Comfy sweater - marked down! Thursday, March 15, 2007

Some time ago, I switched from MarsEdit to ecto. Mostly, I did this because I liked writing posts with "real" formatting -- that is, using the RTF editing view that ecto offered.

At the time, I was only allowing myself 15 minutes per post, and the HTML I was using in MarsEdit simply got in the way of quickly reading the post for content. Too much translation, the Preview didn't really do it for me... and it didn't look like Brent was going to find much time to work on the program (understandable, given his success with NetNewsWire).

Given that set of issues, I switched. Not all upside (the HTML generated by the RTF translator was rather sub-optimal), but overall it worked for me.

With Daniel Jalkut's recent acquisition of MarsEdit (congratulations, Daniel!), and his flurry of activity improving the core and fixing bugs, I've decided to give it another shot. And to get around the readability problem, I'm giving Markdown a try.

I don't know why I didn't use Markdown before -- probably, I didn't want to learn yet another thing. Maybe I just wasn't aware of it. But I'm glad I've finally found it and taken the time to figure it out. Markdown's pretty easy: natural to read and write once you grasp the basics. JG and Aaron Swartz did a good job with the syntax: it's regular, logical, functional, readable.

And it's supported by Expression Engine, too.

So, three posts later, I'm sticking with it. Hopefully with these few changes I'll be able to find a bit more time to blog!

HP: you rascal you! Thursday, March 15, 2007

It wasn't that long ago that HP had the absolute worst OSX drivers of any major peripheral developer. Their scanners barely worked, their printers sort of worked, the software they loaded was pretty shamefully buggy, flaky... they just sucked.

So, imagine my surprise when -- after a recent Mac purchase at the Apple Store -- I decided to get a "free" HP C6180 all-in-one printer and... hey! It's been de-suckified!

The thing is well designed, has good drivers, built-in networking, even scans and faxes over the network -- pushing or pulling to multiple "associated" Macs. It's not perfect but what the hell? It's like someone is writing these drivers who actually uses a Mac!

When did that happen? Doesn't HP know they're supposed to have crappy Mac products?

And after that good experience, and reading a number of great reviews, I grabbed an HP B9180 Photosmart Pro Printer, too. Again, a great printer, with good drivers, built-in networking, relatively frugal with inks, good paper handling: and it generates great prints.

This is HP -- "we generate huge dots with expensive ink and our photos look like crap" HP. And -- not.

Wow. I don't know what's going on at HP, but they should definitely keep it up.

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