Software

You are currently browsing the archive for the Software category.

Catching the Wave (Google Wave, that is…)

November 25, 2009 in Blogging, Internet, Software, Technology, Writing by faltarego | 2 comments

(Don't skim. Read the whole post. There's a surprise later.)

Just over a month ago, my friend Asheyna sent me an invite to the preview of Google Wave. Since then, I've been going to the site nearly every day, playing with features, catching up on some of the public waves I'm following, and generally just checking things out.

First off, Google Wave is cool.

No doubt about it. It's like a discussion groups forum with document editing and formatting features and bit of instant messaging.

But it's much more than that. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

NaNoWriMo Day 1 – The Honeymoon Begins

November 1, 2009 in Blogging, Internet, Software, Writing by faltarego | 2 comments

Well, the games have begun. I've written my first chunk of NaNoWriMo text. I've set myself a goal of 2,000 words per day (which is higher than the suggested amount), and have managed to achieve slightly more than that on Day One. So… so far so good. I'm using the Write or Die website I mentioned in my last post, and I'm probably going to purchase the desktop version before the month is over. I know it will get me through the process.

I'm actually using Write or Die right now, and because I haven't seen or heard the "consequences" of pausing since my first experiment with the site, I decided to pause for a bit after I typed the first sentence of this post. Well, after the gradually intensifying red background, there came from my speakers such a horrible sound that there was no way I was going to listen to it for more than two seconds.

Yes, folks, Write or Die works. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: , , , , , , ,

National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo)

October 21, 2009 in Internet, Software, Writing by faltarego | 1 comment

Well, I've gone and done it. I've signed up for National Novel Writing Month (or NaNoWriMo as it's affectionately known). I'm going to spend the month of November immersed in words. The object is to write over 1600 words a day in order to amass a thirty-day total of 50,000 words, the equivalent of a short novel.

I did something like this three years ago, when I purchased a book entitled No Plot? No Problem!, written by Chris Baty, the originator of NaNoWriMo. The book goes into great detail about how the thirty-day novel works and gives some excellent advice and suggestions. So, although I haven't "officially" done NaNoWriMo before now, I did write an "unofficial" thirty-day novel in the middle of the summer.

The damn thing still isn't finished, though. I wrote the requisite number of words, but I didn't finish the story. And there it sits. I've read through it a number of times in the past three years, and I really like most of it, but I haven't added anything new to it. I know where it's going, and I know some of the scenes I want to write, but I haven't written them yet.

This is typical of  me. I write a bunch of stuff, and then I let it sit unfinished for eons. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: , , , , , , ,

The Marvel Super Heroes Have Arrived!

September 19, 2009 in Comics, Internet, Software, TV by faltarego | No comments

We take you now to a conference room somewhere in the blogosphere. Five superheroes, all veterans of the 1960s animation scene, gather to discuss an issue that has suddenly reappeared on their collective horizon.

Iron Man: Thanks for coming, fellas. The reason I asked you all to meet me here—

Hulk: Meetings! Tin-Head always calling meetings. Business brain can’t think for self. Tin-Head can’t take piss without calling meeting first.

Captain America: Now, Hulk, let’s be fair here. We don’t even know what Tony wants to talk about.

Hulk: No. But good bet it something Hulk not interested in.

Namor: I’d give that good odds. Because the list of things you are interested in could be rattled off in about three seconds.

Hulk: Short list, but making fish-meal from Namor’s face on it. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Akismet – It Stops Spam

September 18, 2009 in Blogging, Internet, Software by faltarego | 1 comment

Having just deleted a bunch of spam comments from the spam queue in my blog, I thought I'd take a moment to point out just how awesome the Akismet plugin for WordPress is. It magically detects spam comments and puts them in a spam queue for me to review. This is a good approach, because, while it's a rare occurrence, it's entirely possible that at some point the software might flag a legitimate comment as spam.

I think this has happened to me exactly once, and that was because for some reason, the person's comment had been posted twice. I've gotten quite a few spam comments over the month-and-a-half that I've been doing this blog, and that's the only glitch I've had. The rest of the time, Akismet has happily and handily shoved the spam comments out of the way. I don't know how it does its magic, but it does it well. I'm impressed. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: , , ,

WordPress: My Hero

September 4, 2009 in Blogging, Internet, Software, Technology, Writing by faltarego | 1 comment

Free software is a wonderful thing, and I've written about it not only on this blog—with my posts about WriteMonkey, Celtx, and yWriter—but on Asheyna's blog as well, with my guest post about OpenSource. I still marvel at the dedication of the individuals and groups who develop and maintain these tools; they do it because they love it, and they're often able to continue working on their projects because of donations from users.

Today, I'm going to talk about the mother of all free packages for writers: WordPress.

In the miniscule-to-nonexistent likelihood that you are a reader of this blog and somehow don't know what WordPress is, let me tell you. WordPress is a large and elaborate set of PHP scripts that allows a person to very quickly and easily set up a blog website.

If you have your domain name and web hosting service set up, all you need to do is download WordPress to your computer, unpack it, and then upload the uncompressed files to the root directory of your website. After a quick run of an installation script, you can go straight to logging in, tweaking your settings, and writing a blog post. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

yWriter: Free Novel-Writing Software

August 28, 2009 in Software, Writing by faltarego | 2 comments

I’ve discovered yet another cool piece of free writing software. My brother mentioned it to me the other day, and it sounded familiar. I think I’ve heard of it before. It’s called yWriter, and it’s an organizational tool for writing novels.

I downloaded yWriter a couple of days ago and started playing around with it, importing some scenes from one of my half-finished novels (seems like they’ve been half-finished for a long time now). The sheer number of features and tools in yWriter is nothing short of astonishing. I can’t believe this thing is free software.

Basically, you create chapters, and within those chapters you create scenes. You can add as much or as little information for each chapter and scene as you want. You can write a summary (or description) for each chapter, and also for each scene within each chapter. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: , , ,

« Older entries