Posts filed under 'Technology'
Although my confession here might cause those hanging out on the Newton mailing lists some degree of embarrassment for their newfound brethren (their technical aptitude, at least for hardware, seems to dwarf my own), I have to admit some trepidation, if not outright fear, in finally addressing the eternal problem of eMates: wonky hinges. It’s a well-known manufacturing defect that will cause the hinge springs to eventually pop out of their slots within the hinge and, sooner or later, puncture the display cable. However, reading the fix is enough to intimidate most beginners to electronics: it involves a lengthy process of removing the battery, opening the shell, soldering wires, stripping down the eMate to its bare components, recoiling wires with vicegrips, applying white grease or teflon lubricant, putting in washers to prevent future spring pops, and putting everything back together again. (The process, for those not faint of heart, might be found on Frank’s excellent Newton site.)
Thankfully, it was nowhere near as painful as it sounds, even though I did experience a few problems because of my tools and inexperience.
I started with my old Radio Shack electronics “binder”, a collection of screwdrivers, soldering iron, pliers and wire stripper, augmented it with a toothpick, plastic knife and vicegrip, and I was well on my way. Only three problems:
- The Torx screws are very soft, and the plastic holding them in had a tight grip. You guessed it: I wound up stripping a few, making it difficult to get them out. It didn’t help that it looked like somebody before me had attempted a hinge fix before, unsuccessfully, and wore them down before I even got to them. My Dremel with a cutting wheel and a fine diamond engraver point were called in to re-slot. So caution dealing with the screws is definitely advised.
- The first time I put the machine back together, essentially trying to follow the disassembly instructions in reverse, I neglected to align the volume and contrast sliders in the right place. This was just careless.
- The second time I put the machine back together, I didn’t leave enough slack for the backlight wire connection, and it popped out. Easy enough to determine (thanks to the translucent bezel around the screen — you’ll see the wires and connections at left), and fast to fix.
The operation took about two hours the first time, including the re-slotting of screws. I was paranoid, and definitely took my time. The other issues were fixed in about fifteen minutes each, once I had a little more confidence in what I was doing.
The surgery was a great success. My dear little eMate now feels brand new, with nice smooth hinge action, and no fear of one day puncturing the display cable.
Tags: newton, emate
July 6th, 2007
My Newton MessagePad 2100 remains disconnected from my computer and the world at large while I wait for a) a Newton 2100 Serial Adapter Dongle; or b) Andriano’s Newton-USB dongle. Thus I’m taking this time to play around with my Newton eMate 300 and a few of the available sync programs. To tell the truth, I had heard so many intimidating and frustrating things about synchronising a Newton with a modern Intel-based Mac OS X box that I doubted I’d ever bother with it. Sure, I could always go back to my Pismo and OS 9, but my wife has now claimed that machine, and besides, I want to sync with my OS X address book, calendar, and so forth.
So, my current set-up: a 15″ MacBook Pro, a stock eMate 300, an old-school Mac serial cable, and a Keyspan USA-28X serial-to-USB adapter. One end of the serial cable plugs into the eMate, the other end into the Keyspan, and the Keyspan’s USB connector into my MacBook Pro. Keyspan drivers are downloaded and installed.
First, the most basic sync program: NewTen, by Panic Software’s Steven Frank. This is basically a package installer. I choose my Keyspan connect, set the eMate to dock via serial, and drag a Newton package onto the app. After a little while –remember that a serial connection can be rather slow– the eMate has the package installed. A one-trick pony at the moment, perhaps, but it works well.
Second, Simon Bell’s NCX, also known as Newton Connection. This is an impressive little app that looks to replace Apple’s official Newton Connection Utilities (NCU). While it doesn’t yet do full synchronisation, it currently has the ability to:
- Install packages through a drag and drop;
- Import and export NewtonWorks “paper” (text) files as RTF and Notes files as text, plus Calendars and Names.
- Back up and restore the programs, extensions and data files on the Newton.
- A pass-through keyboard. This is neat. Whatever you type on your computer comes out on the Newton. Drag and drop text on the window to copy it into whatever program is currently open on the Newton, right where you’ve put the cursor.
The latter has proven handy to drop text right into a NewtonWorks or Notes file right from the Mac’s desktop. The export works well too — I’ve written four articles on the eMate thus far (including this one).
The third program I’ve been trying out is NewtSync, also known as nSync. (*cough*) I’ve already used this program to transfer all 200 of my OS X Address Book entries to my eMate, and am now experimenting with its text, outliner, calendar, and newsfeed synchronisation. It’s still an early release, and so I’m attempting each sync with extreme caution, being sure to back up my data often. Thus far, no problems.
I should note that none of these programs were created by Apple, nor are they sponsored by Apple in any way: these are hard-wrought fan projects, pure and simple. There’s something to be said for the dedication needed to program such things, given that the Newton platform was prematurely canceled nearly a decade ago.
More posts later, no doubt, as I learn the ins and outs, strengths and weaknesses, of each of these applications.
June 3rd, 2007
In two articles for DIYPlanner, one about the MessagePad 2100 and another about the eMate, I mentioned how I’ve got the decade-old Apple Newton bug. Given that the site is mostly about paper-based fetishes, there’s only so much I can say there without upsetting the apple cart. (No pun intended.) Here I can say a little more.
It’s a little bizarre: I normally receive a half-dozen email per article, in addition to the 6-12 comments left on the site. These Newton articles not only generated a lot of comments, but some 30 email, and were picked up by The Unofficial Apple Weblog and –giving me a brief and unexpected laugh-out-loud instant in a supermarket check-out line– on the MacBreak Weekly podcast. Most of the email posed the same conundrum: “I’ve always wanted a Newton, too…. Should I buy one on eBay?”
Now, I really hate giving advice like this, and for several reasons. First, the costs of Newtons in the past few weeks on eBay seem to have jumped significantly, no doubt owing to its sudden re-appearance in various media outlets in the weeks leading up to the iPhone. Second, I prefer not to be responsible for someone bidding for a Newton on an impulse and winding up with a $200 device that seems almost antiquated for most modern-day uses. Third, and most importantly, I’ve only had my Newtons for a few weeks. That means I am a base and uninformed Newt Newbie. I’m not fit to give such advice. I tell these people that the Newtons I have work for my purposes, but that they should join the NewtonTalk mailing list, which is overflowing with wise old masters dispensing advice and practical knowledge.
That these machines are working for me is evidenced by my sudden ability to write articles, notes, lists and other text in a focussed environment. While I dearly love my MacBook Pro, it’s filled with distractions, not the least of which is its proclivity to braise the flesh of my lap. By contrast, the eMate 300 (which I’m using to write this post) remains cool to the touch and allows me to actually concentrate on my words without thinking about websites, email, instant messaging, or even fancy graphics. Text, baby, and nothing else. It’s a handier version of an old-fashioned typewriter. This is the same reason why I’ve been debating getting an AlphaSmart Neo or Dana for so long. The difference is that the eMate (besides being quite a sexy looking machine, in my humble opinion) is roughly 1/20 the price. While getting the initial connections set up wouldn’t be as easy as with an AlphaSmart, the screen is bigger, the ruggedness is legendary, the touchscreen works very well, the 20-hour battery life is nothing to complain about, and –well– there’s something very unique about the machine that that makes a guy feel special. I can see why Batgirl likes it.
Perhaps in the next few weeks, I’ll post about how my Newton experiments are going. I’m still learning the ropes and exploring the machines’ strengths and weaknesses, so I might toss my discoveries out onto the Interwebs for those folks meandering down the same path. I’m sure there’s at least one other person out there….
May 27th, 2007
Over at 43 Folders, Merlin Mann is rediscovering the wonderful Mac application that is DEVONthink Pro - DEVONthink: An appreciation of “smart groups”
I’ve now had DT Pro v. 1.1.1 in battlefield action for the last few weeks, and have been dutifully feeding it anything I find that seems tangentially interesting or useful; a few custom Quicksilver triggers mean one-click, no-look addition of any data type, from web pages to text selections to photos, full PDFs, and movie files.
DEVONthink Pro is probably my favourite piece of software. Ever. While I use a score of multimedia applications (Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, etc.) on a regular basis, I am –by nature and trade, in the broadest sense– an information worker. I need a digital commonplace book to collect, track and act upon all those things that Merlin mentions, and much more. While DEVONthink Personal proved an excellent application for doing this, the introduction of DT Pro and its subsequent updates have left me continually astounded. (See my earlier detailed review of DT for more information.)
Merlin goes on to mention the “smart groups” –basically, agents to collect items automatically based upon their content or properties– but I’ve always found that its real power starts to show with things like concordance (estimations of related items — see Berlin’s article), offline archiving of web pages (very useful for changing sites like the NYT), sheets and records (think about a database), Dashboard widgets for quick access, and a teeming horde of AppleScripts. Those starting off with the software might not appreciate all these functions, but I can assure you that they all come in very handy, very soon. And the fact that DT/Pro gets “smarter” as you feed more information into it translates into a more powerful application every day.
Those needing to dig up knowledge on a constant basis can take the application a step further, though: I’m just now exploring DEVONagent, an “intelligent research assistant.” For a long while, I resisted: I’m definitely a Google power-user, and it seemed to do everything I needed it to do. Or so I thought. It turns out that DA has increased my research abilities many-fold. It scours not only the web in general, but also specific online databases to collect and collate information, compiling a useful text-only preview of all those tidbits it thinks I might like to know. With one click I can view the full pages in an integrated (tabbed) browser, or add the information into DTP. The new version also adds an interesting “visualiser” to see how other words and topics relate to your current item. The application takes a little getting used to, but it really pays off after a week or two.
So much information, so little time. At least with the DEVON gear, I can generally make the most of it.
May 23rd, 2006
A particularly lucid comment left by eletherious on my post “So you wanna start a blog?” has me thinking of a suitable response:
However, what you do not answer is why would someone blog rather than create a web site? Both requre the same focus and discipline over focus and content. It would seem that a web site provides more content and design flexibility whereas a blog is more one dimensional - literary / literal?
In the nearly fourteen years I’ve been producing both static and dynamic websites (oh, that makes me feel so old), this is a question with which I’ve grappled time and again. In fact, in the early days of blogs, when they were driven almost exclusively as vanity projects, I was one among many who resisted the creation of any product that stood simply as a monumount to one’s ego, perferring instead to produce a non-blog site that might showcase my writing, my artwork, my web design skills, and so on.
Do you see a difference between the two, as fundamentally ego-driven projects? In retrospect, I can’t. But I think this is due to a certain levelling of the stigma attached to both types of sites, and especially blogs. They aren’t simply vanity projects any longer, but also vital sources of ideas and information, and –ironically– a personal “static” website is more likely to be viewed with an air of hoity-toitiness (to use a technical term). After all, many static sites beg us to come back often and check for updates. Why should we? They rarely make those updates easy to find. Are we expected to troll through every page looking for something new every week? Isn’t that presumptuous, in a way? What could bring us back so regularly?
And therein lies part of the appeal of blog sites to visitors. In our busy schedules, we want the convenience of one-stop shopping. The days of visiting eight markets in one day is best left to the idle rich, or the very devoted traditional housekeeper inspecting the morning wares in a rural village. Most of us don’t have the time or the absolute need to wander through hundreds of sites of potential interest per day. I want to know what information is new, and I want to expend a minimum of effort finding it. Hence, of course, the rapid proliferation of newsfeed readers like Bloglines.
“But,” some will interject here, “there are applications that tell you when a page has been updated.” True. But of all the 60+% of people using Internet Explorer, what percentage of people have ever used the “Subscribe” function, or even know it’s there? I dimly recall using it a couple of times, and gave it up when it proved completely unreliable (due mainly to the way that information tends be moved around a website dynamically).
If your goal, then, is to attract and keep regular visitors –as opposed to people tripping across a popular page in your site via a search engine and, then satisfied, leaving forever– the reverse-chronological nature of blogs can be far more effective than the vast majority of static sites.
Beyond this, though, blogs have other advantages. As silly as this may sound, since the general expectations afforded to blogs are lower –after all, the ease of creating a blog has allowed everyone and their dogs to erect them as testiments to their own boredom– there is far less of an intimidation factor in actually getting the darn things up and running. For example, I can’t count the number of iterations of my own personal sites that have been nearly complete, but –in my final but overly-critical evaluations– weren’t “good enough” to be released. A showcase site (as was my intention) becomes a grandiose and complicated affair that, to perfectionist standards, may never be complete enough to launch. I had no such compunctions about creating and launching a blog, since I knew it would be quite easy to match up to the majority of sites out there. I could thus build up better material over time without fear, or at least without an incredible amount of pre-launch effort.
This all being said, eletherious does have an excellent point about the one-dimensionality of blogs. For example, most blogs can be seen as a simple stream of quickly-written and barely literate verbage spewing forth at regular intervals, eventually to “scroll off” the main page and disappear forever into the rarely-viewed archives.
But –and I stress the following– that doesn’t need to be so. Many of the better blog engines will allow you to easily create so-called static pages, or fixed pages, that will allow you to write materials accessible via a top or side menu. For example, a company may have pages about its history, its reputation, its clients, its products, and so on, and these can be viewed by all visitors at a moment’s notice. The “blog” portion can then be the news about launches, specials, reports, industry news, and those other tasty little morsels that encourage repeat visitors. This can provide the best of both worlds.
There are, of course, downsides to using a blog as opposed to a static site. For one thing, there is a constant pressure to update it; when your most recent post is eight months old, it shows a certain neglect. Blogs are based around “templates” –a standard look and feel you create for almost every page– which tends to limit the aesthetic variety within your site. (This is not necessarily a bad thing.) Since items are archived (unless deleted), all the older posts on the site are there to reflect upon you –the chaff with the wheat, so to speak– and so those people producing wildly inconsistent material, or who change their minds often, may not wish visitors to see those pieces. And, although providing the ability for readers to comment is often considered integral to building up a sense of loyalty and community (read: repeat visitors), the need to guard against undesirable feedback, mainly the spam that results from one’s popularity, has to be assigned a high priority.
The most important function of a static site, in my opinion, is a “point of presence”. In other words, a site that can be put up and left for indeterminate amounts of time that simply establishes your presence on the Net — and therefore in the world, such is the pervasiveness of the medium. If you’re a small business, or a scholar wishing to put up a few papers, or a proud papa or mama who just wants to put up a few baby pictures for family, then this could be perfect. Otherwise, it might be worthwhile to weigh the advantages and disadvantages of using a blog engine to create your site, even though you may hesitate to consider the resulting product a blog.
No doubt many books have already been written about this topic, and many more will come. These are just a few idle thoughts conjured up this Sunday morning over a Thermos of coffee, though most of them are born out of long-standing practical experience, rather than ethereal theory. The latter, I’ll leave for the pundits to debate over their $8 mocha latte grandes. 
May 7th, 2006
Whew. That was a tough one. Life can get to normal now.
May 6th, 2006
Since it’s now possible for newcomers to the blogging world to set up a Blogger or WordPress.com account in mere minutes without the slightest idea about what one is doing or why, it seems like 98% of the blogs on the Web boast but a half-dozen erratic posts before going dormant forever. Of those that are left, most offer only simple “my link for the day” posts, which of course are fine for friends or people of very similar interests, but not so much for the world at large.
Now that I’m in the process of starting a new blog (on Sherlock Holmes), I figured it was about time to write down and share a few of my wildly-scrawled ideas concerning how exactly I go about such a thing (or, how I occasionally help others in a consulting capacity to do the same).
Like most other things, I conceive of a blog as a project, to be given due consideration, planning and effort. As such, I brainstorm, write notes, prepare a vision, gather resources, construct initial timelines, experiment with form, evaluate delivery options, and so on, before I even think of doing that magic little incantation which causes the blog to appear. I’m not going to get into all of these here. What follows are rough notes, not a course. But first and foremost to keep in mind is the approach: a lacklustre preparation usually leads to a lacklustre site. On the other hand, all the preparatory time in the world won’t mean squat if you don’t have the discipline or wherewithal (or –*ahem*– ego) to keep it up.
A clear vision is the primary thing to keep in mind. Vision leads to purpose, purpose leads to motivation, motivation leads to regular posts, regular posts lead to regular readers. So what’s this thing of yours going to be? Is it going to be a site to explore or exploit a niche interest of yours? Is it going to help develop commercial opportunities? Is it a playground to learn new technologies or methods? Is it to provide feedback for a project or cause you’re involved with? Or is it an ego thing, where you’re going to post idle thoughts as you feel like it? If the latter, pay attention: remember the 98% of dormant blogs? Almost all of them fall into this category. Repeat after me: “I want this blog to ….” Fill in the blank. If you don’t have a coherent point or two, then you lack a vision with focus.
Now, a lack of focus doesn’t necessarily mean that the blog won’t be a success, but it sure makes it a lot more difficult to maintain. For example, this blog doesn’t have a strong focus. That explains the erratic posting, the subject matter covering no particular ground, and the wide variations on quality. However, this blog does have a purpose: it’s an outlet for me to practise my writing skills, especially on those topics that don’t fit into my other, more specialised sites. Practice is necessary for a writer, of course, and it helps to have actual readers as motivation. Don’t believe me? — try joining a writing club where you have to produce materials to read aloud each week, and enjoy a newfound discipline. (Private material is obviously kept offline, since I figure no one needs to know about my Sturm und Drang, or my sex life either, for that matter.)
For the new Holmes blog, I have a vision with two primary purposes: to learn more about my subject matter by exploring a new facet each day; and to help others explore the character of Sherlock Holmes not only as a cultural phenomenon, but as something far beyond the stereotypical cartoonish figure with deerstalker and magnifying glass. Secondary purposes: to indulge in a relaxing pastime each day; to provide a hub or lens to focus on all the rich sites scattered throughout the web; to introduce the joys of old time radio shows to the iPod generation; and –last but not least– to provide a little fresh Sherlock to fans every day.
Ultimately, a blog faces two great dangers: boredom and degree of effort. Boredom is almost always inevitable, at some point. Having a purpose can get you past these dry spells and recharge your batteries when necessary. At times, the topic of productivity can get quite stale for me; having a clear purpose for DIYPlanner.com means that I know my goals and can work towards reaching them, which means writing with an end in mind. Then there are some people who love their subject matter so much, and have so much free time, that they may write copious amounts of text each and every day. It’s a very rare individual that possesses this degree of commitment and time — I’m afraid that isn’t me. Ask yourself why you’re starting a blog. Do you have a good answer? If so, you can overcome these obstacles, as long as you possess enough discipline, passion or ego.
Vision also leads to the type, frequency and angle of the posts. Who are you writing for, how often, and what sort of material will you be providing? For this blog, my material is almost always original, and therefore tends to be rather irregular: things are posted as they’re done. For DIYPlanner.com, each volunteer writer has a slated day for posting an original article, usually concerned with a particular subject matter (although personal and professional issues sometimes mean that the posts may be postponed). Deadlines can work, as long as one is strict about them. For the Holmes blog, I’m intending a daily post each weekday. Some of these will be original writings, some will be graphics or advertisements, some will be radio shows, and some will feature links with quotes from other sites. This variation is important to me — it means that I don’t feel the pressure of having to write entirely new text each day, and yet I can still keep to a daily schedule of providing interesting material. If you wander into a blog with no idea of your target audience, frequency, or type of posts, statistics dictate that the blog may not last long.
Since we’re on the topic of readers, figure out what part these people play in your blog. I’ve always believed in the idea of fostering feedback and community, so I prefer to hear from readers as much as possible. Other bloggers don’t allow comments to be left on their blogs; this strikes me as a old-style schoolteacher who lectures at the podium without interacting with a class, or a politician who refuses to field calls from constituents except at election time. How do you know what people want, unless you allow them a voice? Allow them to be publicly heard, and you show them a greater respect, not to mention a willingness to involve yourself in honest discourse. This has the added effect of building loyalty, as well as traffic between your site and others.
Another thing I keep in mind while planning: alternate ways of providing material, besides your own posts. These commonly tend to fall under certain categories (although others do exist):
- Other posters, either regular or as guests
- Constantly changing links, with comments (such as a del.icio.us roll or two)
- Syndicated material from other sites (lists of recent posts, pointing to the articles and updated automatically)
- Shoutboxes and comment feeds, where people can leave messages on your site that appear as a scroll or feed of some type (great for sites fostering heavy discussion)
- Information fed from other sites that you may have contributed to, such as a series of thumbnails from your recent Flickr posts
My blogs already have several of these, and my Holmes site is no exception. For example, I often come across interesting pages about Holmes or Conan Doyle at other sites. I can simple post it to del.icio.us with a “sherlock” tag, and have all those links appear automatically in a box on the new blog. News, I tag with “shscandal”, and it will show up in my Scandal Sheet section. There’s something to be said for automating as much of your content as possible. On the other hand, some people take it to the extreme: their blogs are no more than simple portals, taking others’ information and posts, and simply displaying it within their own pages. From time to time, I actually find my AMMT or DIYPlanner posts copied in full on other sites, sometimes without even an acknowledgement of my name or site! Needless to say, this is a way to upset others. Don’t do it.
If you have a somewhat personal blog and only foresee low traffic numbers, then the idea of financial support probably doesn’t strike you as important. But even fledgeling blogs stand a change at covering basic hosting charges through Google ads and an Amazon Associates account, both of which are very easy to set up. The former means pasting a little chunk of code into your blog for an ad to appear, and the latter means constructing links that, if followed, snatch you a small percentage for each book sold. If your traffic picks up due to your growing technical and/or marketing know-how, your amazing content, or perhaps even a random fortuitous link, it means you have a shot at getting dedicated advertisers or special types of ads, such as in RSS feeds, which can bring in even more pocket change.
Be aware, though, that blogging is a hard thing to do for a living. Many have tried, carefully plotting their business model and putting in endless hours of content creation, and have ultimately failed. All is not lost: there’s always publicity, financial opportunities (chiefly job offers and freelance contracts), networking, a reputation as an expert, and other outcomes to keep in mind. Many people have turned hobbies into occupations or legitimate businesses; a blog is no different. Just don’t toss out a few words here and there and expect the world to come knocking at your door with fistfuls of cash. The dot-com era is over, and it’s unlikely that VCs are going to want to pay for you to post stories about Fluffy and his big honkin’ furballs, complete with a flashing Purina advert.
Getting the word out is not easy, either, unless you’re “tapped in” to a number of blogs or discussion sites where people will probably want to read your material. In my case, AMMT and the D*I*Y Planner got a good start when I mentioned my (then rather primitive) little templates on some productivity sites and mailing lists I frequented (read: was obsessed with). This, I believe, is a good example of what to do: if you have a particular subject matter in mind, announce it in those places where people with a similar interest can be found. It sounds logical, and it is. But try not to appear out of the blue and start promoting yourself. Hang out, discuss, leave your URL in your signature, say profound things, and people will learn to respect you and actually want to hear your thoughts. Being a lurker counts against you in such cases, as it will when you start posting. People want to read the opinions of someone with something to say.
Of course, one can get an immediate traffic boost by writing something sensational that caters to the audiences of a major site like SlashDot or bOINGbOING, then submitting the link. But you’ll be one among hundreds, if not thousands, that submit their wares that day, so don’t count on being picked up. And even if you are, once the hordes come (and possibly bring your server and spam filters to their knees), they had better find other materials on your site that they want to read, or else you’ll not be bookmarked, or have your feed taken, and in a few days you’ll be sitting in your big ole’ empty room again, like the aftermath of the proverbial party that wrecked your house and went off to other, more popular hosts with better booze.
And lastly, stay away from “link exchange sites”, as these rarely work. Why? Because the only people who exchange links with them are newbies with oft-lacklustre content, and whom few people read. In the mathematical voodoo of search engines, this generally racks up very few points, and you’ll definitely loose those points with net-savvy people who visit your site, only to find scores of random links to furball Fluffy and obsoleted blogs with smatterings of “I found this cool link today: link”. Yup, these are like the unpopular kids in the schoolyard that try anything to become accepted. Rise above that, become an individual, and speak your mind. That’s why people will listen to you, and visit again and again. Once they find you in the first place, of course. (And that’s the hard part.)
Well, that concludes my few pages of wild and woolly notes. Hopes this helps someone out there….
March 29th, 2006
About six years ago during the height of the dot-com madness, I was flown across the continent on very little notice for an e-learning consultation, and promptly placed in a high-end hotel (the type that feels no need to include “quality” in its title). Each morning the hotel would sponsor a special e-networking breakfast room for select guests, and it was here one morning that I stood, overlooking San Diego while indulging in aromatic coffees, decadent pastries and exotic fruits. There I made the acquaintance of the CEO of a newly-public company (e-something- or-other, of course), a man in his mid-twenties, just a few years younger than I, but far better-groomed and clad in clothes costing more than a luxury sedan.
The first ten minutes of the conversation was decidedly one-sided, and he went on at length about how he outsmarted his stock advisors and “stuck it to the vulture capitalists” to attain the nearly $40 million he needed to pursue his super-secret business idea (which, true be told, once he explained it to me, sounded like a flaky advertising project to create and sell ads to run within a company’s own intranet). R&D money, for him, meant wining and dining celebrities and high-powered executives in epicurean and orgiastic parties held in rented designer mansions. To determine what people actually wanted, of course.
He asked what I did, and I told him why I was there, and a little bit about my jack-of-all-trades background. He didn’t seem interesting in anything besides himself, so I kept it short. The conversation then went something like this….
“Listen, guy,” he said, mouth half-full with baklava no doubt flown in from Greece –he called everyone guy, even the women in the room– “there are two types of people in the world: the generalists and the specialists.”
I nodded, trying to hold up an tiny expresso cup in my large hands without jutting out a pinkie, because my father told me it wasn’t a manly thing to do.
“The specialists back themselves into a corner, you see. They only have one set of skills, and when those aren’t needed any more, where are they?” He awaited my response, a Socrates probing his Plato, while he picked his teeth with his forefinder and flicked the flakes ramdomly.
“Where?” I asked, cleaning off my tie in as subtle a fashion as possible.
“I’ll tell you where, guy… no where!” he exclaimed, slamming down his empty cup upon the table by way of punctuation. “But people like you and me, we’re too smart for that.”
“Are we?”
“You betcha, guy. You see, we’re the people who evolved, while others got left behind. You don’t see us running around with apes, do you?”
My mind returned to university, when a female friend of mine started dating a large and uncouth individual with an excess of body hair, but I simply shook my head.
“We’re the ones who adapt, who know enough about how everything works that we can be leaders. And leaders are leaders.”
A brilliant observation, I observed.
This went on for another ten minutes, wherein he expounded upon the virtues of those people who knew little about anything in particular, but about many things in general.
It almost made me feel good, however briefly. I had always been a generalist –I prefer the term “well-rounded”– with a hand in everything from project management to art and design, from high-tech multimedia production to marketing, from programming to teaching high school literature. I’d always adapted, often quickly, to whatever role was necessary at the moment, learning whatever skills were needed. It wasn’t a waste of time after all, I reflected.
In 2003, after the dot-com collapse had bankrupted the technology-based private college I was working for, I started going through all the business cards I had collected a few years previous, partly out of curiosity but mostly in the vain efforts to catch a few leads. The CEO’s company, like all the others, was redirected to a squatter’s perch with the pitch “This domain name is available and can be yours!”
Meanwhile, I’m still in pursuit of permanent employment with a good future, while all my specialist friends have been gainfully employed for years with decent, stable incomes. Sometimes it doesn’t pay to be a generalist, I’ve decided.
January 14th, 2006
You might have noticed a few fresh changes to a million monkeys typing. It all comes as a result of upgrading to WordPress 2.0. For a while now, I’ve been hesitant to install the latest patches and upgrades to WP 1.5.x (yes, I know, I’ve been a naughty boy), since my theme was so heavily customised — it was an all-in-one file I originally made for WP 1.0, and quite a mess after being hauled reluctantly through several versions. This weekend, I decided to strap on the bungee cord, close my eyes, and jump. The actual database work and installation was seamless and smooth, but I didn’t see much point in pushing an antiquated theme that couldn’t take advantage of all the latest generation of WP goodness. Thus, with great trepidation, I grabbed a pre-existing theme with a superficial resemblance to the layout of AMMT –Blix by Sebastian Schmieg– and started creating my style sheets again from scratch.
Might I reveal here that my CSS2 is a tad rusty? Or at least it was, until yesterday morning when I started diving into the plumbing of the styles. Slowly, it all started coming back to me, even all the “standard” codes that break Internet Explorer (which are, as any CSS guru knows, quite numerous). Not everything here is perfect yet, and you’ll no doubt see quite a few things break intermittently in the next couple of days.
Seeing it’s a new year, and a new start in so many ways, I’m going to clear out some of the clutter here, streamline some of the formatting, create a few new features, and generally get back to blogging regularly. Although we’re still not unpacked from our big move, I think it’s a good idea to get back to regular online life again, and despite the success of my other site DIYPlanner.com, I still consider AMMT to be my homestead of sorts. (DIYPlanner was designed to be more of a community than a place for one individual’s voice.)
As for WP2, I am enjoying it quite a bit, but am still undecided about the WYSIWYG editor for posts. Although it’s mostly well done, I find it a little slow on this G3 PowerBook, and keep tripping across paragraph breaking issues. Besides, I speak HTML like a native language, so using the non-WYSIWYG editor is not an impediment of any kind. That being said, all the other changes –such as the streamlined posting interface, the “inline” images and files, the end of .htaccess hassles, and the easier management of content– are priceless, and worth the upgrade. Plus, the whole thing feels much speedier, which is no doubt a result of the interface changes and the new caching mechanism. It’s normally a good idea to wait for the first bug fix release of software, but thus far I have no regrets in jumping headfirst into this upgrade.
I’ll follow this post up in a few days with some more thoughts about using the new WP2, as well as some of the plugins I’ve decided to set up.
January 1st, 2006
Perhaps I’m just hopelessly naive, but I normally try to assume the best intentions from people (at least, most days… sometimes an ill wind has been known to blow from my direction, however briefly, and I try to make amends when that happens). I tend to believe that everybody is intrinsically good, but that folks often make mistakes, take a wrong turn, or lose touch with their nature. As such, I’ll try to take someone at their word.
Which is why I’m a little confused by a post from Lee Phillips, who suspects a hidden agenda behind my recent review of Tinderbox as a brainstorming and writing tool. I can’t imagine I’ve personally slighted him, so I can only assume a sort of paranoia at work. (He runs a mailing list about the product which he calls “uncensored,” which is a little unusual in itself.) Now, I’m not going to get all kumbayah here, calling for peace on Earth and all that (it’s been done), but I would like to set the record straight on the back-story.
One of the little D*I*Y Planner side projects I’ve been playing around with lately has been a way of using OpenOffice.org templates to import (via macros) some external data, essentially populating the forms and prepping them for print-out. I’m only at the early stages of it right now, but I wanted a nice self-contained tool for experimentation that would let me structure information in various ways and export ready-to-use data for OOo. After trying a few dozen alternatives, I decided that Tinderbox –with its outline stucture, agents and high-powered export template language– would be a good choice to start with.
I contacted Tinderbox creator Mark Bernstein about the project, asking for his opinion about how his software might fit the needs of my crazy scheme. He said that it could probably work, and offered to donate a copy of the program for our little non-profit project. Now, where I live –eastern Canada– one good turn still deserves another, even in this day and age, and so I offered to run an ad for Eastgate on my sites for the month of December, free of charge. Eastgate not only carries Moleskines, which would appeal to many of my readers, but also index card briefcases and Florentine journals (that, alas, I can only drool over right now). I thought the fit was apt, and I could return his kind consideration.
Now, my review came, as they all do, as a result of the dedicated usage of the product for a few weeks. The fact that it was favourable is simply because… well, it’s a damn good product. That’s it, really. No money exchanging hands, no Eastgate conspiracy, no grassy knoll, and no little red guy sitting atop my shoulder with a pitchfork. It shouldn’t be that boring, but it is. If I hadn’t liked the product, I probably wouldn’t have bothered reviewing it at all.
As for the “smell,” I do try to wear a strong deodorant and take a shower daily, but I am a really big, hard-working man who spends a lot of time in the woods with a dog. Sorry, Lee, but I’d advise standing up-wind….
December 23rd, 2005
For a year or so now, I’ve been evaluating quite a number of digital brainstorming tools in order to find one that best serves the way I think, the way I make associations, and the way in which I like to fiddle with vague and ethereal ideas before they become solid. I’ve tried plain text editors, wikis, various mind-mapping tools like NovaMind, FreeMind and Inspiration, outliners like OmniOutliner, and “notebooks” like Mori, AquaMinds NoteTaker and Circus Ponies Notebook, but none of these seemed to possess the right mix of power, visual layout, rapid entry, and emphasis on text.
And, oddly enough, the answer has been right under my nose for a while. I had been trying to force Eastgate Systems’ Tinderbox into becoming my digital Commonplace Book, but it was a poor fit for me. I required so much multimedia and OS X services support that I felt like I was trying to force a square peg into a round hole, and eventually I decided upon using DEVONthink Pro. While I have not regretted that decision for a moment, my inner geek still lusted after Tinderbox, having had fleeting glimpses of the power that lay untapped beneath its surface.
In a way, Tinderbox is like the Emacs of information management applications. Beneath each deceptively simple exterior (and, after all, Emacs does seem to be just a text editor), there lies a very powerful system with seemingly endless possibilities. Both require some effort and dedication before you begin to understand the depth of the applications and the myriad uses which slowly make themselves known as you explore their non-obvious capabilities. Like Emacs and its underlying elisp, Tinderbox has some powerful tools beyond the basic ability to write and organise text, and this case, it includes scripting tools, agents, rules, versatile export codes, prototypes and multiple views. And, unfortunately, just like Emacs, both applications are often relegated to niche power-users while mom-and-dad computer users have moved on to more straight-forward, simplistic and user-friendly software.
Let me get back to digital brain-storming for a moment. I’m a strange mix of visual tinkerer and textual thinker, and for me, things like colour, size and proximity of items have to strike a balance with text note names, hierarchy, and the ability to enter large amounts of material. For example, I like the ability to rapidly create notes as little boxes with various colours and short descriptive names, then move them around the various sections of the screen to play with categories and relationships. But once these categorisations are made, I want to be able to see the outline of all my ideas, and to write text and annotations for each item.
People who have used Tinderbox are no doubt grinning right now, as this is a perfect (albeit low-level) match for how this application works. By switching views between Map and Explorer views, one can create and place notes visually, and then structure them within an information-rich hierarchy. The latter, DEVONthink Pro can handle, but not the former.
So I started thinking, do I really need to do all of my outlining and writing in DTPro? Of course, the answer is no. Choosing the best tool for the job means evaluating each application on its own merits for the task at hand. For me, Tinderbox has become my brainstorming tool of choice. I like being able to create separate documents as “silos” for each subject matter. For instance, I just created one that outlined a number of business opportunities, and then I worked on another document with some ideas for the next generation of the D*I*Y Planner. These are things that I really don’t want in my DTPro Commonplace Book, at least not until I have something that I feel is somewhat solid and ready to be called “information”, as opposed to a loose but flexible array of insubstantial ideas.
In short, DTPro has become my collection bin for every conceivable type of multimedia information, but Tinderbox has become my repository for half-baked ideas, snippets of incoherent prose, mind-maps of categorical and causal relationships, and brain-dumps that are eventually (well, possibly) massaged into something I’d risk showing to other carbon-based bipeds. It’s for the act of textual creation, an invaluable tool for a writer.
Of course, like any other application, Tinderbox is not without its warts and unsightly blemishes. The price strikes many potential users as extraordinarily high –an initial regular cost of $192 USD, plus $90 per year of updates– but here I’d have to suggest weighing the value of your usage against its cost. Ted Goranson referred to Tinderbox as “a Photoshop-scale application that is underpriced” (and we all know how much Photoshop will set you back).
Other issues concern the documentation: unfortunately for those who learn best by studying example, the manual is structured more like a quick reference help file than any sort of tutorials on how to get the most out of the application. The Tinderbox wiki helps somewhat to fill the gap, but not much. Then there’s the nature of the beast: owing to the complexity of the application on one hand, people have a hard time understanding exactly what Tinderbox can do for them, and yet owing to its deceptive simplicity, others who try the demo write the software off as an expensive and underpowered waste of money. It has almost no support of modern OS X features like services, AppleScript-ability, tight Finder integration, and WebKit embedding (although this might be partly due to the fact that Tinderbox is being ported over to Windows, which lacks these things). And, while Goranson diplomatically called certain components of the application “austere”, others have commented (not unjustifiably) about its interface, which looks basic and somehow temporary, like software in its early alpha form. Supporters of the application are quick to point out that this lack of clutter allows one to focus on core tasks like writing with a modicum of distraction.
Finally, many people seem to have a problem with the fact that Tinderbox seems to be the product of only one man, Mark Bernstein, and that he’s not receptive to other ideas and feedback. From my (albeit limited) experience thus far, I’d have to disagree. True, the Windows port is taking quite a while, but it doesn’t really matter that much to me, since I use Macs most of the time. (My selfishness is showing here.) But looking at the broader vision of how Tinderbox works and what it can do for me, if I were to choose any one person to create such an application, Bernstein is an excellent choice. I have no doubt that he’s an incredibly intelligent man, and almost all of his decisions regarding the functionality of Tinderbox have been spot-on. In fact, I’ve been reading the manual as I fall asleep at night (highly recommended, although the subplots seem forced and the characters are a little two-dimensional), and I’m constantly struck by little eureka moments when I suddenly realise what brilliant little touches are present in the software, although sometimes hidden just beneath the surface. As for feedback, my few exchanges with Bernstein through email over the past couple of years, most of which transpired when I was experimenting with the demos of various versions, have been rapid, quite responsive and thought-provoking. He’s a man with a lot on his plate, but still takes the time to help confused newbies experiment with the demo, probably knowing full well that most of them will never buy. That earns my respect.
Which reminds me, if you do use a Mac and love to write or play with ideas, I’d highly recommend trying the demo, but only if you have enough time to put into understanding how it works; else, you’ll only scratch the surface of what it can do for you, and you’ll walk away from it either confused or disappointed.
These small gripes and oddities notwithstanding, consider me firmly in the Tinderbox camp. In all the various applications I’ve tried, both commercial and Open Source, I haven’t come across one that’s quite so attuned to the way I play with ideas and write text. I’m not sure if I think like Tinderbox, or Tinderbox thinks like me, but I know it’s an environment which encourages creativity without distraction, and yet feels wholly comfortable to use. A winning combination, indeed.
December 20th, 2005
Today you’ll find a guest post of mine on Dave Gray’s Communication Nation about the “back-to-paper movement”:
Dave has mentioned the back-to-paper revolution here, and he’s right. Strangely enough, it’s mainly a revolt of tech lovers against their favourite toys, junkies eschewing their drug of choice. It’s painful, it’s heart-wrenching, it flies in the face of our own self-identities, and it makes all our high-tech podium-thumping and evangelising suddenly look hollow.
Communication Nation: Why techies are leading the back-to-paper movement
November 19th, 2005
Recently, my comrade-in-arms at DIYPlanner.com, eric Farris, was completing his port of the various contacts forms for the letter and A4 sizes of the D*I*Y Planner. There was a problem, however. Normally, I take the various templates, designed in Adobe Illustrator, and copy and paste each one into Adobe InDesign so I can produce the PDF booklets. This time, though, my InDesign refused to launch for some reason.
The other option was to produce his templates as individual PDF files (exported from Illustrator), but I have several problems with this: 1) it makes it very difficult to flip through the forms; 2) printing multiple forms in one print run is impossible; and 3) the combined file size of all the individual files is many, many times greater than one master PDF file.
So eric decided to jump into Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger’s new Automator. For those folks here who aren’t Mac geeks, Automator is a tool whereby you choose applications and a series of actions to automate certain tasks. Although it certainly looked intriguing, I’ve haven’t tripped across anything since getting Tiger that needed this sort of thing. eric suspected that it would be perfect for combining multiple PDFs, and he was right.
It’s basically four clicks: get the Finder Items; sort them in ascending order; combine PDF pages by appending,; and open the Finder Items in Acrobat, where one can “Save As…”. Save the Automator workflow in ~/Library/Workflows/Applications/Finder, and when you select some PDFS in the Finder, you can run this Automator script on them. Beautiful. eric points out that a relevant MacOSXHints.com hint is here: 10.4: Use Automator to combine PDFs.
This means, of course, that I won’t have to slog all his AI templates through InDesign, thus saving me a tonne of work.
(In case you’re interested, Adobe InDesign eventually started working again for no known reason about a week later. Hmph.)
November 16th, 2005
It seems that every geek worth his or her salt is giving Flock a spin. In case you’re not a geek, or have been buried up to your neck in Ruby code, or (God forbid!) offline for a few days, Flock is a pre-release Firefox-based browser that ties into “social” web-based tools like Flickr, del.icio.us, newsfeeds and various blogging platforms. In fact, it does a great job of tying all these things together. For example, you can tag something as a favourite site, and it appears in your online del.icio.us list, which can appear in your blogroll. Meantime, a click on the built-in blog editor and a special toolbar means you can select one of those Flickr images your posted recently and write a blog post about it, publishing it automatically. It auto-discovers most feeds, lets you read them (or even combine various feeds together) in a nice ad-free environment, and –of course– blog about them. Throw in a nice little tie-in to the new blogging service WordPress.com (a free account!), and you have yourself a handy little tool for wrapping yourself in the interactive glory that is Web 2.0. (For a nice little guide of its features, see a short tour at stream of thoughts.)
So, do I like it?
I’m really not sure. (How’s that for a definitive answer?) I’ve never been a big Flickr user (my stream now has a grand total of two images, one for testing ages ago, and another for this post), and lately I find that I use del.icio.us less and less –I tag sites, but hardly ever return to use those bookmarks. The blog editor is decent; I’m actually using it for this post. The feeds are well done, but I’m not sure it’s going to replace bloglines for me any time soon. And the bookmarking system is, for me, rather clumsy, albeit great if you’re using several different computers and don’t mind sharing all your marks with the rest of the world, seeing you sync these online with del.icio.us. (Although, to be fair, you can choose not to share your bookmarks, but you’ll be losing one of the most important –or at least hyped– abilities of the browser.) At least my favourite Firefox extensions work well, including Web Developer Toolbar, GMail Notifier, AdBlock and GreaseMonkey.
I’m giving this a spin for a week. Who knows? Maybe it will encourage me to become more “social”?
October 23rd, 2005
I love it when I get a pleasant surprise for the weekend. Now, all things being relative (and keep in mind that I’m a bona fide geek), this is quite a wonderful one for me: I’ve just downloaded and installed a version of the free Open Source office suite OpenOffice.org 2.0 beta for OS X, a version I didn’t even know existed. (Windows/Linux users can skip ahead a few paragraphs.) It’s not easy to find from any official site that I’ve tripped across, but you can find it here:
http://ftp.stardiv.de/pub/OpenOffice.org/contrib/MacOSX/
The current offering is Milestone 130, which is (according to the OpenOffice.org 2.0 RoadMap) after Beta 2 and before Release Candidate 1. It’s almost a month old, and it needs Apple’s X11 (which is an add-on to Jaguar, but standard in Tiger), but heck, that’s better than nothing. In fact, in the few hours I’ve been using it, I haven’t tripped across any unexpected crashes or glitches, and the whole experience has actually been quite smooth.
Obviously, there are a few bugs and oddities to be found, not least of which is the whole font thing, where one has to manually install fonts before they appear in OOo. A tip: if you haven’t done this sort of thing before (I only know this from using Linux), go to File -> Wizards -> Install fonts from the web… and you can install a bunch of nice typefaces, although the Microsoft ones probably won’t show up. Then, to get the rest of your system’s fonts, call up X11 and in the xterm, type:
cd /Applications/OpenOffice.org\ 2.0.app/
cd Contents/openoffice.org/program
sudo ./spadmin &
After you enter your password, an administration program will pop up (give it a few seconds) and let you add fonts by selecting font directories and then those fonts which you want to install. Not exactly user-friendly, but hopefully this will be rectified by the time of the final release.
The first thing I called up was my D*I*Y Planner Widget Kit. Whew… it works perfectly, and I can now breathe a sigh of relief that I’ve chosen OOo to produce it. (I wasn’t sure what wrenches OOo2 might throw into the cogs.) All told, the whole experience with OOo2 is far slicker and more responsive than OOo1–especially when compared to NeoOffice/J– and there are plenty of handy layout aids, floating/docked toolbars, and drawing tools. While I did find the tools in OOo1 to be fairly clunky, designing forms with the WK seems to be much easier and more intuitive. While it won’t be completely replacing Adobe Illustrator for me any time soon, I can see where I’ll have the opportunity to use this a lot more in my day-to-day work.
As for the other programs in the suite –the word processor, the spreadsheet, the presentation program, the XML forms editor, the database and the HTML editor– I can’t say that I’ve looked at these in any detail yet. I’ve always been fond of the word processor, which actually encourages structure-based writing (unlike, say, Word), and the spreadsheet has always done exactly what I’ve expected it to do. The presentation creator, Impress, has a lot more PowerPoint-style features, has good Flash output, and also blends in the powerful tools from Draw. The HTML editor is as capable as any other non-professional WYSIWYG program (don’t expect Dreamweaver or GoLive), and while the database and XML tools seem quite impressive on first glance, I’ll have to spend more time with them before I can come up with a valid opinion. The native PDF export of the whole suite does seem to be noticably improved, now including hyperlinks and better compression, although it was certainly no slouch to begin with.
Windows and Linux users can take advantage of the more recent OOo2 Release Candidate, or can grab StarOffice 8, the commercial offering from Sun that’s built atop OOo2, but with added goodies like more fonts, a clip art gallery, plenty of templates, a better dictionary/thesaurus, and so forth. (Psst! If you sign up for an account on the Sun website and select your area as “Education/Training”, you can download the full unlimited StarOffice 8 suite free of charge, saving yourself $70. Don’t lie, now. And you didn’t hear this from me.) Those interested in this product can also find a decent (albeit Linux-centred) review of SO8 at NewsForge.
October 9th, 2005
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