Do You Speak Vim?
December 6th, 2009 § Leave a Comment
Every so often I get on a kick to change the text editors I use. While I have tried most of them, Emacs, Notepad ++ and a many others, the one I keep coming back to is Vim. For most of you, this discussion is as boring as watching paint dry. However, for some geeks who spend a lot of time writing or editing code or even just plain text files the choice of text editors is a big deal.
I don’t write a lot of code, but I do write a lot of text. The longer I have been using computers, and the more versions of word processors I have seen come and go, the more convinced I become of the value and beauty of plain text. A good example of this is found in a recent upgrade of Microsoft Office at work. We went from Office 2003 to Office 2007 and every since, I’ve gotten complaints from the few souls left on our network that are stuck on 2003 that they can’t open the new 2007 file format.
I don’t seem to have that problem with plain text. The things I write now, I want to be able to open in 10 or even 20 years from now. I mean, who has a copy of Word Perfect 5.1 to open all those old documents you created nearly 20 years ago.
There is also a subtle beauty in working with plain text. Vim, for all my experiments with other text editors, is the best. I don’t want to start a Emacs vs. Vi flame war but that’s my opinion. If you want to play with Vim, be warned there is a steeper learning curve than with some other programs but if you stick with it, I believe you’ll find it worth the effort. Who knows, you might even be convinced of the beauty of plain text.
Bohemian Rhapsody
November 29th, 2009 § Leave a Comment
This is funny. A good send up for one of the best rock anthems of all time.
NaNoWriMo Fail
November 20th, 2009 § Leave a Comment
While I started off with great intentions to complete the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) contest and complete a 50,000 word novel in a month, I am not going to be able to complete it. The first day I got about 3,500 words written and was well on my way to my goal. However, events in the very first week conspired against me and I began to fall farther and farther behind. By the end of the first week it was clear that I wasn’t going to make it.
That being said it was not a total bust. For some time I have been blogging on a work related blog called The Crime Analyst’s Blog. I have been fortunate enough to get some attention from a couple of prominent bloggers who blog on crime analysis or criminal justice issues. As I have continued to blog, my blog statistics have continued to grow. A couple of weeks ago I was contacted by a crime and criminal justice website and offered an opportunity to become a regular contributor and write articles for their site The Crime Map.
There is an old adage that says “write what you know”. With 19 years in law enforcement I suppose it’s only fitting that I take that advice. I posted my first article for The Crime Map here. It’s exciting for me as I love to write and want to be able to do more than just annoy my friends on Facebook with my rants.
While I’ll chalk this year’s NaNoWriMo up as a loss, the new contributor gig goes in the win column.
Cheers,
Scott D
NaNoWriMo
October 26th, 2009 § Leave a Comment
It’s not like I am a terribly prolific blogger here at ScottDickson.net. Most months I manage to post at least once or twice. Since I know that many of you wait patiently (don’t you?) for my next post, I need to break the bad news that I am going to go on hiatus for November.
The reason for this is NaNoWriMo or the National Novel Writing Month. What is NaNoWriMo you ask? Here’s the explanation from the NaNoWriMo website:
National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30.
Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over painstaking craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved.
Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It’s all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.
Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap. And that’s a good thing. By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless tweaking and editing and just create. To build without tearing down.
As you spend November writing, you can draw comfort from the fact that, all around the world, other National Novel Writing Month participants are going through the same joys and sorrows of producing the Great Frantic Novel. Wrimos meet throughout the month to offer encouragement, commiseration, and—when the thing is done—the kind of raucous celebrations that tend to frighten animals and small children.
In 2007, we had over 100,000 participants. More than 15,000 of them crossed the 50k finish line by the midnight deadline, entering into the annals of NaNoWriMo superstardom forever. They started the month as auto mechanics, out-of-work actors, and middle school English teachers. They walked away novelists. Source: NaNoWriMo.org
I tried NaNoWriMo last year but due to work, family, running, etc. I didn’t make it. This year however, I plan on redoubling my efforts to produce a crappy 50,000 word opus by the deadline this year. If I seem scarce from the blog, Facebook, etc. it’s because I will be pounding the keys towards my goal. I do plan on updating my Twitter feed with my progress while I work on NaNoWriMo. Follow me on Twitter, or look at my Twitter sidebar here to keep up with my progress.
If I make it, this year I’ll let you know.
Cheers,
Scott D
Review: The Search for God and Guinness
October 12th, 2009 § Leave a Comment
The title of this book piqued my interest. Having spent a number of years as a member of a famously teetotaling church denomination I had been used to thinking of alcoholic beverages as something bordering on immoral. While I had left that denomination and even came to a more enlightened conclusion about alcohol that allowed me to develop a passion for craft beer, I guess I still had some emotional baggage regarding beer.
Stephen Mansfield writes an engaging history of the Guinness brewing dynasty. A history that includes a strong faith in God and led the Guinness company to pioneer social change in Dublin and throughout the world. While we think that companies that provide for their employees well-being as a modern invention of a dot-com company like Google, Guinness was providing for their employees in a manner to rival these dot-com’s at the beginning of the 20th century. Just as amazing as the Guinness family’s investment in their employees was the story of Rupert Guinness who took his new bride and their £5 million pound wedding gift and moved into the slums to work towards improving the lives of the poor.
In a departure from the form of a traditional historical narrative, Mansfield concludes his work with a five point epilogue describing the values that made Guinness successful that Mansfield calls “The Guinness Way”. It’s an interesting conclusion for a worthy book.
My only criticism of the book is not so much the fault of the writer but of the enormous story he tries to tell in a brief 270 pages. The Guinness story is so big, with such an interesting cast of characters that any attempt to distill it down to such a brief form invariably leaves it feeling a bit disjointed. In spite of this I’d recommend this book to anyone with a love of God and a taste of good beer.
As a matter of disclosure, I participate in Thomas Nelson’s Book Review blogger program. I get copies of the books I review gratis in exchange for reading and writing reviews of the books. For more information about this visit: http://brb.thomasnelson.com/
Shalom,
Scott D
Achieving Your Dream
September 16th, 2009 § Leave a Comment
Rush is my all time favorite band. In this film, Geddy Lee, their bassist talks about his musical heroes and achieving the dream of playing the hall where he watched his heroes play.
What’s your dream? Are you chasing that dream? If not, why not?
Something To Think About
September 12th, 2009 § Leave a Comment
The stats in this will blow your mind.
How will you use social media in your personal life? In your faith?
Of Macs and Men
August 30th, 2009 § Leave a Comment
I went down to the Apple Store yesterday and dutifully paid homage to the Apple Fan Boy in me by purchasing a copy of the Mac OSX 10.6 Snow Leopard operating system. I also ended up buying some new video editing software (Final Cut Express) and some photo editing software (Photoshop Elements). Now I can play with video compositing which I have been wanting to try for a while, and get back to some art photography that I used to enjoy.
- Apple II+
- Mac Classic
- Performa 575
- Power Mac 7100
- Green G3 iMac
- 17″ Flat Panel iMac
- Powerbook 140
- Powerbook 7500
- iBook
- MacBook
- Sharp Expert Pad (Newton Message Pad 100)
- Newton Message Pad 110
- Newton Message Pad 130
- 15GB 2nd Generation iPod
- 2nd Generation iPod Nano
- iPhone 3G
I still have a few of these items. The rest have been passed on to others or sent to the big network in the sky. This doesn’t include all the other Macs I have used at work either in the Navy or at my current employer (we had one or two at one of my assignments years ago). My work history with them goes back to 1989 and was with Mac SE and SE30 era. I guess 20 years is a pretty long time for a love affair with Apple products.
My New Dell Mini 9
March 18th, 2009 § Leave a Comment
I got my Dell Mini 9 netbook yesterday. I have always been intrigued by small gadgets. When the netbook craze started I wanted one in almost an “ashamed to admit it” kind of way. I am supposed to be some uber geek and here I want this “toy”. It’s kind of like a guy admitting that you like the 80′s stadium rock band Journey. Real guys don’t like that stuff do they? (I hate to admit it, I do like Journey…I’ll hand over my man card now.)
While the Asus netbooks that started this craze were interesting I really wanted to wait until one came out from a major manufacturer before I took the plunge. I know that Asus is an OEM for a number of big names but I still had concerns and the toylike size didn’t help it either. I’ve always had a preference for Macs but for the Windows machines in the house I generally buy Dell’s. They’re based close to where I live and I have a few aquaintances that work there. When Dell came out with the Mini 9 the cracks in my resolve began to appear. My resolve gave way completley when tech columnist Andy Ihnatko wrote that he mananged to get Apple’s OSX running on his. He wanted a small, ultraportable machine to drag around in case he needed to bang out a quick article without having to drag a real and expensive MacBook around. I had similar reservations about dragging my $1200 MacBook all over the place.
I vacilated between buying an new one and trying to get a deal on one from the Dell Outlet website. I started seeing some on the Outlet site for about $219 with Ubuntu linux, 1 gb RAM and a 8 GB solid state drive. The first time one appeared at that price I clicked the Add To Cart button and by the time by browser registered the click someone else got it. This started a cycle of clicking refresh, finding a machine with what I wanted and clicking Add To Cart only to find that someone else got it…again, and again, and again. I was about to give up after about 30 minutes of this when I saw a machine pop up for $209. I clicked Add To Cart after muttering a quick prayer to the gods of HTTP (there was no time for animal sacrifice), crossed my fingers and waited for my browser to register the click. This time, Success!
I ended up with a black Dell Mini 9 with 1GB RAM, an 8GB SSD and loaded with Ubuntu Linux 8.04 LTS. I picked Linux as opposed to Windows XP as I really wanted to see how an OEM configures Linux on a commercial machine. I’ve used many flavors of Linux from Red Hat, Slackware, Knoppix, SuSe, Debian and Ubuntu as well as a few other more obscure distros. In fact, the last desktop machine I bought from Dell I wiped XP and loaded Ubuntu on it for quite a while.
It’s hard to imagine just how tiny the Mini 9 is just from looking at the pictures. It is dang tiny though. About the size of a hardback book when closed. To get this tiny form factor the keyboard has been shrunk a bunch. It’s not too bad to type on though. The letter keys are about the size of a normal laptop keyboard although there is very little space between the keys. Also, they shrunk the symbol and other keys to little bitty and also managed to stick them in some unusual places. For example, the quote / double quote key is now below the period key instead of above it on normal keyboards. With a little practice it’s not too bad. In fact I typed this entire article on it.
The trackpad is right up to the front edge of the netbook and the button keys are small, slim and take quite a bit of getting used to. This is probably my biggest complaint so far. That a Flash not working in the web browser. I did manage to get Flash working by using using SWFDEC even though Adobe Flash was already installed. Every time I’d go to a website with Flash content, the content wouldn’t work and I’d get the usual ‘do you want to install Flash’ dialog. Dell is going to have to get this right if they want to sell more Ubuntu boxes to the masses.
Other than system updates I haven’t installed much on this. My plan is to see how much I can accomplish using web applications and letting my data reside “in the cloud”. It will be interesting to see if I can do it. It will also be fun to see if I can adapt to the form factor as well as keeping this machine away from my daughter. She’s already got her sights on taking it away from her dad.
Shalom,
Scott D
iPhone Applications
March 4th, 2009 § Leave a Comment
Several friends have recently purchased an iPhone. Being their resident l33t geek, they often ask what iPhone applications I would recommend. To answer everyone’s questions efficiently, I thought I’d show people what apps are on my iPhone.
I think showing what apps I use is probably more informative than just recommending an app. I think sometimes people recommend apps that they don’t really use. There was a recent story out that said in effect, why people download a lot of apps, most times they use them only once or twice. I am kind of weird about things getting crufty and so I will readily delete an app that I don’t use. If it’s on my iPhone I use it. If they app sucks, then it will get deleted off my iPhone in short order.
For brevity’s sake, I probably won’t comment much on the apps that come with the iPhone.
First up, The Weather Channel app (starting at top left, row 2, column 3). This is probably the best weather app out there. You can easily view, current conditions, the hourly, 36 hour and 10 day forecasts. You can also view severe weather alerts & weather maps. I don’t really use the weather video because I can get much more information faster from reading than watching a video.
Now for my favorite app, Evernote (row 3, column 3). One of the biggest annoyances with the iPhone is that while it came with a Notes application, you can’t sync the notes with your Mac other than to email them to yourself. Evernote solves this problem. You create an Evernote account on their website, you can also download a Mac of Windows client and then you can create notes, clip web pages, etc. Once you sync the note you can view it from your iPhone, desktop client or the web. I like it so well I upgraded from the free account to the paid account. It’s definitely worth the $45 per year for me. I can take shopping lists, to do lists, meeting notes, etc. with me wherever I go. This is a must have application. Did I mention that I like this app a lot?
The next icon to the right of Evernote is not really an app but a link to the ESV Bible’s mobile website. Very handy in that I have access to the full ESV text, devotions, etc. from my iPhone wherever I am.
The Google app (row 4, column 1) is pretty handy. I don’t use the voice search but the text search makes it supper easy to Google something without having to launch Safari, navigate to Google, etc. It also has handy links to all of Google’s mobile/iPhone optimized web applications.
The Facebook app (row 4, column 2) works pretty well for those who use Facebook. You can change your status, comment on others status feeds, upload and comment of photos, chat, send and read messages from your Inbox, accept friend requests, etc. The only thing you really can’t do is view, post, administer Facebook Groups.
Twitter is all the rage for microblogging. Twitterific (row 4, column 3) is a pretty capable client to view and post tweets. The only downside is there is no way to follow someone mentioned in someone else’s tweet without launching Safari. Also since the iPhone still doesn’t support cut and paste you can’t cut and paste a URL into a tweet which is a major portion of what people use Twitter for. To deal with these annoyances, I just mark a tweet as a favorite and then go back to Twitter on my MacBook and handle these issues later with a more capable client.
Pandora is a streaming Internet radio service. There is a huge variety of styles and artists and it uses a pretty neat engine to create custom playlists based on artists, styles etc. The Pandora app (row 1, column 2) lets you listen to your Pandora stations on you iPhone. It works well and sounds good if you are on Wi-Fi or 3G network. I haven’t tried it on the EVDO network though. The only downside is that unlike the iPod application native to the iPhone you can’t listen to Pandora while using another iPhone application. Like most other iPhone apps, Pandora doesn’t multitask.
The Public Radio app (row 1, column 3) lets you stream NPR radio stations. I love NPR’s news programs and have trouble getting NPR on the radio as the nearest NPR station is in Austin about 60 miles away. Like the Pandora app, it works well on Wi-Fi or 3G and it doesn’t allow multitasking with other iPhone apps.
I just got the Amazon Kindle app (row 2, column 3) on my iPhone this morning. I love it so far. I’ve been using Stanza to read e-books on my iPhone for a while. The Kindle app has the advantage of Amazon’s huge Kindle e-book store. I downloaded the ESV Bible Kindle book (free!, btw) and a Philip K. Dick book. I’ll start reading them soon.
My only gripe so far is that the page turning interface is different than Stanza’s, a swipe vs. a tap and it might take a bit to get used to the difference. I’ve seen people griping that unlike the Kindle you can’t subscribe to newspapers, blogs and magazines. You also have to use Safari to purchase books rather than doing it through the client. I don’t really see this as a problem as I read all those on the web using Safari. I mainly want to read books wherever I am with my iPhone.
The Stanza app (row 2, column 4) is great for reading e-books. It has online access to many of Project Gutenberg’s books as well as several other publishers. Stanza has a companion desktop app. The best part of that is that you can open a file on the desktop client, and then download it onto the iPhone. The desktop client supports a boatload of formats, TXT, PDF, etc. I get lots of free books, stories, etc. as PDF’s and all of Project Gutenberg’s books are not available using the iPhone client so this makes it easy to get these onto my iPhone.
The USA Today app (row 3, column 1) is great. The interface is probably one of the best of any iPhone app’s and it has the ability to share stories by SMS, email or Twitter (using Twitterific). The Twitter part really makes this app stand out.
The AP Mobile News app (row 3, column 2) works well, The interface isn’t as good as the USA Today app though and while you can share stories via SMS or email it doesn’t have Twitter support.
I love to read Wikipedia. It’s probably because when I was a kid I’d take a different encyclopedia to bed every night and fall asleep reading. I can spend lots of time reading random articles. The Wikipanion app (row 3, column 4) is a great client for accessing Wikipedia.
The NY Times app (row 4, column 1) just got updated. It’s a good thing too because the first version was pretty slow to update the news stories. Hopefully, this version will work better. I do enjoy reading some of the national and international news articles on the “old gray lady”. I just updated this app to the new version so I can’t really comment on how well it will work. So far you can only share stories via email. No SMS or Twitter. The old version was so slow it got deleted off my iPhone.
The BBC Reader app (row 4, column 2) is another one I just got. It seems also a bit slow to download news stories but supposedly it allows off line access. This would account for the slow updating. When you click on a story link it takes you to what appears to be the BBC webpage for that story. You have to use the pinch/un-pinch gesture to zoom in to where the text is readable, at least if you have middle-aged eyesight like me. Another downer is there is no app native way to share stories other than by going to the story web page and using the tiny link at the bottom of the page.
Apple’s Remote app (row 4, column 3) doesn’t come on the iPhone but it should. If you use iTunes on your desktop computer the Remote app can control your iTunes over the network. Slick, works great and no real downside other than when your iPhone goes to sleep (and/or locks) the Remote app takes a bit to find the network, connect to iTunes and get back to where you were.
The WordPress app (row 4, column4) works really well to post to your WordPress blog. It’s full featured and very capable. I can’t imagine that you want to type a long blog post with an iPhone though. I host my own installation of WordPress on my own server space and it works for my blog. I also assume it would work equally well if your blog was hosted by WordPress too.
You’ll notice that I keep most of my game apps hidden over here on the third page.
The iChess app (row 1, column 1) plays a good game of chess. The interface is good and it’s pretty full featured. There is a long splash screen that points you to the paid version. It’s not too annoying but it is a bit disconcerting at first.
reMovem Free is a completely mindless game app (row 1, column 2). It’s a fun timewasting game but there is little challenge involved. Not a real criticism of the app but more if the way you play the game. Good for killing a few minutes while waiting in line in the post office, where you really don’t want a big investment in brain power like a serious game of iChess.
The Sol Free app (row 1, column 3) is great. If you can spend hours playing the solitaire game on your PC then this one is for you. It works well and has a variety of games. If I wasn’t so cheap I might even pay for the paid version.
The Sudoko app (row 1, column 4) works well. I don’t play that often as I’m not often in the mood for the time investment any game of Sudoku requires. My only gripe is that it’s not as easy to write the typical Sudoku pencil notes that most people use as part of their Sudoku strategy. You have to click the Note button first then the number to insert the note or else pressing the number key puts that number in the cell. I can’t imagine another way to do this on a iPhone app so I will cut the developer some slack. Not every game out there is designed with a computer in mind.
The DigiLite app (row 2, column 1) is an electronic drum machine. You can play a pretty full featured drum kit (two tom toms, kick & snare drums as well crash, ride and high hat cymbals). The sounds are great. However, you’re not going to sound like Neil Peart mainly due to the challenge of playing a great drum solo by tapping buttons on a small screen. You can get a great rim shot out of it though. Perfect for those boring meetings, just turn the speaker up really loud so everyone can hear. It also has a record/play feature so you get put a really good riff loop together. However, when you exit the app your loop goes away.
The YPmobile app (row 2, column 2) is a client to search the Yellow Pages. It works well and is location aware. When you first start the app it asks you for permission to use your location. If you grant it, when you type for example “restaurants” it will search for restaurants near where you are. You can even click the location and it will open up that location in the iPhone’s map application. Not bad for when you are in an unfamiliar city.
The User Guide (row 2, column 3) is just a bookmark to Apple’s online iPhone User Guide. Since the iPhone doesn’t come with a manual this is handy for those few features that aren’t intuitive. I do find that the longer I use my iPhone the less I find myself going to the User Guide.
Last but not least is the Google Earth app ( row 2, column 4). I first had some concerns about installing it. While I find Google Earth’s desktop application works well, it is a bit machine intensive. The iPhone app is pretty network intensive too. It’s probably best to use it only on Wi-Fi. I haven’t tried it on 3G and can only imagine that EVDO would be excruciating. It’s probably really close to being deleted from my iPhone in that I find the iPhone’s native Maps app works really well for those times I need a quick fast map.
I hope that this list helps you to find some interesting and useful iPhone apps.
Peace,
Scott D
