OK-Writer 1.4 for Mac OS X released

 Geekology, Personal  No Responses »
May 162013
 

I’ve released OK-Writer 1.4! The latest version of my Mac OS X word processor aimed at children and others who need a simplified user interface for word processing. The new version has new retina-quality icons, improved user interface layout, full-screen mode support, and other improvements.

OK-Writer 1.4 screen shot

One of the things I’m particularly proud of is the unforeseen use of OK-Writer by people with disabilities, especially vision problems. Its speak-as-you-write features have proven useful for the disabled. That’s a great source of personal pride for me.

To get a little more specific about what’s changed in this version other than the retina icons, I’ve spruced up some of the innards a bit to prepare for some future work I’m planning to do, and obviously the background is no longer brushed metal, but is a lovely periwinkle-like blue. I’ve fixed a couple of minor bugs, and the buttons don’t drift around slightly crazily when you resize the window anymore.

Full-screen mode has proven popular with Sophie, too. I may do some experiments with ways to make that experience better and/or more fun in the future. I made sure to make that code conditional so that the program still works on OS X 10.6 upward.

I did drop PowerPC support in this release, and I dropped support for Mac OS X 10.3 through 10.5. But this version is built as a 32/64-bit Universal binary. It was time to cut the cord on some of the older Macs, but the older version of OK-Writer is still available on my web site for people who need it.

 Posted by at 10:29 AM

Helping kids: Pride and OK-Writer

 Personal  4 Responses »
Feb 062013
 

Back when my niece Olivia was eight years old, her family got a new Mac after years of using Windows. They loved it, but missed a particular kid-friendly writing program they had been using on the PC. When I failed to find a similar program, I sat down and wrote one for them. I named it “OK-Writer,” after my niece’s initials. She loved that program, and over time I fiddled with it and added features to it.

Its big features, from a kid-friendly standpoint, are that it offers big fun buttons for styling text (using a few fun fonts, colors, and styles) and for tasks like printing and the like. Each button plays a silly sound effect when pressed (although you can turn this off in the preferences). It takes away concerns about page layout and stuff by rewrapping text to fit the page width, no matter what the child has done. And, a few versions in, I added some neat speech features for automatically reciting letters, words, or sentences as they’re typed.

Screen shot of OK-Writer 1.4

Over the years, the program has been bought by a number of parents, but even more teachers and in one case an entire school district; I offer site licenses for both individual schools and entire districts.

Today I got a nice email from a nursery school that bought OK-Writer some years ago. While the main point of the email was a contact information update, it also included some nice remarks about how they still love the program and use it all the time. That sure makes me feel good!

I’m really proud of it, even though it’s a fairly simple piece of software. That I’ve created something being used to teach kids and encourage them to enjoy writing is a great feeling. Even better is knowing that some people are using it with blind children (and even grownups) because of its unique speech features.

That’s pretty darned awesome.

I’m working on a new version now. It’s not a huge update, although it does fix a few bugs, and it adds new retina-quality icons. And I have some nice plans for future improvements, too. It’s a fun project to work on, and that it’s making a difference for some people is a lovely bonus!

 Posted by at 10:02 AM

Slow but steady wins the race?

 Mozilla, Personal  2 Responses »
Nov 122012
 

This week, I’ll be working again, albeit slowly. After many weeks of working slowly, that’s hardly unusual. However, what’s different is that hopefully things are on the upswing at last! Last Wednesday (November 7th), I had surgery to correct a spinal problem in my neck. In technical terms, I had an anterior cervical discectomy with fusion. This corrected a long-standing problem I’ve had with certain nerves in my neck — in addition to my spinal cord — being compressed, causing severe pain, coordination problems, and so forth.

Now that this problem is corrected, I can begin, finally, to recover!

Right now, of course, I’m recovering from the surgery. My pain is by and large not bad at all, and is much, much less than what I was going through previously. However, it does slow me down a bit, and if I sit up working for too long, I get very tired and have to take a rest. So I’ll be on again, off again on IRC and the like, and will be picking and choosing what I work on for the week.

But things should be getting better from here on out! I can’t wait!

 Posted by at 5:19 PM

An answer at last

 Personal  No Responses »
Oct 022012
 

Yesterday I finally got an answer as to why I’ve had near-constant neck, shoulder, and facial pain for the last several months (and some degree of it for a very long time). A cervical spine MRI shows that I have a condition called cervical spinal stenosis, among other issues.

In the C5-C6 area of my neck, quote:

Uncovertebral spurring with accompanying disc material is present both centrally and laterally. There is significant proximal right neural foraminal narrowing and compression of the right C6 nerve root. Moderate canal stenosis overall with AP dimension of the canal approximately 8 to 9 mm and mild to moderate cord compression. Milder narrowing of the left neural foramen due to spurring and mild compression of the left C6 nerve root.

In the C6-C7 area:

Milder uncovertebral spurring with accompanying disc bulge. Mild canal and neural foraminal narrowing but no cord or nerve root compression.

Basically, some of the nerves in my neck are being compressed by deformity in my spinal column; I also have mild arthritis in my neck.

My neurologist has urged me to have surgery as soon as I can in order to resolve this. The procedure is fairly commonplace, so it shouldn’t be too big a deal. Other than it may conflict with my plans to travel to the Caribbean in November. A lot depends on exactly what procedure is needed (which will determine how long my recovery time will be) and how long after my first meeting with the surgeon I’m able to get into an operating room.

I’m scheduled to meet with a surgeon on October 17 to get the ball rolling toward having this repaired. I hope beyond hope we can get this done quickly. I’d like to be able to focus on my work again. It’s hard to write sensibly about deeply technical things when you’re either in serious pain or on narcotic painkillers (or both).

I’m incredibly fortunate to work with so many people that are tolerant of all the delays and throughput issues I’ve gone through lately while trying to sort this out. It’s been several long months that I’ve been trying to get an answer for this problem. Turns out that three months of physical therapy was probably not the best course of action. Still, I apologize (again) for all the delays, and thank everyone (again) for their patience with me!

At least now I know why I’ve been, at times, nearly out of my mind in pain lately, and needing to take pain medications just to get by. Once this surgery is done, things should be so much better.

 Posted by at 6:20 PM

A thought experiment about the development of civilization

 Geekology, Personal  4 Responses »
Sep 082012
 

I was driving along yesterday and happened to drive past a gas station (which is a pretty common occurrence, as there are three along the main road leading toward my neighborhood). As I did, the thought popped into my head: “What kind of civilization would arise if there were no fossil fuels?”

This led to a broader question: “Why wouldn’t there be any fossil fuels?”

And finally to: “What if the first major wave of evolution resulted in a civilization?”

Let’s consider the history of evolution on Earth for a moment. There have been at least two or three “waves” of evolutionary development, separated by massive extinction events that wiped out much of the evolutionary progress that had been made.

For example, dinosaurs evolved over many millions of years into the often large, powerful creatures we know and love from the fossil record and movies such as Jurassic Park. Then they were wiped out by an asteroid impact and the resulting climate change. The next wave of evolutionary progress resulted in our civilization.

Our civilization has benefited from the billions of years before it, in which massive amounts of life has existed, died, and over time been turned into fossil fuels.

Now consider: what if the very first wave of evolution resulted in a civilization. There would be little or no fossil fuel available for them to use. How would they develop differently as a result? Would they rely on wood-fired steam power until they discovered nuclear or solar power? Would they be stuck in the Stone Age forever, unable to make the massive leap from wood power? Or would they discover some other kind of power we haven’t even thought of?

And how would their understanding of biology and of evolutionary theory differ from ours? With a much smaller fossil record to draw from, how well would they understand where they come from? We know with a fair degree of certainty a lot about the evolution of species on Earth, despite the dogmatic opining from certain corners.

This line of thought intrigues me, and I invite opinions!

 Posted by at 9:00 AM
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