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estimmel — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 03:40:59 +0000

Really grateful to @sarhar1 for showing me the most excellent video. There’s just so much to love about this song and the people singing it that I won’t even try to put it into words. Just watch it.

Of course a discovery like this can only be followed down the rabbit hole, i.e. YouTube, to discover more of the same, interesting and new (to me) music and imagery. I really like this one as well. Wishing I had some disposable income right about now…

I also kind of dig the title fonts.

Markdown in Notepad++

estimmel — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 00:02:52 +0000

I recently (recently as in about an hour ago) discovered a way to use Notepad++, my text editor of choice on Windows, to process Markdown files into html without having to jump into DOS and run do it from the command line. I’ve been trying to keep my notes in Markdown for awhile now because I like that I can easily publish them to a blog or webpage without fighting with the markup. I also like the small bit of discipline it gives to my text files and the opportunity to tinker around with scripting in the process. Since I don’t really blog that much or publish any html documents to speak of, it’s more of an affectation than a truely useful exercise. That said, I still find myself writing in Markdown with a lingering feeling that the future is all in a browser.

I also enjoy Notepad++ and, like the web, it feels more powerful and full featured that I currently use. So it keeps my attention. I also like the tabs and persistant workspace it provides while the syntax highlighting and numbered lines make some of the things I do at work (writing AutoCAD, Autolisp and AutoHotKey scripts specifically) much, much easier. I won’t go into all the details, but if you do any scripting and you are doing it in plain Notepad you really need to take a long look at what you are missing.

So, to the point! What you need to do to get this to work on your Windows machine, and I’m going to gloss over a lot of the dirty work here, is the following:

Install Notepad++
Install Perl – I don’t remember why, but I installed Straberry Perl and it seems to work just great.
You could install thomsmits’ Markdown syntax highlighting module for Notepad++ if you want, but you don’t have to. (I’ve only been using it for a few days and I’m not sure it’s as solid as I would like, but it’s something!)
Make sure you have the NppExec plugin installed in Notepad++. I think it’s a default, so not to worry.
Go into Plugins > NppExec > Execute… or just hit F6 and type the following into the script box making sure to put the correct path to wherever your Markdown.pl script lives:
```
perl "C:\Markdown_1.0.1\Markdown.pl" "$(FULL_CURRENT_PATH)"
CON_SAVETO $(CURRENT_DIRECTORY)\$(NAME_PART).html
```
Save and name the script in the NppExec dialog and you are good to go.
To run your script, open a file using Markdown syntax and hit F6 and choose your script (if it doesn’t come up by default) and select OK. Your new file will be saved in the same directory with the same name and the .html file extension.

I really like this and it seems to be working really well. You may have to toggle “No internal messages” in the NppExec menu if you are getting messages in your html file, but I have tested it and even wrote this blog post using this method!

UPDATE 2010.02.19: Fixed the save to code.

Relaxing on a Sunday morning

estimmel — Sun, 10 May 2009 15:30:58 +0000

It’s nice to sit in a cafe and just relax a little. Read a bit, draw… (ok, listen to Audible books and sketch on my iPhone… It’s the future…)

a new form of sketchbook

estimmel — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 01:37:45 +0000

Photo/Sketch by Stef Kardos

I love these drawings. Done with an iPhone application called “Brushes.” Installed, but little used on my iPhone, this series is quite inspiring. It also makes me miss California.

Check it out

∎

sadly indeed…

estimmel — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 19:21:15 +0000

So many times I read xkcd and get a glimpse of that once possible future, the one where I pursue higher mathematics and have the intellectual prowess to make jokes that are truly funny, but somehow over my head. It gives me that good kind of anxiety that comes from being surrounded by really smart people. Other times I read it and see the present and it makes me laugh out loud because that’s really funny too (and still contains some pseudo-intellectual chicanery).

Other times, I see my life so clearly in these little stick figure gems that I can barely believe it. (That’s when I start sweeping for bugs…)

This, sadly or not, is not a true story for me, but the circumstances and *ahem* tendencies are all pretty much par for the course.

∎

new studio

estimmel — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 05:20:51 +0000

I’ve got a new studio space in Greenpoint. It’s a shared space, but so far I’m mostly there by myself which is sort of nice. I’ve barely moved in so I don’t really have much to show for it, but here’s a little video I made of my first day actually making something in the studio. I made a Digg Button designed by Limor Fried. It’s designed to be reprogrammed, but I haven’t quite finished setting up my studio PC… somehow I can’t find the keyboard… guess it’s back to search the storage unit one of these days…

∎

Typography

estimmel — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 22:28:07 +0000

It’s been awhile since I worked on this blog at any great length and as I look back over it I see that I have made the forthcoming promise to ‘pick it up again’ more than once – one might say more often than not! That being the case, I’m finally starting to feel like I have got it to a point where I can stand to look at the thing and that’s a large part of the battle for someone like me. I have a theme that is tweaked enough that I feel I can claim some small amount of credit for the aesthetic, but not so much that it’s breaking on every new page view. There is still some progress to be made – for instance, regularizing the sidebar. It pains me to look at all those horizontal lines somehow not lining up! I’ll probably also have to explore getting some of those excessive links onto a new page so the main page is less cluttered. Then there are the categories and tags and getting Markdown to work as well as figuring out a consistent posting schedule… but i digress.

I’ll leave you with a couple of typographic symbols that I learned about as I was wasting time surfing the web doing research. The first is called an asterism and is used to call attention to a passage or separate subchapters in a book. It looks like three asterisks set in a triangle as such (slightly larger for more clarity):

⁂

The second is called a tombstone which signifies the end of a proof and looks like a filled square as such (slightly larger for balance):

∎

And with that, I’ll solemnly swear (up and down and with a flourish!) to pick this blogging thing up again for 2009.

See you soon. ∎

How to Work Better by Fischli-Weiss-1991

estimmel — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 03:59:01 +0000

I could really use this pasted over my computer monitor at work… especially the first item. man, if I could master THAT one… woohoo baby! That would be money.

iPhone 2.2

estimmel — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 23:36:50 +0000

Nice visual cue added to the iPhone’s podcasts… Now, if you subscribe to a cast that publishes both audio and video, you can tell which is which. Very useful when trying to choose something to LISTEN to on the train or while walking.

First post from my iphone…

estimmel — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 23:02:36 +0000

This is a test post from the wordpress for iPhone app… So good!