Creek Jots ~ 2010-10-08

â–¶ I’ll be attending the Blue Ridge Parkway 75th Anniversary Symposium next week–a choice I made over flying to Missoula for the Society of Environmental Journalist conference, an organization where, after two years of association, I am finally starting to feel a bit less pretentious and more familiar with some of the names and faces. My small-pond visibility rose a notch this year when the SEJ chose one of my images for their mass mailing campaigns. But I will stay local this year, and work with people I’m likely to meet again, even though I’ll miss SEJ,  following it by twitter and blog as it progresses.

â–¶ NaNoWriMo is coming up. I participated last year, and completed 20k words by mid-November before deciding I didn’t want to be pressured by an arbitrary deadline. And there it sits. And frankly, I’m a bit intimidated by jumping back in on a work of fiction. Even though it is a third-person look through my own eyes at a world I know, creating story lines and characters is foreign to me. I’m excited by the fact that Scrivener will be coming out in a few weeks with a major new version. I’ve found that the tools available do influence the object constructed. I’ve use Devonthink to compile the pieces of my first two books. I will likely start there, then move into Scrivener for Book Three.

â–¶ For those of you who might need bibliographic formatting for the elements of your writing, (eyes glaze over) another writing tool to watch for is the massively overhauled Zotero, which will include a free-standing desktop app. I’m always on the lookout for the best possible work flow in info-research, and Zotero Everywhere will be a contender, with it’s own particular strengths.

â–¶ Since I’ve lost both my regular readers by now, I’ll just mention that my son told me yesterday he’ll be moving to the Mac platform soon. What he will need (as so many of us mac converts do) is a replacement app for the abandoned PC app Ecco Pro, which I introduced him to, after using it since 1992 until I went Mac in 2007. It is the Swiss Army Knife nobody has picked up, though many are asking for. Ah, well. I’m recommending Circus Ponies Notebook for it’s responsive outlining format; Notational Velocity for freeform data saving; Evernote for web snippet including graphics; and followup.cc for alarm-reminder notifications.

â–¶ Just found: Geemail–and AdobeAir app for G-mail with offline access, something my son prefers. Don’t know if it will switch to calendar. That’d be super. It’s cross platform, and free.

Related articles

• Zotero, the Best Way to “Cite Your Sources,” Now Available Everywhere (readwriteweb.com)
• Scrivener 2.0 Preview Shows off Syncing, EPub Export (pcworld.com)
• 5 Mac alternatives to OneNote (en.onsoftware.com)