Category: Geekness

The Final Days of an Image

Pluto_hubble_photomap

We are in the last days of this image. What is it? That is the current best image we have of a small body known as Pluto. These images were taken with the Hubble Telescope at its clearest resolution. And yet, with all of that, this is still the clearest image we have.

That will all change this week. On May 15th the resolution of the onboard instruments on the New Horizons probe will exceed that of Hubble’s. This means every day from the 15th on we will be seeing Pluto for the first time.

All will come to a head on 15 July, 2015 when the probe makes its closest pass by the planet and its five moons… maybe even more will be found.

Already we have images coming in of Pluto and Charon. Soon, the other four, found about the time New Horizons was launched, Nyx, Styx, Hydra and Kerberos, will come into view too.

OpNav3_barycen_v7_lowres

Downgraded from “planet”, maybe, Pluto is no less a wonder, and this new moment of exploration will be as important as Voyager and Pioneer before it.

More info, and more images will be appearing on the official site for the probe:

http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/

Byword App

I’ve been a fan of Byword for quite some time. At first, I rejected the idea of plain text as a viable format to use for writing. This, now, I blame largely on the programs that deal with plain text files.

Notepad is perfectly serviceable, and I have written many a website on it, but for fiction, it leaves something to be desired–presentation.

And it is this that Byword excels on. Byword is a markdown editor, which is a text editor that used Markdown syntax. It is also distraction free. For example, right now my entire screen is just a blank canvas with words, and a small stat menu at the bottom which updates with the umber of words and characters.

When you are writing, very rarely do we need to format. Primarily we are dealing with two basic items: paragraph breaks and italics. For Markdown, italics are created with astericks. This means that this is now this. And, even in plain text files paragraph breaks work about the same.

You can set the veiwable font anyway you want, which is a part of the presenation. And from there, you can write.

Add in a new feature which allows for blog posting, and here I am, writing this post on my computer in ByWord. Now, why would I want to do that? Mostly, I find it easier to write these things up outside of WordPress. It lets me wander away if I want, and work on it later.

It also gives me an offline version of my blog. I have a folder with txt files from my posts, there, safe, should anything happen to the server.

ByWord lets me just work, rather than allowing me to get in the formatting parts. And, let’s be honest, formatting is, for the most part, the job of the publisher. Even if that is you, now is not when you should be doing it.

Plain text is nice and clean, but when you need it, ByWord will export to docx, rtf or PDF for you. There are other apps, such as Marked 2 (which I also recommend), which will help with formatting and exporting.

But I need…!!!

Of course. There are always needs, and just as Word cannot be replaced by Scrivener, or WordPress, Byword is a tool that has its place in your workflow. For most, it will sit with first drafts and writing practice. But you could use it for the whole thing, too.