Late start, and it's snowing...

I must've been really tired, because with only two interruptions, I slept until almost 10 am.

I woke to a light snow falling in very still air. (Indeed, one of the interruptions was the sound of melted snow coming off the roof.) There was no accumulation on the ground as I surveyed the scene to the sound of water gurgling through the coffee-maker. The snow eventually petered out, but then came back with a vengeance (and some wind), and enough of the stuff has fallen for it to have started to accumulate in places where it's cold enough (top surfaces of fences, some tree branches).

In the meantime, I've been translating and cleaning, trying to chase paper. I'm a better translator.

I've received all parts of the item I'm supposed to edit for Tuesday by 3 pm my time (only the revised part of the 131 pages, which will take me most of a day, based on what I've seen), and there's another strength analysis to do (due Friday, but that'll only happen if nothing "fills in" in between).

Cheers...

Evaluating software, 'n stuff...

OneNote Facilitates the creation of a virtual "notebook." Among its strengths is the ability to "clip" pieces of the screen that appear in notebook pages. You can also send text highlighted in a browser to the app, but this doesn't work for highlighted Unicode/UTF-8 text (this means you're limited to clipping the screen, can't search, highlight, etc.). The program's weakness is the amount of disk space required for the data, but it's no show-stopper. I have some amount of time before having to commit or get off the pot.

EverNote Very similar mission to OneNote, except it does support Unicode/UTF-8, but doesn't do clipping. OTOH, if a graphic is part of what you've highlighted, it gets copied too. Whereas OneNote uses a notebook metaphor, EverNote uses an "endless paper roll" metaphor, with entries arranged chronologically. There are some kind of strange formatting issues, too, but it is, after all, beta software, which is why it's free.

FreeMind A GPLed, Java-based mind-mapping application. For those who enjoy such forays. I bought MindMapper a long time ago and never was able to screw up the courage to use the resulting mind maps in PowerPoint presentations. I've also never quite acquired the mind-map approach to life, either.

Shortkeys (Does every piece of software coming out these days have a WikiWord for a name?) Anyway, I'm on a 30-day trial for what appears to be a pretty nifty app that sits in the background waiting for you to type certain strings, whereupon it will replace/add/transform what you type into what you really want to type. I could have used this in the recent geological translation, where I must've typed "Lower Permian" about a hundred times, along with some arcane place names that I tended to type wrong (the spell check kept finding "Toraveisk," where I should have typed "Tovareisk") I get the feeling I've only tapped the surface of its capabilities, and I'm leaning toward a purchase unless something really ugly rears its head between now and the end of the evaluation period.

* * *Via the LifeHacker site, I've found out way too much about searching for online mp3s, a pretty cool way of publishing hi-resolution pix online, and an intriguing gmail hack.

FWIW, I wrote a polite email this past week to the Moleskine folks asking whether they intentionally use different paper in their unlined journals, or whether my experience (the paper is different, and soaks up fountain pen and gel ink more readily) is the result of variations in paper used in manufacturing. No answer as yet.

I've been adding sites to my de.lirio.us bookmarklet list, and I'm finding that part of the attraction to "social bookmarking" is checking out what I've come to think of as the "ticker," i.e., the list of recent additions, and - once you find someone who has posted a couple of interesting links - checking out that person's list to see what other cool things they found in the past that one might be interested in (I found the link to the EverNote site this way).

In other news, I've installed Windows 3.1 on a venerable IBM ThinkPad that's been lying around for a while, but I need to quibble out one more little nit: the poor thing still thinks it's booting Linux. I think I know the solution (and it ends with /mbx), but it'll have to wait... I think I'm going to go upstairs and rest.

Cheers...