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I have always enjoyed software that lets me create and manage outlines, and have gone through a bunch of them. There are still two good ones left, and one of them runs on the Palm Pilot.

I am speaking of ThoughtManager, from Hands High Software It's a nice solid product (they also have a new product "Slap", that feeds into it), and there is a desktop version for Windows that has largely replaced Microsoft Word for creating outlines. It can interchange data with Microsoft Word, but frankly the need doesn't come up much anymore.

I actually purchased, installed, and tried out Brainforest Professional because it also had a Mac version, but I didn't find the Brainforest product to be usable, and decided to stick with creating and managing outlines with ThoughtManager on the Palm and ThoughtManager Desktop on Windows.

One drawback of the Palm is that it's small enough object to get lost in the clutter. You forget to use it. Hey! I bet there's an audible timer program that might be of use! That's the watchword of the day: discovery and full use of existing capabilities.

While tracking down information on SVG (scalable vector graphics), I ran across a wonderful series of pages on the Apple developers site. They were erudite and clear, so I read more than just what I had gone there for, and brushed up a little on Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), a page layout language for web pages.

That inspired me to replace "table layout" for the WebMonsters WebDesign Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) and replace it with a "css-based" layout. I didn't quite finish, but it looks much better and it made me really happy to do it.

In my web travels, I ran across two books that would have been helpful, had I but read them: Cascading Style Sheets: Separating Content from Presentation [buy at amazon] . by Owen Briggs.

And Designing CSS Web Pages [buy at amazon] . by Christopher Schmidt.

Perhaps another day...

Finally posted "RubyJournal" my free weblog toolkit written in Ruby last night. Still needs a page more of doc. And an improvement or two. I've been using it for three or four months on this site, fixed a bug or two and so far I have found it quite usable.

Once installed, it completely separates the daily writing from the posting and presentation work of a weblog.

You can read about Rubyjournal now.

Yesterday Apple introduced two wonderful new computers, solving the PowerBook quandary forever. Is the screen too large? Is the screen too small? Now you can choose a small one (12 inches) or a tall one (17 inches).

I like the small one: it lacks the light-sensitive keyboard of the 17 incher, but it sports a medium-range speaker. Just to make sure it's right, I'll work with 1024 by 768 for a while here on the Cube.

Ok so far!

Enjoy the year of the laptop at Apple

pools=XML, Blog, Ruby

Today Apple's Steve Jobs will announce that formerly free applications will now be subject to a "Mac Tax". The danger to the company is not that its customers will become angry, but instead that they will not.

What if they change their mind about Apple, and simply consider that "Apple Computer, just like Microsoft, won't solve my future problems. It just wants me as a subscriber, not a customer. Subscription cancelled"

It's enough to make you consider the charms of yellow dog linux

pools=XML, Blog, Ruby

Welcome to 2003, a year in which we will keep on installing and developing new software. First up? Java 2, version 1.4_01. Soon to be followed by Eclipse.

A quick visit to eclipse.org found the Eclipse download. Now it's installed. First project? I don't know yet, but 4D graphics is one of the usual suspects.

Happy New Year! pools=XML, Blog, Ruby