Tools

A while ago I tried visualizing all of Japan's many Prime Ministers on a Timeline using data from Wikipedia [^ft] and a Google Docs timeline gadget. It sort of worked, but was buggy... As I look at the page now, it does not work at all.

Some of you may have figured out by now that I’m blogging over on Penn-Olson.com, an up-and-coming blog focused on technology in Asia. Think Mashable or Techcrunch but with an Asian focus. It means that I get to cover China again, something I haven’t done much of since moving leaving China for Japan back in 2008. But above all else it means that I get to experiment with new web publishing tools, something I seldom get to do when writing freelance for individual clients.

If you were following my Twitter stream recently, you may have seen some messages I sent out as I was covering some volleyball matches here in Tokyo. Reporting on International volleyball presented a couple of problems right off the bat for me:

I recently completed a piece on CNNgo.com about the best places to run in Tokyo. These sort of lists tend to make me uncomfortable, and this one would be impossible unless I ran all of the trails personally — tricky to say the least.

When I reinstalled Mac OSX on my Macbook last week, I found myself using my list of Mac apps from last year's reinstall to figure out what to applications to put back on. I don't screw around with Time Machine because I really love my computer after it's been wiped clean. Too many people buy new computers when all they need is really a clean OS install.

I'm trying to learn some more command line stuff lately, mostly because I think it makes me look badass -- in much the same way as smoking or bear claws makes one look badass.

It's always fun to see how other people use new tools to get their work done. Inspired by usethis.com's series of interviews, Takaaki has written up a really neat piece about exactly what hardware and software he uses in his daily life. I would LOVE to read more of these because it gives you so many crunchy tips that you can steal and adopt as your own.

Update: SixRevisions has a great post on getting started with Drupal as well.

The worst thing about all the documentation over on Drupal.org is that it's just not very accessible to non-developers. But first I want to address the question,

I don't do stuff like this very often, but last night I had a chance to spill my guts to about 30 or 40 people on a topic that I've kinda been obsessing over for quite a while. I've met a lot of people who write for a living over the past few months, and I always find myself recommending certain tools or a workflow tweak to help them do what they do a little bit better.

Maybe I gush about this stuff too much, who knows...

Finding programming study resources is tough. I mean, there's no shortage of material out there on the internet, but from a total beginner's perspective I've always found it hard to know where to start. So many tutorials assume some prior knowledge which I just didn't have. Here are a few links that I've found which stand out as very accessible to the absolute beginner. I'll add to these over time, but for now this is it. If you have any to add, please leave them in the comments.