Amazing Circles

Enchanting effects can be achieved using the "Amazing Circles" technique to distort photos, particularly when you start with a photograph that has interesting elements.

Purple Coleus
Originally uploaded by angora bunny

Purple Coleus Amazing Circle
Originally uploaded by angora bunny

Lone Tree at Sunset
Originally uploaded by angora bunny

Circle of Tree at Sunset
Originally uploaded by angora bunny

The Q10 Editor

The Q10 editor is a full-screen editor that can be a great tool for writing -- particularly for writing your first drafts without distractions. It is free, tiny, and runs on Windows or under Wine (Windows emulation on other operating systems, like Linux).¹ It's small enough that you can fit the application and your documents on a USB stick. It's easy to use, and everything is located in one simple help menu, accessed with .

The typewriter look and feel is one of the things that attracts writers to this application. The default settings it comes with include a typewriter sound effects from the Amélie movie (for both keystrokes and carriage returns), and the default font is courier -- the classic, mono-spaced font. The settings offer plenty of flexibility and you can set them to match your own preferences. With the customizable colour palette, you can set your colour combination to white text on a black background, black text on a white background, yellow on black, or anything in-between. You can also choose whatever font you like and alternate sound schemes, or turn the sound off completely. Q10 is available in multiple languages, with or without the spell checker.

As an added bonus, it gives you current statistics including your ever-changing word count (as well as characters and pages).

There is a easy-to-set alarm² for writing sessions and word wars. Or, for word count goals, you can set the global target and Q10 will keep you updated as to what percentage of that goal you have achieved so far. There are also four partial counts that you can use for your own purposes, setting them to whatever quantity and units you need (words, pages, lines, paragraphs, characters or non-spaces).

For example, if you were participating in NaNoWriMo and it was the last week, you could set your daily goals using partial counts and track your progress. Assuming you are working towards the standard NaNoWriMo goal of 50,000 words, your desired word count for each weekday of the last week would be:

• Monday 45,333
• Tuesday 45,000
• Wednesday 46,667
• Thursday 48,333
• Friday 50,000

To do this, you'd set your Global Target to 50,000 (Ctrl+T). Then set up the counters in your preferences (Ctrl+P) for Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu. Then set the counters to the number goals using Ctrl plus the number. E.g., for Monday, press Ctrl+1 twice, then enter 45,333 words (Twice, because the first instance sets the partial count to your current location).

Here are some screen shots to illustrate how this would work (click on images to see larger sizes). First, how you set up the names of the partial counters in preferences:

Next, here is a screen shot with white characters on a black background. In our example, we've written 2 words of our ~1,667 daily goal. When we achieve Tuesday's goal, it will show as 0, but right now we have 1,665 words to go, so it shows that amount in the negative. We're two words past Monday's goal, so that shows a 2:


Here we are at the same word count, on a white background, and with the alarm set to 30 minutes:

Q10 provides bookmark functionality through the use of Notes -- any lines starting with ".." are considered notes. Using Ctrl+H invokes the "Notes list", and you can quickly jump to your note locations throughout the document. These lines are not included in the final word count, so those who want to make sure their chapter headings are not included in the final word count, can do so by utilizing this feature.

One more tip -- Q10 can be set to open the last document by default when it starts up. Once you've got more than one document though, you may want to set up a file association for your Q10 files. Rather than use .txt as the extension, you can an extension such as .q10 (so long as this doesn't clash with anything else on your computer). This way, your existing TXT text files can still open up with the existing editor they are set to (such as Notepad or Wordpad), but your new writing files will open up with Q10.

Here is the link to the Q10 website, where you can download this application and try it out for yourself: http://www.baara.com/q10/

---

¹ To get Q10 working in Wine on Ubuntu or a Debian-based Linux, see the directions for installing WineHQ on this page: http://www.winehq.org/site/download-deb
² Caution: The only crash experienced in testing this application was when the alarm was on. You might want to check out the "auto save" feature before this one.

Flowers on Flickr

NaNoWriMo 2007

To my friends who don't know what NaNoWriMo is:

"NaNoWriMo is an annual (November) novel writing project that brings together professional and amateur writers from all over the world."

The focus is on completing a 50,000 word novel. Isn't that a bit short for a novel? Well, yes, but you don't have to stop at 50,000 words. Plus, this is a first draft -- you can always edit and expand it into a larger novel. The emphasis for NaNoWriMo is on meeting your word goals, and some use this popular mantra:

"November is for writing; December is for editing."

For writers who find themselves constantly bogged down in minutiae or self-criticism, this can be a valuable exercise. A list of published novels that started as NaNoWriMo projects can be found on their website.

Finding others who are also reaching for the same goal also adds to the experience; making way for word wars, competitions between geographical areas, and plotting your own progress alongside other people, areas or your genre of choice. The forums and chat areas of the NaNoWriMo site encourage this, as do the numerous groups on Facebook. Regional areas schedule events including: kick-off parties, writing sessions at local coffee shops, and even all-night writing sessions.

Another advantage to participating is the pep talks: This year's were from: Tom Robbins, Naomi Novik, Sue Grafton, Neil Gaiman, Deanna Raybourn, Sara Gruen, Julianna Baggott, and Garth Nix. (One of the forums had an active thread titled: "Society for the Defense of the Serial Comma.")

Congratulations to all the other
NaNoWriMo 2007 winners!

Kettle on Trangia Stove

Kettle on Trangia Stove
Originally uploaded by angora bunny

This is a great little stove for camping. It is:

• very easy to use
• quiet
  
• less dangerous than a lot of the alternatives:
  

• sturdy base with pots and pans that fit perfectly; great stability and nothing to precariously balance
  
• simple construction -- less parts to misplace or break down -- no need for a maintenance kit
  
• burns without pressure, so safer
  

• packs up relatively compact and light (there's also a mini version if that suits your expedition better)
• environmentally-friendly and not difficult to find fuel

Alcohol burning stoves may take a bit longer to heat up and do not burn as hot as some other fuel types. However, these aren't really drawbacks. The extra time isn't unreasonable and gives you time to do other prep work. Without the really high heat, and with the simmer ring, there's less chance you'll have to eat burnt food.

Finding fuel is easy in North America. You can use denatured alcohol / marine stove fuel, methylated spirits / methyl hydrate / methanol, isopropanol / isopropyl alcohol, ethyl alcohol / ethanol / grain alcohol - so even alcool or everclear (but obviously this is more expensive). You can even dilute with water to make a small amount of fuel last longer.

Since Mountain Equipment Co-Op didn't carry the set that includes the Trangia kettle, the one pictured above is a Chinook Timberline Tea Kettle (seen in the catalog at Chinook Technical Outdoor and available online at stores such as Great Adventure Company). It is a sexy, 24 fl. oz. kettle, and folds down nicely into its storage sack. The mesh basket for making herbal or loose leaf tea is included.

Links with more information:
- Trangia website
- Flickr Trangia Group with recipes, photos and shared memories
- How to Use a Trangia Camping Stove on WikiHow
- Video of How to Use a Trangia Camping Stove
- Stove Fuel Comparison
- Trangia has a translated list of international fuels so you can see what to look for in other countries. The link is on this page.

There are also other accessories available for this stove, including a gas burner in case you want/need an alternative to the spirit burner. See the Trangia website or your local outdoor store.

UNESCO, 7 New Wonders of the World, World Heritage Sites

On Saturday, July 7, 2007, a list of the seven modern human-built wonders of the world was announced by the website New7Wonders. The final results were tallied from voting by about 90 million people casting votes online, by phone and by text message, over a year and a half:

• The Colosseum in Rome
• India's Taj Mahal
• The Great Wall of China
• Peru's Machu Picchu
• Mexico's Chichen Itza pyramid
• Petra in Jordan
• Brazil's statue of Christ the Redeemer

UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, has confirmed that they are not linked to this campaign in a news release on their website. The results of the above vote are limited to those with internet access. In contrast, much scientific and educational research goes into the selection of sites chosen for UNESCO's World Heritage Site.

For a more extensive list of the wonders of the world, see the full World Heritage List.

Flickr Functionality - Search & Replace Descriptions, Seen Referrer

Scripts can be awfully handy if you use Flickr to post your photographs.

An easy way to utilize these tools is via Greasemonkey, a Firefox extension. Add this to your Firefox web browser, and then add the scripts mentioned below. The extension page on Firefox is here.

Add Referer Into Comments lets you easily add the referer into comments you leave on other people's Flickr photos, letting them know where you saw their photograph. For example: "Seen on my Flickr home page" or "Seen in Teal".

The second handy script I'm going to mention today is very useful for editing the titles and/or descriptions of your photos in batches. "Title + Description Batch Tools" is best described in the Flickr Discussions here, and accessed here, along with other scripts by Steeev.