I really should do this when the month ends, it’s so much easier to keep track that way. I didn’t read much during these two months, unfortunately, mostly because of finals but also because I just wasn’t finding anything very good and so I have a lot of half-read things I gave up on. There seems to be a particularly huge influx of very bad speculative fiction and I picked up a good fair share of it. Luckily most of it was from the library so I don’t feel like I wasted my book budget too badly. If you’ve read something you’d recommend, tell me! I’ll add it to my list!

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12:09 am | Category: Books, Reviews | | No Comments

I was inspired to write about my own quest to find a note taking tool because of Amelia June’s recent posts on her experimentations with Microsoft OneNote. Since I’m a poor student, I don’t have OneNote and so I’m trying a cheap-o way to manage my notes. Maybe some of these softwares will come in handy for someone else.

I realized a while back that I needed a way to write down notes as I worked on Morgan. Things would pop into my head — usually along the lines of, Crud, I’m going to have to go back and change that, but I don’t want to right now while I’m flowing along. I better write a note or remember the change for later — and I would try and make a note to myself.

I first tried keeping a notebook handy, but unfortunately I’m not organized enough to always have that same notebook within arm’s reach and notebooks lack a very important tool: copy & paste.

So, I tried to write in RoughDraft, which has a notepad right next to the wordprocessing screen. I loved the program…except for the fact that it was Rich Text Format and thus did not support more advanced formatting options. Could I live without my precious em dashes? I wondered. The answer was “no,” which may seem crazy to some of you, but whenever I saw two normal dashes instead of my usual em dash, it just looked wrong on the screen and it would distract me.

Then I began playing around with almost every free software I could find, which isn’t a lot. I found things I liked, such as LivePad, which is comparable to OneNote in a lot of ways, but it still costs money (granted, not as much as OneNote, but…). I also tried ZuluPad, but it lacked a lot of features I’d've liked (which, ironically, were available on ZuluPad Pro) but I really did like it’s wiki-style linking. Maybe I’ll experiment a little more with ZuluPad later.

I’ve mentioned KeyNote before, and I do like many of its features, as well, but there were a few aspects of it that frustrated me (many of the same ones that frustrated me on ZuluPad). Basically the fact that the files are not .txt or .rtf, so if you want to open the documents on another computer, you’ve got to have the program installed. Since I often nip into the computer lab when I find myself with a few free minutes, I would much rather have something that I could access from any computer — be it Mac or otherwise. Although, KeyNote does offer a lot of the stuff ZuluPad Pro offers (like rich text formatting) and for free.

However, I suppose I can experiment with putting the whole software on my USB key (now that I have 2 megs, its much more easier to put extra stuff on it). But, for right now, I’m trying out NotePad Pro+. It is as the name suggests: it’s a more advanced version of NotePad. What I really like about it is: tabbed documents (very handy when I have multiple files of notes!), everything is saved as .txt, I can set the font, in-document links, syntax highlighting, word count and character count, and an unlimited undo. In the end, I simply copy & pasted the .exe file into my USB key, and now I can have the program wherever I go. Or, if I don’t have my USB key with me, I can open a .txt file and email it to myself or put it on Google Docs and I’ll be able to open it with Notepad Pro+ later.

10:27 pm | Category: Reviews, Writing | | 1 Comment