Tag Archives: General

General

A Re-Shuffle, and Re-Commitment

h3. Re-Shuffle:

Things are shaking up around here–this online journal[1] should look quite a bit different, and the re-shuffling will continue.

I’m currently starting with the Elegant Grunge theme, and we’ll see where it goes.

h3. Re-Commitment:

Project 52 was technically a failure, already. However, “he wins who gets up more times than he is knocked down.”

h3. 750words.com:

I love the concept of 750words.com, and am excited to get back into the habit of writing a journal.

A first concern is privacy. All entries of all authors are stored (in plaintext) in a central database. I’d prefer they were stored locally, and any statistics stored in the database.

Second, in addition to Markdown, I wish it could use Textile:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Textile_%28markup_language%29
http://textile.thresholdstate.com/ (current version)
http://textism.com/tools/textile/ (original version)

h3. Big Freebie from Adobe:

http://www.adobe.com/type/browser/landing/garamond/garamond.html

fn1. I prefer not to use that “b” word. Dreadful. By the way, if “blog” is a contraction of “web log,” shouldn’t it have an initial apostrophe, as in ‘blog?

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General

The Setup

the setup is interesting.screenshot of The Setup website

Self-described as “a bunch of nerdy interviews,” they basically ask “What do people use to get the job done?”

The interview questions are all the same, consisting of four questions:

  1. Who are you, and what do you do?
  2. What hardware are you using?
  3. And what software?
  4. What would be your dream setup?

Like most good introspective exercises, you can approach it on different levels–and with more or less rigor. Here are my answers:

Who are you and what do you do?

Michael Montgomery. Husband, father, lawyer, technology fan, internet afficionado, speaker, organizer, and write with a fountain pen.

I blog sometimes, and work for Christopher & Weisberg as a registered patent attorney and intellectual property lawyer. On the web, I play with markup & styling, teaches, presents, help with Godbit, RefreshLauderdale and RefreshMiami.

What hardware are you using?

At work, I use a nondescript box from a company I won’t name, that’s been downgraded to XP for compatibility with ProLaw, our office back-end. The displays are a 19″ HP f1905 and another 19″ nondescript second monitor.

At the office, I have a 30Gb iPod driving Tivoli Audio Model Two stereo speakers.

My laptop is an HP G70 with 4Gb of RAM and Vista Home Premium. It came with a free upgrade to Windows 7, but I haven’t yet had the courage. At home, I use a 19″ HP L1945w and the laptop as a second monitor.

I tend to carry an 8Gb iPhone, and usually either a book or Moleskine notebook. And a pen.

And what software?

For browsers, I use Firefox and Chrome (mostly for apps like Gmail). For text and code, Notepad++ rocks. For documents, I use OpenOffice Writer by choice and MS Word when required.

For websites, Textpattern usually, ExpressionEngine for larger projects, and WordPress for blogs. Dropbox (love it!) for synchronizing, and Jungle Disk (meh) for backup. Delicious for bookmarks.

Online I use Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Reader, Remember the Milk, Readernaut, Etherpad.

I go by Montgomery most everywhere. For games, LotRO, EVE and Babas Chess.

What would be your dream setup?

Vastly improved voice recognition capability–so good it doesn’t require a headset. I don’t understand why we’re all still typing!

Corollary: kill the keyboard and mouse. Long live the pen!

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A First Resolution for 2010

h4. Clearing out some of the cobwebs around here, to say that I’m excited.

Excited about:

http://project52.info/

bq. What is Project52?

bq. Project52 is a personal challenge geared toward getting fresh content on your website. The goal is to write at least 1 new article per week for 1 year. Because we all know what it’s like to procrastinate on our content.

bq. All you need to do is just commit to the challenge and write the content. This site is just here to remind you of that commitment.

bq. How to Participate

* On Twitter, you can follow @p52info or use the hashtag #p52. We’ll track that as often as we can.

* Add your site to the form below. In time, we’ll gather the RSS feeds and begin sorting out who the slackers are.
* If you would like a banner to add to your site, feel free to download the logo. Be sure to link here and help spread the word. It’s time to get people writing again!
* You can also join the Google Group, if you’d like to share thoughts, ideas, and various bits of inspiration.

p. An awesome idea, whose time is overdue.

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Today is September 11, 2008

May God bless America.

!/images/121.jpg!

h4. Photos:

“*Hiro”:http://flickr.com/photos/hiro_oshima/127765125/, “*Hiro”:http://flickr.com/photos/hiro_oshima/127764819/, “*Hiro”:http://flickr.com/photos/hiro_oshima/127765025/, “*Hiro”:http://flickr.com/photos/hiro_oshima/127765052/, “TIO…”:http://flickr.com/photos/66179962@N00/239976220/,
“NASA”:http://flickr.com/photos/pingnews/241630320/, “Brendan Loy”:http://flickr.com/photos/51629368@N00/2658832719/, “DoD”:http://flickr.com/photos/pingnews/272548043/

_All photos licensed under Creative Commons._

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