I thought it might be nice to start this weblog by introducing myself, but then I thought that since almost everything on this web site is about computers, and almost everyone who reads it is interested in computers, perhaps it would be better to introduce you to my computer instead.
Here’s my desktop right now:
As you can see, it’s a bit of a mess. Like most things in my life. I try (I try *so hard*) to keep things organised, but as my friends will tell you, I am a fundamentally lazy person and these efforts to stay on top of things soon fall by the wayside.
This machine is called flange, and it’s a 600 MHz G3 dual-USB white iBook with 640MB RAM (the maximum it will take) and a 20GB hard disk. I bought it just over two years ago and it is still running very well, having had few problems during its life. Considering the amount of time I have spent using it, it’s doing very well indeed.
It currently runs Mac OS X 10.3.2, and upgrades happen rarely because I still use a dial-up modem connection. This is going to change in coming weeks, when I get a super new wireless broadband network set up in my home (of which you will no doubt hear more on these pages).
I am *very* fussy about software, and something of a flitter. If my browser annoys me for some reason, I will switch in an instant to a different one, until it annoys me too. My current set-up includes Eudora 6.1 for email, Camino 0.8 for browsing (with Mozilla on stand-by for certain sites), BBEdit 7 for text (although I’m seriously considering the upgrade to version 8), Graphic Converter for image editing, X-Chat Aqua for IRC nattering, and lots of other little apps for the other little things that happen less often.
I’m a very text-oriented person. My todo list is a text file that I edit in BBEdit. I keep notes and snippets in Notational Velocity, which stores everything as text, but I’ve often wondered about putting them into one huge text file and just using BBEdit’s search feature to find my way around. I download text editors for the hell of it.
It’s a simple sort of setup, but my needs are pretty simple. I’m a writer and journalist, and text is how I earn a living. Luckily, few of the editors I work for ever require the words I produce to be formatted, and in most cases I can just send plain text in the body of an email message. I love being able to work that way.
There are some other computers in my house. A PowerBook G4 on loan, a NeXTStation that I bought for peanuts from a guy down the road, an X86 box that used to run Windows and currently runs the the Lycoris Linux distribution (it was free with a magazine), and a Hewlett Packard Jornada 820 laptop/PDA. Plenty to keep me occupied.
So … anyone round here like talking about computer stuff?
Feel free to say hi
More than a hello
Mac DevCenter readers will recognize Giles from the many informative and entertaining articles he's contributed.
He recently approached me with a new idea. Why don't we cover some of our own news in addition to the features and syndicated news currently on the site? Good idea.
It's going to work like this. Giles is going to write about the stories that catch his eye. He'll publish them in this weblog. That way he can post when ever he feels like it without our normal production process.
At that point I'll publish a summary in Mac DevCenter's What's New box in the upper right corner of the page. I'll include a link to make things even easier.
It's a simple idea really, but I think it will work well.
Stay tuned...
Text orientation
Hello from another very text-oriented person! Have you ever tried Vim or Emacs instead?
Vim is the best thing that ever happened to me (I did use BBEdit at a job for a while, so I have a basic idea of what it's like). If you try it, don't be put off by the strange way it works that is unlike most any other editor — run vimtutor to get the basic hang of it, run it again the next day and another a few days later to solidify your reflexes. It is by far the best investment I have ever made, and has paid off a thousand times and then some. I can't imagine use anything other than Vim to edit text on anything that has a keyboard.
I understand that Vim is not everyone's cup'a tea, so if you don't like it, maybe you'll appreciate Emacs instead. I can't say too much about that one because I hate it :-), but a lot of people seem as fond of it as I am of Vim. Obviously it might be worth a look also. It's a little less unconventional than Vim, but much more powerful than "regular" editors just as well.
They're both amazingly capable heavy duty text lifting machines.
Text orientation
well, there is a bit of irony in the world (that's being kind): lots o folk look down their noses at keyboard oriented editors [vi/emacs; i love the former and run Visual SlickEdit in that mode], not realizing that jumping mouse to keys and back again all day is a prescription for carpal tunnel and the like. but they also look down the same noses at the drag-n-drop-they-can't-really-be-programmers-who-do-VB who never have to type. odd, isn't it??
Text orientation
The short answer is yes, I've tried vim, vi and emacs; I can see the potential benefits of all of them, but in every case the learning curve is too steep for me.
Not in the sense that they are too difficult to learn - I'm fairly confident that given enough time, I could learn to use them pretty well - but that finding that amount of spare time is not easy.
Another issue is that I don't cope very well with the idea of editing and command modes. It's because I've been using "ordinary", less powerful editors for too many years. The way I write is fixed in my fingertips, and forcing them to work differently is very hard work!
Maybe learning vi and emacs are projects I could save for my retirement...