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23 Dec 2009 19:21 EDT
41 years ago today I was spending a cold winter in Michigan, a dark-haired little boy.
31 years ago today I was 11 years old.
21 years ago today I was spending a very cold winter in Alaska.
11 years ago today my 2nd son was born; today my dark-haired little boy is 11 years old.
1 year ago today during a cold winter in Ohio I received the gift of life from an old friend, my 2nd kidney transplant.
Merry Christmas to all
Apps I love: yWriter 5
23 Dec 2009 00:19 EDT
I started writing fiction in earnest early this spring. All authors have their own medium of choice for the creative act of writing — some longhand with fountain pen, some on legal pads, some dictating into a machine, some use a good old typewriter, and of course, many on computer. The choice seems usually to be personal and quirky, not unlike a musician’s choice of axe. I use the computer myself since that’s what I’m most comfortable with and find it the quickest method to flow words from my brain to “paper”.
For umpteen years, or actually more like twenty-ump years, I’ve been writing with Microsoft Word as a tool for technical documents, reports, whitepapers, standards docs, etc. I started writing fiction using Word as well; it’s fine for research, character creation, backstory, etc., but I found that it’s not really the best tool for the actual act of writing novels. It’s rather too generic and doesn’t have any awareness of the building blocks of novels: chapters, characters, scenes, and so forth.
Then in the run-up to National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo, where I’m Derek Balsam), I learned about yWriter. In particular, I discovered yWriter 5 (older versions are still available, but I wanted the latest) from SpaceJock Software. It’s FREE (as in beer) software written by a single developer who is also a published novelist. He wrote the tool that he wanted for writing novels.
It has a great philosophy behind it: it’s free (though I did make a donation to its author), it’s quick, it’s light. Its interface is minimalist and uncluttered, and you can customize fonts and colors to suit your preferences. What it does is provide tools to organize scenes, chapters, characters, points of view, locations, and key items; for outlining, drafting, scheduling/tracking/repoting. and storyboarding.. It also has global and local search/replace and (very important!) word counting and usage statistics. A great set of features for writing stories.
What’s almost more impressive are the features it doesn’t have. It doesn’t have an interface full of icons; it doesn’t provide complex formatting, page layout, or publishing features. It doesn’t check you grammar or try to reformat things as you type. In short, it doesn’t try to be a word processor. If you want, you can import and export stories or chunks to and from your favorite such program, but yWriter itself concentrates on the craft of writing, not of printing and display.
Two other awesome features are its text-to-speech capability (it will read you story to you) and context-sensitive highlighting of characters, locations, and items — this latter feature includes the ability to click any of these building blocks, which will bring up your own notes on each of them. Last, I’ll just mention that the program has real auto-save — it automatically saves your work so you can’t accidentally quit without saving.
Thanks to yWriter, I was able to write the first 35,000 words of my first novel in just 30 days. It’s a useful tool that does only what it needs to do and no more.
Apps I love: Notepad++
20 Dec 2009 17:12 EDT
Notepad++ is a freeware text editing program available from Sourceforge. The name implies that it’s a Windows Notepad replacement or enhancement, but that’s true only in the sense that bacon is a replacement or enhancement for pork. Notepad and pork are fine, but Notepad++ and bacon are awesome. Even better, Notepad++ is free, and you still have to pay for bacon.
I use the program mostly for web stuff — HTML, CSS, XML — but also for regular English .TXT files. The features I enjoy the most are syntax highlighting in the formats of my choice: option of light-colored text on a dark background for good visibility; support for a wide variety of file types; multiple-document multiple-view interface; great editing and search/replace capabilities; syntax folding to collapse and expand logical units; drag-and-drop; awareness of file modifications made outside of Notepad++; indentation guides and automated bracket finding.
It’s very quick and very lightweight — it uses a wonderfully small amount of memory. After years of the industry creating bloatware and believing that delivering more features is equivalent to using more resources, I’m always pleased to find programs that aim for simplicity in the right places. Notepad++ is very rich on features, but its interface is uncluttered and it remains fast and easy to use.
Kudos to the entire Notepad++ development team for their useful and usable project.
Google browser size – but what about liquid?
17 Dec 2009 19:22 EDT
People view the web in many different ways. There is little uniformity in the display sizes, aspect ratios, and resolutions that we use to browse the web. When creating a web site or a web-based application, you need to check how your design looks through different combinations of the above — and then you need to make some guesses about how many people are actually using each of the combinations. Sure, some people might still be out there trying to look at your web site in 320 x 200, I suppose, though too few to warrant a lot of work on your part to optimize for them. So you need to take into account both your majority audience as well as enough of the long tail to satisfy most of your likely customers, while weighing this against the work it takes to test this.
The goal is usually something like making sure that the “important stuff” that you want people to catch at first glance appears above the fold — a borrowed newspaper metaphor.
Google Labs has just released a tool called Google Browser Size that attempts to help understand what percentage of likely web audiences use various screen sizes. They measure screen size in horizontal and vertical dimensions as percentage of users. You can now understand how people are likely to interact with your page from a statistical point of view.
The tool has some neat technical aspects, such as the set of div’s that allow you to interact with the underlying page even when it has been overlaid with the Google statistics. According to their about page they get these statistics from all visitors to Google (it’s not clear if they mean the Google home page or all Google.com pages).
One unfortunate drawback is that the tool only supports the native (non-virtual) viewing size of the display of whoever is using the tool. This specifically presents an issue for web pages that use a liquid design which resizes itself at least partially according to the user’s display. On my 1280×800 widescreen laptop display viewing a liquid page like http://www.markbeadles.com/, for example, the tool incorrectly implies that objects on the right side of my screen aren’t visible to most users, when actually they are due to resizing. [I suppose the solution many of you would recommend is to not use a liquid layout. Eh. De gustibus non est disputandum.]
Rough week for Google (great week for Evil?)
12 Dec 2009 03:12 EDT
Google, the company whose motto is “Don’t Be Evil“, has had a rough week or so. First, they released Vevo, a crippled, redundant, and non-user friendly music video site — the only group that might like Vevo is the oligopoly of commerical copyright holders and the RIAA. Let’s put it this way: there’s not much to be found there, and what there is can all be found on YouTube anyway. And as I write this, at 2147 EST, the service cannot be reached. Great stuff, guys.
Second, a rather minor point but since I’m piling on what the heck, I love Google Chrome but I hate the current extensions. They call the extensions “beta” but in this particular case they actually mean it! Most of them seem to be broken and/or useless. Too bad, a working ad block tool is the one thing missing from their beautiful, minimalist, speedy browser.
Finally, we have their CEO, Eric Schmidt. Eric, Eric, Eric. For those who haven’t heard, this week he made a very revealing and very stupid statement regarding privacy. He said, “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place,“. Well, Eric. Can I call you Eric? Or is that too, um, personal? I don’t want you to know what time I went to the crapper. Does that mean I shouldn’t be doing it in the first place? I don’t want you taking pictures of my children in the school locker room. Does that mean they shouldn’t go to school in the first place? I don’t want you to know my credit card number, doofus, does that mean I shouldn’t have a credit card? Things that are private, things that are personal, things that are secret – these are three different categories with complex overlaps.
I’m not building a straw man here, I warn you. I expect the argument that ‘he was just referring to what you do online’. That distinction is useful to a company like Google but in fact is completely irrelevant. Privacy is privacy on-line or off. If the head of the only search company that matters, the company that sends vehicles down our streets to take pictures of our homes and workplaces, the company that uses satellite photography to show us our neighborhoods and schools, the company that wants to put its OS onto our billions of mobile devices — if the head of that company doesn’t respect our privacy, then maybe they’ve grown beyond their “Don’t Be Evil” infancy into something less…Not Evil.
Which sucks, I kinda like their software.
NaNoWriMo begins
01 Nov 2009 21:00 EDT
It’s November 1st. I can’t waste much time writing blogs: all my words are reserved for National Novel Writing Month. There is a 50,000-word minimum I have to write and a 100,000-word goal I personally have set.
What am I writing?
I thought science fiction would be my genre, but this story has just leapt out to me. I’m writing a young adult fantasy novel. My Twitter-length synopsis is:
In Rha, a world where humans don’t belong, Gam & his brothers must learn self-reliance when a shadowy enemy abducts their parents.
My slightly longer elevator pitch is:
In the world of Rha, where humans don’t belong, Gam and his two brothers must learn self-reliance when a shadowy enemy abducts their parents. Through conflicts with emperors, fearsome jeweled behemoths, and allies turned traitor, they discover inner strength and magical wonders. But even if they find their parents in this vast, strange world, will their lives ever be the same?
I’m writing this story not just as a NaNoWriMo writing exercise, but as a direct address to my three sons: Sean, 13; Paul, 10; and Luke, 5. They love stories, and they love my stories, so now they’re going to get a long one. I’ve got 318 words written so far. A mere 49,682 to go. Follow my progress at http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/user/506825
Ten months, thirty-one days
01 Nov 2009 03:13 EDT
It’s Halowe’en 2009, October 31, and I’ve exercised at the gym for the entire month. In my own personal NaGoGymMo (National Go to the Gym Month) I’ve worked out every day at the local YMCA. To be honest, this would be impressive for me even ignoring the fact that I had my second kidney transplant just 10 months ago. I had never been the going-to-the-gym type; my favored exercises had always been running, swimming, and aerobics — but, as you’ve all heard me complain, my joints haven’t let me run or do aerobics in years. Going to the gym allows me to do two things that are critical to my future health: build muscle and exercise my heart.
Long-term kidney failure had done a number on my muscles and tendons. And not a cool number like 7 or 42, either. More like 13 or 4 or 11630. My muscles atrophied; my joints swelled; I developed bursitis in my knees and my right elbow. This was due to the metabolic changes associated with the kidneys: they regulate electrolytes and protein, and if they’re outta whack, so will be your muscles and joints.
Going into October, I really had no idea what lay in store for my body. I’d exercised about twice a week since my surgery, but I had not been able to handle anything really strenuous. I believed that I needed a challenge in order to see what I was capable of.
So it began. I’m stubborn.
Some days were great, some days weren’t. Overall, the days got better and better. I did 30-45 minutes of strict exercise time each day. I tried mornings, days, and evenings, and settled on evenings as the time that worked best for me — I could come home, settle in, and then sleep the sleep of the sleeping dead. I saw myself get stronger, too; I moved the pins downward a couple slots on most machines. Both Monica and my doctor noted that I gained a lot of muscle; I’d estimate maybe 5 pounds of additional muscle weight, actually. No, really, it’s muscle. Seriously. Really. Anyway.
Aerobic exercise saw the biggest change. Kidney failure is very bad for the cardiovascular system. People with kidney disease are most likely to die of heart disease, actually. I had discovered about a year ago that I have a small scar in my heart muscle; that is almost always a sign of a previous and probably unnoticed minor heart attack. I also have high blood pressure. So aerobic exercise is critical to my health. Eh, yeah, it’s critical to your health too. But my problem had been that I hadn’t been able to move my body hard enough or fast enough to get good results for my heart. Well, that changed this month.
I’m data-driven and fueled by music. I bought a snazzy new exercise heart monitor, filled up my snazzy old first-generation iPod mini. The iPod playlist is heavy with Gary Numan, B-52s, Adam Ant, Siouxsie Sioux, Afro-celt Sound System, Danny Elfman, Devo, The Fixx, Liz Phair, the Raconteurs, and Stevie Wonder right now. Around-the-neck/over-the-ear headphones. Turn it on. Turn it up. Hit the big black button on the heart monitor watch, and go go go.
There’s a downside to NaGoGymMo, though. Even though I was careful to alternate activity types on different days, going daily didn’t allow me time to rest. I also wasn’t taking enough time to stretch. That, combined with my already screwy tendons, put some hurtin’ on me. Right now I’m nursing a right lateral epicondylitis, commonly known as tennis elbow. I’ve also got a real fun case of plantar fasciitis in my right foot. Both of these are tendon-associated degenerative conditions, and in both cases the cure is rest and stretching.
But I figure after 31 days in a row I deserve a little rest, huh?
So the experiment is over. The results are better than I expected. I think that from a physical point of view I’m now just as mended as any other average forty-something male. I’m going to keep it up, of course, though not every single day. Well, maybe next October. And, hey, I’ve got more things to do next month! Have you heard that I’m writing a novel starting tomorrow as part of National Novel Writing Month? Not only that, but as an unemployed-American my official occupation is still ‘looking for ways to make money’. So, yeah, I’ve got more challenges to keep me busy.
But like I said, I’m stubborn.
Thank you to the Central Ohio YMCA Hilliard/Ray Patch Branch, to Polar Electro, to Apple, to New Balance, and to the two wonderful ladies in my life, my mother and my wife, for their implicit and explicit support in this experiment.
The Scoop on Seven
23 Oct 2009 02:16 EDT
Today Microsoft released Windows 7, their newest version of their operating system. I’ve worked with Windows and various Microsoft OS development teams over the years, especially with some of the Server OS’s (NT 5.0/Windows 2000, and 2003 server in particular, when I spent a lot of time in Redmond), so I’ve had a fairly intimate view of the evolution of the system. I’ve been on the beta, and I have a fairly positive view of the release, especially compared to Vista. When my disk comes, I’ll definitely upgrade my home machine to the release version. Yeah, I’m not the average Windows user.
So what does Windows 7 mean for the average user then?
If you buy a new PC, it will probably come with Windows 7. That’s good. If your dealer gives you an alternative choice of XP or Vista, choose 7. It will work with your hardware and it will have all the latest code.
If you just bought a new PC with Vista, then you qualify for a free Windows 7 upgrade. Do it. Get the upgrade from whoever you bought the PC from. The upgrade will definitely be worth it since it’s free and better.
If you have an older PC running Vista, you can pay for an upgrade. It’s a hundred or so bux, depending on your edition. This choice is tougher. The jury is still out on whether it’s worth paying to upgrade from Vista to 7, especially since it’s so new. I’d hold off for a while and see; if 7 has a much better security track record then I’d recommend the upgrade. Until then, I can’t recommend paying for it.
If you have an older PC running XP, don’t upgrade to Windows 7. It’s really not worth it yet. First, you have to make sure 7 will even run on your machine. Then you have to buy the upgrade to 7 (see above). Wait, but it’s not really an upgrade! It’s a complete system reinstall where you have to back up your data. When you finally do all this, all your XP apps might not even run (unless you buy a more expensive version of 7). After all this, you do get an OS that’s somewhat better than XP, and with a significantly updated interface. Microsoft has a few other reasons they think you should upgrade from XP to 7, but to be honest the reasons don’t seem compelling to me. Given the potential hardware incompatibilities, the cost, the hassle of a complete reinstall, all for minimal benefit I’d recommend holding off until there is a very very compelling reason to upgrade: like, you need a new PC.
So in short:
- New PC? Get it with Windows 7.
- Recent PC with Vista? Upgrade to Windows 7 for free,
- Older PC with Vista? Wait a bit to see how it pans out, since it costs money to upgrade.
- Older PC with XP? Stay on XP.
HTH
[ Trivia: did you know that the code name for XP was Cairo? Cairo = Chi Rho = χρ = XP ! ]
Training 10-year-old CEOs and CFOs
21 Oct 2009 22:19 EDT
Today I had the pleasure of working as a volunteer for Junior Achievement‘s JA BizTown. BizTown is a program where elementary-age children simulate the economy of city. In organizations such as City Hall, a bank, retail businesses, media, utilities, even a health insurer. They worked in assigned (or elected) roles in each business, including CEOs, CFOs, sales, a mayor, and so forth.
To run a successful business, the kids need to apply for a business loan from the bank, and then earn enough money from customers during the day to pay back their loans. They have to learn to price their goods and services appropriately with this goal in mind — too high, and the other kids won’t buy from them with their limited paychecks; too low, they can’t pay back their creditors. The CFO keeps books on computers networked to the bank, with accounts payable and receivable functions and check-printing capabilities. There’s even overhead like utilities, rent, and taxes. Those are just some of the elements in a complex economy. It’s a very realistic simulation, and the children thoroughly enjoy it.
Junior Achievement of Central Ohio and the national organization deserve great accolades for bringing this experience to thousands of 5th graders. Education in entrepreneurship and business operations is sorely lacking from most school curricula in the US; this program is wonderful for the gap it fills. It’s not just this program, of course; JA leads the world in promoting and educating in entrepreneurship among the youth. It is not a cliché to say that this is where tomorrow’s startups and business leaders come from.
I certainly wish I’d had this opportunity mumble-mumble years ago when I was 10. I encourage all readers to support JA and to consider volunteering or sponsoring entrepreneurial education. Central Ohio folks, Junior Achievement is located in a new building now: the repurposed Second Avenue Elementary School in Columbus’s Italian Village. It’s a beautiful neighborhood, and it’s nice to see that the former school has found a use.
It was a great experience, and I’m glad to have helped in a small way to train the next generation of entrepreneurs and capitalists!
Tags: Columbus, economics, entrepreneur, local, Ohio, startups
Posted by mark beadles in Uncategorized | No Comments »
Posted by mark beadles in Uncategorized | No Comments »
Topics: Onyx, Proteolix, and an Autoimmune Fix?
20 Oct 2009 16:08 EDT
I read with interest yesterday of Onyx Pharmaceutical‘s acquisition of Proteolix. (Thanks to VentureLoop for the tweet that tipped me to this.) Onyx specializes in cancer therapies, and Proteolix has drug therapies that are useful in treatment of both cancer and autoimmune disorders. Among the products in the Proteolix pipeline are immunoproteasome-selective inhibitors.
Proteasomes are barrel-shaped complexes found in every cell of our body. They are cellular recyclers – their job is to break down old or unwanted proteins and turn them in to peptide building blocks that can then be recycled to make new proteins. An immunoproteasome is the form this structure takes in cells of the immune system. Normally, they play a role in fighting infections, by breaking down proteins from invaders and using the broken-down pieces as a sort of signal for infection-fighting cells. But increased activity of the immunoproteasome has been implicated in many autoimmune disorders, like rheumatoid arthritis and lupus, where the body attacks itself instead.
Proteasome inhibitors block the action of proteasomes. Since proteasomes are necessary for the day-to-day life activities of cells, inhibiting them can induce apoptosis (cell death), which sounds bad but which is a great thing when you’re fighting cancer. And immunoproteasome-specific inhibitors are likewise a great thing when fighting autoimmune disorders.
Immunoproteasome inhibitors are being studied as therapies for autoimmune diseases such as RA and psoriasis (where they’ve been shown to be effective in animal models) and potentially many other diseases.
One autoimmune disease that I’d hope was an eventual target for this sort of therapy is Goodpasture Disease. OK, I’m admittedly very biased here: I have that disease. It’s a very rare autoimmune disorder that causes kidney and lung failure; I was diagnosed with the disorder in 1989. It’s a rare enough disease that it’s considered an orphan disease for which there are no specifically-targeted therapies.
Encouragingly, there is good evidence (such as this paper from the journal Proteomics [PDF] and this one from the Federation of European Biochemical Societies) and a good chain of reasoning to indicate that immunoproteasome inhibitors would be effective against Goodpasture Disease as well.
I’m happy to see that this novel kind of research into therapies for autoimmune diseases like Goodpasture’s is bearing fruit. Onyx Pharmaceuticals has been concentrating on cancer therapies. I certainly strongly encourage Onyx to take advantage of Proteolix’s full pipeline and continue the development of proteasome inhibitor-based therapies for autoimmune disorders as well. There are established links between the pathologies of cancers and autoimmune diseases; and there are millions of suffers of these diseases who could benefit from therapies based on this biotechnology.
Boy, do I love this stuff! The intersection of entrepreneurship, innovation, biotechnology, and the hyper-hyper-local. More, please!
[cross-posted to markbeadles.blogspot.com]
about mark beadles
I write the things you read here. Polymath renaissance redneck. I build software, stories, and young men. More...on the desk
around the web
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