Juxtapose the magic of a successful ping from the middle of West Africa's outback with the buzzing of an old serial modem making a connection. Add in the frenetic flashing of the lights on the cable modem, and the amazement of connecting to the internet over a device that fits in your pocket. Here's my take on how it's all worked out:

Mellel is a powerful word processor for those of us who need to write long works that include cross references, bibliographies, internal citations, tables of content, and whose contents require carefully structured parts, sections, and subsections. And it’s unsurpassed for working with multiple languages in a single document – particularly if one or more of those languages are Middle Eastern. Mellel provides comprehensive tools for creating, organizing, and applying text styles, but it takes some thought to get it right. Here are some guidelines.

If you use Vim for coding, you might find it equally useful for writing text and longer works. If you don't use Vim and appreciate fast, efficient writing and editing, you might want to give it a try.

In either case, I highly recommend the Vim text editor for authors, writers, and anybody working on long text and prose works. And I've put together the 13 page Woodnotes Guide to Vim for Writers to set you on your way.

This is in the tradition of my Woodnotes Guide to Emacs for Writers, Woodnotes Guide to using Jedit to Code Manuscripts for Avalon Travel Publishing, and article Editing Avalon Docs in Vim.

Find the Woodnotes Guide to Vim for Writers here: (PDF(128KB)|HTML).

This document is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 licence..

Back in 2000 I first ventured onto the 'Net via a 56K dial up modem over telephone lines, and the Internet was mostly built around those needs. Times have changed, and the idea of dialing up a connection seems quaint, even antiquated. With some careful planning, dial up isn't so bad at all. But in a world where the average webpage is now an order of magnitude heavier than it was back when everybody dialed up, some planning is indeed necessary.

Linux to the rescue. It's easy to set up a Linux computer to run a downloading mission every time it connects, and take care of your mail and even your basic web browsing, all in one fell swoop. Here's the secret:

This short article describes how to get a Zoom 3095 USB Modem working on Linux. This cool little USB telephone modem sells for about US$50 and proclaims proudly on the package that it is compatible with Windows, Macintosh, and Linux. That was clearly the work of the marketing team, as in reality, we Linux users need to do a bit more work to get on line. I bought one of these modems in order to rescue an old Linux box (PIII 555Mhz, 128M RAM) running SuSE Linux 8.2 and was immediately frustrated to learn it was going to take more work than I'd been led to believe.

Do not despair. This guide is going to get you connected.

Emacs rocks. It is a highly customizable text editor and one of the reasons I continue to use Linux. The Dvorak keyboard layout rocks, because it streamlines typing and places the most commonly used letters in the most easily accessible positions. And the Kinesis Advantage keyboard rocks: it is a highly customized keyboard that makes typing effortless.

But Emacs on a Dvorak keyboard sucks. And Emacs on the Kinesis Dvorak keyboard really sucks. In fact, it's all but unusable.

But emacs is customizable. That's what this is about: making the Kinesis keyboard usable for writers that use the dvorak keyboard layout and like emacs. That probably boils down to me alone on earth, but so be it: customizability is what makes Linux, Emacs, and even the Kinesis, so damn useful, and if you're a writer, you may as well make your environmental useful and comfortable. Let's begin.

Emacs is powerful but complicated. The more you are able to reference its keyboard shortcuts the faster you can work - I find this its greatest strength.

If you have already read my article on Emacs for Writers in which I describe how authors can make best use of this powerful software, you may also appreciate this Reference Card (cheat sheet). It provides all the most useful commands in both long and short form, on three concise pages (PDF).

My operating principle has always been: use the best tool for the job. Where computer work is involved, I insist on a good keyboard. In my case, it's the Kinesis Advantage keyboard, which is ergonomic, comfortable, and built to last. Read on about why I love it.