Farsong Blog-o-Matic

I've pointed to it a lot recently, but there's a great deal of moving and shaking happening in the realms of Mobile Computing. Namely, the eeePC and its ilk — this new group of “netbooks” or “sub-notebooks” that's taken the mobile market by storm.

Last year, the eeePC felt rather like a toy, with 2gb of SSD and a tiny screen. All that's changed, and the machines are powerful and efficient, not running 1.6ghz processors (designed by Intel for this purpose) and getting 5, 6, or 7.5 hours, easily. They're tiny, light, free of optical drives and moving parts, and are super-connected. They're smaller and lighter than the MacBook Air, significantly cheaper (even for the large-capacity, high-powered, feature-rich ones), and bristle with USB ports, card slots, connectors, and features. If you ask me, the Air sort of missed the mark; the Air feels like a luxury computer, while the eee and other netbooks feel more like true workhorses.

( It's not just the hardware that's revolutionary, but the entire small-computing paradigm shift — thoughts on OSes and netbooks )

This seems to happen every eight-to-twelve months: I compile a list of Mac software I use. Usually this is because a friend has switched to Mac.

We'll start with specs:
Right now I have one G5 PowerPC tower @1.8GHz, with 2Gb of RAM, and a MacBook Core2 Duo @2.0GHz with 1Gb RAM. The former runs Tiger (10.4.11 final) and is named Kirkegaard, and the latter runs Leopard (10.5.2 is the current version, as of this writing) and is named Lobo. I use them both. I have not taken the laptop with me to University yet this quarter, though I probably will.

I also use Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac, and Adobe CS3, but there is open-source software to fill the gap. I can't in good conscience recommend The GIMP for image editing, though.


OSX is all well and good, and Leopard has a number of great new features that have replaced old software I used to use (Leopard came with tabbed Terminal and Screen Sharing, so out go iTerm and Chicken of the VNC). But sometimes, the built-in things in Mac OSX don't act in quite the way I want, or there is functionality missing. Ergo, third-party apps. All work on Leopard, based upon my usage. This is by no means an exhaustive list, and if I've missed something or don't list something useful I should, comment! All links go to the developers' pages.


( Software for OSX--now with 120% more snarky commentary )

And that's that software I use in my everyday life on the Mac!

I saw another MacBook user using an app by the name of “Journaler.” It actually looked rather interesting, so I found it and downloaded it. It’s an easy-to-use program and does a good job of organizing and keeping track of notes, journal entries, etc. The program even features integration with some of the premiere blogging sites, though the integration with Livejournal is half-hearted at best; for this (even if I used Journaler I would still blog to LJ with Xjournal).

However, this program, while good, is not what I seek. It offers little control over formatting — rightly so, as it’s content-focused. This is where Journaler and I diverge. Perhaps I’m archaic, but I am very much about formatting and layout — no, it’s not archaic, but I am focused on layout for readability with an orientation towards a printed end product. I cannot stand the “internet” format, with the paragraphs separated by larger spaces, and a lack of indents. This is okay for a small amount of text, but a print format is much preferred, complete with quarter-inch indents.

Journaler does not offer this. Word — a traditional word-processor focused on print — does. Perhaps it is overkill for writing blog entries, but for essays and whatnot, Word is the perfect tool. When I write, I like to see the formatting marks — it helps me to gauge content length, form, structure, and location (this entry, for example, takes up about one half of a traditional, MLA-formatted page, and I have over 12 pages written about VII; for reference, this is slower going than Farsong, which the original ten pages were written in the span of three days).

It is a problem of mine that comes from the laying out of newspapers, which made a transition into graphic design. However, for anything more than the most rudimentary pages of text, Word becomes a headache to work with — which is the place that layout apps come in. Sure, you could tweak with word to make that handbill, but a layout app like InDesign is much better — it will save you time and headache. For larger things? don’t even try Word unless it’s all text.


Journaler is a great program as long as you recognize its place and its limitations, or if you do not demand precision formatting, and don’t mind Journaler organizing your files. I’m better off with a heavy-duty word-processor, but I’m also more focused on print as an end-product, and like to keep my documents organized at my own whim.



Additionally, the Hinderlie webpage was up-dated.

5. Please ensure Grandmother is not hiding under your desk. She does that sometimes, and while the pistachio gelatin is good, it does not make up for the fact she is stealing squirrels and placing them in your bed.

Also, I really need to become less cryptic about the two big stories that I've been writing — Farsong, which involves Dylan and Klitaka (and is in a holding-pattern for now), and the more-recent work on the story about VII (pronounced “Seven”) with a working title of My Name Is Seven. Allen concurred that the premise of the latter is very much a sci-fi sort of thing. He's a good man. Knows what it is to be real.

I will reiterate: It is as if they can smell a Sci-Fi writer.