Scapple Noted

I just wanted to mention that a few weeks ago I did download the beta copy of Scapple from the folks who produce Scrivener. I'm following it closely but so far it's kind of stable and I don't think any further additions are going to be made to it's basic function as a kind of computerized white board for brain storming ideas. I like it's simplicity, but I think that I need to wait until it's been officially released before making further comments.

MarsEdit Not Forgotten

I have stayed from composing in MarsEdit somewhat over the last weeks/months when I've been seduced by Markdown however nothing is really faster than just using MarsEdit and straighforwardedly writing content and applying formatting from within it's editing window. I guess this means that I'm going to stay with the program and not attempt to do anything complicated within these other writing environments, particularly as I seem to constantly get into trouble with cutting, pasting, copying, etc from one program to another.

Apple Dictation

Since I just upgraded to Mountain Lion a few days ago I've decided that I need to at least experiment with the new dictation feature of the operating system. I am therefore writing this blog entry with dictation turned on. I am using iA Writer for text entry. A problem might be in that the dictation does not recognize the word iA Writer. We shall see. Actually the dictation system did fairly well with that edit name and I'm only needing to go back in and edit the text in a minimum number of places. I t does turn out (when I experiment) that I need to actually speak not particularly quickly otherwise the system tends to introduce more errors and that of course means that I have to go back and edit more

VoodooPad

VoodooPad is a program which I purchased back around Memorial Day, and I have to say this wiki program for the Mac is working quite well for me. I’ve been a long time user of ConnectedText on the Windows platform, but of late I’ve pretty much exclusively moved to the Mac and only run windows under Parallels or Wineskin Winery.

My wiki lust of course was frustrated by not being able to conveniently use a program that easily and seamlessly links between entries in the way that Wiki’s generally do. ConnectedText had always worked in this way and certainly VoodooPad does a better job with such links than other note taking programs for OS X. I’d certainly like to find another program like ConnectedText or VoodooPad to test and in fact on IOS there is Trunk Notes which certainly hold promise as a Wiki that not only allows casual linking between notes, but also supports markdown and the Lua programming language.

And speaking of markdown I should also not forget to mention that VoodooPad entries can be written using that format, although I did find out that at the moment there seems to be certain limitations in the implementation and how markdownformatted text interacts with the Wiki structure.

Anyhow, I’m still very much in the exploration stage with VoodooPad so I’m really not ready to give it a full scale review, but perhaps sometime in the future…

Useful Bartender

I’ve just discovered this app after check out recent entries in Frank Eve’s useful and interesting blog on Mac, IOS, and BC. Actually I’ve come across other interesting pieces in Frank’s blog, but that’s for another time.

Bartender is now an essential Mac application for me since it specifically addresses a cluttered and too busy an OS X menu bar. This will most probably only develop after you’ve owned a Mac for a while, but believe me you’ll get there. Bartender allows application icons which might ordinarily be pushed out of site to be relocated into a new menu bar which can sit below the regular one. It’s a simple concept that fulfills a need and it’s available for no cost so try it!

Dropbox, Markdown and IOS

I’m fiddling around with probably far too many editor apps for ios. At this point I’m using (from way back) Simplenote, Day One and I’ve just installed and started playing around with Trunk Notes. And now I’m getting keen on checking out Elements. Perhaps I should stop this incessant experimentation especially as there are other editor apps that I occasionally use on my iPhone such as Plaintext, Drafts (quite like this one) and possibly some other apps. I also use EverNote but this software is something I tend to reserve for storing webpage clips in.

And so I find after checking these different apps, that one thing that some have in common is dropbox sync and markdown support, and apps in this category are probably the most seductive to me.

Blog editing programs

At the moment I’m trying to decide whether or not to compose my blog posts in MarsEdit or go over to VoodooPad. Both programs are seductive environments in different ways, but the former is definitely more mainstream and in any case I actually do my main writing from within Byword and then copy and paste or just connect using Quickcursor

Discovering Mou

One of the reasons that I feel that I can actually make good headway with this blog (as opposed to other attempts that I’ve made writing in this medium) is that I’m using markdown which enables a writer to compose a piece without having to worry about formatting up front. The markdown notation however requires actually formatting characters to be inserted into text - it’s just that a plain text file marked down with markdown is a lot easier to read that an html formatted file.

Go here more information on markdown. I suppose the other extreme to writing a blog post in markdown or even direct html would be creating and formatting in a program like MS Word. And of course this brings up the initial issue of separating composition from formatting, but also involves all of the other concerns of using a general Word Processor for writing a simple blog post. It’s kind of like using a sledge hammer to kill ants and besides not everyonene necessarily has a copy of Word. I don’t have Microsoft Word by the way, and for that reason alone, I suppose, it’s a non starter for my blogging tool.

All of the above is kind of a prelude to my happy discovery of a new markdown editor for the Mac called Mou. It’s available on the developer’s website at Mou and even though it’s still only in “early ”beta stage" according to the developer “ it seems to be (as far as I’m concerned) quite feature complete as a markdown writing tool.

Mou has a straight forward window divided down the center with a left hand side frame for text entry as formated markdown and a right hand side frame devoted to html ‘live preview’ display. There’s also an option for css choice on the live preview and it all works extremely well and seemlessly.

One of the reasons that I like this program and am using it in the production of this blog is that the live preview makes it very easy to learn markdown by example - there’s a very useful example file provided - but none of this would be so useful if the program was slow. Indeed tardyness if definitely not a problem here, and I’m running Mou presently on a 4 GB iMac on 2008 vintage as well as a recent model MacBook Pro with 8 MB of RAM. I switch back and forth between devices with my production file residing on a dropbox folder.

Once I’m satisfied with the formatting and general appearance of the text, etc, it’s a simple matter to just copy text from Mou directly into html which can be pasted into MarsEdit for final preview, etc and posting to the blog. I have to admit that I’ve done some experimentation with this, but at least for the time being this all seems to work pretty smoothly.

And that’s all there really is to know at this stage, although I have to say that for this last part of this entry I’m actually using Byword in conjuction with Mou since I like Byword’s typewriter style scrolling facility and larger font size.

Obligatory Introduction

I retired from my job of managing a GIS operation for State Government a couple of years ago and one of the consequences of this change of pace was that I not longer had to use MS Windows. I’d been running a Macbook for a few years before this change but now that I’m in the retirement mode I run OS X programs on my Macbook Pro and iMac almost exclusively although I have to admit that around tax time (which is now) I prepare out taxes using TaxAct running under Parallels 7.

Since I find myself with more time on my hands that I’ve typically had in the past for using my Mac (and iPhone as well) I typically get to try out different programs and perhaps buy same if they strike my fancy. Now since I’m spending so much time and energy actually installing (and occasionally removing) programs from iMac, Macbook Pro and iPhone, I figure it’s more than past time to start recording my observations of all this time wasting software exploration!

I don’t quite know where this blog is heading yet, but I can say that it’s going to be almost exclusively concentrating on the software side of things and I’ll not only be writing about my experiences running OS X programs but also IOS programs on my iPhone. I admit upfront that I don’t own an iPad although it’s possibly a device that I might own in my future. I’ll also try to provide a rich linking environment on this blog, since that’s really what the web’s all about.

For the curious, I’m presently typing this entry using a beta copy of Mou which strikes me as already being a more than adequate system for creating markdown copy even in this still beta stage. Don’t worry if you are not sure what that Markdown reference is about. I’ll probably be writing about it very soon.