Reviews Posts

I’ve been writing the Q-Blog with relative intensity for about 5 months now, and the biggest struggle thus far has been to find interesting things to write about. Actually, that’s not true. This is the Internet after all. There’s something interesting just a Google search away. The real trick is keeping track of all the good stuff. It’s not as easy as it sounds. I also like to keep reference material for all of the writing and drawing that I do. And, again, the most crucial part is just keeping track of all the stuff so that you not only capture it, but you put it in a place that’s easy to access and keep organized.

Luckily, there’s been a recent boom in software that is up to the challenge.

Notebook and information manager saturation

There are tons of these types of applications out there:

1. DevonTHINK
2. Yojimbo
3. Mori
4. VoodooPad
5. EagleFiler
6. Journler
7. Web-based wikis

And I’ve tried all of the above and then some (I’m a Mac user, so apologies for the Mac-centric list). And each have their advantages and disadvantages. All make it easy to capture information, store it, tag it, search it, and organize it. But the trouble is that they are all locally stored. And if you’re like me and you either have two or more machines that you regularly work from, or if you are frequently working from machines that you aren’t the primary user of, you’re out of luck. You can collect and organize all the data you want. If you can’t get to it, it’s useless.

That’s where Evernote rises above the rest of the players in the field.

Enter Evernote and the sync

Evernote is both a web service and a desktop application. Each on its own is a respectable competitor in the notebook app marketplace. It’s got tagging, saved searches, a number of different ways to view your notes, images, and other data. It’s fast and intuitive to use. So it’s on par with anything out there from a functionality standpoint.

But what makes Evernote special is that it overcomes the problem of not having to access your data by letting you capture and store your data via its web interface to a database on an Evernote server OR via the desktop application to a locally hosted database. And then (this is the good part) it syncs the data over the web, so that within minutes you have identical copies of your data accessible locally, via the web, or on another computer with a desktop application that’s synching to your account!

Hallelujah! This is nailing shut the coffins of all the other notebook apps out there. This solves the most nagging problem of remembering to synchronize my files from desktop to laptop before heading to the coffee shop to work.

The clients

As I mentioned, there are 2 main ways to get to your Evernote notebooks: Through the web-based client, and via a locally installed native application. And Evernote provides native apps for Windows, Mac OS X, and the iPhone. And they’re terrific.

In general, they all work in much the same way. You have many ways to capture information and create new notes. In just a couple of clicks you can begin composing and emailing notes from within the client, tagging notes, creating new notebooks, searching your database, and more.

What follows is a quick run-down on my impressions of each method of getting to your Evernote data:

Web client

The web client feels really natural. It’s got a lot of AJAXy, drag-n-droppiness, which allows you to arrange notes, transfer notes between notebooks, and drag notebooks themselves around. It’s intuitive, and all in all, a very robust way to manage your data collection if you aren’t able or interested in installing an application.

There’s also a bookmarklet that allows the quick capture of websites.

Windows client

Evernote has been around for a few years, albeit in a very different format. It was originally a Windows-only notetaking application that functioned very much like a big, endless roll of parchment that you could type notes into, drag images and stuff to, and it was actually pretty cool. The Windows client retains a little bit of the feel of that older version in the way that it displays the current note and appends a new note.

I haven’t done much with this version beyond download and install it on a virtual machine, so I’m not speaking from a position of great authority, but I do know that it’s got a few minor differences in functionality and appearance, and they’re largely inconsequential.

There are options to set a global hot key to capture selected text and images directly to a new note.

Mac Client

As a Mac user, I’m very impressed at the quality of the Evernote application. In a world where most cross-platform applications are developed using Java which means they’re ugly and feel completely alien when used next to native OS X applications. This one is definitely not ugly, it’s not jarring, and it’s as intuitive as any application I’ve used that adheres to the OS X standards. And it stands toe to toe with the other Mac notebook applications.

This client also features hot keys that can be used to capture screenshots or text that’s been copied to the clipboard.

iPhone client

Since I don’t have an iPhone, I can’t really provide much information about how well this app functions, but from what Mat Lu from TUAW says, it doesn’t sound like much more than an iPhone optimized way to access and create new notes on the Evernote servers.

The price is FREE…with a but

An Evernote account is free. Just head to Evernote.com to sign up. Access to the web client is free. The desktop-based client applications are all free to download and use (you can even use them locally without connecting them to the Evernote mothership). It is all very very free to use.

Your new Evernote account gives you up to 40MB of transfer per month. That means you can transfer 40MB of information (notes, photos, webpages, PDFs etc.) up to the Evernote server and/or down and around to every other desktop application whose database you want to keep synced with the server. I currently have the Mac app installed on my Mac Pro and Macbook Pro and the Windows app installed on a virtual machine, all of which are synchingsynching to the same database.

Evernote is hoping to make their money by selling upgraded accounts, which up the transfer total to 500MB.

I certainly haven’t pushed things too much, but I have yet to break 10 or even 5MB of transfer, so you’d have to be moving around a pretty hefty amount of information per month to really feel the limitations of the free account.

The gripes

I’ve only got a couple of minor gripes about Evernote:

Nitpicking on the synching

By and large, the sy

The Hold Steady have made it to the big time. I know this not because they’ve played on the Letterman show (which they did while promoting their previous album Boys and Girls in America), but because they were made part of what passes for the comedy on the show.

And I guess when you connect the big sound of Craig Finn’s voice with his comparatively runty body, you could call that comedy.

But, aside from passing judgement on their choice of television promotional techniques, I’ll pass final judgement on the band’s music: This is a record that must be purchased, and I sentence The Hold Steady to continue making records of comparable greatness to Stay Positive until the time comes when I’m dead or my hearing has disappeared completely.

As is typical with this band’s albums, Stay Positive tells stories in a disjointed, Pulp-Fictiony style. Familiar names, places and incidents pop up throughout the record, and it also connects to the other three albums released since 2004.

Musically, Stay Positive starts out a little heavy-handed, but it quickly recovers and has becomes the best of their discography. Each track shows the bands rock roots, and this record has been connected stylistically to Bruce Springsteen.

The first single, Sequestered in Memphis was performed on Letterman last month, and you can have a listen for yourself.

Constructive Summer is the first track on the album, and I feel like it comes on a little too strong and simple, featuring a loud and repetitive sound that overpowers the vocals in some places. But after listing to the track a few times, the noise and repetition seems to fit the lyrics, which are about teenagers spending a summer getting drunk on the watertower night after night.

My favorite song, One for the Cutters, starts out with a melancholy harpsichord that’s reminiscent of the Doors, which compliments the sad tale of a nice girl who goes to school in a nice college town and ends up with her life getting dragged down in a toilet flush of grubby townies, bad lovers, murder and lies.

Buy Stay Positive from Amazon.

If you’re a writer of mid- to large-sized projects and Word just makes you mad, you might need a writing tool that’s been designed to meet your needs. And let me make the search for your new writing tool easy for you:

Scrivener ($39.95).

You need to buy Scrivener. Unless you’re a Windows user. In that case, you need to buy a Mac and then buy Scrivener.

Both Merlin Mann and the NYT Magazine have written up reviews of Scrivener that hit on all the great features of the app like the Corkboard, the easy organization of drafts and research material, and the best implementation of a full screen mode I’ve seen so far.

I love Scrivener. It’s the writing app that I’ve been looking for since putting hands to keyboard in order to produce work.

I use SCRIVENER to write all of my blog posts.

But the reason why I’m a 2 year devotee of Scrivener is its scriptwriting tools. If you were to try to write a script in any kind of standard script format, say for a stageplay, screenplay or comic script, you’d either be doing a lot of tabbing and caps locking in order to mimic the format in Word, or you’d be shelling out at least $139 for a scriptwriting app like Final Draft or Montage (which I’m looking at again for the first time in over a year, and Mariner has really polished it up).

Scrivener comes with several script templates that make it a breeze to write a script. Quick and easy keyboard shortcuts allow you to quickly add dialogue, character names, headers, and the like. Everything that you need to write a script for a fraction of the cost of other dedicated applications.

And there is a recommended Windows option called PageFour which looks pretty decent.

Do you have a favorite application you nestle into in order to produce your written work? Put it in a comment.

Links

Merlin Mann’s Scrivener Review

NYT Magazine Scrivener Review

Other writing software

Scrivener

Montage

Storymill

Jer’s Novel Writer

PageFour

Remember that old Simpsons episode where Homer’s brother invented a baby language interpreter? It could take in Maggie’s babytalk and spit out plain English? Yeah, that seemed just plain ridiculous, didn’t it?

Well it’s not.

I happened across an episode of Oprah one afternoon that changed my life (pause for heckling). A guest on the show was Pricilla Dunstan, a former singer with a photographic memory for sound. Dunstan claimed to have found 5 universal words that make up a “language” that all infants speak.

The 5 words are:

Neh

I’m hungry – An infant uses the sound reflex “Neh” to communicate their hunger. The sound is produced when the sucking reflex is triggered, and the tongue is pushed up on the roof of the mouth.

Owh

I’m sleepy – An infant uses the sound reflex “Owh” to communicate that they are tired. The sound is produced much like an audible yawn.

Heh

I’m experiencing discomfort – An infant uses the sound reflex “Heh” to communicate stress, discomfort, or perhaps that they need a fresh diaper. The sound is produced by a response to a skin reflex, such as feeling sweat or itchiness in the bum.

Eairh

I have lower gas – An infant uses the sound reflex “Eairh” to communicate they have flatulence or an upset stomach. The sound is produced when trapped air from a belch that is unable to release and travels to the stomach where the muscles of the intestine tighten to force the air bubble out. Often, this sound will indicate that a bowel movement is in progress, and the infant will bend its knees, bringing the legs toward the torso. This leg movement assists in the ongoing process.

Eh

I need to burp – An infant uses the sound reflex “Eh” to communicate that they need to be burped. The sound is produced when a large bubble of trapped air is caught in the chest, and the reflex is trying to release this out of the mouth.

These 5 words, once you tune yourself to your infant and his/her pronunciation of the words, the way you interact with your child will change. It’s no longer a guessing game trying to figure out what the child needs. A brief moment taken to listen to them will tell you nearly always just what the problem is. Then you take steps to solve the problem. This makes the job so much easier.

I used this technique while taking care of Thessaly. I’ve been able to tell what another parent’s child needed, just in passing. I was able to tell that Torbin was hungry within the first few hours of his life.

New parents, this is an amazing couple of DVDs. It’s easily the best tool that you could have in your childcare arsenal.

Links

Dunstan Baby Language on Wikipedia

Buy Dunstan Baby Language on Amazon

This is a review of the film The Incredible Hulk. There be spoilers.

With the July heat bearing down on me, I get mad. And when I get mad, I turn on the air conditioning. Sadly, Bruce Banner’s reaction is to get big and green and violent. This would make for an unfortunate life, but it makes for a pretty good summer movie experience. Unless the AC goes out in the theater.

Who is this Hulk character?

Having been a Marvel comics reader for just about my entire life, I know things about it’s characters. The Hulk is no exception. But many people don’t. Other than the horrid 80’s television show.

Fortunately, the wretched series pretty much has all the background that you need to know about the character. There’s really not much to it.

Bruce Banner, a scientist, is working on something for the military. What, exactly, varies depending on which iteration of the Hulk franchise you’re experiencing. Could be bombs, could be genetic experiments, could be ham.

In each version, something goes wrong, horribly wrong, and Banner is caught in the middle of it. He’s altered on a genetic level and becomes a big green monsterman with amazing strength. And less than amazing intelligence. The new fact of life for Banner is that whenever he gets agitated, he turns into the Hulk. He smashes stuff up, demands to be left alone, and leaps into the night. Banner reemerges somewhere, shirtless, shoeless, and disoriented.

His main enemy is the military. They do anything they can to contain him, but fail time and time again. And that’s about it. It’s pretty simple, but there’s enough room for variation that the origin can be revamped and updated repeatedly.

The Hulk works because the character is an expert blend of successful formulas.

• Jekyll and Hyde, (obviously).
• King Kong
• Frankenstein’s Monster

And all of these great character aspects come through in this summer’s film.

Firstly, this is not a sequel to the 2003 Ang Lee film. From all accounts, I hear that this is a good thing. It was an odd choice for Marvel to make this their second show in the new Marvel film universe, and one that might preclude any further direct sequels due to box office performance. I think another choice of hero would have been wiser. Five years might not be far enough upwind from the stinkiness of 2003.

Moving on.

The first act was especially good. The way that they handled the origin story (something that most other comic book movies can’t escape until the 2nd feature of the franchise) was expertly done. The origin story isn’t complicated. The film wisely spends the first few reels on an exciting first act.

The story opens with Bruce living a fugitive’s life in South America, making an effort to find a cure for his condition and to control it via yoga breathing exercises (and his teacher does some crazy abdominal flexings you’ll have to see to believe). I really liked the “Days without incident” counter. It’s funny at first, when it resets to zero after the first appearance of the Hulk, but then it’s used very effectively to show passage of time.

Eventually, he’s discovered after communicating with an anonymous university scientist and the army comes down on him, flushing both Banner and the Hulk out of hiding with great chase scene through the town. It’s a very strong start.

The Hulk creature itself took a bit of getting used to. It still looked like a CG character, and I couldn’t tell if it was because it was a bad design job, or if it was because it’s still basically a human figure, and the industry still doesn’t have a finger on creating realistic, believable human characters. But I got past it after awhile.

And I really didn’t like the design of the Abomination. It reminded me too much of the stupid human/alien hybrid from Alien IV. Why does his ribcage stick out through his skin like that? Ugly. I think they should have stuck with the basic design of the comic book’s version.

Both Tim Roth and Edward Norton are well cast. Norton has an everyman quality that is cut with the ability to turn tight-faced and angry. Roth is suitably creepy in his role as Emil Blonsky. However, Liv Tyler was a big zero. She might have had little to work with in the script (I never liked the character of Betty Ross), but she’s done more with less, I think. She was great in Lord of the Rings; stinky in this show.

The action scenes were great. I really liked the skirmish on the college campus. Except for the fact that the army seemed to suffer from extremely bad planning. It played out more like a kung-fu movie, where the bad guys attack one at a time. First they shoot at him. The Hulk beats them up. Then the general summons the reinforcements from over the hill. Then the Hulk beats them up. Then the helicopters come in. The Hulk beats them up. Then Blonsky comes in. The Hulk beats him up. Visually cool, yeah. But not believable.

The climax was okay. The battle in the street was cool, but I felt the Hulk seemed a bit too weak. He never really had a big blowout moment. Even at the end, he seemed to win because the bad guy was distracted. But it does make a kind of sense. The Hulk is like a wild animal. The Abomination is a trained soldier who retained his skills and intelligence when he turned into a monster. They captured the Hulk’s fury and ferocity very well, though.

Whether they’ll come to fruition or not, plans for a sequel were made quite clear in the last few minutes of the film. Tony Stark makes an appearance, sowing the seeds for what will be likely be Captain America. And that’s cool. But the evil looking smile on Banner’s face in the final shot…that’s way out of character. He’s been a good guy the whole film, and he’s going to turn evil now? Because that’s what that smile said.

The verdict

This was a very good summer comic book movie. Much better than Iron Man. It’s worth a few bucks and a couple of hours to take in. And it’s worth it just to get a little more excited for the further development of the Marvel film universe. More like this one, please.