I love plain text files for documents. They’re future-proof, past-proof, and completely platform agnostic. I’m sure someone has written a text editor in Minecraft or something more outrageous. Text editor for Gameboy Colour? Text editor for a Casio F91W.
But sometimes text files need a little more oomph. Some va-va-voom. And this is where Markdown comes along. It’s still a plain text file, but you can format the text with some markup that ranges from very simple, to slightly less simple.
Like this:
# Heading 1
## Heading 2 - The headening
This is the body text.
1. This is
2. an ordered
3. list
and
- this is
- an unordered
- list
and
- [ ] these
- [ ] are
- [x] checkboxes
This then ends up looking like this:
when viewed through an interpreter. The themes can be tweaked, but you can tweak individual bits of the style. You can’t suddenly decide that your ordered lists part way through should be twice the size or something.
And it just works. The files don’t bloat. There is image support. Table support. All manner of things.
And because it’s plain text files, it works perfectly with your preferred version control system (git, most likely, right?) in a way that Word Documents don’t.
I recently stumbled upon Typora and it’s just bloody great. You can either type in code, or use the wysiwyg interface, or kinda use both at the same time where the styles update as you type in the code. It’s not free, but why should it be? It’s very well priced at AU$22. It’ll probably never stop working – and if it does, there are dozens of other text editors out there that will pick up your file and open it without any issues.
Start writing in Markdown. You’ll like it. I think.
I can plan things in advance, but it’s not my natural way of doing things. I enjoy spontaneity. The last minute “hey are you up for…” call or message. But it can be a bit unmanageable if you don’t have a group of similarly minded people around. This is where the Last Minute Adventure Club steps in.
It was an idea I had (probably not technically original, but whatever – I thought of it myself) of a chat group where you can post if you want to do something and want company. Simple, really. You have to be prepared for not getting any bites. And you have to be prepared for getting too many bites. But the flexibility of it is what makes it appealing to me. It’s zero pressure. Ideally you don’t bail if you’ve said you’re going to do something, but in reality – what’s stopping you?
My Last Minute Adventure Club chat has about 15 people. I would like it if it had more, and if others posted more activities in there. But like with my cinema nights and pizza rides – these things take a bit of time to build, and consistency is key.
Start your own Last Minute Adventure Club. Join mine. Just get outside and do things.
I designed some stickers. I posted about them here: Stickers. Two days ago I placed an order with a local print-house and this afternoon they were ready! Some slicing was required because they come 6 to a sheet. But I’m the proud owner of 120 KESAB stickers.
Gloss next time, I think.
Head over to the Stickers page if you want to grab the files to print your own.
This book came highly recommended by a good friend whose opinions on stuff I generally trust. I mentioned to them that I needed some books for travelling, and they announced that they loved the Murderbot series by Martha Wells. With a lot of planned transit and transfer time in my life, I grabbed all of the available Murderbot books and loaded them on my Kindle, ready to read.
I didn’t do a whole lot of reading on the flights over. It wasn’t until I was on the train, trying to conserve roaming data, from Rome to Pompei that I finished No Way. I started, and finished, All Systems Red on the flights from Catania to Venice. I know it’s a novella – but reading a book in a single sitting is nearly unheard of for me. I think even Matthew Reilly’s Cobalt Blue took me a couple of sessions.
That I managed/could read it in a single sitting says a lot about the novel. It was punchy, interesting, and pure/hard enough Sci-Fi that I was captivated the whole time. I found it very interesting that I assigned a gender to Murderbot before I started reading the book. I wonder if that had something to do with the person who recommended it to me.
I’m moving on to Artificial Condition (the second Murderbot Diaries novel) next.
