James LaRue - myliblog

I found another wonderful tool for writing, definitely worth sharing. It's called Haroopad . It's an open source, cross-platform, markdown-based, code folding-capable editor. You can download Mac, Windows, and Linux versions from here . The defaults seem to be set up for writers. You can toggle views: editor and HTML viewer side by side, or viewer (on the left) and editor (on the right) if you prefer that orientation, or just one or the other. It has a constant word count display on the bottom status bar. It has lots of themes. There's an automatic focus on the current paragraph. The best thing is code folding. (This is a neat trick that turns a text editor into an outliner . By that, I mean that you can selectively hide and reveal big blocks of text, allowing one to see or rearrange the structure of a document.) I did have to toggle it on (on the Mac, it was under File>Preferences). It works reliably and consistently by structure (header level). I love outliners. ...

As usual, the end of the year makes me thoughtful not only about what I do, but also the tools I use to do it. Much of my life is spent with computers, and so it makes sense to take a step back and look at the larger picture of that from time to time. I now use four operating systems: Windows 7 at work, Ubuntu 12.04 at home, iOS on iPad in many locations, and my Android smartphone. A great deal of my work has moved to the cloud, where I can gain access to it from all these devices. Google has my Calendar, Tasks, and Contacts. the calendar syncs to my Exchange server at work (although I understand that Google doesn't offer that program anymore). Many of my working files are on Dropbox, where I work with them from Office suites on all the individual platforms (Microsoft Office, LibreOffice, Polaris Office, QuickOffice). There are difference between them, but all of them do the modest work I need from them (mostly editing small word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation file...

A couple of weeks ago, I turned on my System76 Meerkat NetTop (which I'd bought back in December of 2010 for $400) and heard the SNAP of some kind of electrical/power discharge. Dead. Although System76 is a great company, and the hardware seems generally reliable for most people (judging by online reviews), it marked the THIRD problem I'd had with my unit, and this one was out of warranty. Sometimes you get a lemon, no matter who the manufacturer is. So I unplugged and recycled it. The good news: I back up my home computer every week in several places. I didn't really lose anything but a few emails. At about that time, I got an electronic ad from the local Micro Center. So I wandered over, and picked up an Acer Aspire (5733/5733Z/5333 Series) series laptop for $300. Oddly enough, this morning I read an article by a librarian about why this is totally the wrong time to buy a laptop. Maybe ... if you really want the latest and greatest. The truth is, my needs are si...

Thanks to Matt Hamilton for this link to another tool. Looks like this one is more collaborative than Sigil. I'll need to set aside some time to dig into these.