WriteRoom’s great as a full screen editor, but it has a hidden beauty as a windowed text editor too.

Look at it - gorgeous simplicity, green-on-black loveliness, and a live word count in the window’s title bar. I shall say that bit again: a live word count in the title bar. That’s the one feature that I wish, I wish, I wish I could enable in TextMate.

People like me - people who often have to produce a certain number of words for a client - are prone to have joyful grins on our faces whenever we find a decent bit of writing software that includes a live word count. It matters, you see, when you’re trying to get exactly 550 words, and you’ve knocked out the perfect bit of well-argued prose and it ends up being 532 words, or 581 words. Either way, that live word count is essential for the clean-up process that follows.

It’s daft. I’ve been using WriteRoom full screen for years but it’s never occurred to me to use it differently until today. It’s not a TextMate replacement but it’s yet another writing environment to add to my list of favourites.

We are waiting for connection. We are waiting for an opportunity. We are waiting for this path to be filled; with life, with victims, with delightful sounds. The sounds of passion, and pain, and punters passing by. We’re waiting for you.

We’ve been waiting like this for too long. We waited while you were misbehaving in public; we waited while you took your time hiding from the consequences; we waited while you wasted years in prison and going to court and being dealt with by society in the way that society sees fit.

And we hear that now society’s forgotten you, like you expected everyone else to forget you and you expected us to forget you. And you’re heading back this way and you should be here shortly: and that’s why we’re waiting. It’s that connection we want.

That connection of us, of yourself and ourselves, of our opposed paths. It will be violent, it will be loud, it will be destructive, and we cannot wait any longer. We’re almost spent with anticipation, because the waiting has not been easy for us. We’re not the sort who wait often, or for very long. You taught us all about that many years ago, when we were too young to have considered waiting for anything. Back then, we wanted something, we took it. We had to learn how to wait, we had to grow an appreciation of patience.

And here you come, now. The waiting can end, and the new reality can begin. We can see you approaching. We’re going to stand up now, reveal ourselves.

Don’t be frightened.

Photo credit: Gateshead town centre, originally uploaded by mojo-jo-jo. Used under CC licence.

Visigami is an app and a screensaver. It looks for pictures based on your search terms, and wafts them across your screen in a dreamy sort of manner. Odd.

I like the look of some of these Gelaskins; a brand name for flashy stickers that cover the entire surface area of your laptop’s lid and make it look even trendier than it did before. Thirty of your American bucks, which works out at about half a whisper over here in the UK.

In my day it was all Denby crockery and electric toasters.

I saw a modern wedding list today, and items on it included:

• USB record deck
• 500GB external hard disk
• Energy saving lamps
• Solar rock lights
• Laser Cosmos mood lighting
• Roomba
• Lego Millennium Falcon
• Bath towels

OK, so I expected the bath towels.

Park bench -
Originally uploaded by gilest

Kate and Charl were deep in conversation on the park bench, while us dads entertained the kiddies.

I made this for my recent presentation about web writing. A lot of it is not new to expert webessionals like you, but to my audience on the day most of it was new. Might even have been interesting. I’m putting it here so I don’t mislay it.