Fiddling while Nathan Cries...

Look above if you want the latest baby update - this entry addresses my inner geek! In spite of the recent spate of sleepless nights (the joy of Nathan's cold!) I've been playing with some computery related things. The first is the complete rebuild of the Power Projection website. In reality, it was done before Christmas, but the domain name registrar took far too long to redirect to the new server.

I'm pretty pleased with the site. Ever since I created the Power Projection site way back, it's never been quite what I wanted. I was surfing BlueBall Design's website and saw their MaxLight theme for Rapidweaver. The moment I saw it, I knew I wanted it for PowerProjection.net, because it was so, well, Star Trek like. Something just made me think of space. Anyway, I bought it, and started to build the site while we were waiting for Nathan's arrival. It needed a little bit of hacking to get exactly what I wanted (some tweaks to the theme) but I got there. I should also mention Charlie Lockhart from BlueBall, who was incredibly helpful when there were some code issues. Anyway, I'm pleased with the site, and happy that it is finally off the Pipex webspace which this blog is on, because it is a real pain to update.

The other big IT related find is Scrivener. Writing Power Projection on the Mac taught me the limitations of Word for creative writing projects, in much the same way that writing Delta 3 is Down taught me the limitations of Windows (NT 4 in this case) as a stable OS you can rely on. The problem is, Word really stops you seeing the wood for the trees, and you end up spending a lot of time thinking about the programme rather than the words.

I tried a number of solutions to address this issue with the workflow before layout, but none of them have been entirely satisfactory. My first attempt was a program called Copywrite, which promised a lot but seemed to be unstable as hell on my G3 iBook and G4 iMac. (It may be better now, but I have no burning desire to check it out again!) I eventually gave up on it and went back to Word. My most recent solution was to use Circus Ponies' Notebook to capture notes on projects, and then drive the projects themselves through the excellent OmniOutliner using an outline with embedded documents and files. This worked reasonably well, but didn't quite click. Then I happened upon a reference and review of Scrivener on 43folders.com, which instantly peaked my interest.

Scrivener takes what I was using Word and OmniOutliner for and merges them with some really intuitive tools. The full screen editing and structuring tools are excellent and it is very 'Mac'. It hangs together beautifully and after a few days playing convinced me it was a must have. I've registered a copy, and will be using it for my next two writing projects; Power Projection: Reinforcements, and a Traveller scenario called This Fear of Gods. I recommend you take it for a test drive and have a look. You can use it for 30 days before it locks down.

(Edit 2025: dead links pruned)