Folding Text

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Recently I paid £28 on the Apple app store for a copy of Mellel 3, a word processor I don’t intend to use. This is more than just an example of my relentless addiction to acquiring software (honest!). I recently came across a cache of files from way back in 2006  when I used to use Mellel as my word processor of choice– for the record, it is excellent for handling long documents. At the time, Word on the Mac was more or less unusable for me– it kept slowing down and crashing and Scrivener was not even a blip on my Read more…

MacHeist 4

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While I am talking about software I may as well recommend the MacHeist Bundle. At $29 this is a real bargain, a bundle of 17 apps that includes Scrivener and a 15 month sub to Evernote Premium– two of the most useful programs ever for writers. (As ever, I shall just take a moment to plug Scrivener— the best app ever for the working writer.) Either one of these things alone cost more than 29 bucks. The rest of the bundle has some nice software– I particularly like Radium, a really cute internet Radio App, and Mariner Software’s MacGourmet– a recipe collection Read more…

DragonDictate 3

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I suffer from RSI. When it gets really bad I switch to a speech recognition software such as Dragon Naturally Speaking or DragonDictate. Over the years I have tested a lot of speech recognition systems on OS X. To tell the truth I have never been that impressed by any of them. It is the one area in which the Macintosh has lagged behind Windows in terms of software for writers. I started with MacSpeech’s iListen back in the days of the PowerPC iBook. A number of people reported getting good results with it but I’m afraid for me it was Read more…

Gamesday Italia:The Report

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So I’m back from Italy. It was just a flying visit really but it was a lot of fun. I hopped on a plane to Vienna on Saturday night and made my connection to Bologna without problems. I was undoubtedly the scruffiest looking man of my age on the flight. It got me a nice double take from a fellow passenger when he saw the limo that picked me up. Needless to say the driver was a lot smarter dressed than I was.  I ran into a few people from Black Library, Forge World and GW Italy in the hotel on Read more…

Gamesday Italia and Other Stuff

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Just a quick note to say I am getting ready for Gamesday Italia in Modena. I am really looking forward to this. Also for all you writers out there, a book recommendation; 2K to 10K: Writing Faster, Writing Better. This is one of the shortest and best books about writing I have read, and certainly the best book about writing I have read this year. It’s by Rachel Aaron, of How To Write 10,000 words in a Day fame and it covers not only how to increase your word count, but how to edit efficiently and well, and probably the Read more…

Waiting for Pandaria, WoW-Killers and Other Stuff

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So I am sitting here waiting for Mists of Pandaria to drop. I am not wildly excited by the thought of Kung Fu pandas but I expect Blizzard to do a decent job and I am curious. I strongly suspect I will end up playing more Guild Wars 2 than WoW in the near future. A lot of people are saying the same. That got me thinking about how many games have been called a WoW killer and how silly this tendency is in our media and not just in how it applies to games. Way back when I worked Read more…