Thursday, December 16, 2010

Writing . . . Sort Of.

Been doing some work on "First" . . . sort of. I've been experimenting with MS Office's OneNote program. It's basically a large electronic notebook with an unlimited number of tabbed sections in it and an unlimited number of pages in each tab. (Think: five subject notebook X infinity!) You can free-form notes, thoughts, sketches, images, etc. on each page and even insert links to external files/programs. What I like best is its ability to link any text on a page to any other text/section/object on any other page, under any tab. I have a text file of notes (back story & character questions, etc.) that I wrote for myself a while back and I inserted it into OneNote. I also created tabs for maps, unfinished plot, calendars & time lines, etc. I'm able to link the notes to the locations on the maps or the dates in the calendar, or even to character profile pages so that a single click while I'm reading through it jumps me to the linked info . . . very nice! The only thing I'm having a little trouble with is linking to specific locations on and image (world map). I know it can be done, just haven't pinned it down yet. What a great idea though - the ability to jump from reference text to the world map, then click on that location on the map to jump to an enlarged map or another page that details the area! Much potential here, just not sure if it's potential for: A) Organizing my work so I can write more concisely or B) A massive time suck.

We shall see!

Work has been crazy busy. I'm rolling out & training folks on Windows 7 & Office 2010 (hence why I started playing with OneNote!) It's nice to be back to training again. with the shitty economy I've been limited by senior management to mostly support calls and troubleshooting this year. Things are looking up enough so they're letting loose of the monetary reins and letting me get back to what I'm supposed to be doing. Should make for a very busy year here though - I have a LOT of stuff on backlog that I need to get geared up for.

Family is good . . . should be a nice weekend ahead. The Boy has his Naval Ball (aka Senior Prom) and The Wife and I are heading to my company's Holiday Party (can't say "Christmas"!) for the first time in . . . hell, at least six years! It just always fell on dates where I had conflicts but this year we're clear so I'm looking forward to it. Other than that, it should be a quiet weekend around the homestead. Nice lead in to the holidays, right? Hope all is good with everyone else . . .

I'm out!

1 comment:

Ethereal Highway said...

One of these days I will get civilized and investigate one of the programs from your post for my writing. For now I am still using Word 2003 and... I save to a floppy disk (with an external drive because my machine is new). I really need to get with it tech-wise. When I ordered this laptop, I told the kid on the phone to add the external floppy for it and he said, "The what?" Yeah, I know... I'm a dinosaur. It could be worse. At least I don't use a typewriter anymore. :-)