Penny Hero (dot) Net

someone explain to me why there isn’t a decent FREE wordprocessor for OS-X? Note: Neo-office and OpenOffice (with x11) don’t count. Edit: web-based stuff like writely and thinkfree also don’t count. Edit again: I forgot Abiword. It behaves similarly to neo-office only worse. so it also doesn’t count.

It seems that there is enough demand that someone would have developed something natively by now.

wtf.

I need to write my paper and I’m sick of waiting HALF AN HOUR for my mouse-clicks to register in NeoOffice.

Edit for the third time: Let me rephrase my question… I’m not really looking for suggestions on what to use instead of these ones. I’d really like to know why there isn’t a good opensource free alternative for mac like there is with windows and linux. Is it because they have to use java? Is it because mac is hard to program for? are there licensing hurdles that make it hard to write stuff for mac?

I’ve learned the hard way that there are no (legal) alternatives to the problematic options I mentioned above. I’d really like someone smarter than I am to help me understand why.

Funniest lead I’ve seen in a long time:

SEARCH outfit Google has managed to tell the US government to go forth and multiply over its demands that it hand over details of keywords that its punters choose to search.

Google beats off the government (*snickers again*)

and btw, yes I know that the article is more like funny, and less like news. (”rolled over to have its tummy tickled” ??)

Haha. Writer Nick Farrell just made my morning. Funny thing was that I didn’t get it for almost a minute. took two sips of coffee before I started to laugh. I’m a loser. I’m also a loser for posting about my giggle fit. :) *pfft*

WISH ME LUCK ON FINALS!

Is this my third post in one day?

I realized today that I need a single place to store, save, and refer to lots of little tiny bits of information… things like notes to self, lists of movies, lists of books, things I don’t want to forget, birthdays, etc. It’s irritating as fuck when i write something down and lose the paper, or when I’m curious what my to-do list was like a year ago so that I can compare it to how busy I am during my senior year. So… I have a feeling that I need to get smart with database programming and php like… yesterday.

Idea for a web app:

It would basically be a running list of anything you want, with a ton of meta-data that could be added quickly. The interface would be simple containing (ideally for people like me who want it fast, now, simple, etc) a textbox where you could basically type your item with some kind of syntax that would tell the app that this is the item (maybe put it in [brackets]). Then you could have simple syntax that would quickly tag the item… The trick would be the ability to add all kinds of meta-data and tag each short entry with as many terms or types of information as you’d like.

For example, I could enter:

[revise wr327 paper] cat:assignment due:20060317 cat:writing cat:school.wr327

(’cat’ means ‘category’ btw. I could replace it with ‘tag’ but i want something descriptive so I can have ‘due’ and the potential for ‘name’ or ‘date’ or something at the “level” of category)

and it would store all that info including a date-timestamp or various other types of automated data like ip address, browser, etc. It would be REALLY spiffy if the app would suggest tags based on ones you already have (like gmail’s auto-complete of email addresses… sounds like I need to learn ajax.)

Then, I’d have a nice shiny published interface that would let me sort my list by any of those categories or tags or other data that I’ve created, quickly generate html ordered lists so that I can copy/paste that into my blog to share with others, etc etc.

This wouldn’t be a social-networking tool or group-aggregate-data networking at all. this would be a personal application, ideally web-based and public in order to be easily accessible from any location, and it would be used as a feature-enhanced book of post-it notes or pocket-notebook.

I’m sure that this could be done! I’d like to learn how to create a tool like this. Can anyone here see problems with my idea or forsee things that I may need to learn that I probably haven’t thought about? I’m one of those girls who has crazy big ideas and doesn’t realize that they’re way over my head. From what I understand, I could do this (minus the auto-complete stuff) in php and mysql… and a lot of hard newb-destroying work.

Also, is it weird that I think of my ideas all from a “user” and “this is what I want it to do and result in” standpoint and not from a “hey I know how to program this, maybe I can program something else that’s cool”?

Dear everyone on my friend’s list.

My friend is conducting research for his Master’s degree on the use and understanding of wi-fi and wants people to take his survey. Don’t ask me about this method of “spread the word” survey distribution. I’m sure that will come up in the analysis of his data.

It’s about 3 pages long (just a few screens of questions).

Whether you’re interested in wi-fi or not, this is an official call for participants:

Click here.

And, spread the word if you’d like to help him get a larger number of respondents. His research is very worth supporting, in my opinion. He’s interested in making information about public and private wireless networks more easily obtainable. in other words, identifying what information about accessibility and laws is not easily available to users and maybe even coming up with ways of making that available.

Before I met him in the writing center, I had no idea about this kind of problem but now I’m really really interested.

I had dreams about being asked to audition for an amateur movie being filmed in albany. (albany? all the way in fucking albany?) A group of four or five of us (all girls) went to the neighbor’s for the audition in the middle of the night. I knew from the beginning that I wouldn’t be able to go even if I got the lead part. One of the girls and I were wearing the same dress because she was (borrowing my sister’s dress)… or something that explained it in a funny accidental sorta-girly-drama-way. At the audition, the directors and staff really liked me. I have visual images of the text on the script, with some of the lines bolded and italicized indicating how I delivered them. In the dream, I “printed out” the script in my head like that as I delivered my lines. I don’t remember what the movie was about, but I was perfect for the part, and I was confident and charismatic and I made all the other girls angry with me. But all along I knew that I couldn’t take the part because it cost $250 to be in the movie, and I didn’t have time because I needed to graduate.

I came home alone after my audition, and for some reason I’d forgotten that it was my mom’s and my birthday at the same time. It was belated, and I gave her a gift in my room. then she told me that my presents. (in this dream, plural nouns mean exactly two.) I opened one, and it was something lame. the second box was FULL OF KITTENS. They were orange an soft. There were around 8 of them.

For some reason, I felt like I should have expected this, and that it was sort of an inside-joke between me and my mom. Sort of like if your parents take away one of the toys in your room and wrap it up as a new gift in order to hide the fact that there is a hundred dollar bill at the bottom of the box. I started taking care of the kittens and I tried to name one but couldn’t decide.

At one point I was in the living room with the kittens (they had escaped their box and I had to catch them all) and they were playing games with me. They were walking in front of the projector and playing what looked like patty-cake with each other.

At another point, I had locked myself in the bathroom with some of the kittens for some reason. it felt like I was hiding them from “my stepdad” or something.

1.

I was making coffee. And it was somehow normal that no liquid would fall into the coffee pot. Instead, it was this dry substance that looked like coffee grounds. The pot was dirty, and it was getting too hot. A drop of coffee-crud fell in to top left-hand side of the pot and started to catch fire. I poked it to put it out. It caught fire again. I was annoyed. I wanted my coffee. I turned around to get the nearest glass of liquid to throw on it. The sink was full of glasses and bowls full of gross standing water. I decided to get a clean dish… but by that time, the entire coffee maker was on fire and I had a stab of terror like I was about to burn down the house. I thought I must be so stupid for not cleaning it, and for being too wussy to grab the dishes with dirty water. I reached out and slamed the coffee pot off th counter and it hit the ground cracking. The dry stuff inside really was liquid coffee afterall and when I tipped it over, the contents spilled and put out the fire. It was a sort of nightmare

2.

Lots of broken memories of walking from one house to another on Chehalem Dr where I used to live. I woke up early to work on my paper, but every few hours my hair would be too greesy so I’d go and take a shower. I was wearing a skirt for god knows what reason. I broke into my own house several times. I remember having to pick my way between bikes to get to the back entrance. An ex boyfriend of mine was with me studying, and he let me kiss him although it was a stupid idea. This dream had a narrative, but all that’s left are fragmentary images.

It sounds like things are about to explode for me. I tried to get up at 5 to work on my papers, but the 5:30 alarm was what pulled me out of my nightmare, so I slept a little more to rid myself of the scared feelings. I couldn’t get out of bed until now… 7am. fuck.

Time to go make coffee.

Articulating Lawrence’s theories deadens them in the novel. the metaphors become dramatizations of his obscure language rather than open metaphors with the suggestion of what he’s writing about.

Similarly, The Rainbow is only successful because Ursula’s story is unfinished and unresolved. We don’t know what happens to her–only that she has the potential to become a nietzchian woman and able to find true Lawrentian fullfillment in the future. Lawrence must leave that open for the potential to exist. As long as she remains unarticulated, she comes to represent reader’s hopes for themselves and their own potential for change and spiritual growth.

Not just change on an individual level, but through the individuals who change, the potential to change the social structures which are clearly unbalanced and over-masculinized according to Lawrence and Feminists.

Someone explain to me why the FRACK it took the cylons a whole year to travel one light-year when they’ve always had better FTL capabilities than the fleet?

Seems like a plot/script/whatever error.

It would have been funny if they didn’t have FTL capabilities. BUT THEY DO. SO IT WASN’T. It was just STOOPID.

Edit: DUH. Buddha-X (in the comments) reminded me… DUH. It’s going to take exactly a year for the light from the bomb’s explosion to travel a light-year. (the bomb being the thing that alerted the cylon’s to their location.)

Sup snow. :)

All three of my supervisors at work have a great work relationship with each other and also all have offices within 2 feet of each others…literally. Yet today, they hilariously apparently decided to communicate largely via email and all three of them basically passed each other in the writing center on their way in and out to tell me about the new developments in their conversation.

So it seems that they all knew I was there within 10 feet of their computers and each other, came in to tell me stuff, and then went back to their respective offices to email each other.

Wow. laff laff at the use of technology in humanities departments anyone?

It all worked out though, and we have a new meeting time. I just opened my inbox when I got off work and laughed my ass off at the written record of their conversations with me and with each other.

:)