@ my wits’ end

A companion for Evernote

Although I’ve used web-based email off and on for a few years, I didn’t appreciate the value of cloud computing until I discovered Evernote. That gem led me to investigate other cloud options: among them the excellent DropBox.

The concept is simple: imagine a folder on your computer into which you can stuff files that can be accessed from any computer in the galactic neighbourhood. As soon as any change is detected in that folder or its sub-folders, the updated file is duplicated in your account on DropBox’s website. Then it’s automatically updated on your office desk machine, your notebook computer and your home computer.

I can acomplish the same thing with Evernote, but some files—notably Word, OpenOffice, and Excel files—aren’t compatible with Evernote’s free version. Even with the Evernote Premium, Office files can’t be read in Evernote’s local client. You must locate the file in Evernote and then open it in the relevant application before you can read it, search its text or edit it. Because your files are stored in Evernote’s rather cryptic database there’s an issue with finding the file’s actual location on your hard drive if, for instance, you wish to back it up locally.

What’s more, DropBox, unlike Evernote, is fully Linux compatible. I’m hoping that will change with Evernote’s recent raising of $10,000,000 for development but we’re not there yet.

Evernote is outstanding for information which I need to be fully and instantly searchable, but DropBox is more suited for the files I wish to edit regularly.

In a nutshell

Evernote is a full fledged application which allows you to view and edit text files and to view pdf files and images from within the application. Dropbox doesn’t do any of that, it’s just an icon in your notification area which accesses your DropBox folder. That folder can be in your Documents folder or any other location your heart desires.

DropBox has a tiny footprint and its simplicity is its biggest asset.

I use Evernote to squirrel away all the random information I may need to reference later and which needs to be easily and quickly searchable. Some examples:

• image files,
• scanned magazine and newspaper articles,
• web clips,
• pdf files,
• scanned statements, bills, receipts, library slips and business cards.
• scanned copies of wills, marriage certificates and the like.

I use DropBox for working files:

• my website local files,
• my blog notes,
• my Microsoft Office files: to-do lists and inventories,
• my financial spreadsheets,
• downloaded program files,
• data files for utilities like Stickies for Windows and PhraseExpress.
• and anything else which I need to keep synchronised between my main computer, my virtual computers, my Linux test box, and my laptop.

I only use a small fraction of the 2GB of free storage available with the free DropBox account. Because it’s such a simple concept I find it very useful for my everyday files—if I need to backup large files to the cloud I can use Microsoft’s free and generous 25GB Sky Drive but that doesn’t have DropBox’s synchronisation ability.

Bang for buck, which is the best operating system for you?

Over recent months, apart from trying to paint the house, battle my backyard wilderness, sort out my junk overload and save the planet, I’ve been trying to become moderately expert in Apple’s Mac OS X Leopard and Ubuntu Linux 9.04. I’ve not been impressed with Windows lately so I decided to evaluate the opposition with a view to deciding which OS to throw my lot in with for the foreseeable future.

I’ve written more in-depth about my findings here on mistywindow.com

What’s the conclusion?

A plague on the houses of both Apple and Microsoft. Ubuntu Linux wins by a narrow margin.

Apple have an excellent operating system and easily the best hardware, but that beautiful hardware is just too outrageously expensive for me. Yeah, I know you pay for quality, but the extortionate Apple hardware tax will cost you far more than Microsoft’s operating system tax.

With Windows 7, Microsoft have improved their act by a degree of magnitude. It’s too early to be sure but my feeling is that, security aside, Windows 7 is as good as Snow Leopard. They’d become divorced from reality and from the people paying their bills – maybe they’re seeing the light at last.

Windows 7 is far better than Vista, smoother, less bloated. and with a lot of incremental usability improvements. They’ve kicked we long-suffering Vista users in the teeth with their Windows 7 upgrade pricing but at least they’re on the right track. If you’re thinking of upgrading and budget concious, consider buying an OEM copy – it’s the cheapest option.

I’m sticking with Windows for the time being: I’m ready to give up Photoshop and Dreamweaver which I can’t easily run in Linux, but I won’t give up Evernote. Nevertheless, if present trends continue, within a few years I’ll be going full open-source, probably with Ubuntu Linux.

Any discussion over the relative merits of Windows, Mac and Linux usually invokes fanaticism worthy of the Third Reich and degenerates into personal abuse on a scale usually reserved for South American football referees.

If you’ve read my full investgation I’d like to hear your views. I’ve given my biased opinions based upon my own trials, my own software requirements, my own limited budget and my own past experience. Your requirements may be very different so your conclusions may be just as different.

If your mileage varies that’s fine with me, just leave the flamethrower at home.

Creating special characters in your Linux documents

Inserting special characters can be tedious. In Linux you must open and search the Character Map or set up a Panel Widget and search through it. The least irksome way for often used characters is to memorise the Unicode.

1. While holding down Shift+Ctrl
2. click the U key,
3. then type the 4 character code – e.g. type 00B1 to produce the character ±

The list on the left comprises those symbols which I find useful and which display correctly on web pages (HTML). The more complete list in the image on the right includes those symbols and further characters which work in normal usage (such as text editors, spreadsheets and most other programs) but may not display on the web. I made the image by taking a screenshot with Gimp of an OpenOffice spreadsheet – so you can be sure they work!

To display the fussy characters on web pages you need to use the (X)HTML Character Codes, the most common of which I’ve listed here on mistywindow.com.

There are thousands of these symbols. Links to the .pdf documents which show them are at the end of this post.

For Windows users see my mistywindow.com page about ASCII symbols right here.

00ab  «  left guillemet
00bb  »  right guillemet
2039  ‹
203a  ›
00d7  × multiplication sign
00b1  ± plus or minus
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Currency
00a2  ¢
00a3  £
00a5  ¥
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Fractions:
00bc  ¼
00bd  ½
00be  ¾
~~~~~~~~~~~~
00b5  µ
00b6  ¶
00c6  Æ
00e6  æ
00d8  Ø
00f8  ø
00e8  è
00e9  é
00a9  ©
2022  •
2013  –   en dash
2014  —   em dash
201c  “   curly quote left
201d  ”   curly quote right
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Superscripts
00b0  °
00b2  ²
00b3  ³
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Get them all here—thousands of them—at unicode.org and more here:

This method didn’t work for me in OpenOffice.org v 2.0, but it’s OK in the current version 3.0.

Confessions of a would-be penguin freak

For the last two or three months I’ve indulged in a minor obsession. I switched completely from Windows to Linux. Started out with the Ubuntu 8.10 flavour but in the end settled on Mandriva 2009.

I’ve been so up to my ears in the learning curve that I’ve been ignoring my blog, my websites and the house painting.

I’ve tried Linux three or four times in the past. On those occasions I gave up within days: the learning curve took up too much of my time and there were programs I missed and didn’t care to do without. This time, accepting that Linux and the free software movement has improved by a degree or two of magnitude in recent years, I changed my criteria. Instead of considering what I’d have to give up I started out deciding what I couldn’t do without. It wasn’t all that much:

Must haves

Important, but not deal-breakers:

It’s easy to have the best of both worlds and run both Windows and Linux in dedicated machines, in virtual machines or as a “dual boot” configuration. But unless one has a specific requirement to do that to my mind it’s a waste of effort, resources and time. If you must use Windows, there’s not much point in having Linux as well unless you need it on a server, for learning or for teaching or as a short term situation during the transition to stand alone Linux.

For me, Linux is all or nothing. After about a month I decided that there was no going back to Windows. I was a Linux user now and forever. My must haves were satisfied and with more learning my non deal-breakers would be too.

However!

A week ago I switched back to Windows. It’s not permanent, but I’ll be using Vista for some time yet.

Linux is ready for prime time. I’ve set up two of my granddaughters with Ubuntu: one 20-year-old, recently married and impecunious; one 9-year-old and smart. I’d be happy to set up any new computer user with Linux. They’d find it less of a battle than Windows.

For me it’s more problematic. I’m supposed to be an experienced computer user and fix-it man. My friends, children and grandchildren come to me for help mistaking me for a geek. As yet I’m not there in Linux. There are too many arcane bits of knowledge I need to acquire before I can make the switch confident that I can fix things when they turn pear-shaped.

This is not a Linux failing. To reach the level of expertise I need takes time with Windows too.

I’ll address the specific problems which have put my transition on hold in a coming post.

Ubuntu rocks!

In April I tried the latest release of Linux operating system distribution, Ubuntu 8.04. I wrote in my blog that it was a major advance but that I didn’t see it pushing Windows off my desktop for a while yet.

Well, I’m partially eating my words. After many past nibbles at Linux which were short-lived, with the final release of Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron I virtually dumped Windows for my day-to-day computing needs for over a month.

The Ubuntu Linux distribution has now evolved to the point where it can do all the things that most people need to do on their computers with less associated pain than Windows. What’s more it can be installed more easily than Windows by an average computer user.

And there’s the small matter of cost. There isn’t any.

Unfortunately

Much as I’d like to, I can’t stick with Linux for two main reasons: Adobe Dreamweaver CS3 and Corel Painter X. For all the other programs that I use, there’s a free open source equivalent that’s good enough to replace what I’m using and in some cases they’re better than thestandard  Windows equivalent.

Who’s it good for then?

For any computer user, experienced or novice, who needs a Word Processor, a Spreadsheet, Internet browser, Email, graphic design, photo editing and music it is excellent.

there are good databases and many other free applications, but if you’re a gamer or if you need a specialist program like Dreamweaver then you still need Windows or a Mac.

In my case I could get by for web design with an open source XHTML editor, but my knowledge of server side scripting is insufficient to cope with dynamic web templates, so I’m stuck with Dreamweaver or, at a pinch, MS Expression Web.

Come on Adobe, port your software to Linux. Strike a blow against world domination by the nice guys at Microsoft.

Please?

I had a rave about this subject here a few months ago and concluded that all was lost for Linux. Now I have hope.

Note that you can run Windows by dual booting with Linux or in a virtual machine within Linux. I do that now with an XP test installation running as a guest of Vista. But if I have to do that to run my must have applications, then from my point of view, I might just as well stick with Windows.

For every dyed-in-the-wool Linux fan in geekdom there are probably dozens of hopefuls like myself who’ve tried it a number of times and given up. Why? Because for most computer users there have been just too many hurdles. The promise of free software isn’t enough to justify the pain involved in switching.

This unhappy situation is changing rapidly. Users with a modicum of computer knowledge can be up and running in an hour – Internet, email, word processing and spreadsheets? No problem. If you’re capable of installing Windows, you can do the same with Ubuntu.

Past barriers

• For ordinary computer users, just installing Linux has been a difficult process.
• If you managed to get it installed, accessing your Windows data from within Linux was a mission. Importing it into equivalent Windows programs wasn’t easy.
• The free word processors were clunky.
• If you still needed to access Windows programs it was necessary to dual-boot. Dual booting is a pain in the backside. First you shut down Linux, then you reboot into Windows, do what you want, shut down Windows and boot into Linux again.
  Who needs it?
• Updating your installation and installing new programs was much more difficult than it is in Windows.
• Drivers and utilities for printers, scanners, routers, modems and other hardware were often a problem.

All of this has changed.

The latest version of Ubuntu’s distribution of Linux has taken yet another step on the road to making Linux a viable free alternative to Microsoft’s creaking, top-heavy Windows edifice.

Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron

Over the last year or so, Ubuntu have been addressing these problems and the final release of Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) is, in my opinion, ready for ordinary mortals to use.

For the first time ever, I had Linux installed on my desktop computer as my main operating system for a month. I did all my normal day-to-day computer work using Ubuntu. I had Windows XP installed inside Ubuntu as a “virtual machine”. This allowed me to access my old Outlook emails, check how my web pages look in Internet Explorer, and to use a couple of programs which, as yet, I can’t sensibly abandon.

Microsoft would do well to review their place in the world. Ubuntu is only going to get better.

Download Ubuntu from here. If you don’t have a fast internet connection, Canonical will send you a free CD from here.

Next post. What needs to be done to make Linux available to more folk?