In 2011, I wrote a post about Crossplatform Note Sync with Dropbox. For the most part, the workflow and apps I wrote about still work well. However, times change I thought it would be a good idea to go back and check on some new developments, both platforms and tools, that may give you some new note-syncing options.

In a few cases, new features make this workflow even more flexible. For example, Elements now allows you to select which folder it uses for syncing files.

Dropbox has much more flexible options for sharing files and folders. There's also a revamped iOS client and a client for Windows 8, but not for Windows Phone 8.

One new development the deserves a look is TextDrop, an online text editor for Dropbox.

TextDrop

TextDrop is a web app that lets you access your Dropbox folder and edit, in the browser, any text-based document there.

I learned about TextDrop from Gabe Weatherhead of Macdrifter, who's written some great introductory posts about it, most notably here and here (plus an interview with TextDrop developer Sam Nguyen that's worth a read).

There's not much to the app: one pane shows the contents of the current Dropbox folder, the other lets you view and edit the selected file. It provides minimalist text-editing features, plus MultiMarkdown preview.

There are options for enabling hard tabs, non-text file previews and full-text search. That's pretty much it.

The good news is that TextDrop works fine in some popular desktop browsers, specifically Chrome, Firefox and Safari. TextDrop also works in Mobile Safari on the iPhone and iPad, though the site is a bit too cramped for regular use on the smaller phone screen.

The not-so-good news is browser compatibility. IE 6 and 7 are not supported by design, and I couldn't get the site to load in IE 9. Google Chrome Frame might help. Windows 8 is not supported. No joy in Opera, either. The site does load on Mobile Safari, but it's marginally useful at such small screen sizes.

Update: After a recent update to TextDrop 3.8.3, the site loads and works correctly in IE9. I haven't tried IE10 yet.

TextDrop is priced on a sliding scale, the actual subscription price rising a small amount with each new user. This is similar to the pricing scale used by Pinboard.in. You lock in a yearly subscription fee based on current price when you sign up.

I purchased a subscription (at around $10) because TextDrop does add some helpful flexibility to my writing work and I want to support Sam's continuing development of the app. The price recently jumped to almost $30.

Is TextDrop valuable at the current price?

If you work mostly within the toolset currently supported — namely, Chrome, Firefox and Safari — TextDrop can be quite useful. Once authorized, your documents are just a browser bookmark away, wherever you may be working.

Although TextDrop has some missing spots in its compatibility checklist, it does cover the most popular platforms. Expanding compatibility to Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 could win TextDrop some vocal supporters. On the other hand, improving mobile compatibility and expanding the editing capabilities probably addresses the needs of a larger user base. I'll be watching with interest.

Update: It's worth noting that Sam is making regular updates to the service and making changes in response to user feedback. Not only did he fix the IE9 loading issue within a week of my pointing it out, but he also fixed a minor tab-spacing bug as well, among other things. This is the kind of service where your subscription dollars are really going to support the work of an independent developer, who in turn is working hard to address the needs of his paying customers. I like it.

The State of Things

TextDrop aside, how has the cross-platform document editing scene changed since I wrote about it in 2011?

Not much.

Dropbox seems to have become the most reliable and flexible service for syncing your data, reinforcing the reasons I settled on it in the first place.

Apple's iCloud service still isn't ready for prime time and is, anyway, currently restricted to Mac and iOS.

Microsoft's SkyDrive service offers cross-platform syncing, including Android, iOS, Mac and Windows/Windows Phone clients.

There are two reasons I'm wary of this service. First, given the history of support for now-defunct sync services like FolderShare/LiveSync and Live Mesh, I wonder how long SkyDrive will stick around.

Second, you have to wonder about support for competing platforms with Apple reportedly rejecting updates to Microsoft’s SkyDrive iOS app.

Text editing apps have proliferated. I run Sublime Text 2 on all my desktop systems — Linux, Mac and Windows. For iOS devices, Brett Terpstra has compiled an extensive list of iTextEditors - iPhone and iPad text/code editors and writing tools compared. I'm still happy with the latest updates to Elements.

I'm less familiar with the Android text-editing scene, but LinuxLinks has a roundup of the 8 Best Free Android Editors. Here's another Minimalistic Text Editor for Android, though I've seen a few forum posts recommending vi. Seriously.

Code-focused editors are another, more specialized category. I'll be looking into that soon...CodeProject

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Online services are going to steal all of our content and use it to enrich themselves. Or maybe they're not. It makes for great paranoid headlines whenever a popular site updates their terms of services, but what's really happening here?

IANAL and have no particular expertise in the areas of IP law, so you'd be wise to rely on your own judgement and the advice of an attorney rather than my insight. However, I think there's a lot we can learn from a close reading of actual terms of service and a little common sense.

I was inspired to write about this by a tweet from Hal Berenson, linking to a post by Bruce Schneier, suggesting that, if you "Store something in the cloud... the cloud service owns it."

Schneier mentions the recent dust-up about Instagram's terms of service, and if you've been paying attention, you also know that Twitter, Facebook and other services have faced similar controversy over their TOS language.

The general uproar is something along the lines of:

"OMG ALL YOUR CONTENT ARE BELONG TO [service du jour] AND THEY CAN DO ANYTHING THEY WANT WITH IT!"

What's this all about? Why is [service du jour] suddenly stealing everyone's photos, wry observations, presentations or whatever? And what are they going to do with all this booty?

All Rights Reserved

The problem rests in some fundamental misunderstandings about how we use copyrighted works.

When you create something — write a tweet or a blog post, take a photo, sing a song and so on — the copyright for it is granted automatically (and in most cases, to you... though there are exceptions). If someone else wants to use it, they need your permission: you can grant a license for them to use that writing or photo or song under certain conditions.

And that's exactly what's happening here. You take a photo. You have a copyright on that photo. You upload it to Instagram. For them to do anything with that photo, you need to give Instagram permission — a license — to reproduce your copyrighted content and save a copy on their server.

Say you want Instagram to let your friends see the photo. You're smart and know how computers work; think about the further consequences: Instagram has to make and distribute copies of your photo for each person who wants to see it. Maybe they distribute files around to servers for load balancing or CDN-style distribution. More copies. Hopefully they back up your data. More copies.

They need your explicit permission to copy and distribute your copyrighted work.

Of course, lawyers being lawyers, and corporations being corporations, they use very-broad-and-yet-very-specific language to cover their asses in all the ways they can possibly think of, plus a few ways both you and they haven't imagined yet.

So you end up with terms of service language that sounds like OMG ALL MY FILES BELONG TO...

Licentious Behavior

Take a deep breath. Maybe it's not that bad after all.

In a previous life, part of my job involved proofreading EULA text for software installers. Yes, it was dull. But, the benefits! If you'd ever read through all of a EULA, a rental or mortgage contract or any similar legal document, you'd know that most of the language looks remarkably similar from one contract to another... it's boilerplate. Why reinvent the wheel? If it works in one situation (and holds up in court), use it again and again and....

Going back to that Bruce Schneier post, the objection focused on this particular text in the Prezi Terms of Use, Prezi being a service that lets you upload and share presentations or something to that effect. Specifically, there were concerns about the section dealing with User Content & Options:

In order to provide you with the Service, it is necessary for you to grant Prezi certain licenses to your User Content.

With respect to Public User Content, you hereby do and shall grant to Prezi (and its successors, assigns, and third party service providers) a worldwide, non-exclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free, fully paid, sublicensable, and transferable license to use, reproduce, modify, create derivative works from, distribute, publicly display, publicly perform, and otherwise exploit the content...

(My emphasis here and throughout, by the way, unless otherwise stated.)

That sounds pretty sinister. Promising to "exploit" is rarely a great way to make friends. In addition, Prezi requires you to grant a similar license to anyone who views your public content:

When you upload User Content on or through the Service, you also hereby do and shall grant to each user of the Service with whom you share your presentation a personal non-commercial non-exclusive license to access and view your User Content.

Yikes! What are they doing with my presentation?

But hang on. Think back to what I metioned earlier. They need your explicit permission to make any copies of your content that live on their servers or move around their service, any copies displayed to other users of the service and any copies needed for features of their service they haven't implemented or even thought up yet. That is what your "worldwide, non-exclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free, fully paid, sublicensable, and transferable license" enables Prezi to do without fear of being sued for copyright infringement.

Boilerplate Special

I mentioned my interpretation of the license terms to Hal, who replied that "Microsoft has no rights other than those necessary to operate [the] service", offering Microsoft's terms of service as a counterexample to Prezi's.

It's a fair point to the extent that Microsoft Services Agreement section 3.1 does explicitly state "[W]e do not claim ownership of the content you provide on the services. Your content remains your content...."

I believe that to be entirely true and put in fairly straightforward terms. Further, they make the entirely valid point that other people may see, save and reproduce copies:

If you share content in public areas of the services or in shared areas available to others you’ve chosen, you agree that anyone you have shared content with may, for free, use, save, reproduce, distribute, display, and transmit that content in connection with their use of the services and other Microsoft, or its licensees’, products and services. If you don't want others to have that ability, don't use the services to share your content.

Well said.

However, if we read a bit further, we'll see something a bit more like that Prezi license language start to show up:

When you upload your content to the services, you agree that it may be used, modified, adapted, saved, reproduced, distributed, and displayed to the extent necessary to protect you and to provide, protect and improve Microsoft products and services.

Sounds simple enough. But wait, these are not the only terms you're agreeing to. For example, head over to SkyDrive. The terms of service are a little more difficult to find, but eventually you'll end up at the Terms of Use page. Again, it includes the benign-looking prelude "Microsoft does not claim ownership of the materials you provide to Microsoft," but there's more:

...you are granting Microsoft, its affiliated companies and necessary sublicensees permission to use your Submission... including, without limitation, the license rights to: copy, distribute, transmit, publicly display, publicly perform, reproduce, edit, translate and reformat your Submission... and the right to sublicense such rights to any supplier of the Services.

Looks familiar?

It's Non-Exclusive

For better or worse, you're going to see language like this being used by pretty much any significant player in online or cloud services.

Here's Twitter's version, under the section helpfully titled "Your Rights":

You retain your rights to any Content you submit, post or display on or through the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through the Services, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, display and distribute such Content in any and all media or distribution methods (now known or later developed).

As the tip on the page notes, "This license is you authorizing us to make your Tweets available to the rest of the world and to let others do the same."

Let's take a look at Facebook's Statement of Rights and Responsibilities, under "Sharing Your Content and Information":

You own all of the content and information you post on Facebook, and you can control how it is shared through your privacy and application settings. In addition... you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook (IP License).

Or maybe you should check out the "Your Content in our Services" section of Google's Terms of Service:

Some of our Services allow you to submit content. You retain ownership of any intellectual property rights that you hold in that content. In short, what belongs to you stays yours.

When you upload or otherwise submit content to our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works...communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content. The rights you grant in this license are for the limited purpose of operating, promoting, and improving our Services, and to develop new ones.

It's a little harder to find (conspiracy theory anyone?), but Apple's iCloud Terms And Conditions aren't much different:

Apple does not claim ownership of the materials and/or Content you submit or make available on the Service. However, by submitting or posting such Content on areas of the Service... you grant Apple a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive license to use, distribute, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, publicly perform and publicly display such Content on the Service...

Birds do it, bees do it. Everybody on the web seems to do it. Let's do it. Let's accept that these license terms are basically industry boilerplate and move on.

Fox In The Hen House

Just to be clear, I'm not trying to belittle the comments made by Hal or Bruce... or anyone else who has concerns about this widely used, easily misunderstood — and perhaps easily abused? — licensing language.

I believe it is essentially boilerplate and meant to cover legitimate business use of our photos, videos, jokes and memories. Thus far, I can't think of any businesses that have, in fact, appropriated user content for reasons not intended by the user. And given the backlash resulting just from the suggestion that it might happen, I can't see why any sanely run business would try to do so.

But the ideas that are unacceptable today may become more acceptable tomorrow. Perhaps a future startup tries explicitly employing user content as part of its service, creating a wedge that makes the practice tempting where it was previously taboo. Of course, people tend to do stupid things, so maybe it's just a matter of time for someone to exploit this broad licensing language, consequences be damned.

In the meantime, the bold headlines seem more click-bait than Cassandra.

Update: Well, well, well... Ryan Singel points out that BuzzFeed is already raising significant investment funding on a "biz model of willful copyright infringement." Sure, they're taking liberties with photos folks have posted to other services — you haven't licensed them anything — but is this the "wedge that makes the practice tempting where it was previously taboo," or an outlaw site, doomed to failure?

My point stands, however: these terms of service aren't the problem (yet). Bad actors are.

Update 2: Today Reuters reports that News outlets improperly used photos posted to Twitter. According to the story, a reporte at Agence France-Presse took photos that photographer Daniel Morel had posted on Twitter, used them in an AFP story without permission, then passed them on to Getty Images, from whom the Washington Post procured the images.

AFP had argued that Twitter's terms of service granted it the right to use Morel's images.

The judge, though, said that while the service terms do allow the reposting and rebroadcasting of users' images in certain circumstances, such as "retweeting" them, it does not grant a license for commercial use....

Twitter was not a party in the case. "As has always been our policy, Twitter users own their photos," a Twitter spokesman said.

As before, I think this is a case of misappropriation — and a journalist at an organization of this stature should really know better.CodeProject

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In theory, I don't need many tools to get my daily work accomplished: a browser and a text editor handles 90 percent of my needs. Nonetheless, it was interesting to look back and think about the tools that did end up being used on a daily basis.

On Mac OS

My most-used machine is still the 2010-vintage Mac Mini I purchased used two year ago. I'm using it with a Filco Majestouch-2, Tenkeyless keyboard and Apple Magic Mouse. The displays are an old 23" Sony IPS monitor and an even older 20" Samsung.

Chrome is my current go-to browser. Fast and flexible makes up a great deal for horrible memory hog.

Template is a Chrome extension written by Alasdair Mercer that I use extensively for quickly grabbing information about a web page that I can then paste as formatted text into other documents.

Instapaper and Pinboard are my preferred bookmarking/read later services.

TableTools2 is a handy Firefox add-on for grabbing data from HTML tables and pasting it in CSV format. It does other tricks, too.

Sublime Text 2 is my text editor these days. It works enough like TextMate that moving over was a breeze, and now I have a consistent text editing experience across my Linux, Mac and Windows machines.

Reeder is my RSS client of choice, providing a much better window for keeping track of the feeds in my Google Reader account.

TextExpander holds boilerplate bits and pieces of text that I use frequently, and also has the ability to run scripts that grab and insert data on demand. Priceless! Pro tip: start your snippet abbreviations with a semicolon and you'll never have to worry about premature expansion.

Alfred App mostly gets used as an app launcher, but I've slowly been adding extensions (including a few of my own) to automate CLI-like file creation, tweeting, data conversion and other operations. Another can't live without app now.

Witch is Commmand-Tab task-switcher that's a huge improvement over the default Mac OS feature. I have it set up to work much more like the traditional Windows Alt-Tab functionality of switching between open windows.

Marked is a great app for creating previews and HTML markup of Markdown documents. Created by Brett Terpstra, who's also behind nvAlt, which I use for Crossplatform note syncing.

1Password keeps track of my passwords across iOS, Mac and Windows, and also provides great tools for creating new, strong passwords.

Twitterrific is my preferred Twitter client on both iOS and Mac OS thanks to the unified timeline and being just generally easier to read than other clients I've tried.

Dropbox is my primary tool for sharing important data across devices as well as providing a first line of backup, along with Time Machine. I also use SuperDuper! as a secondary on-site backup and CrashPlan for off-site backup. Yes, I'm paranoid about backups.

µTorrent is my (very) tiny BitTorrent client, for sharing large files and live show trading.

GeekTool is a flexible utility for displaying data on the desktop.

On iOS

I've already mentioned 1Password, Dropbox, Instapaper, Reeder and Twitterrific, all of which see active duty on my iOS devices as well as the Mac.

Camera+ serves as a feature-rich alternative to the native Camera app.

Check the Weather, by David Smith, is my current weather app, and a pretty good one — pretty, not overly information-dense and easy to read. I highly recommend listening to David's Developing Perspective podcast if you're a mobile app developer.

Dark Sky is a different kind of weather app, more focused on current and near future precipitation. Extremely useful if you don't want to get wet.

Downcast keeps track of my podcasts.

Due reminds me to take out the garbage. I'm not a huge fan of the interface of this app — I find setting the time for reminders unintuitive — but it's better than others I've tried for recurring reminders.

On Windows

I don't use the old Windows 7 box much anymore, but I do keep it around for browser testing, working on documents in Office and a bit of PC gaming (which, unfortunately, I haven't had much time for lately).

iRacing.com is still my racing sim of choice. I use a Logitech G27 Racing Wheel.

Baldur's Gate — the classic Windows version — has been kicking my ass for much of the year. I'm really not very good at it, but keep coming back for more punishment.

Black Mesa is my more recent obsession. I was introduced to this universe through Half-Life 2, so playing through a Source engine-powered re-boot of the original Half-Life feels like a long-overdue pilgrimage.

Valve's Steam service and GOG.com are great ways to get games for both Mac and Windows, and getting better all the time.

On Linux

Linux is my preferred server OS for personal projects. Nothing much exciting happens here. I run various flavors of Ubuntu for no other reason than it was at hand when I got started and the documentation is quite good.

Nginx is my web server. I prefer its concise, additive configuration to the Apache alternative.

staticDimension, with a few customizations, is my static blog engine.

AWStats handles my minimal web stats requirements.

Full disclosure: some of the links on this page are Amazon or Apple affiliate links and I could receive a payment from them for any purchases you make during a shopping session initiated via these links.CodeProject

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Bonus: Mike Wats merged my pull request, and now the new archive code is part of the core staticDimension code on Github.

Not bad for a first attempt at coding in public.

I've been working with developers and writing or editing articles about software development for a long time. But here's a confession: over all those years I never really learned to code properly. Sure, there was the occasional script, or picking up a book on C or JavaScript or whatever folks were writing about at the time.

But it never really clicked for me. Until this year, when I started to put some real effort into not just learning about coding, but actually putting fingers to the keyboard and making something — anything! — execute and do something — anything!

I'll write a bit more about the experience of putting years of theory into action another time. Right now I'm going to share my experience of doing one of my first real coding projects, however small it may be, right out in public for everyone to see.

The Basics

As I mentioned in the previous post, my primary goal for this project was to create a simpler, easier to navigate archive of my blog posts that no longer appeared on the home page. Simple solution: create a single page with a listing of past posts. In the unlikely event that someone wanted to find one of my old posts, it would be easy to simply go to the archive page and either scroll the list or Command-F find the desired post title — responsibilty on me to write relevant post titles.

The quick-and-easy plan for adjusting the code was to comment out the archive code that I didn't want to use and replace it with a modified version of the code used to create the home page. It just needed to grab the titles and bylines (including publishing dates) and make the title a link.

There were a few other details, such as including a link at the end of the home page to archive, so the intrepid reader who scrolled all the way down could fine more posts. And that was about it for version 1.

Making it Work for Anyone

Those tweaks would have sufficed for my site, but I felt a need to take the next step in my development as a developer: write code good enough for other people to use, not just me.

To my mind, that meant three things:

1. Make my changes a new, additional feature to the existing project, not just a tweaked version.

2. Write my feature in a way that defaults back to the standard functionality if anything goes wrong.

3. Try not to add much additional overhead to site updates.

As a bonus, I thought it would be interesting to submit a pull request and see if Mike would add my feature to his codebase.

I'm not all that self-conscious of the triviality of my changes. It adds a feature I want, it works, it doesn't remove any functionality other users might use. The first part was pretty easy. The second part added a bit of a challenge.

After thinking about the problem, it seemed like the most straightforward approach would be to add a setting. If it's set to true, my new feature gets used. A setting of false or any other value reverts to the default behavior.

/*
    Single-page Archive
    This setting enables a single-page archive instead of 
    the default day-month-year folder archives...

    A value of 'true' enables single-page archives. 
    Any other value currently uses the default archive 
    format.
*/
$this->settings['singlePageArchive'] = true; 

I left this as false by default as well, so anyone who pulled the code to an existing site would not be surprised by new, unexpected archive page creation. This was an important point for me: it should not break anyone's existing site!

From there it was a fairly straightforward task to put in my new archive creation code (adapted from Mike's original home page cration code) along with a test for the singlePageArchive setting.

That took care of my first two goals, adding new features on top of the existing ones, and not breaking the old, default features.

Baby Steps

This is probably old hat to many programmers, but it was a pretty big step for a guy who's worked with programmers for many years, yet never written anything comprising more than 20 or 30 lines of rudimentary Python.

For starters, I'd never spent much time wading around in PHP before, and what I had done was mostly cut-and-paste coding to quickly solve a problem. The contact page on this site is a great example: someone elses's code example with a few tweaks to suit my needs.

The good news is that, over the course of many years, enough programming logic permeated my thick skull that I could follow the code, understand what it was doing, and find the interaction of functions I needed to modify — even though it was in a foreign language.

The moral of this story is that you can achieve quite a bit with a little knowledge, reference material on the web, some careful reading and persistent effort.

What I'd Like to Do Better

There's definitely room for improvement. I have few illusions about that. So there are a few goals for the future:

Testing is something I've read much about, but haven't done properly yet. This is a high-priority area to learn and incorporate into my future projects.

My third goal was to avoid adding overhead to site operation, and that may be one area where I've failed. As implemented, any action that adds, changes or removes articles updates the entire site to make sure the archive page gets updated. A better way to handle this would be to test whether the changes actually affect the archive and only update the affected pages instead of rebuilding the site.

For a small site, this probably isn't an issue, but it would be more "right" in my mind.

Finally, I've been wanting the ability to update menus and sidebars without having to edit each page template individually — a source of several errors. So expanded templating would be nice and is on the to do list.

Polished Is Not a Requirement

Now, while I saw putting some spit and polish on my code as a prerequisite to sharing, it's certainly not a requirement. In my case, I felt it set a reasonably high bar for my own work as well as making sure my contribution played well with someone else's existing project.

This seems to be the quality bar many others set for contributing to existing projects. Play nice. Make your changes clear. Provide passing tests. It's just good manners.

But there are plenty of cases where putting code up in public for other people to see, play with and discuss can help move an idea forward. The sentiment is pretty well summed up in this exchange between Kelly and Brandon:

@kellabyte always. Code doesn't mature in privacy.

— Brandon Williams (@faltering) September 16, 2012

That led to Kelly posting her initial swag at writing her own home-brew column-oriented database, Dazzle, an attempt at understanding the inner workings of Cassandra by implementing her own version of it.

One thing I’ve learned from posting Dazzle on GitHub & code pastes in the past, embarrassed about your code only holds your progression back

— Kelly Sommers (@kellabyte) September 26, 2012

Success or failure, the kinds of fast, constructive feedback loops enabled by Github and similar tools are great for learning. So there's very little reason to not share your code.

Interesting Times

I never doubted that public code repositories were a great idea, and the proliferation of choices — Bitbucket, Github, Google Code, SourceForge and others — indicates it's a pretty popular and successful model for collaboration. And though I'd downloaded code and applications many times from these services, I never thought I'd write any code worth pushing back.

But my tiny triumph underscores how important it to just dig in and try something new. You can keep it to yourself if you want, but striving to make something you're willing to share sets the bar high, and sharing opens the door to feedback, learning and improving. Whether it's coding or writing or drawing... whatever floats your boat. Create. Share. Grow. Repeat.CodeProject

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And then there was search, and it was good.

Making search better and better taught me that the information was out there, and I could find it.

It also gradually led me to expect that, as search improved, it would begin to understand my question better and return more accurate, relevant results.

Eventually, however, search engine developers seem to have stopped trying to understand my search expression in more sophisticated, relevant ways. They know a lot about me: where I am, what I search for, what I look at, what I buy... and they make a business off that. But I'm not the customer anymore. And their attention turned toward making the service better for the actual customer...

Making search better and better for marketers is teaching me that the information may be out there, but whatever I enter as a search term, it fails to understand the nuance of my question no matter how I phrase it and returns only marginally related results, mostly for products or services I can buy.

Page after page of inaccurate results, and all for the wrong thing to buy.

It gradually leads me to expect that our industry will pursue progress and innovation just far enough to capture an audience. And from that point on it's all scaling up, monetizing and, mostly, showmanship. But not giving me a better product.

Eventually more folks realize that they're contributing to the business, but not getting anything back out of it. So the audience goes away and the search folk are left wondering where they went wrong. Should have written the service in a different language? Didn't scale right? Outmaneuvered by competitors?

No, just forgot why what they started was important in the first place. And that was not so good.

So, to live happily ever after, the good folks wandered off elsewhere to find and share things and maybe, over time, search becomes a bit less relevant. Because they forgot who their real customers were, and why they started doing what they were doing, and we never really made any progress at all.

I bet you can apply this same parable to a few other online services, too.CodeProject

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More about the git/Github aspect of this adventure in another post. I'm still making sure things work as expected and the story won't be over until I submit a pull request to Mike. Stay tuned.

As for the Archive page... Mike wrote the staticDimension engine to create archives organized by year, month and day. I'm sure that works for him, but it's very difficult to find anything unless I know exactly where to look. Otherwise I might as well googlebing it, which sort of defeats the purpose of having the archive in the first place.

Instead, for any overflow off the home page, I just wanted a static list of every post on the site in reverse order of posting, showing only title and byline. This solves the search problem by enabling a simple Command-F search on the page in most browsers. The onus is on me to write useful post titles.

I suppose this could become unwieldy for a busy blog, but I haven't written often enough thus far for it to be a problem

One interesting aspect of this project has been figuring out someone else's codebase and making these changes in as non-kludgey a manner as possible. I'm not a particularly experienced programmer. I know very little PHP. And yet, I pulled it off.

It's also worth noting that, once I committed to sharing my code publicly on Github, it really focused my mind on making the changes an addition to Mike's work, not just a variation. More on that later.

Enjoy the new archives.

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To get this project going again I spent some time trying to find one or two well-reviewed biographies for each president. You'll find the results on my The Presidents Project page and I'll continue to update the list based on recommendations and further research.

I also included the biographies of a few other notable non-presidents, and that list may also change over time.

Hopefully you'll find this useful. Enjoy!

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There were seven adults in the house trying to have some grown-up conversation, and six kids — 1, 3, 4, 5 and two at 8 years old — simultaneously climbing into, out of and around the playhouses.

Total damage:

Eventually the red door came off the cottage, and some wrestling between three of the boys tore part of the lower-front corner of the cottage. Fixed it with some packing tape this morning.

I think some of the parents were appalled by what their kids were doing and I had to repeatedly tell them it was all in good fun. I wanted the kids to do their worst so I could see where the playhouses failed. We were all amazed that they provided as much fun and held together as well as they did.

Best playtesting ever.

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Of course, the bigger the box, the bigger the possibilities... which ultimately led to making these playhouses for the kids.

They were easy to build and I will explain how you can build some, too.

You will need:

• A box. The bigger, the better.

• A box cutter or something similar. I like my classic Stanley 199 utility knife. A fresh, sharp blade helps make clean, straight cuts.

• Glue or tape. I use Gorilla wood glue, which just happens to be made in the USA.

• A pencil, and maybe a ruler (though you can use a cut-off box end as a straightedge like I did).

• Paint, if you want.

You could probably get fancier than this and, I don't know, make curtains or something. I will leave that to you and your therapist to work out.

Building the Playhouse

The steps to build the playhouse are straightforward.

First, secure the flaps on one end of the box. This will be the bottom of the playhouse. If you are starting with a used box, it may already be taped shut, which is fine. Gluing the flaps shut makes the entire structure more secure (which extends the life of the playhouse) and keeps them from flopping about.

If you glue the flaps, give them a few hours to dry. You can "clamp" the flaps together by turning the box bottom side down and placing something heavy like paint cans on them.

Now cut off all four flaps on the other end. This will be the top. I will come back to why I leave the top open in a minute.

If you want to add a roof profile of some sort, this is a good time to cut those bits out. Use your ruler or the edge of a cut-off flap as a straightedge. Learn from my mistakes: do not succumb to the urge to eyeball your cuts. As Norm cautions: "Measure twice, cut once." It doesn't need to be perfect, but stupid mistakes lead to frustration, which leads to making this not as much fun as it should be.

This is also a good time to plan for your door. Just cutting an open space is one easy option. One of the cut-off end flaps provides a handy template that is big enough for kids up to probably 5 years.

In previous playhouses I have just cut through the top, bottom, and one side of the door, then made a slight score on the other side of the door as a hinge. This is quick and easy, but the top corner of an unreinforced door tends to bend and collapse over time, particularly if you cut in a window.

For this set of playhouses I glued one of the cut-off flaps onto the side of the box to create a much stronger double-layer door. When the glue dried, I cut a window, cut the three edges, then scored the remaining edge on the inside to create a hinge.

If you have problems with the door, do not despair. A little packing tape cures most problems. Worst case scenario: just cut out the door and go without.

Windows can be cut out either before or after painting. I like to carefully map out the first window, then use the cut-out piece as a template for the other windows. One on each side lets in plenty of air and light. Just be careful of cutting out so much that the box becomes weakened.

To Paint or Not to Paint?

That choice is really up to you. I did not paint our first few attempts and the kids were perfectly happy. Eventually they decorated the boxes themselves with crayons and tempera paints.

This time I had some leftover interior primer — the 5 gallon bucket seemed like such a good idea — and used it as a neutral base. A roller makes this go on fast. Do not apply the paint too thick, though, because the moisture may warp the cardboard. On the other hand, I think the dry paint gives the box a little added rigidity. Your mileage may vary.

Let the paint dry thoroughly in a well-ventilated area. Then, you can add any decoration you like with whatever paint you have around the house. I raided the kids' tempera paint supplies, mixing colors as needed. (That greenish castle door was an ill-advised attempt to make brown. Should have looked it up, first.) Again, rollers are handy for large areas. Don't bother putting the paint on too thick. It's not a Hollywood set, after all.

And that is it. I would like to get some carpet squares to put in the boxes eventually. That is on the roadmap for vNext.

About the Open Top

Earlier I mentioned cutting the top off the box. We did not do this on our first attempt years ago, but here are a few reasons why I do so now:

• Ventilation. An enclosed box, even with a few side windows, can get hot and stuffy inside. Plus, some boxes and paints outgas a bit, which can't be good for the kids. Top off equals cool, fresh air.

• Easy access. The open top makes it much, much easier to retrieve toys and children as well as cleaning out any messes.

• Safety. We can always see what's going on with the open top. And if a rambunctious child tips the box over — it happens more often than you would think — the open top allows you to get in or the child to crawl out easily. One enclosed box tipped over on the door will convince you of the wisdom here.

I have tried making A-frame roof structures over the top, leaving the gable ends open, but never figured out a method appropriate in effort to a disposable cardboard playhouse. The kids don't seem to care, so I haven't revisited the problem.

Reuse and Recycle

After our last two moves we ended up with, of course, a good selection of large moving boxes from which to build playhouses. The large wardrobe and appliance boxes are best. But not all boxes are created equal.

You don't want boxes that are too beaten up because they lose structural rigidity pretty quickly.

They also get dirty in transit, and it is not easy to wipe down a box to clean it up. Paint does help trap and hide dirt. Make sure to check the inside of the box for dirt, oils, smelly smells and bugs.

Boxes that have been soggy are poor choices. They are already starting to fall apart and I would not bother. I am also sensitive to mold and mildew, and most boxes that have been in storage for a few months will have picked up some fungus. Again, best to avoid these. You may, however, have better luck in a very dry climate.

For the set shown here we picked up new wardrobe boxes from a nearby big-box home improvement center for about $10 apiece.

Depending on your tolerance for chaos and falling-apart toys, as well as the mayhem created by your lovely children, these boxes will last anywhere from a few weeks to a few months. When the door breaks, cut it off. When a corner rips, tape it up. When the whole thing starts to warp, bend and fall apart, please recycle.

Then build a new one.

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For context, I started sim racing in 1999 with Grand Prix 2. By 2001 I'd discovered Grand Prix Legends and a year later attended my first real-life track day.

Now, more than a decade later, I have a bit more experience with performance driving, both online and off, and the PC sim racing world has changed immensely. I'll try to write that story soon. In the meantime, here's the situation as I saw it back in 2004. (I've edited, where appropriate, to include currently relevant links.)

Now that winter is upon us and the track season is over, where does a true racing nut go for that much-needed fix of oil and adrenalin? Some may immerse themselves in preparing mind and machinery for next season. Others may head off to warmer parts of the country. But what if you could satisfy that desire to drive at the limits without leaving home... without even taking off your slippers?

Racing simulations might just provide the substitute you've been seeking for real track action, whether you're waiting for spring to get the car back out on the grid, or you just can't muster the time or budget for the real thing.

You may be thinking, there's no way a console game can give the feeling of a real track experience. And you wouldn't be entirely wrong. While racing simulations, or "sims", are just computer games with cars, they are not like the games you're accustomed to seeing on the consoles, or even the "arcade" racers like the Electronic Arts Need for Speed series. The best sim racers have sophisticated physics engines based on real-world performance data. Many provide extensive car setup options, creating a predictable and realistic effect on where the car goes and how well it gets there.

These are good days for sim racing. There are more high-quality racing games available market than ever before, and the internet communities that have grown up around these games provide something for everyone, whether it's joining an online league, downloading (or creating) new tracks, or just talking about cars with other car nuts. So let's take a look at the best of the current sim racers....

NASCAR Racing 2003

The NASCAR Racing series, created by Papyrus Racing Games, has long been considered the pinnacle of racing sims, providing realistic driving dynamics, beautiful visuals, and setting the benchmark for online racing. The latest version, NASCAR Racing 2003 Season, was created with specific technical input from Jasper Motorsports and Goodyear so that car setup, tire wear, and driving style have the same performance effects in the game as they would in real life.

NASCAR Racing 2003 provides for private testing sessions as well as racing against computer-controlled fields, but the multiplayer racing features are where this sim really shines. The game supports fields of over 40 human opponents, either through a local network or online servers. As you racers know, there's nothing quite like wheel-to-wheel competition with error-prone, unpredictable, real-life folks to get the adrenalin pumping. But in this case you don't have to pay for fixing a wrecked car.

Admittedly, Winston... I mean Nextel Cup racing isn't for everyone. And here's where the NASCAR Racing story gets interesting: Papyrus recently released a patch that, among other things, adds three additional physics models in the game. These include physics for the NASCAR Busch and Craftsman Truck series [edit: you'd know these as the Nationwide and Camping World Truck series now.], as well a pseudo Trans-Am series. All of these are somewhat limited by the spec-racing nature of NASCAR so, within a series, all of the cars use a single physics model. But each series provides unique and challenging handling characteristics, and the common physics between cars within a given series puts more focus on setup, strategy, and driving skill.

Project Wildfire is a group of artists and developers — many former or current Papyrus staff members — that is creating modifications, or "mods," that make the Busch, CTS, IROC (based on the Busch physics), and Trans-Am series available to players within NASCAR Racing 2003. This includes the car models, tracks, car paint jobs, and other bits needed to run a realistic version of the series. The Busch, CTS, and IROC mods are complete and can be downloaded from the Project Wildfire web site. A beta version of the Trans-Am series mod is available, unlocking the physics, but still using the Cup car bodies and sounds.

Another group, supported by The US Pits sim racing community, has released a beta version of their Trans-Am mod for NASCAR Racing 2003. The mod is called The Pits Touring Car Challenge (TPTCC). The current version includes car models for Corvettes and Mustangs only. However, some enterprising souls have devised remarkably convincing Team PTG M3 GTR paint schemes for the Mustang, so you can compete as Bill Auberlen, Boris Said, or Hans Stuck.

The combination of graphics, physics, and multiplayer support make the Trans-Am mod for NASCAR Racing 2003 probably the best sim racing experience currently available.

F1 Challenge '99-'02

The Formula One simulations from EA Sports have been getting better and better, and F1 Challenge is probably the best modern F1 driving experience most of us will ever get. This version is actually the end of the road for EA's F1 sims — Sony recently negotiated an exclusive license to F1 video games and they pretty much pulled out all the stops.

In F1 Challenge, you can sit in for any driver from any team in the series between 1999 and 2002. Obviously that means you can drive a Williams BMW as Ralf, Juan Pablo, or Jensen, but you can also drive a McLaren, Ferrari, Arrows, or Prost if the spirits move you to do so. Changes in chassis, engines, and liveries are recreated for each year, as are changes to the circuits such as revisions to the Rettifilo Tribune chicane at Monza.

Appropriate to the technical sophistication of the series, F1 Challenge offers a dizzying array of chassis-tuning options and telemetry data. If you've always wanted to be a grand prix race engineer, here's your chance. Likewise, there are a bewildering variety of controls to master within the cockpit, so keep the manual within grasp for your first few test sessions. F1 Challenge offers online racing against human opponents as well, but supports fewer online players than NASCAR Racing 2003.

One element that sets F1 Challenge apart from other racing sims is its ability to be customized. As a result, there are a wide range of mods available based on EA's F1 sims. Historic Touring Car Championship and Aussie V8 Supercars [edit: now an add-on for rFactor.] are currently under development, and a beta version of the V8 Supercars is available.

Bimmer fans can choose from M3 Challenge, BMW World Series, and European Touring Car Championship. Of the three, the ETCC mod is the most polished and interesting. It includes most of the teams and cars driven in this exciting, hotly contested series, and really seems to capture the high-strung character of these cars. The developers also provide many of the tracks run during the ETCC season that aren't already included in F1 Challenge.

Grand Prix Legends

Long considered the king of racing simulations, Grand Prix Legends recreates glory and danger the 1967 Formula One season — the second year of the 3-liter formula and the first year for Ford's legendary Cosworth DFV engine. GPL, as it's known to the initiated, was released by Papyrus back in 1998 and sold poorly due to its steep learning curve and high system requirements.

The cars are very light, very powerful, and run very hard, unforgiving tires. Little wonder few of the legendary drivers from that era survived. GPL features separate physics for each of the seven chassis included in the game: Brabham, BRM, Cooper, Ferrari, Honda, Lotus, and the beautiful AAR Eagle. Each has quirks derived from its real-life performances, meaning the Ferrari sounds wonderful, the Honda and Eagle are delicate, and the Lotus is wicked fast.

In the five years since its release, the game has developed a cult following of amazing proportions. There are photorealistic graphical updates for the cars and tracks, and hundreds of additional tracks have been created by the talented editing community. Since GPL includes an early version of the multiplayer features seen in the NASCAR Racing series, you can race online with up to 20 people through leagues or the popular WinVROC utility. An active community of GPL enthusiasts and extensive links to GPL add-ons and utilities can be found at Race Sim Central.

Live For Speed

Live for Speed is something of an anomaly among racing sims, as it's being developed and distributed by a small group of independent coders. The game isn't available in stores. Rather, you download the software and purchase a license from team's Web site. A free demo is available as well.

Unusual distribution aside, this may be the model for racing sims of the future. Live For Speed may not be quite as polished in some areas as other titles. It also includes a rather funky selection of cars, leaning toward affordable European compacts rather than race-bred supercars. But the chassis dynamics are some of the best available and the game simulates the impression of speed, tire scrub, and body roll in a very believable manner. In addition, Live For Speed provides efficiently designed online racing functionality, though multiplayer grids are limited to 12 cars in the current version.

Rally Trophy

Worthy of mention due to its unique subject matter, Rally Trophy simulates — in very broad strokes — stage rallying in the '60s and '70s. You can drive classic cars such as the Ford Cortina and Escort, Lancia Fulvia and Stratos, Volvo Amazon, and Opel Kadett. The stages are a bit short, but it's quite challenging to throw these softly sprung cars around, and each car has its unique quirks.

Half-Price Books seems to have bought up a supply of Rally Trophy and at press time was blowing them out for around $8. You can pick up some excellent updates, including new cars and stages, from No Grip Racing.

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