I can’t seem to leave well enough alone. I’m still downloading writing apps and trying them out. Nothing is as good as the iA Writer Classic experience so far, but I have made some interesting discoveries.
One is an app called Origin, which has a true typewriter mode. Most apps claiming to have this feature just keep the line you’re typing on centred vertically. This is indeed similar to the way things work in a typewriter, but not exactly the same.
Origin actually keeps each letter centred both horizontally and vertically — just like a real typewriter. The line of letters moves to the left as you type. It’s been so long since I used a typewriter that I had forgotten about this.
What would make it even truer to a typewriting experience would be if only one letter was in focus at a time. Because that’s the way it was. As far as seeing what you were doing while you were in the act of writing, it was just one letter at a time. The rest — the sentences, the phrasing, the cleverness — was all in your head.
You could, of course, stop typing and look at what you’d written, but that would break the flow. Your only choice, to keep that stream going, was to concentrate on whatever letter was being imprinted onto the paper by the key you were pounding.
That doesn’t mean I want to go back to those days. In fact, I found the experience in Origin to be weirdly disorienting. And, of course, an app can’t claim to be distraction-free if the way it functions is itself a distraction.
There’s an old pricing trick to make things seem cheaper than they really are. You take it down to a nine.
For example, instead of charging $10, you charge $9.99. That way, it seems (if you don’t think about it too much) like you’re paying $9.
This old trick is used for pricing Nova, the amazing new Mac-only code editor from Panic. It costs $99, which seems a lot less intimidating than $100, but is actually just one dollar less.
It even translates well (at this writing) to Canadian dollars — $129.98. This is a lot more than $99 or $100, but still apparently less than $130.
There’s a reason for all this agonizing over price. As much as I love Nova, I can’t make myself pay $130 when VS Code is free. Yes, I have to put up with cross-platform compromises, and I have to grudgingly make nice with Microsoft. But still, it’s pretty good. And free.
One day I may give in and buy Nova. After all, I paid for Panic’s FTP client, Transmit, despite the fact there are free alternatives.
I had a story idea that turned out to be not as original as I thought, but I still think it’s worth exploring: Man-Bat.
After coming up with the idea, I heard it mentioned on The Big Bang Theory. So I looked it up, and sure enough DC Comics already has this character — a deranged scientist who takes a potion and turns into a bat with a man’s head. He causes all kinds of mayhem despite Batman’s efforts to help him. His wife eventually joins in as She-Bat.
But this is not at all what I had in mind.
In my story, hundreds of years in the future, an Earth astronaut goes to a planet inhabited by an intelligent species descended from bat-like creatures — just like humans are descended from ape-like creatures.
These bat people have built a civilization to about the same level as we had in the 1950s. They have a written language, transportation, cities — and, of course, crime.
One of them lives in a city where crime is especially bad, and decides to go on a crusade to stop it. He wants to put fear in the hearts of criminals, so he dresses up like a man — the most fearsome creature in this world.
Why so fearsome? This is the only creature that goes to war against itself, the only creature capable of planning its own destruction.
And so Man-Bat is born. He wears a cowl the covers his pointy ears with the rounded side-ears of the fearsome man. Man-Bat’s main weapon is his ability to tell lies. He turns this power around for good, so instead of using the lies to cheat people, he uses them to convince bad people to change their ways.
Our Earth astronaut is fascinated by Man-Bat. He’s actually kind of appalled that human traits are being used this way, and winds up showing himself to be every bit as untrustworthy as his kind is reputed to be.
The astronaut goes out of his way to sabotage Man-Bat, and in doing so becomes a villain. Of course, Man-Bat, being the good guy, wins in the end, and our astronaut is rehabilitated. He lives out the rest of his life on the bat world, doing everything he can to make the lives of his fellow citizens better.
Way back in the day, iA Writer went through a major upgrade that left the original version in the dust. That original version is now known as iA Writer Classic and I’m pretty sure it’s no longer available unless you want to explore some sketchy download sites.
I actually did download that new version, but I kept the old one, too. Because, well, you never know.
I used to have that old journalist’s pride of being able to write anything anywhere, regardless of the circumstances. So who cares what app you’re using? If you need to focus, then develop some self-discipline.
(Apparently, there is a real need for focus these days. Just do a search on “writing focus apps” or something similar. You’ll get suggestions by the dozen.)
Those decades of working for a newspaper left an indelible imprint, but they’re far behind me now, and I do love trying out apps.
So here I am writing this post in iA Writer Classic, feeling a little guilty that I never did pay for the upgrade. But also feeling a little pleased with myself for having hung onto it. Anything with the word “classic” in its name has to be good, and it is.
I like the focus mode where there is nothing but text and a blank screen. The text blurs into grey when you finish a sentence. The sentence you’re working on is always vertically centred.
It corrects my typos and points out my spelling mistakes.
I’ll just save this post into a folder, then copy and paste it into Textpattern. At this point, it’s all I really need.
I made a chart that shows COVID-19 data for the Interior Health region of British Columbia, where I live. It looks encouraging, but no one should be complacent. Every death is a tragedy for family and friends left behind.
Stories about the future, it bears repeating, are a reflection of the present. So when we yearn for the optimism of Star Trek: The Next Generation, what we really miss is the optimism of the era in which it was produced.
The first season of Star Trek: Picard starts off dark, and mainly stays that way, because in order to have any credibility it must reflect our current dark times. Too many of us have allowed our outlook to be based more on anxiety than hope. And maybe we should be afraid — disastrous climate change, with no good solution in sight, is enough to make anyone despair.
The pandemic has only made things worse.
A couple of days ago, I took a walk in my neighbourhood. I could see the fear in people’s eyes. It made me sad when they stepped off the sidewalk onto the street to avoid getting too close to me, even though I understood why.
But I also see all the extra time and effort that so many people are putting into making sure we come out of this all right — maybe even better than before. For example, thousands of people in the community are signing up to volunteer in a variety of capacities to help those in need.
If there is a message to take away from the just-finished first season of Picard, it is that the way back to optimism is by overcoming our fears. The knowledge that we will die is what gives our lives meaning. Instead of being afraid, we need to do the hard work it takes regain our optimism. That means making the most of these precious years we have.
In some ways it seems kind of frivolous to be writing about a TV show during a world wide health crisis. But we take our inspiration where we can.
I was excited to learn that Jean-Luc Picard is returning in a new Star Trek series — with appearances by Data, Seven of Nine, Riker and Troi, no less.
But the icing on the cake has to be Michael Chabon as showrunner. His novel, the Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, which won the Pulitzer Prize for literature in 2001, raises hopes that the Picard series could itself be amazing.
One of the main characters in the novel, Joe Kavalier, is a Jewish comic book illustrator who escaped Nazi-run Czechoslovakia in the 1930s. He had to leave his family behind, and makes it a mission in his life to help his younger brother join him in the United States.
He works out his frustrations, with the help of cousin Sam Clay, by producing story after story where a superhero called the Escapist pounds on Nazis. His great pride is a cover illustration of Hitler getting slugged in the jaw.
This is pure speculation, but I wonder if Chabon will take on the role of Kavalier with Picard becoming his Escapist. It would be entirely believable for a much-loved hero such as Picard to go up against personifications of the evils of our time. Racism, nationalism, immigrant-scapegoating — we’ve got many demons to contend with here in 2019.
If Picard does indeed take them on for us, don’t expect that there will necessarily be a happy ending. The Escapist was killed off by comic-book industry court battles. And for Kavalier and Clay, life turned out bittersweet at best.
I have a feeling we will learn new things about Picard’s humanity. The man will remain legendary but not quite as heroic. And we might also learn some uncomfortable things about ourselves, because the villains we fight are, to some extent, in all of us.
If you’re multi-tasking with two apps, it’s nice to have the window for each app neatly take up half the screen. Here are three ways to do it.
Split View
This is built in to macOS. If you’ve never heard of it, you’re not alone. I just discovered this functionality recently myself. To make it work, grab and hold the green dot in the upper left corner of a window. When you let go, the window will be tucked over the left half of the screen. You’ll then be able to pick which window you want for the other half. Once you have the split, you drag between them to get the window widths exactly how you want them. You can learn more from Apple support.
Spectacle
This free utility has been around for several years. When launched, it places an icon in the menubar. You can then start organizing with keyboard shortcuts or clicks on the menubar options. It doesn’t take over the whole screen like Split View.
Tiles
I found this one by digging around at MacUpdate. It works the same as Spectacle, but also lets you drag windows to the edges of the screen to get them organized. This might be something you’re used to doing if you’ve ever used a Windows PC.
All these years I guess you could say I’ve been winging it when it comes to planning out the structure of a website.
Mostly I would use indented lists, occasionally a spreadsheet — or just let the site grow organically.
Then I saw someone with a beautifully designed sitemap. She told me she made it in draw.io. And that got me thinking — are there other tools that come to mind when mapping out a website? Hmm. How about a mind map!
To my amazement, there are literally dozens of apps and online services devoted to mind mapping. It’s practically an industry unto itself. And these are not necessarily fly-by-nighters. They charge a lot of money to corporate types who need ways of collaborating on projects. The brainstorming that mind maps allow is a big piece of the collaboration puzzle.
Even so, there is a place for the lowly web developer. And I have recommendations.
This online service is super easy to use. Between tabbing and entering, you can have a visual sitemap put together in no time. They have an org tree layout that is great for presentation of a complex site. Or you can do a before and after — current site on the left, proposed changes on the right.
I am enamored with the ability to share with clients. You can give them a link that lets them get in there and move stuff around. Now, that’s collaboration! On the other hand, if you don’t want them making a mess, you can share a link without giving them the ability to edit.
There’s a free version that allows you to do up to three maps. So far, this has been fine for me. I delete old maps and move on. But the paid versions are reasonably priced with a big discount if you work in education.
You can download this app and use it for free as long as you like. Some of the features are disabled, but none of them are deal breakers. They put a watermark on exported PDFs, but I’m OK with that. One way around this would be to take a screenshot and convert it to PDF with Photoshop.
The app has a more features than Mindmeister, but getting it to the org tree display is tricky. This is just the way I prefer to look at things, so you might not care about it.
There is no way to do online collaboration the way you can with Mindmeister, but on the other hand you can make as many maps as you want.
The verdict
Currently, I’m using a combination of Mindmester and XMind Zen. I have a feeling, though, that I will eventually spring for a paid version of Mindmeister. It’s not a huge amount, and I love being able to show clients something that looks professional and allows for collaboration.
A snippet from Sift on the topic of U.S. immigration
The trouble with the news is that the focus is on what is new — what’s happening now. We sometimes get analysis that allows us to see the bigger picture, but even that is fairly limited. In the end, the news can leave us feeling apprehensive, even outraged, because so much bad stuff is happening and there is nothing we can do about it.
Making things worse are those who take advantage of the situation by offering quick-fix political solutions designed to make us feel like something is being done. This helps governments stay in power and helps opposition parties win power. It helps us not at all.
The makers of an app called Sift News Therapy believe that we need way more context. For example, when you’re reading about the latest tragedies and controversies at the U.S.-Mexico border, what you really need to know about is immigration policy.
This is a much bigger topic, covering a lot of territory. But if you learn something about it, you’ll find that there isn’t really much in the way of news at all. Much of it, in different forms, has happened many times before. Opportunists have been whipping up anti-immigrant sentiment for hundreds of years.
Sift looks at U.S. immigration policy in two parts: the economy and cultural identity. In each section, you swipe through pages with snippets of information that together leave you much better informed.
Included are interactive charts, tables and quizzes — all of them nicely designed. And along the way are deep dives into related topics such as the tech industry.
Backing it up are credible sources. For example, the two for entrepreneurship are the Americas Society and the Center for American Entrepreneurship.
When you’re done with a topic, you can check in with your anxiety level. After reading about immigration, I chose the lowest.
The other topic currently available is guns. Coming up are climate, education, heath care and media literacy.
If you want to read about them, though, you’ll have to pay for a subscription. You get a one-week free trial, then it costs $26.49 every six months in Canada or $19.99 every six months in the United States. That’s around $4 a month.
Is it worth it? Well, for one thing these topics are covered very much from an American point of view. If you’re an American, that’s great. If you’re a Canadian who gets their news from CNN and the New York Times, it could also be great.
I’m kind of surprised at how many apps are asking for subscriptions — sleep apps, yoga apps, meditation apps. And now news apps. Where does it end? How much are people willing to pay?
The old journalist in me hopes that a lot of people are indeed willing to pay for the news. Good journalism requires good journalists, and they don’t come cheap.
The other problem for Sift is that it is a new. Will they get around to finishing those other topics? Can we count on them to create new topics on a regular basis? You might want to wait and see before paying. But if everyone does this, the lack of cash flow could kill Sift before it has a chance to prove itself.
The company behind Sift is All Turtles Corporation, which funds startups with a focus on technology. They cite a study from the Pew Research Center that shows most Americans suffer from news fatigue. Their own study shows that people feel less anxious and overwhelmed and more informed after using Sift.
