One week into 2008 and this is only my second post. Were you one of those who was checking every day to see if I’d resumed the daily posts? Do you miss me yet?

Alas, all is not lost. I’ve been writing — as always — just not here, very much. In fact I would almost — though hesitantly — call it a productive weekend with that regard. A few thousand words, in fact.

I don’t have much to say other than I wanted to pass along a link to a very cool text editor I found. I found it completely by accident, and the story goes something like this:

Ahem…

So, I’ve pretty much decided on a Mac. I’m going to switch sometime this year. I’ve been contemplating such for a few years now (yes, years) and with the increasing need for a “creative” porta-machine for my writing, photography, and design stuff, I think the only real option is moving to a slick new Mac Book Pro. (Perhaps after the upcoming announcements?) The clincher came yesterday when, while trolling Slashdot, I found an article on Scrivener, a Mac-only bit of author-geared word processing software, endorsed by one of my short-listed favorite authors Michael Marshall Smith.

Drool!

But, yeah. No Windows version. And while that drove the final nail in the metaphorical coffin and solidified the conviction to dump Windows, it didn’t solve the actual “need money to buy Mac” problem — and thus the lack of access to aforementioned software.

In a mostly fruitless search, I did not find a replacement but did manage to find JDarkRoom, a slick and fast full-screen text editor. The premise is that to do any sort of serious writing, modern word processors and operating systems are a distraction. The solution: a blank screen with a very retro, text-only interface, so when you type you see NOTHING but what you are typing. It’s free (donation-ware) and small to install. I wanted to share that because I know a few of you out there might find it useful. I’ve already defaulted it on text docs. Nice! Check it out.