April Musings

Hail readers!

I have some good news for you all. First off, we have finally been connected to the Internet; it is through an ADSL2+ cable, which offers around 16Mb/s maximum bandwidth but delivered around 11Mb/s in testing (which is more typical). It doesn’t hold a candle to fibre optic, but it’s faster than my old DSL connection and delivers much more consistent and generally faster speeds than even 4G. (Proof of the old adage that cable is better than wireless, I guess.)

Secondly, the washing machine is delivered; do not underestimate the importance of this.

Thirdly, my quest to find an editor is progressing slowly. It may not surprise you to learn that I have decided to write much of this post on something else entirely—bicycles. Yes; you heard that right.

Cycling in the UK

Recently, I attempted a 4-mile bike journey from my new house to my school. What I found annoyed me greatly, but came as no surprise.

The UK is not a friendly place to cyclists. Despite whatever our politicians may like to say:

“We are moving as fast as we can to get it all done,” Johnson said [in reference to a bike lane opened in London]. “It looks beautiful and … will be a wonderful thing for London, and this is just the beginning of a massive programme.”

He said he hoped his successor would keep the campaign going. “It is very, very important that the momentum does not stall and there is a large number of cycle superhighways still in the pipeline. There is a lot of work still to do but this is an example of the kind of transformation that can take place.

“It is vital if we are going to get people out of their cars, ease congestion and encourage fitness, walking and cycling – the things that we really need to get going.”

Source: the Guardian.

However, even Boris himself admits that there has been ‘a lot of aggro’ from his own senior parliamentary colleagues (who, surprise surprise, like to travel in cars).

Those senior parliamentary colleagues are far from atypical. When I attempted my journey, I found that:

1. There were no dedicated cycle lanes.
2. It is illegal to bike on the pavement.
3. Roads are frequently twisting and narrow.
4. There are numerous roads linking to motorways; cyclists require detours.
5. Roundabouts often don’t have pavements, which makes them impassable to pedestrians and dangerous for cyclists.

These combination of factors, while not rendering cycling impossible, do nevertheless render it unviable for the majority of people and somewhat hazardous for those who do cycle. I’m especially worried about children and young teenagers—they shouldn’t be cycling on busy roads.

I will contrast my experience with that of Holland, where I lived for two years and biked to school nearly every day.

The most apparent difference between cycling in the UK and in the Netherlands is that in the latter, nearly all local and rural areas have fietspad i.e. cycling lanes. This is by far the safest and fastest approach to carrying bike, car and pedestrian traffic.

Cycling lanes cost less to build than roads for cars and can be added to many roads with modest expense. Unfortunately, politicians have only seen fit to grace London with any; the rest of the UK has virtually none. It’s true that London gets more of everything—it’s as if the rest of the UK doesn’t exist—but in this case I suspect Boris’ love of bikes plays a factor. It takes a determined bike-lover to get anything done vis-a-vis the cycling situation.

Aside from the apparent contempt of the establishment (and indeed many of the citizenry) for cycling, the laws are also either drafted by halfwits or deliberately designed to make cycling more difficult. (Maybe both.)

For example: why can’t bikes be ridden on the pavement? Ostensibly the argument is that this puts pedestrians in harms’ way, or at least more so than it puts bikers in harms’ way to use the road.

This argument can easily be refuted using simple physics. Energy is what determines the amount of change a body can experience; in our case, kinetic energy is the primary determinant in how likely a collision is to be dangerous.

Kinetic energy according to classical theory (which is very accurate for the speeds involved, which are far below c) is half the product of the mass and the square of the velocity.

Compare the kinetic energy of a moving bike to that of a car. A bike may be moving at around 15 miles per hour—which translates to about 7 metres per second. If a bike and its rider weighs around 100kg (a high estimate) its kinetic energy is 2.5kJ. A typical car, by comparison, might weigh 1500kg with occupants and their luggage; if it is travelling at 40 mph, it will have a kinetic energy of about 243kJ.

That’s almost 100 times greater than the bike.

Momentum can be dangerous too; in a collision, it can send objects flying, and causes whiplash in car accidents. Classical momentum is the product of mass and velocity. Here the difference is again stark: the bike’s momentum is 700Ns, whereas the car has a momentum of 27,000Ns—nearly 40 times greater.

A cyclist is far more likely to get killed by a car than a pedestrian is from a bike.

Empirical and epidemiological studies confirm this as well. 113 cyclists died in 2014 in the UK due to being hit by cars; 21,000 were injured to varying severity. (ROSPA). I can’t find any data on how many pedestrians were killed by bikes. The number is probably in the region of zero.

But Cyclists Annoy Pedestrians!

A surprisingly common argument made for this ‘sensible’ law is that if cyclists cycle on the pavement, this will annoy pedestrians.

There are quite a few problems with this line of argument. The first is that much of the time, the pavements are devoid of pedestrians—particularly in rural areas.

In the scenario of a densely populated urban area, it’s worth pointing out that cyclists will either get in the way of pedestrians or in the way of dense urban traffic. This is not the fault of the cyclists; pedestrians are given pavements, cars are given roads, and cyclists are given... nothing at all. In this kind of situation, the only fair response is to build fietspad.

Why Do We Want to Bike, Anyway?

There are some very serious reasons for promoting cycling over other means of transport (particularly car travel).

The first reason is that the UK, and numerous other countries throughout the world, suffers from an obesity epidemic. That’s not an exaggeration; the statistics are disturbing:

Data on overweight and obesity among adults (defined as people aged 16 and over) are mainly from the Health Survey for England (HSE). Results for 2014 showed that 61.7% of adults were overweight or obese (65.3% of men and 58.1% of women). The prevalence of obesity is similar among men and women, but men are more likely to be overweight.

A substantial proportion of obese adults have a body mass index (BMI) of well over 30. Women are more likely than men to have extremely high BMI values.

In England, the prevalence of obesity among adults rose from 14.9% to 25.6% between 1993 and 2014. The rate of increase has slowed down since 2001, although the trend is still upwards. The prevalence of overweight has remained broadly stable during this period at 36–39%.

(Emphasis mine) Source: NOO

There are many reasons for this debacle, but it is widely accepted that our increasingly sedentary lifestyles (when compared to ages past) is a significant factor. If people cycled regularly to school, to work, for leisure—as they do in Holland—obesity would take a hit.

Aside from your health, cycling has other advantages. Firstly it emits no noise; this is a huge boon to those living in urban areas that suffer from traffic roar, day or night. Secondly, it has an appreciable impact on traffic congestion—which incurs substantial costs to the UK economy in terms of lost time, lost productivity, and numerous externalities.

Thirdly and finally, cycling emits no pollution: be it in the form of nitrous oxides and free radicals like benzene, or in the form of greenhouse gases like CO2.

It seems inarguable to me that the benefits of cycling easily outweigh the modest capital outlay of building cycling lanes.

Some Caveats

Any proposal for mass cycling must however be cautioned with a few caveats.

The first is that cycling is obviously not suitable for many journeys due to an obvious factor—distance. While fitness and the aid of electric bikes may increase range and average speed up to a point, at the end of the day your maximum realistic range in a bike is going to be about 10 miles (assuming bike lanes, good fitness, and maybe a battery).

Secondly, the weather in Northern Europe is often poor. Nobody wants to go cycling in the rain.

Conclusions

All in all, my thesis on cycling in the UK highlights two major problems:

1. A lack of investment in proper cycling infrastructure;
2. Certain laws that make it difficult for cyclists, in particular the lack of access to pavements.

If this country is serious about resolving its obesity epidemic, its climate change commitments, and complaints about noise, it ought to seriously commit to building proper infrastructure.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.

Musings on Alex’s Phone

Hail readers!

My poetry and latest Corbyn polemic aside, it is true that I’ve not written all that much here on the Magical Realm. In part, this is because of my continued efforts on the Ark—I have now completed chapter fifteen. But it is also because of a few other things I’ve been occupied with.

In particular, I’ve purchased and set up a new smartphone. This is fortunate, since my old smartphone was five years old; it could barely chug along with 384MB of RAM and a 533MHz single-core processor. My new phone—the Sony Xperia Z3 Compact—has a quad core processor clocked at 2500MHz, along with 2GB of RAM, a 20MP camera (it can shoot 4k!) and, most importantly: it has a fast GPS.

(Here are some additional photos of the new phone.)

This is important, because of another reason: I am once more leaving for Germany this winter. I was hoping to go skiing; but with the spring-like temperatures, I will have little choice but to enjoy the view (and take photos!) Since we’re going by car, a fast GPS—unlike my old smartphone’s painfully slow and somewhat unreliable version—is invaluable.

Anyway: I’ve decided to share a few of my thoughts on the smartphone market in 2015, along with a few photos I’ve dug up. Consider it a light-hearted break from my usual politics, philosophy and literature essays.

A Few Words About the Xperia Z3C

Before I go on about the ideal smartphone, and other philosophical musings, allow me to share a few thoughts on my new phone.

First off: the specsheet is impressive. The phone boasts dust and waterproofing (!); an excellent GPS; 4G, compatible with all major standards; a fast (for ARM) quad core processor; healthy RAM; an impressive camera; and a razor sharp display. With 319 pixels per square inch, the screen is literally as good as printed paper—for fonts, more so, since RGBA anti-aliasing means the horizontal font resolution is more or less tripled.

Tiny icons are rendered picture-perfect. The screen’s brightness is good; the colours are vivid. What more is there to say?

To top it all off: the Z3C only cost me £250 off Carphone Warehouse. It’s not bad for a smartphone of this calibre—not bad at all.

There are, however, some caveats. The first is to do with software. Sony has pre-installed a large number of applications; many are of questionable value. There’s AVG antivirus—surely an insult to Linux kernel security, to Google’s OS, and to user intelligence.

Then there’s Garmin’s Map Pilot. Don’t get me wrong—satnav apps are only too useful, and I’m sure Garmin’s app is decent. Trouble is, Google has already added GMaps to Android. And GMaps is a perfectly capable satnav app—it has voice-operation (I can attest that it works), voiced directions (ditto), and of course, it only takes about five seconds or so for it to find you.

(A note: the phone has its sat-nav antenna to the left. In right-handed operation, my fingers end up obscuring it; although this has no noticeable effect on reception.)

All of this, however, merely makes for some uninstalling when setting up. That is, except for the fact that some apps cannot be removed.

Sony has shipped a number of uninstallable apps with the Xperia, and most of them only fufill functions already extant in the OS; email, for example, but also music-players and a specialised video app are included. Some of these apps are genuinely useful—Sony’s email app should work with multiple accounts, including my Outlook account.

But some are useless for me. I don’t have a PlayStation; what use could I have for Sony’s app?

I could understand it if Sony merely included the apps as part of its UX experience, although—frankly—I would still rather an OS just fulfill its function of providing an interface, interacting with the hardware at the kernel level, and giving me a package manager. (Or ‘appstore,’ in the smartphone parlance.)

But for Sony to waste my internal memory space on apps I have no use for? Bad form, Sony. Bad form.

Other than that, Sony has also shipped a (non-default) UI for Android. Having experienced both it and Android’s offering, I prefer the latter. I find the default Android UI simpler and more intuitive—less getting in the way, more working. That said, Sony’s offering ain’t bad. I’ve found my way round it without having to type ‘man Android’ into a terminal. (Yes, I know Android doesn’t have a command-line interface by default. Yes, I know it doesn’t have a manual either. Shoot me, why don’t you?)

It did take me a while to figure out the overall workings (multitasking, home screens, etc.) but it was no great effort. Although, I do get a sense that Sony designed the interface for social media addicts: there are quite a few widgets that take most of the screen displaying Facebook/Twitter/etc.

Anyway; stay with me for more updates on my experiences with the Z3C. So far, it has proven fast (the CPU is overkill anyway), sharp, and good-looking—even if it is hindered by Sony’s dubious software ethos.

Oh, and one more thing: I know I can root the phone. That would allow me to uninstall Sony’s bloatware. However—I’m not dumb enough to risk bricking my phone and voiding my warranty. Sony’s bloatware will have to remain ignored.

Thoughts on Smartphones

With my mini-review out of the way, allow me to share a few thoughts on smartphones more generally.

Firstly, since it’s already mentioned—let’s address bloatware and user rights. Bloatware might save a few handsome pennies for the manufacturer, but it’s hard to see anyone willingly choosing to accept it in return for a few quid. Like the market for Windows PCs, manufacturers are desperate to increase profit margins; Google or Microsoft would find it difficult to prevent them doing so (since having the software available on a wide variety of hardware is dependent, in part, on giving the OEMs freedom); and consumers, for lack of choice, must go along.

‘Alex!’ you cry; ‘If you dislike bloatware so much, why buy the phone?’

As I’ve said: choice. First off, most Android phones are not actually stock Android—only the Nexus phones are officially vanilla Android, along with a few other phones orbitting the sidelines. Samsung, Sony and HTC are the big players; and they’re all shipping Touchwiz, bloatware, and modifications galore.

I could’ve have bought the Nexus 5—I almost did. The extra £55 wouldn’t have deterred me. What did deter me was the screen size; at 5.2", it was too large to operate one-handed. (The Xperia is small enough to allow this, but anything larger would be uncomfortable.)

The problem with bloatware from Google’s side is that there’s not a whole lot they can do about it. Android is open-source code; anyone can modify it, and sell phones with it, provided that they follow the GPL. Google could close-off parts of Android like the UI, various utilities, and the package-management. While Samsung et al. can code their own interfaces and utilities, package management would likely prove insourmountable. If they went it alone, they would have to find a way of making the many thousands of Android apps work on their implementation.

The problems with Google closing the Android project to open-source development are rather substantial, however. Firstly, any departure from the current .apk packaging would involve repackaging every Android app around—a huge effort for the developers. It could even lead to developers abandoning Android for other competing platforms.

The second problem is that open-source development benefits the Android project considerably. Closing the source would shut the door on that.

The third problem is that if Google changes the OS too much, it would cause even bigger problems for the apps. Conversely, if it changes too little, competing Samsung and Sony OS would still function with Android apps.

The only other possibility for Google would be to re-license the Android code under a more restrictive licence—I’m not an expert on this, but I suspect there would be some difficulties. Still, it would be easier than the above.

There is one more option: the EU could legislate to require that all phones sold within the EU be rooted, i.e. the consumer must have full access to the software. It might pose some difficulties with the EU’s plans to regulate radio devices to prevent them running at illegal frequences or power ratings; since, theoretically, the user could break the law (unlike in a locked-down phone). Then again: should users not be themselves responsible for breaking the law?

But until someone can give us a legislative or technical solution to this, we as consumers will have to put up with it. Maybe the development of Ubuntu for phones, or KDE’s Plasma Mobile will give us more choice in the future; alas, that is not the here and now.

Screen Size

Another issue that’s caught my attention is that of screen size. There’s been a trend recently towards larger and larger phones—up to 6". On one hand, I welcome any initiative to bring choice; and there are people who like, or have use for, large phones. Some people have large hands, and struggle to operate smaller phones. Other people use their phone heavily and want the extra display.

That said, I dislike this trend because a) it seems to be leading to a shortage of smaller phones (most phones are now around 5") and b) some of the features found on larger phones aren’t being included in their little brothers (my Z3C being the exception). I suspect this is one area where we’ll have to just vote with our wallets.

The question of ‘what is the ideal size for most people’ does have an answer though. I suspect any phone that’s too large for a normal-sized hand to operate is, indeed, too large—phones are, after all, meant to be portable. As Steve Jobs said: big phones are like Hummers. Pointless and garish.

Anyway: back to the Z3C. The 4.6" screen seems close to the limit of one-handed operability. Indeed, it takes some effort to reach something on the bottom of the screen if your thumb is at the top; any larger, and I’d be struggling. This is not helped by the fact that the off-button is to the side—I have to perform feats of dexterity to hold the phone and turn off the screen.

So: we can perhaps place a maximum realistic limit of 5" for the ideal screen.

On the other end of the spectrum, my old phone’s 3.2" screen is easy to use—but small, especially when it comes to browsing or gaming. For the sake of simplicity, we can probably say anything between 4" and 4.9" is ideal.

The Role of the Smartphone

Lastly, I’ll deal with a different question entirely: what are smartphones for?

They seem able to do almost anything. They can call; they can email; text; update Twitter and Facebook; they have capable web-browsers; they have GPS, and can play music.

All of these functions pretty much render dedicated music players obsolete (although if you buy Google’s 5.7" monster, you might want a small music player you can take on a jog). A similar story is to be found for satnavs.

And is this a good thing? Overall, yes. One of the boons of general purpose computing is that it can replace a large number of specialised devices otherwise requiring more money, space and hassle to operate.

Still: as the example above shows, there are compromises to be made. Large phones can do web-browsing better but fall foul to simpler tasks; small phones are less capable as an on-the-road replacement for a PC. Personally, I think one should leave serious computing to the desktop, or else (if portability is required) a laptop. Even without the technical advantages that computers have in software availability, processing power, and memory—it’s just a whole lot more practical.

No phone—even a large one—and no keyboard, no matter how finely tuned, can replace a physical keyboard for speed and accuracy. For a writer, that’s a deal-breaker. And if you need to create diagrams, presentations or edit photos; forget it.

One More Aside: Resolution

Before I conclude, allow me to mention resolution; or, more correctly, pixel density. My phone has a pixel density of 319ppi; it’s sharp as a surgical knife. There are phones with higher pixel density and bigger screens—some 5+" phones come with 2560x1440p screens, with pixel densities of over 400ppi.

Let me be honest: while any improvements in the screen’s appearance are debated and to an extent subjective, what’s not debated is the effect on battery life. Phones with enormous resolutions will likely just suck your battery (and your wallet) dry.

To Conclude

If I’ve rambled a bit, apologies. My new phone is proving quite a mouthful. Perchance I ought go back to writing on the Ark—my latest beta-reader (a reviewer of the Necromancer) might even have gotten back to me…

Until next time, have fun. And do choose your phone wisely.

To Philosophise, or not to Philosophise; and Other Difficult Matters

Hail readers!

Previously, I spoke on matters of writing—on plot, detail, and other such questions as pertain to a writer. I did, however, mention one thing: I have upgraded my PC. Thus, today I will briefly explain this—what it will mean and so on—along with more general updates on my goings-on. This will be relatively brief, but informative. Without further ado...

Alex! What Have You Been Doing?

I have recently purchased what is known as a ‘Solid State Drive,’ or SSD as the acronym goes. For the non-technical among you, think of it like this: your computer stores data permanently on what is called a ‘drive’. It keeps your computer’s software, along with your photos, documents, etc. stored there.

When the computer boots, it has to load the software from drive and onto the RAM (random-access memory). It does this for a very simple reason: drives are slow. Copying, or indeed writing, data to a drive is much slower than doing so to RAM. Many software functions—like those you might find in a graphics editor like GIMP or Photoshop—do a lot of processing to this data; they would be unusable otherwise.

Loading from drive to RAM is why your computer might take half a minute to boot, or three seconds to load a web-browser.

And why does the computer not just keep all the data on RAM, you ask? The reasons are twofold. Firstly, RAM is ‘volatile’—you need to keep it powered on, or else all the data that’s on it will get wiped. This is obviously a bit of a concern if your computer stores e.g. a priceless manuscript.

RAM is also much more expensive on a per-GB basis. 8GB of RAM might cost around £30–£40; for that, you can buy a 500GB hard drive.

Anyway: what all this means is that the drive is the slowest part in your computer. Most common functions are bottlenecked by your drive. An SSD, then, is useful because it is much faster than a standard hard-disk drive (HDD).

This means that the computer boots in 10s instead of thirty, that a browser can be opened in one second instead of four, and so on. SSDs also have a number of additional advantages over HDDs which I won’t go into here.

The bottom line is: with this upgrade, I can spend more time writing and less time waiting on the computer.

Problems

Alas, my upgrade did not go quite smoothly. I spent two hours getting the SSD into a finnicky drive bay inside my computer case; I spent a number of hours, afterwards, installing Ubuntu to it. Installing Ubuntu took about fifteen minutes; however, a problem with my wifi driver for the USB dongle I use ended up requiring lots of troubleshooting...

Above: this little dongle didn’t play nice with Ubuntu. It had to go.

I ended up connecting the PC to my wifi extender, via ethernet. The extender acts like a router, and the PC gains access to the Internet through the (well-supported) ethernet cable. It’s not the most elegant method, perhaps, but it does the trick.

To cut a long story short: I am now up and running.

The Ark

As for the Ark, I have written chapter thirteen and have begun chapter fourteen. My technical difficulties prevented me from writing as much as I’d like to have done; but with such technical conundrums a-sorted, computer-time should now be better spent.

I have also received a substantial amount of feedback on everything so far from multiple sources. Chief among these is a beta-reader, whom I shall name simply as Peter, who has taken pains to read (almost) everything written thus far. He has been both praising—‘you have talent,’ ‘the characters are well-painted,’ ‘the descriptions of the architecture imaginative’—and damning (my overuse of certain words being a particular issue).

As you may also have been able to guess from this and other posts before it, I have also written a sex scene as part of the Ark. There I obtained feedback both from a romance writer (and friend) as well as a colleague. Suffice to say they were pleased, though I have decided on one or two changes.

Other than this, my work continues.

School

I have said relatively little on this, though it occupies a large share of my time. Previously, I was occupied by physics coursework. This week, I have the December tests. They are not too difficult, nor terribly important, but they are a good time to draw up some useful revision notes. My philosophy notes so far total over twenty pages, all in all.

Future Essays

You are probably wishing for fewer words on writing, and more words on—for example—my perenially favourite political economy writings.

Alas, I have not found any more issues I feel both keen and qualified to write on; instead, I shall write on a topic hitherto only alluded to: philosophy.

There are two specific topics I’m considering to cover. The first is moral philosophy. This will involve, firstly, some discussion on meta-ethics—questions such as ‘What is good?’ and ‘Are moral propositions subject to the principle of bivaliance?’ will be addressed. Thereafter, I will address normative, ethics—i.e. how to apply these principles to the real world, in general.

Alternately, I can address questions of logic. I could write a primer on the principles of logic, the fallacies, and ask you to consider some interesting examples.

To answer the above, take a look at this questionnaire

Conclusion

The life of a writer is a busy thing; the life of both a student and a writer can be hectic. Even so, there is plenty to come. Stick around. You might learn something.

The Machinations of a Writer, Part I

First in a Three Part Series on Software

This post has been bumped up, owing to extra detail; the follow-up post is located here.

As detailed previously, I am endeavouring to detail to you the many machinations of the publishing industry; and, specifically for today, the tricky matter that causes many a writer many a headache: software.

Text Editors, or Word Processors: Which Will it Be?

The default reaction of young, foolish writers—when confronted with the matter of recording their (no doubt) genius musings—is to run to their word processor: and that, usually, means Microsoft Word. And it seems a natural enough response, after all; for word processors are capable, often-times advanced pieces of software that are quite able to generate, say, an essay, or some other short piece of text.

The trouble with word processors, however, is not so much to do with their ability to handle large documents—a feat which they accomplish with but minor misshap—but rather, with the fickle heart of a writer.

Allow me to illustrate:

‘Alex!’ you cry; ‘whatever is this? It wouldn’t be... your book?’ Well, dear reader, that is in fact correct; what you see is the Necromancer, as it appears in paperback form. But I would draw your attention to something altogether different: LibreOffice writer, my word processor of choice.

Do you notice the formatting options—be it bold, italic, underline, superscript, and many more? Do you notice the plethora of formatting styles; the litany of sidebars, icons and menus? And now imagine, dear reader, how inherently distracting this mode of editing must be; how easily a curious soul such as I may become engrossed in the numerous minutiae of formatting (fonts, weights, leading, indents, footer or header page numeration, footer placement—dear God, I spent far too long on that—heading styles...) and become altogether diverted from that central quest. Which is, quite simply, to write.

This is not to pose a criticism of Writer; indeed, the program is merely fulfilling its role as a word processor: namely, to provide complex WISYWIG editing. But though word processors are in fact a necessary step of the process—as I shall explain—the first, vital stage of writing does not fall within their remit.

For that, one must look to an ostensibly similar piece of software—the text editor.

The Humble Text Editor

Aside from the evident distractions and complexities of a word processor, text editors bear another, more subtle advantage: that of reliability.

It is no secret—word processors, as an inevitable consequence of their abilities, are more prone to all manner of disastrous failures. Random freezes? Check. Input lag? Ditto. (That, I must confess, is particularly infurating.) And that’s not even going into other potential pitfalls, namely: incompatibility across formats (every tried sharing Word documents?), obsolete formats—imagine trying to open a document written twenty years ago (you can’t)—along with other, invisible syntax-level complexities, e.g. direct formatting preservation.

The alternative to this, of course, is plain text. In this, there is no ‘hidden realm’ concealed within the formatted appearance of a document; rather, plain text is the simplest human-readable syntax in existence. What is you see is, really, what you get:

Plain text has some rather significant disadvantages, however. In particular, plain text doesn’t support formating; a limitation that renders it useless for writing even this humble blog post, let alone the epics of Narnia.

‘But Alex!’ you observe; ‘Are you not using plain text at this very instance?’ I am indeed... but this not ordinary plain text. Rather, it is the creation of a wonderful man (whose name eludes my memory, sadly) and goes by the name ‘Markdown’. What distinguishes this ‘Markdown’ from mere plain text is that of markup formatting: italics may be denoted by asterisks on either side; likewise bold, through double asterisks; and even paragraph styles can be incorporated, using direct HTML.

Thus, I am able to include my precious formatting. Markdown is of course an intermediate format, in that the asterisks don’t create actual italics; however, it may easily be converted to HTML—a format that is easy to manipulate and further convert—through the ingenious markdown script.

Gedit—my text editor of choice—appears deceptively simple, but conceals many a feature. One of this is the ability to run scripts (such as markdown...) and to employ them in ingenious ways. For example:

Through this, I am able to convert this Markdown into HTML—all via a few clicks. Unfortunately, this particular feature only works in Linux, and Macintosh systems; Windows users are left out in the cold. This is not due to Gedit so much as Windows’ less than stellar ability to handle scripts. It is one of the many reasons why I recommend the so-called ‘alternative operating systems’.

EDIT: concerning Markdown, a new Gedit plugin has recently been released; it allows something called syntax highlighting, along with easily previewing your markdown document as it would appear in HTML. Here is an example:

A Question of Operating Systems

My OS (to use the acronym; brevity, I adore thee) is one Ubuntu Linux. Writers, of course, use many operating systems; some adore their Macs, whereas others hold fast to Windows. Ubuntu, however, is likely the best candidate for the task of creating tales. For one: it is really quite beautiful.

The value of beauty is not to be underestimated. It can bequeath to a writer that sense of phantasmagoria, that view into the unseen realm; and, furthermore—who likes ugly screens?

But there are also numerous more—how shall we say?—practical considerations involved. Take non-ASCII characters; or, to translate from jargonese, pretty much anything that’s not on your keyboard. How does one write smart quotations? Or dashes? What about diacritics; ‘Deriën,’ as I like to point out, isn’t the same thing as ‘Derien’—there’s a distinct lengthening of the /ɪ/, for one.

It is true that word processors can ‘autocorrect’ formatting, in many cases (albeit with limitations; try writing ’Tis). But writing non-ASCII characters involves long, tedious forays into the character map, otherwise; and, as I’ve mentioned previously: word processors are distracting, and dubious of reliability.

Ubuntu (and all distributions that employ the Gnome DE) have a solution: the compose key. This, simply, is a user-configurable key—right super in my case—that, once pressed, results in the OS absorbing inputs and creating new inputs based on set patterns. For example: writing compose, then hyphen three times creates an em dash. Genius, n’est-ce pas? Of course, one has to learn these key combinations... but they are remarkably intuitive. Quotations, for example, employ the simple flat apostrophe, preceded either by < (for the left starter quote) or >.

Another advantage—there are others, though too minor and numerous to save poor brevity in their mention—is the matter of font rendering. This affects Windows—Mac users, thankfully, are saved from this particular idiocy of MS. In any case: Windows employs what is known as ‘hinting’ to render fonts. This is a complex, technical process, but detailed simply: it forces pixels on the outer edges of a glyph into set squares, that match the physical configuration of pixels on a monitor. This removes the bluriness present on the edges of a glyph, allowing them to appear ‘sharper’.

Here: a demonstration.

As you can see, my wonderful Necromancer—formatted in the elegant Linux Libertine—appears suitably gorgeous unhinted; but when hinting is applied... horror ensues. This is due to the fact that Libertine is a font that isn’t specifically designed to be hinted; if it were, it would appear more like MS Calibri. Sharpened, slightly distorted, but overall enhanced.

The trouble is, hinting a font is a difficult and time consuming process. Invariably, many font designers would rather create beautiful fonts. Many of which, incidentally, are indeed beautiful; and which cannot be used to display text in Windows, or even to create printed documents—you can’t tell how the font is meant to look.

OSX does not apply any significant hinting; Linux—being wiser than either—allows you to choose. The default is the same as OSX.

(Incidentally, it is possible to disable Window’s font hinting using a third-party hack; but I’m not certain if the program even has an English version maintained anymore, and nor is it as capable.)

The Tricky Matter of Editing

‘Okay, Alex,’ you say; ‘suppose we’ve written our masterpiece, but now want to send it to the editor—what do we do?’ This question is more difficult than it first appears, for what Markdown cannot yet do—or may ever be able to do—is track changes. This is a valuable editing tool, and indeed you’d be hard-pressed to work without it.

Markdown, however, is flexible; and so, your manuscrupt a-written, you may proceed to convert it to your format of choice. This can be done via a number of means; I recommend pandoc, a flexible, able and simple converter. You will have to learn to use the command-line in order to peruse it... but it’s worth it.

Finishing Off

I have spoken at great length on this matter—even more than I may wish—but then, software can prove surprisingly troublesome without a suitable dose of expertise. I shall write more, in future—this is only part one, after all—on such topics as eBook creation, publishing formats, and more. Until then, keep following. I’ve poetry, news, and an essay on socialism a-coming...

Apologies for the Absence

Dear readers:

I apologise for my absence in blogging. I’ve had my third migraine in the past two years. It knocked me out of commission for a day—afterwards I was busy with a bunch of other important things that prevented me from blogging.

Anyway: I shall be in Holland (on a trip; not moving) soon. I may be a little erratic with my blogging then—I’ll be rather busy, you see. However, I shall be in Romania by about the 14th of July. There I shall have plenty of time to entertain you lot...

I have also, I can inform you, set up a dual monitor configuration. Here it is:

(I apologise for the dodgy quality: I ain’t no photographer, oh no.)

I shall now proceed to bore you with a brief analysis of why I think dual monitors are overrated—and in some cases, a downright bad idea. Skip the subsection if it doesn’t interest you.

Dual Monitors…

Let’s start with the obvious: having two monitors requires a lot of space. If I weren’t such a suckish photographer, you’d be able to see that one 22" and another 23" monitor combine to take up most of one pretty big table.

If—like my grandma dilligently waiting for me in Romania (no, I have’t forgotten you; but you can’t understand this, can you?)—you’re someone who doesn’t have much desk space or indeed space in general: dual monitors are a suckish proposition.

That’s bad brownie number one. Bad brownie number two are the cables. You need more of ’em, and you need ’em long. Not good.

There’s also the wee little issue of having the right cables. You see, many computers have integrated graphics (that means there is a small GPU embedded within the CPU; if that sounds like gibberish, you probably shouldn’t be reading this, but I digress).

Anyway, integrated graphics solutions rely on the motherboard providing the right outputs. Most mobos usually only have two outputs: one DVI and another HDMI.

Trouble is, most monitors don’t support HDMI, so you’re left needing an HDMI to DVI (or whatever) cable.

Besides the fiasco with space and cabling (making all of this seem increasingly impractical) there’s also a myriad of other issues. Many operating systems don’t allow per-monitor configuration of pixel densities; this means that if, like me, you like to have a secondary satellite monitor—a smaller one—then your text on the second monitor will look scaled down and be painful to read.

(You may observe that I am writing this in a Linux virtual machine that runs on the second monitor. Virtualising another OS is currently the only way round this.)

Finally, after all that, I’ve realised that having two screens isn’t such a big boost to productivity. Most of the time I’m doing one task; and having a second monitor just gets in the way. I usually turn it off.

Dual monitors are indeed good for doing certain kinds of multitasking. I sometimes do web coding, for example: I find it quite useful to have a monitor open with the language’s documentation, and another open for the text editor.

Still, dual monitors are if anything productivity degrading to many of us (rarely as a writer do I have to do two things at once; I’m usually trying to focus on writing).

And let’s face it: it’s not impossible to work with two windows at once on a single monitor—especially if your OS is designed to maximise available screen space à la OSX or Ubuntu Unity.

So there you go. My suggestion is to spend your money on a super wide screen monitor, or maybe even just on a monitor with a very high resolution. I find that pixels help almost as much as inches when it comes to running two apps side by side.

Moving on

I am finishing off a review of Faefever (by Karen Moning) on Goodreads. There is a lot to say, and I was interrupted by my awful migraine in writing it. Please bear with me—the review will be the basis for a post on what bad writing can be. Stay Internet-tuned...

(Ouch. Still have’t come up with better marketing lingo.)

PS: I shall be restarting the Poem of the Week and the Three Days’ Word properly soon. Just give me a bit more time, okay?