It’s funny. I write TealArt enters with a very strange intended audience, and it’s an audience that’s pretty darn old. I joined a listserv a little while ago, and everyone on the list is having fun setting up their ‘blogs’ (blogspot affairs), and I feel like a seasoned pro, because not only have I been blogging for a really long time (I think there has some form of CA/TA blog this or blog that for, 5-6 years, maybe more.) This is an exceptionally long time, when you think about the history of the blog. The end result is that I’m writing for a very strange audience: It’s a bit detached and I attempt to establish some sort of authority/legitimacy. I also don’t expect that there are many real people out there, which I know can’t quite be the case, but no matter.
In the past few weeks I’ve spent a very little amount of time/energy/thought, rethinking the way I use my computer. Mostly this has consisted of a lot of observation of usage habits, software usage, and nagging desires for new features/possiblities. While I was in St. Louis I listed off all the applications that I use regularly in a TealArt entry. I’ve subsquently changed everything I said in that entry, because writing that entry started a minor observation project that I’ve been working on to see what I need/want most and what I need to do to get this done.
My biggest change has been a move back to Voodoo-Pad from OmniOutliner, because I feel like I wasn’t getting the most out of the program (I never did get how to use columns, and I always felt like the formating, an aesthetic concern I’ll grant you, would never behave,) this I think is mostly a problem with my brain and how it works in combination with the kind of tasks that I seem to be focusing on. I learned from 43Folders that there’s going to be some sort of Omni kGTD program (a productivity methodology/application) on the heels of being released. Sweet.
I like VoodooPad because it behaves a little better with the formating, and the new version (which I completely missed) has both multiple window and tabbed editing/browsing of your notes which is great. As is the new file format which allows for bigger file sizes and integration of PDF files (so you can have PDF articles that you get from JStor into VoodoWiks. It’s all great. There’s also a feature in the Pro version that allows you to set up an integrated wiki server through voodoo-pad, which isn’t a feature I’m going to need for years, so I am without.
I’ve also decided to give up the ghost on Microsoft applications for Mac, which doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense. I’m using my weblog editor (more on that in a moment) and VoodooPad for all of my text drafting, and though I might turn on Office every now and then to create knitting patterns, between these apps and google there isn’t a lot that I could want from Microsoft, and I hate the drain on resources to keep such programs open. Despite the ugly icon, I really want to use Mellel, because it looks really cool, and works pretty good in the demo. The only think I need such a program for is for Manuscript editing (and maybe some basic desktop publishing-type things, how long has it been since someone said “desktop publishing?"). So there’s that.
Zoe, my computer, is about a year and a half now, and I’ve just ordered the RAM upgrade that I promised myself that I’d get a year ago (never buy RAM from Apple because it’s cheaper to buy the same stuff cheaper on your own, but then of course I never do because I’m lazy.) So that’s on it’s way, and I think it’ll make the whole operation run a lot more smoothly. For instance, the computer I had for a couple years in high school and my old iBook both had less ram than this one does right now, for no real good reason. But I don’t think that this entry is really about hardware much, so we’ll save that for another day.
And I think this has taken way too much time at this point, so I’ll go now, and I’ll try and write again very soon ;)
Cheers, sam