Jan
26
Since I changed to a Mac I never needed to use a word processor. So I never worked neither with Pages neither with Microsoft Word for the OS X.
Last week I was assigned to write a paper for the Game Theory subject with 6 to 10 pages. Even before I chose a subject (since it was free, as along as it was related with Game Theory, I took some time to choose it) I decided I would use Pages. I know exactly what to expect from Microsoft Word, I tried it thousands of times, I used it for writing my entire life (with some exceptions to Vim for writing LaTeX documents) and so this would be a wonderful time for trying out a new word processor.
Pages is pretty clean, the default templates are very nice and they look very good. I liked the fact that I could drag a picture from Safari directly into the cover page.
So I started to write. My paper is about the wonderful subject of Mixed Strategies in Game Theory. I wrote one page and a half and I was very happy with my Pages experience. I saved my work and went home.
Today, the unthinkable happened.
I was writing for about an hour, I had written another page and a half and I wanted to insert some mathematical formula. I found the option that would allow me to do that on one of the menus and clicked it. Pages crashed and I chose the option to relaunch it, of course. I was expecting to lose some of my work but I lost everything I wrote today. I was so sad. I never expected any word processor not to have a auto-save option activated by default and I never expected any word processor not to have a temporary file that he would be able to recover if the software crashed.
Yes, it was my fault because I didn’t save my work regularly. But still, word processors must have a way of taking care of that. In case we forget.
So remember kids, computer lesson number 5489793: always save your work with regularity.
EDIT: Wikipedia really has all the information a person needs to survive.
Jan
24
The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read,
never even heard of,
as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.
Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses goodbye
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,
something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.
Whatever it is you are struggling to remember,
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue,
not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.
It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall,
well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.
No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.
a beautiful poem by Billy Collins
Jan
24
An amazing set of pictures on Flickr about art and how to explain it to geeks