Of course, you've heard of Dropbox. It's a simple idea but it's a game changer. It's a piece of software that creates a folder. It stores anything you put in that folder in the cloud and on every computer on which you have installed Dropbox and it keeps all of these different folders in sync when the computer carrying them is online. It's so useful I have set it as the default save location in my Wordprocessor. It deals with the vexed problem of backups by ensuring that I have the file in Dropbox on that computer, on any machine I log in on later and in the cloud. I can access the files through the Dropbox website. That said, I don't rely on it for all my back up needs. I also use Time Machine, Back in Time and their ilk. I store … [Read more...]
The Angel of Fire
I thought I would say a little about the work in progress today. The Angel of Fire is a story of the Imperial Guard during the Macharian Crusade. It follows three friends, Leo, Anton and Ivan, part of the crew of a Baneblade, who by a series of strange accidents and the occasional bit of heroism end up saving the life of Macharius himself. It also involves huge armoured battles, urban combat in the streets of a Hive and a particularly nasty bunch of pyromaniac Tzeentch cultists. It's been a lot of fun to look inside the 41st Millennium from the first person point of view. It places a different focus on things from the third person. It's more idiosyncratic. All of the action is on a much more human scale than the Space Wolf books. Looking … [Read more...]
Bye Bye Rift, Hello Again WoW
I cancelled my sub to RIFT yesterday evening. It was not because I did not enjoy it. It was fun -- a polished, pleasant fantasy MMO that played well. It just did not excite me all that much, which is the danger of following too closely in the footsteps of a market leader like World of Warcraft. Everything is just a little too familiar. I ended up feeling that if I am going to play a perfectly polished clone of WoW, I might as well play WoW where at least I have guild, friends and family. I stopped playing WoW because I was burned out by the grind and everything was just a little bit too easy and familiar. I went back last night to level from scratch on a new PvP server with my son Dan. No heirloom gear, no Sugar Daddy level 85 toons to send … [Read more...]
Apple Sales Growth and Guardian Spin
Over at the Guardian tech blog Charles Arthur points out that over the past five years Apple has enjoyed growth of up to 27% while Windows PC manufacturers have seen sales slump. Sounds impressive, doesn't it? Surely it's worthy of serious investigation! There must be something that Windows PC manufacturers could learn here. And yet the same article points out that Apple's overall market share has grown from something like 3.35% worldwide to a mighty 4%. That sounds a lot less impressive, doesn't it? Apple are a great brand and they make very nice machines but 4% market share is not striking any sort of blow against the Windows behemoth. Using those 27% growth statistics to flog the Windows beast relies on a simple jedi math trick. Here it … [Read more...]
Monday Again– Let the Writing Begin
So here we are at the start of the work week. I have been doing my usual Monday morning thing -- making lists of what needs to be done this week. I started this on a sheet of paper last night-- I don't touch a computer at all on Sundays unless it's an absolute emergency. (This is not because I belong to a Sabbatarian Sect -- its simply to give my RSI a rest.) I put aside time every Sunday to think about this, just as I spend the last day of each month plotting what I will do in the following month. And, yes, I spend the last days of each year plotting what I will do in the coming year. I also have a 5 year plan. I like to think I am organised! This morning I begin transferring stuff from paper to my Google and Android Phone To Do lists. … [Read more...]
Scrivener on Linux
I just downloaded the .deb package from the Scrivener forums and installed them on a Linux virtual machine running Ubuntu 10.10. It worked flawlessly. I am looking forward to testing this next week. Below is a screenshot of The Angel of Fire imported from OpenOffice Writer. In case you are wondering why the word Scene appears so often in those Binder headings it's because I put it there to mark scenes in my OpenOffice file before I imported it into Scrivener for Linux. I then performed a search for the word and used the Shift+Control+K hotkey combination to split the file into individual scenes in Scrivener. Yes, I spend my time doing this stuff and it really amuses me. I am a sad, sad man. … [Read more...]
A Week On OpenOffice
So here it is, Friday. I have been working away for a week in OpenOffice Writer and I have had some time to assess the impact. I have written and revised my work quite happily and so far I am not missing Scrivener too much. This surprises me. It really does. I have written my last 5 books in Scrivener and have really enjoyed doing so. My only real conclusion is that modern word-processors are catching up with the Scrivener features I like in exactly the same was other operating systems are catching up with and even surpassing OSX. Yeah-- I know that's a huge claim to make in a throwaway line-- I'll get back to it at a future date. There are some things I miss, the Target word count and the Session word count features but that is about … [Read more...]
Working in Ubuntu
I went out to the cafe today carrying my Acer TravelMate 8371 running Ubuntu 10.10. I opened my present manuscript from Dropbox and I began work immediately and I did not stop writing until I had done 1500 words. I was very pleased with myself and very happy with the Ubuntu writing environment. Of course, when I came home, I had a setback. I opened up Dropbox in Windows 7 on my desktop replacement and looked at what I had written. I decided that I did not like the way Open Office Writer handled chapters and scenes. It does not allow you to fold the lower headings into the higher headings in Navigator. Libre Office does so I decided to uninstall OpenOffice and installed Libre Office. Unfortunately, uninstalling OpenOffice also corrupted my … [Read more...]
Scrivener to Writer
This morning I compiled The Angel of Fire, my work in progress, in Scrivener, saved it as an RTF file and transferred it to OpenOffice with the intention of completing it there. I'm still trying to get to the bottom of what my reasons were since I love Scrivener. I'll try and list them in order – that is the order they come to me – probably not the order of importance. I have become very enthusiastic about Ubuntu recently even as I am becoming less fond of the increasingly control freak attitudes displayed by Apple. I find myself increasingly attracted to the idea of open source software. There are lots of reasons for this and this is not the place to go into them. That will probably be the subject of a blog on another day. I work on a … [Read more...]
Game of Thrones
Last night's episode of Game of Thrones went very well. The cast is superb and the look wonderful. I felt some of the speeches, which work really well in the book, were perhaps overlong for TV but that is a minor glitch. Kudos to all involved in this. I am impressed. … [Read more...]
