Distraction-free writing with Writer and JDarkRoom

Writing is a passion of mine, but it is much easier to do offline for one simple reason – less distractions. There is no way for me to open a new tab in my notebook and go off to watch some mindless yet hilarious YouTube video; no way to Ctrl+Tab my way into another window to obsessively organize my music collection. I can just sit there and let the thoughts flow out.

Writers seeking this state of mind (and desktop) usually end up having to go out of their way to get similar results. Fear not! There are a few tools available so that authors working in a digital environment can have no-frills, distraction-free word processing. When compiling these tools I chose the guidelines of no graphics, basic save/load support, the ability to customize the colors, and that’s it. Plain…simple.

The most polished of those available is only for OS X users – WriteRoom. It’s a great tool for Mac users, and it has rave reviews, but leaves other OS users (mainly Windows and Linux) out in the dark. Also not useful if you are away from your regular computer.

Solution for the mobile user: Writer, the internet typewriter. Writer is a simple Javascript writer that has load/save functionality, autosave and wordcount. It even allows you to download the text as a file or even PDF. Writer has print capabilities and is super small, so it loads fast.

The best tool I found was a combination of all the features that were searched for. It is cross-OS compatible, simple, and extremely customizable. JDarkRoom is downloadable for Windows or Mac, and they even have a .jar file that works on Linux as well. I’ve been running it on Ubuntu 8.10 just fine.  JDarkRoom has all the features of Writely and runs in full-screen for maximum distraction-determent.

The only step left after downloading these fine text editors is to work on concentration. That is the only way to truly block all distractions. For Linux users, I suggest Sitquietly. Sitquietly is a simple meditation timer written in Python and intended for use in GNOME. Hopefully now we can all get some work done!

If you have any recommendations, feel free to share them in the comments. If they seem up to par, I’ll be sure and add them.

Update (12.21.08) – As bet pointed out in the comments, there is a fantastic writer for windows called WriteMonkey. WriteMonkey is a Windows-only download, but had some features that blow most of these programs out of the water. It has customizable fonts and colors, typing sounds, text statistics, spell checking, find and replace, wildcards and regular expressions. It also has a customizable progress bar that tells you how far you are from reaching a “goal” that you can set.

One notable feature of WriteMonkey is its “repository” which is a toggleable text repository, where you can keep snippits of text, URLs, etc. Sort of like a mini-moleskine. (Thanks bet!)

Feeling Changes

…and that’s a good thing!

WordPress finally got around to releasing version 2.7 of their fabulous software. We upgraded the night it came out, and have so far been impressed with the new interface and speed increases. Also, being able to install plugins from the admin panel is an awesome idea. Glad they finally put some more convenience into the app.

So in the spirit of change, PinkOnBrown has remixed its design. The new design is based off of the Wpdesigner7 theme. It was heavily modified – all in Gedit. Can’t get enough of the plain-text editors. Another reason was the launch of the #CampfireReads page. But enough of that, just take a look at the beauty:

Part of the focus of this theme was to focus on the content while balancing speed, simplicity, and shiny bits! For this reason, we introduced a floating menu bar and page top link. All of our searches are now provided by Google for speed and accuracy. All comments run with IntenseDebate – as always – for speed, flexibility, and awesome. We are also now using Add to Any for our content sharing.  There are many more tweaks here and there, but kinks are still getting ironed out and functionality being carefully monitored.

This of course comes on the heels of our friends over at Technoccult getting a logo and branding redesign. Danny Chaoflux did excellent work. Hopefully our rebranding turns out as sucessfully as theirs did. Feel free to leave comments, advice, etc in the comment below. It would be appreciated.

Enjoy the fresh, new look!

Transmission 1.02 Released

Transmission, the quick, simple Bittorrent client for Mac/Linux, has just released version 1.02. This is a bugfix version to fix some issues such as choking certain routers (like it was doing to mine) and increasing GTK+ compatibility. Here’s the full changelog:

Version 1.02 (2008/1/22):
All Platforms:
+ Fix 1.00 bug that choked some models of routers
+ Fix 1.00 crash in peer handshake
+ Fix 1.01 bug that sometimes froze the app for a long time
+ Minor improvements to the command-line client

GTK+:
+ Fix crash when removing a torrent while its details window is open
+ Better compliance with the Gnome interface guidelines
+ I18N fixes
+ Updated Dutch translation
+ Various other interface additions and improvements

Ubuntu .deb packages can be found here.

Transmission 1.01 Released

My favorite BitTorrent client, Transmission, just released bugfix version 1.01 today.

Version 1.01 (2008/1/11):
All Platforms:
+ Fix 1.00 freezing issue
+ Fix 1.00 assertion failure
+ Improve initial connection speed
+ Added connection throttle to avoid router overload
+ Improve reconnection to peers with imperfect network connections
+ Fix crashes on architectures that require strict alignment
OS X:
+ Leopard: Double-click icon to reveal in Finder, progress string to toggle selected and total, and anywhere else to toggle the inspector
+ Leopard: Better behavior with Time Machine
+ Fix bugs with Clutch support
GTK+:
+ New Brazilian Portuguese, Chinese, Dutch, and Turkish translations
+ Fix 1.00 desktop internationalization error

Link, Ubuntu Builds

Transmission is very small (memory and size-wise) BitTorrent client with some great features such as encryption, PEX support, and search. Minimal and beautiful.