed about way back in 1980 or so: a good pocket computer. The 2007 version is basically an iPod touch with TextEdit, an email client, and the ability to pair with a fold-up Bluetooth (or USB) keyboard. This would be something I could stuff in a jacket pocket or fanny pack, or under a car seat, then pull out wherever I happen to be and do some writing — with background music, if desired! — if the mood strikes me. I could email files home right away (given wifi availability) or transfer it when I get back to FAR Manor.

I'll have to see if “they” manage to get Linux working on the iPod touch like they have the “classic” iPod. If they do, I just might have my pocket computer at last.

Stuff that works, Stuff that doesn’t

I’m typing away with the new MacBook battery. It was sitting on the table when I came home from the yard sale on Saturday (and I guess I was so excited I forgot to mention it). I pretty much knew what to expect inside: the battery and instructions for shipping the old one back. The good thing about that it’s all but completely pre-arranged: all you have to do is tape the box shut and call DHL to come pick it up. The other side of that particular coin: Apple will zap you for the cost of the battery if you don’t send it back, probably to keep people from claiming the battery is rotten to get a free extra battery. So unless DHL couldn’t find our office, and I think they bring deliveries from time to time, that’s taken care of.

Less welcome news: the A/C in the Civic lasted all of three days, crapping out on Friday afternoon on the way home from work. Naturally, it croaked in the three miles of stop&go traffic I have to deal with on Fridays (and I guess I was so bummed I forgot to mention it here). Oh well, it was good while it lasted and even mid-90s weather isn’t too bad on a motorcycle (as long as you’re moving).

Yesterday, I finally resolved the plate (or “tag” as they say on this planet) issue for the new motorcycle. The shop sent the tax receipt, and I’m supposed to pick up the tag. I was under the impression that I would get it in the mail. Mrs. Fetched says she’ll handle that today while I’m at work — there’s a pretty good chance she’ll get busy & forget, but right now I have both bikes in the garage and it’s a little tight, and the inconvenience might prompt her to make an extra effort. ;-) So I’m on the Virago at least one more day.

Jumping on the Virago after riding a much lighter and taller bike for a month is a good way to get a fresh look at it. The seat is much more cushy, the engine much stronger (with nearly three times the displacement, that’s no surprise), and the seating position is completely different. Of course, it still takes corners at speeds you wouldn’t dare with most other cruisers.

And with that, I need to start it and get rolling to work. IT has started monitoring web usage at work (naturally at a time when most of my projects are in a lull), so I’ll be coming in at odd morning & evening hours. One more stop to see if Nancy has posted anything this morning…