In my ongoing quest to find better, more efficient, more distracting procrastination tools, I came across this, from Oxford Dictionaries. You drop some text into a box, and it tells you how Shakespearean you are. The essay I’m currently working on is “84% Shakespearean” which means, apparently, that the waters of Avon are almost lapping at my feet:
Category Archives: Writing
Scrivener 2.0 Is Coming Soon
Scrivener is the formerly Mac-only application I use to do most of my writing. It’s a self-contained, multi-functional marvel that lets me get down to writing and have all my research, notes, snippets, and whathaveyou to hand without having to switch between windows, or fiddle around with combining lots of different services and bits of software. Back in 2009 I wrote a paean to Scrivener which has turned out to be one of the most read posts on this blog.
Scrivener has always worked well for me, despite being intended primarily for writing fiction, but there were rough edges. Now many of those edges are going to be smoothed. Scrivener 2.0, introduced on the developer’s website before its release in October [Update: November 1st], looks like a significant revision. Among other things there are improvements to the corkboard, and outliner, new ways of comparing text, and managing notes, and even ePub export. There is also Simplenote syncing, which is extremely exciting. I’m looking forward to getting my hands on it.
Scrivener 2.0 is described, with screenshots, right here.
My review of Scrivener, and a description of my workflow, is here.
Simplenote: Notetaking Everywhere
In my ongoing and probably fruitless quest to find software that will do its job across platforms and devices I have been looking at notetaking applications. In the course of my week I work on three different ‘full-size’ computers using three radically different operating systems and I use an iPod Touch for keeping on top of things while I’m on the move. Synchronised data is a serious problem.
About a month ago I discovered Simplenote, a notetaking app for the iPhone/iPod Touch which has one simple aim: to replace the built-in notes app on those devices. Like a lot of iPhone apps Simplenote syncs with a web-based service. But the clever thing about it is that it allows other applications to sync too. There are currently four desktop apps (Mac only I’m afraid) that sync with the Simplenote web app. Windows and Linux users should take heart from the Simplenote plugin for Google Chrome, a great replacement for the now more or less defunct Google Notebook (Update: Windows users might now also like to try Resoph Notes, or Notes, and there are continuing developments elsewhere too–thanks to David in the comments for the update). A full list of apps, plugins and extensions is here.
For me the best of the desktop apps on the Mac is Notational Velocity, a simple, lightning-fast open source notetaking tool that syncs with Simplenote almost instantly. Notational Velocity is focused on keyboard work rather than the mouse, it works in plain text or Rich Text Format, and it can encrypt notes. Unlike other similar applications it can be configured to save the notes as separate text files rather than locking them inside a database. This means your work stays yours and is easy to manage. It also opens up all kinds of interesting possibilities. If you change one of those files in another application–a wordprocessor for instance, or Writeroom–it appears in Notational Velocity and from there on your iPhone. You can even create new files outside of Notational Velocity and they will appear there when you next open it up; or put the Notational Velocity file folder in Dropbox to sync with other machines. That’s pretty slick, though it is unwise to have two instances of Notational running and pointing at the same folder at the same time.
Notational Velocity meets a lot of the needs I have in this kind of application: it is simple, fast, stores my data in an open, portable format and allows me to move it around to different devices seamlessly and straightforwardly. Add to that the ecosystem of apps growing up around Simplenote, and the interaction possible between them, and suddenly ‘cloud computing’ looks like much more than just keeping your documents on Google’s servers. In this version of the cloud, data is everywhere. We need more software like this.
On Poe, Chesterton, and Borges
Just added to my writings archive an article of mine on Poe, Chesterton, and Borges called ‘The Chevalier and the Priest: Deductive Method in Poe, Chesterton and Borges’. The piece was written about ten years ago and was published in the journal Clues: A Journal of Detection in 2001. I was contacted last week by someone asking for a copy of this piece, but unfortunately their email address didn’t work so I couldn’t send it. This is probably a better solution anyway, but it has been strange revisiting work from what seems like another era.
Links for 2 March 2009
I’ve been working offline a lot this week and trying to concentrate on getting a couple of projects underway, but here are a few things that have come over the parapet:
Caroline Smailes is going to be signing her new novel Black Boxes at Waterstones in Chester on Saturday March 7th between 11am and 1pm. Caroline is a terrific writer and her books are well worth getting hold of even if you can’t make it to Chester.
Lots of us are trying to find ways to make our favourite online reading available in other forms and the Tabbloid service from HP aims to help by converting RSS feeds into a pdf. You can add as many feeds as you like (at least I can’t see a restriction) and a nicely formatted pdf ‘magazine’ is emailed to you at intervals you specify. There’s no sign-up and the service is free, but you do need to give your email address, for obvious reasons.
There are developments over at the Shedworking blog, where you can now buy t-shirts, mugs and whathaveyou with designs by Felix Bennett.
And finally, Liberty Hall Writers is advising that we should kill our wordprocessors. True.
