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Nov 04
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Oct 29
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Oct 13
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Oct 07
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Thanks to my awesome team for an excellent pre-birthday celebration.
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Sep 25
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It’s been a long time since I’ve done a regular blog post. Most of what ends up here gets auto posted from Posterous.
So, with that in mind, here’s a regular post. I’m writing this using the latest version of the WordPress app on my iPad 2. Since my blog is self-hosted, it’s nice that WP gives away a free editor when they could easily restrict it to only those blogs hosted by WordPress.com. One of the “big” new features of the new app is the formatting toolbar located just above the keyboard which appears when you’re writing a post. In theory this is a good idea—no more typing in HMTL markup directly. And maybe on an iPhone where I type with two thumbs that makes sense. But on the iPad, I’m a landscape-oriented 10-finger touch typist. And, as I’m sure is apparent, touch typing when there’s nothing to actually touch is more an exercise in trust (that autocorrect will work) than pure skill. That’s where the placement of the formatting bar comes in. I’m sure it’s placed near the keyboard for convenience but it is certainly not convenient to invoke a blockquote when I’m going for an “e” or a hyperlink when I’m typing a “w”.
I hate complaining without offering a solution. Here’s my solution: put the formatting bar at the top of the editing pane. Let’s face it, an iPad screen is not so big that this placement would greatly affect usability or convenience. And it would eliminate the possibility of inadvertently invoking formatting commands. At the very least make this a user-selectable option.
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Aug 24
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Aug 14
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Aug 07
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Jul 14
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How do I feel now that I’ve installed Ubuntu 11.04 as the primary OS on my Dell? I feel lucky that I’m comfortable with terminal commands. That’s probably a negative for most people (e.g. “normal users”) but since I’m a tinkerer I don’t mind getting my hands…err…fingers dirty with a little text entry.
A definite plus (how appropriate for G+): rebooting it on my Pentium 4-era PC is remarkably fast. It was back at the login screen so quickly that I wasn’t sure it rebooted. Another positive feature is the all-encompassing update system. It’s no lie that Linux had an “app store” on the desktop long before Apple came up with the idea. It’s interesting to note here that while I’ve played with Linux (I used to be a fan of Mandrake, or is it Mandriva?) as a secondary OS (via Wubi) or in a virtual machine, I’ve never had it installed as the only OS on any of my computers. So this, you might say, is a new grand experiment for me. Will I stick with it or will I cave and put something else on it? It’s even more interesting to note at this juncture that the last time I installed an alternative primary OS on my Dell, it was OS X 10.4 Tiger. Sure, it required some hacking, but it also convinced me to convert to Macs. Prior to that I was a staunch Windows advocate and Microsoft fanboy. Will my 2011 foray into Linux portend a full-time switch in 2012? Doubtful, surely, but one never knows.|
Jul 05
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