Scrivener Helps You Pull It All Together

Ever wondered how in blazes you capture, organize and store all those ideas for blog posts so you always have access to them and can quickly find them and start writing?

And secondarily, but perhaps even more importantly, do you pine for a program that works with you instead of fighting you every step of the way as you attempt the sometimes hideously challenging work of writing useful and interesting blog posts?

These questions have plagued me for many years.

In the beginning, and for a long time thereafter, I struggled to manage my ideas and my written words. I wrote ideas on scraps of paper, tried bookmarking links on Delicious to jog my memory and save reference material for later, created multiple text documents in TextEdit and stored these in folders, emailed myself ideas and partial drafts, and tried many far more arcane and useless methods to manage my written words.

Of course some might (somewhat rightfully) suggest that all this effort to find a way to write was just a manifestation of Resistance, but that’s a post for another day.

Throughout it all though, when it came time to actually bang out a post, I had a devil of a time finding all the various bits of digital and physical mnemonic rubbish I had created and set to whirling metaphorically and literally all around my life. In other words, I was frustrated before I even sat down to write because I knew it would be a royal pain to gather my wits and bits. And since it was frustrating, I would rarely end up writing at all.

6 Things I Had to Have

So to recap, my writing frustrations led me to want:

1. Somewhere to save ideas so that I could easily find and categorize them
2. Easy and smart management of drafts and revisions
3. A way to quickly see my word count without undue effort
4. Great tools—better stuff than the basics in WordPress or TextEdit (the equivalent of Notepad for Windows users) but a simple and easy interface
5. Relief from the frustration and pain with the WordPress composition screen
6. Having everything synchronize over the network so I could write online or offline and on whichever device I happened to be using at the moment

Enter Scrivener, the Answer to Every Sane Blogger’s Dreams

A couple years ago I found Scrivener and played with it and thought it was wonderful. But at the time I was blinded by other tools and just didn’t think of Scrivener as a blogging tool. My loss. About 6 months ago I re-discovered it and I can tell you that not only did it address all 6 of the aforementioned desires, it went way beyond that and taught me to be a more organized writer to boot.

Now I also use Scrivener to:

1. Store PDFs, pictures links and sites in my research bin
2. Highlight keywords in my post so I can see SEO issues quickly
3. Speak my text back to me—I love this! (yes you can do this in the OS X system, but this is also integrated so no need to run outside the app.)
4. Sync with DropBox so yes, even though there isn’t a Scrivener app for iPad, you can use SimpleNote and DropBox and easily sync your work between your iPad and your desktop or notebook computer.

Why Writing Inside WordPress Sucks

Some bloggers have suggested that you should just save drafts on your server in WordPress and write inside the composition screen in WordPress. But honestly, that sucks for 2 reasons that I can think of now, and probably more reasons I’ll think of later.

1. I have definitely had a browser lock up, or a server hiccup on ‘Save’ and lost all my work more than once.
2. (As if 1 weren’t reason enough not to write in WordPress!) I can’t FIND anything quickly and easily when I’m looking for it.
3. And 3 (oh look, I thought of another one!) I can’t stand writing in that little window—I’m forever dragging the right-hand corner downward and trying to move it around so that the line that I’m actually typing is right in front of me, etc.
4. And another thing—I have to flip around among my bookmarks site, my text document filled with reminders, and more things I can’t remember at the moment while editing and writing.

The Pièce de Résistance

When you’re writing in Scrivener, you can set it to full screen and then suddenly, wonderfully, masterfully you are presented with a layout with type that is the size you’ve set, a darkened background to eliminate distraction and, the pièce de résistance, a constantly rising text line that stays at the same level as you type so you never have to scroll the page as you continue to fill the screen with brilliant tappity taps!

Here’s the thing—Scrivener is a marvelous piece of software and what’s neat is that even though it appeals to a crazy-wide variety of humans doing superbly disparate types of writing, it doesn’t feel kitchen-sinky or Microsoft-Wordy in the least. In fact the tools stay out of your way and let you get to the business at hand (by which I mean writing in case you were thinking marmalade sifting or tarmac shaving).

Note that the latest version of Scrivener was recently released (version 2.0) and I’m even more pleased with it as I continue to learn its new features. Also, this program has traditionally been available on the Macintosh only, but they’ve recently released a shiny new beta for Windows and that will soon be a welcome option.

There are so many other features I haven’t even touched upon, but I figure if you’re even remotely curious, you can find out a lot more about Scrivener on the website.

I wrote this because I thought it was important to feature Scrivener as a blogging tool and get the attention of bloggers who might have overlooked it. Truly, if you’re blogging and not using Scrivener, you may well be caving in to Resistance more often than you know.

Unimpressed?

I recently unboxed and set up Apple’s new MacBook Air and I must say I was prepared to be unimpressed. Why? I had heard others say it was underpowered and it was actually too thin. Ha, figure that. Others had complained that there was no DVD/CD drive and no ethernet port so it’s crippled. So you might be surprised when I tell you I agree entirely and moreso with the Consumer Reports MacBook Air review that gives it high marks and a recommended status. I imagine there’s also a good reason for the average user rating of a solid 5 stars too.

Underpowered? Not at all.

Once I actually started using it I found that it was more responsive and certainly booted faster than my current iMac which is a 2.8 GHz Core 2 Duo with 4 GB of RAM. They mention that encoding QuikTime video would be slower than other Mac models, but I have to ask, what the heck are you doing encoding QuickTime with a laptop in the first place! If you’re checking email, surfing the web, playing video and editing your Keynote presentations or working in Microsoft Word, you will have zero problems with the speed and responsiveness. It’s faster than you. Also, the fact that it has a solid state drive means that it basically boots up almost instantly. No waiting is always nice.

And even better, since the drive is solid-state (no moving parts) it’s less susceptible to damage from drops and bumps, unlike standard hard drives. And with a full size keyboard and a gorgeous display I was already 80% of the way to thrilled. Finding out that you can get an external DVD/CD burner/player for $79 as well as an external USB to ethernet adapter for $29 pretty much put me over the top considering the extreme lightness and portability of the unit.

Max Portability, Max Functionality

So there you have it. This is a marvelous laptop for most people who need maximum portability and practically all the functionality of a desktop computer. If you don’t need to do video editing and you don’t need to store huge files (the largest drive is only 256GB so if you need more space you should look at the Macbook Pro instead) then the MacBook Air is truly a fantastic choice for maximum portability with full-size keyboard and a beautiful screen. Of course you can also hook up an external display if you need even more monitor real estate when sitting at your desk. All in all, this is the new device to covet. Get it. You’ll love it.

Recently a client called and left a panicked voicemail telling me someone in South Africa was sending email from their Gmail account and asking for $2000 cash from all their friends. I told them it sounded like their Gmail account was cracked and we needed to move quickly. It was and we did.

Here’s what we did:

1. Immediately went to every other online account they had (including bank, Facebook, Twitter, Comcast, etc.), logged in and changed the email address on the account to something other than the Gmail one and updated the weak password to a stunningly secure one. (Important: If you don’t change the email address, they will just keep resetting the password.)
2. Reviewed the history of the gmail account on the local computer (searched archived email) and (luckily) found the original welcome message from the Gmail team. (This is one email you will want to hang onto forever! I’ll tell you why in a sec.)
3. Filled out the form accessed from the main Gmail page by clicking the “Can’t access your account” link. (Image 1)
4. Entered the Gmail Verification Code (Image 4) that was originally sent in the welcome message when the account was created. (If you have this, you are pretty likely to get your account back fairly easily. Unfortunately, most of us (me!) probably deleted that since we already knew how to use Gmail and didn’t need some silly welcome message. Doh!)
5. Entered the 5 people they emailed frequently
6. Entered the date that they first connected their Droid cell phone account to the Gmail account.
7. In about 24 hours we received notice that the account was back under our control.
8. Once account access was recovered, we enabled account recovery via SMS on the Google account. This last step is critical (especially if you no longer have your welcome message) and will ensure that, should your account ever be compromised again, it will be far easier to recover it.
9. Also checked to see if any forwarders had been set up to forward a copy of incoming email back to the attacker.

Below are the screenshots indicating the sequence required to get to the account recovery form:

Image 1?

Image 2

Image 3

Image 4

How did it happen?

The thief got in because my client did what 9 out of 10 of us are guilty of doing— they created a weak password. It was a 7-character dictionary word and all lower case. Not good!

But here’s the scarier implication of this story. (Luckily the following did NOT happen, but it could have had we not moved as quickly as we did to secure things.)

You think it’s just a danger that one of your friends might fall for the plea to send money to someone in South Africa, but it’s far worse than that. In this case, the Gmail account was the email address used for all business accounts including banking and Facebook among many others.

So, in theory, once the attacker got in, it would be a simple matter to go to each of the sites managed with the hijacked Gmail account (reviewing the received email would clue them in to what’s available), click the “forgot password” button and reset all your logins for all your accounts, thus locking you out and effectively taking control of your business. Ouch!

Think about this for a second. Imagine, in a worst-case scenario, they got into your bank account and decided to make a payment with online bill payments with themselves as the recipient.

You think your password is good, but it isn’t

So here’s the deal. If you think using passwords like, “password1”, or “abc123”, are OK, then you will likely be hacked very shortly if you haven’t been already. And the length of your password does NOT guarantee its effectiveness if you repeat characters!

For instance, in a recent data breach study where millions of passwords were inadvertently revealed, research firm Imperva discovered that nearly 300,000 cracked passwords were simply ‘123456’.

A separate weak password breach study revealed that someone’s account protected by the 30-character password, ‘lafaroleratropezoooooooooooooo’ was also easily cracked. The repeated ‘o’ was basically a pointless exercise in creating a false sense of security.

Steps you MUST take to protect your Gmail account

1. Add a secondary non-Gmail address to your current Gmail account (if you haven’t already).
2. Keep your Gmail welcome message! (But don’t worry if you already deleted it like I did. Just make sure and do step 4!)
3. Create a very secure password for your gmail account, preferably at least 14 characters long, with upper and lower case letters, symbols and no repeated characters.
4. Enable account recovery via SMS so you can ensure an easier time of recovering your account via a text to your cell phone.
5. Review your Gmail account and note all your categories, the 5 people you email most often and make a list of all the Google products you use and the date you started using them (month, day, year). All this will be extremely useful if you need to recover your account. It will be even more critical if you deleted your welcome message and no longer have your verification code.

So that’s it. Let me know if I missed anything, or if you have questions, and be safe!

SMS2E8MGNBPD

Your hard drive just crashed and you lost everything…

10 years of family photos, movies, spreadsheets with all your sales figures, email, music and more were instantly consigned to nothingness. Worst of all, much of it was irreplaceable. And now it’s gone, as in gnashing-of-teeth-&-rending-of-garments gone.

Usually when this happens I get a panicked call and I’m asked if there’s anything I can do to recover the data. My first question, of course…

“How old is your last backup?”

You already know the answer, don’t you…

“I never backed it up.”

Here’s the thing, I don’t blame you one bit. Here’s why…

For years, I’ve watched hard drives crash and people lose really valuable stuff. Computers have gotten faster and drives have gotten bigger. We’ve developed cooler new tech that allows us to capture and store more of our life on disk and so we put ever more valuable data on our computers every year.

The problem is that backing up our computers has always been a soul-crushingly boring, complex and irritating process. And even if we did take a stab at it, we discovered that frequently, to our great dismay, when we actually needed the backup we thought we were successfully making, it wasn’t there because of the, wait for it… “weird glitch” that inevitably happened and caused the backup to fail, or be unusable. I can’t count the number of times I’ve seen that.

So what if I told you that backing up your computer is no longer such a pain? In fact, it’s easy to make it almost impossible to lose a file ever again. Would you believe me? No? Well I accept your challenge and I’m going to prove it to you by the end of this post.

First, Let’s Be Perfectly Clear

Before I show you the tools I use to guarantee my data’s safety, there’s one thing I think you really need to know as a consumer of computer technology.

All hard drives fail. It’s just that sometimes, a drive lasts long enough to become obsolete and shelved as a dust catcher before it causes you eternal suffering.

Here’s a better way to think about your hard drive…

Most hard drives will give you about 3 years of useful life, some a little more, some a lot less. The problem is, you never know which drive you just purchased.

And you can’t rely on the MTBF! I’ll explain…

There’s a little thing called MTBF and you’ll see that written in the small print on the hard drive itself, or the box it came in. It means Mean Time Between Failures and it frequently has a huge number after it. That number LOOKS big, but it’s actually an average of how many hours many other hard drives like this one have lasted before they failed. Or is it… ?

Divide by 24 and again by 365 and it usually comes out to about 114 years. What?!! Didn’t I say drives might last 3–5 years?! Yet the manufacturers are giving us some very optimistic, dreamy estimates of drive life, apparently.

It turns out that the MTBF ratings are possibly grossly inflated and are yet another reason you can’t use that as a reliable estimate of hard drive life.

On top of that, you can’t determine that a drive is OK even if it’s passed a certain minimum burn-in period and it’s still working. According to a hard drive study done in 2007 by by Bianca Schroeder and Garth Gibson of Carnegie Mellon University…

“…results were contrary to the widespread IT belief in burn-in, where most problems with any drive (or electronic device, really) will be experienced at the very beginning of its life cycle (Schroeder and Gibson called this the “infant mortality effect”). Instead, the study showed that failures start off in the first few years and grow, rather than starting after a wait of five years or so, which was expected.”

But That’s Not All…

Environmental factors such as excessive heat or cold, cigarette smoke, actual time powered on and frequency of dropping from a ten story building onto a concrete slab will all change the MTBF rating; sometimes dramatically. (See also, Hard Disk MTBF: Flap or Farce?)

POINT: The manufacturer’s suggested lifespan of your hard drive is based on a statistical average and is NOT a guarantee. Some hard drives last longer before their first failure and sadly, some last a much shorter time and then die a horrible, flaming death, with nasty, big, pointy teeth. This usually seems to happen in the middle of your very first backup.

So again, it’s not a question of IF, but WHEN your hard drive will fail. And that, my friends IS a guarantee. How can I know this? Well that’s easy. In this case entropy is on my side and I challenge you to go up against that giggling warthog of doom any day.

And if your hard drive is encroaching upon the 3–5 year age range, you’re gambling with some mighty bad odds against you.

So what can you do? Here’s my basic plan for backing stuff up painlessly and automatically every day.

The Backup Trifecta

1. Local automated backup to a second external (or internal, your choice) hard drive.

Get a good external hard drive that is double the size of the internal drive you’ll be backing up. If your internal drive is 500 MB, then get a 1000 MB drive. I find the MyBooks to be reliable and well priced. My Book (Western Digital) External Hard Drives

Additionally, you will need an application that will automatically copy your data to this drive. If you’re on a Mac running Leopard or Snow Leopard you can use Time Machine, but you will still want to make a bootable copy of your drive in addition to this.

In order to make bootable backups for the Mac I recommend the application Super Duper ($27.95) or if you really can’t afford it, you can use Carbon Copy Cloner (free, however I’ve used both and prefer Super Duper for ease of use.).

For Windows, the most recent version of Acronis® True Image Home 2012 (free trial) should do the trick (earlier versions did not create a true, bootable copy of a Windows hard drive). For a free backup alternative for Windows you might try XXClone.

2. Backup to a secure, offsite system over the Internet

Use a secure, online backup option like Mozy. This will backup your entire drive automatically in the background and it’s easy to restore even after catastrophic hard drive failure.

3. Backup key files and settings to a third online destination.

I use Apple’s mobileMe (now soon to be replaced with iCloud and free!) as an easy way to back up key files (Address Book, Mail settings, browser bookmarks, etc.) Note that Windows users can also use mobileMe and it’s not just an iPhone sync tool. Alternatively, you can get similar functionality by using Google Sync Services, however be forewarned, it will be considerably more complex than Apple’s mobileMe and my goal here was to make things as easy as possible. Also note that I haven’t tried this so YMMV. If you try it and have good luck with it, let me know.

BONUS (Insurance)

And finally, the extra insurance that brings it all together and pushes the success probability over the top in your favor… (yeah, OK, so it’s really a quad-fecta, but come on that sounds dumb so let’s just call this a bonus, shall we?)

Use an online file synchronization application like DropBox to automatically synchronize your files and make them available on any computer you use.

I love this web application! This is great not only for backing up stuff, but keeping files synchronized across multiple computers and locations. You can also securely share huge files that you would never e-mail.

This post has gotten a LOT longer than I anticipated. The point though to sum up is this, use a series of backup measures to multiple networks and media and you are almost guaranteed to never lose another file to chance.

Hope this was useful and, as usual, if you have questions, leave them below in the comments and I’ll be sure to answer.

All the best!
–Zack

I’ve been needing a new external hard drive myself for a while now and after considerable research and deliberation, I selected one that did the trick. This drive is by Fantom and the reviews are consistently very good. The company also appears to be very responsive to faulty, or defective products.

The first drive is about $15 more than it’s USB 2.0 brother, but I absolutely wanted the Firewire option for doing video work and high speed transfers, so it’s worth it by far. It has BOTH USB 2.0 and Firewire 1394a (400) interfaces.

The drive is very quiet and cool with the only complaint from a very tiny minority of folks being the bright, blue LED light on the front, but frankly, that’s a non-issue for me. If it’s in your bedroom facing your pillow, well then you may have a problem, but now c’mon, are you serious? It’s next to your pillow … ?

The second drive is double the capacity at 1 Terabyte (approx. 1000 gigabytes) and an outstanding drive for backups or video or anything else that needs a lot of space and speed. It has top ratings and an unbeatable price. It has only eSATA or USB though so watch it if you need Firewire.

Check them out and please comment back if you decide to get one and have any thoughts about it …

May your tech forays be fruitful!

–Zack

Fantom Titanium-II 500GB 3.5″ External Hard Drive [with Firewire interface]

Fantom 1TB 3.5″ Silver GreenDrive External Hard Drive

Click to read the article …

We’re assuming here that a Mac is out of the question for various reasons.

This is a box I can recommend. Check the reviews. I think this one will be the right answer. I’ve gotten Acer products on a number of occasions and been very happy with the product and their support on the rare times I’ve had to call.

And if you need a low-cost, high quality LCD monitor to go with that, check this out. I think you’ll be more than happy with it (this monitor is NOT intended for high end color critical design work!) But it will be fantastic for 100% of what 99.9% of folks who use a computer need a monitor to do.

Hanns·G HW-191APB Black 19″ 5ms Widescreen LCD Monitor Built-in Speakers

Your comments are most welcome!

–Zack

I needed some more basic CDs for burning and found these Verbatim CD-Rs which are very reliable and burn at their rated speed of 52x, unlike many other brand-name CDs which we shan’t mention.

About $20 for a spindle of 100 CDs. (Note that these are your standard shiny surface for labeling with a Sharpie or similar pen, not for printing from a custom CD printer, if you have one of those; most folks don’t.)

Verbatim 94554 700 MB 52X 80 Minute CD-R, 100 Disc Spindle with Reinforced Packaging to Minimize Breakage

If you DO have an inkjet printer capable of printing on CDs, you’ll want to get these instead:

Verbatim 97019 700 MB 52X 80 MIN DataLifePlus White Inkjet Hub Printable CD-R, 100-Disc Spindle Tape Wrap (White)

I’m really looking forward to a huge change in the way my life works by using this.

If you find yourself frustrated by the overwhelming list of stuff you have to and want to do, you should definitely give this book a thorough review.

Check it out here:

Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity

Well now the IMPROVED 10 Mpixel version of the old 10 Mpixel version is out and it’s cheaper than my original 7 MPixel Powershot! Sheesh. At least you can take advantage of it and I can live vicariously knowing you got the best deal I’ve ever seen on the Canon digicams. Get it, you’ll love it.

Canon PowerShot A2000 IS 10.0 MP Digital Camera