Tag Archives: tools

Practical tip no.2: Software for Writers

In the olden days, I used to handwrite into an A4 – exercise book from school. I eventually bought an Olympus typewriter – very analogue but at the time the only mechanical device I could afford (computers were still fairly expensive in 1995! Difficult to imagine today).

This didn’t hinder my writing. There is in fact a great advantage to be had from handwriting into notebooks: they can be taken anywhere and serve as an ad-hoc surface for noting down thoughts.

Writing on a computer has never had the same appeal to either of the above methods. Word processing software connotes 9-5 office work, and was seemingly invented to draft dull pieces of efficient communication meant to  generate specific responses.  Opening Word, it places me by default into this context.

Hence, I’ve been looking for writing software. I remembered that a few years ago, my friend Maciej pointed me towards Writer’s Cafe, a

powerful but simple to use story development tool that dramatically accelerates the creation and structuring of your novel or screenplay.

I searched for it again and downloaded it a few days ago.  I’ll use it (for the first time) next week when I’ll be on annual leave for a week. I want to write (= start and complete) this first, new story, about my former downstairs neighbour and her partner, the wife beater.

WordPress at Web 2.0 Expo

WordPress have announced a new feature that suggests posts (from your own blog or the blogosphere) based on what it thinks is related to whatever it is you’re blogging about. Sounds like a semantic app.

At the web 2.0 expo they also announced the upcoming Monotone – theme, which is basically a photo-blog template. It looks quite nice (demo here) – though photo-blogging is not for me. I’m first and foremost interested in the written word.

Images only when they are blown up 😐

edit: it didn’t suggest possibly related posts for this one. Maybe I need to switch the feature on somewhere.

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What’s Up With Gmail?

Lately, all new WordPress comments that need approval have been ending up in my spam filter. Also, gmail chat has reappeared on the left handside, even though I set it to not be there 😐

Looking at the top right corner, I can see a link has appeared to ‘older version’ – and when you click on it, you’re taken to what looks slightly more familiar.

I.e. there doesn’t seem to be much of an aesthetic difference, but some tech changes underneath. Not sure that I like it 😐

What to Install Onto a New Vista Laptop

Here is the choice of software I’m currently downloading for my mate D. I’m seeing him and J. in an hour. He bought a brand new Vista laptop the other week, but with nothing on! I.e. no office, no photo editing soft, no nothing. And evil MS tie-ins such as IE7 and Windows Media Player 11 (plus, likely, bloaty Norton Anti-Virus that forces you to pay to renew after 12 months).

Thus, below is the software I’ll be installing for him. All legal, all free. All to make his new Vista laptop much more fun (and also safer) 😛

If anyone knows other handy tools, let me know. Note he’s a very casual computer user, so any schnick-schnack and over the top techie stuff is unlikely to be of benefit.