really getting Kindle organized

I'm writing this post to really think through and get organized with reading on Kindle.

Useful Bookmarks

1. Kindle Library = view and read your Kindle books online (formerly Kindle Cloudreader?)
2. Kindle Book Notes and Highlights = read notes and highlights you made on your Kindle books (please notice that ONLY notes and highlights made on Kindle books are synced!)
3. Kindle Scribe Notebooks = view the notebooks you created in Kindle Scribe
4. Manage your Kindle Content by going to Accounts & List --> Content & Devices
5. Send to Kindle to easily upload personal documents to Kindle (again, please remember that notes and highlights made on personal documents do NOT Sync!)

Now a VERY IMPORTANT caveat. As an academic, I read a lot of articles. and as noted above only notes and highlights that are made in Kindle books are synced online and across devices. What that means is that if I start reading a personal document on my phone's Kindle app and make some notes and highlights, those notes and highlights will NOT sync when I start reading the same document on my regular Kindle. Worse, those notes and highlights are NOT easily available online in a repository (I'll describe how to get the notes out of documents below). This is a bit disappointing, but it hasn't been enough for me to give up my Kindle. Just keep in mind a best practice for reading personal documents in Kindle may be to make sure you make notes on only one Kindle device as much as possible.

Getting Documents into Kindle

if error function in Google Sheets

Just a simple easy fix for cells that return errors.

IFERROR function 

=IFERROR(formula you're using that sometimes results in error, "") returns a blank cell if there is an error.

satchel obsession

I’ve been obsessing about getting one of these satchels. But before buying one, three questions need to be answered: 1) why do I want one,  2) from what company should I buy the satchel, and 3) what size should I buy?

I. Why do I want one?

The short answer to this question is I've  always wanted one and they're so darn cute and stylish! The more practical reason is that they seem so functional. Because they're like totes, it's so easy to see everything in them (as opposed to backpacks). They also stand upright on their own so it feels like you have your own personal file box with you at all times. I have these images of me working at my desk with my incredibly useful satchel next to me.

II. What company to buy from?

After a little bit of googling, I came up the with three main companies (there are many other companies, but these three seem to be the biggest or at least the most popular):

1. The Leather Satchel Company (LSC) 
2. Cambridge Satchel Company (CSC) 
3. Zatchels 

After reading quite a few blogs and forum discussions, I decided that I probably want to go with  LSC. I like how informative their website is and how transparent they are about where they source their leathers. A particularly useful blog comparing LSC and CSC leathers also helped me decide that I probably prefer the type of leather used by LSC (thicker and softer) over that used by CSC (thinner and harder). Finally, of the three sites, LSC has the most flexible options for customizing their satchels. For example, you can add a back slip pocket, request a deeper gusset (a very nice feature!), backpack straps (particularly important), and shorten the main crossbody strap (also a nice feature since I'm only 5').

LSC - back slip pocket

vintage compacts !

My latest obsession are vintage compacts. I always thought it was so old-fashioned and glamorous to carry one these beautiful, refillable compacts; they had weight, they were small works of art, they were well, just so glamorous! And I think they'll make great gifts for special friends. Take a look at  these ads:

 

Zotero again

Sometimes, a good old-fashioned document beats a blog post. I've decided to use a published Google Document to update how to set up Zotero; using a published Google Document will make updating instructions much easier and faster.

getting started with Brackets.io

When I first downloaded Brackets, I didn't quite understand how it worked (i.e. I could not for the life of me figure out how to write HTML and generate a preview). After a little trial and error,  googling, and YouTube videos, the answer is actually quite easy. Basically, the preview works in Brackets if your file is saved as an HTML file. Let's go through this step by step to show you how I set up my work in Brackets.

I like to store my blog posts in one place. And right now, pretty much everything is stored in Google Drive for me.

1. Create a new folder in Google Drive and name it BlogPosts or whatever you want.
2. Open Brackets
3. Go to File → Open Folder, and choose your new folder (arrow code comes from here)
4. Create a new document
5. Save it (name it anything you want- e.g., the name of a post, etc.)
6. Then right click and rename it by adding the extension .html

That's it! Now you can click the preview button in Brackets and see the outcome as you write your code.

Now when I want to make a new blog post, I just open brackets and write my post in html. Once I'm done, just copy and paste the HTML code into a new Blogger post (of course, make sure the post's html editor is selected!) and I'm done! Where has this been my entire life...?!!!

Some Hints

1. At the bottom of the editor, you get to choose what kind of code editor you want to use (e.g. C++, html, etc). So if you're writing html, make sure you choose that to get all the bells and whistles of the Brackets' editor for HTML. 
2. If your html code is off in some way, the preview will become disconnected. Fix this by either refreshing the preview pane or fixing the code. I find that it stays connected and works best when the entire post is bounded by the "body" code. 
3. The easiest way to make the font size bigger is to just use CTRL+ +sign

blogging in text and text editors

I've been testing going all-in on writing blog posts only in text. I'm doing this for two main reasons: 1) I've realized that if I ever want to be fully comfortable in code, I'm just going to have to take the plunge and just write in it a lot (practice makes perfect, right?) and 2) I was tired of what a pain it is to work in WYSIWYG in Blogger, etc.

standard text editor with online check

So I started with my trusty Notepad++ and it works great. The one disadvantage was that I then had to test the code somewhere. I googled "test html editor" and found quite a few including online html editor (requires disabling Adblock), htmledit from squarefree, code beautify, and W3Schools HTML Editor. These are basically two-pane editors where the code goes on side and then you can generate a preview on the other side. Again, these work great, but required being online and that extra step.

Simplenote?

Then I thought-- what about using Simplenote? It makes use of basic text, has a bunch of different apps (for Windows, Android, etc.), and handles markdown. The desktop version even comes with a preview and I could access it from everywhere! In fact, I'm writing this post in Simplenote! But I hit a snag- Simplenote works great for handling markdown, but there's not really a preview for html/xhtml code. Of course you could write in HTML, but Simplenote isn't the best editor for that (no numbered lines, auto codes, colors).

full on HTML editor?

So I went back to looking for a full service HTML editor. Another Google search turned up the following: Upwork's post about text editors and a discussion in CodeAcademy. The winning options seemed to be Sublime Text, Atom, and Brackets.io. Upwork's post gives a great review and I decided to try Brackets because it's free, open-source, and has a preview pane.

Conclusion

I haven't tested Brackets yet so I can't really give a full review of how well it worked for me... and after writing this post in Simplenote, I'm kind of lamenting that I can't make markdown work in Blogger (there are ways). Markdown is so much faster and easier than html! At any rate, I think what's going to happen is that I'll probably use one of those html editors regularly, but in a pinch, I'll use Simplenote and just copy and paste Simplenote's Preview directly into Blogger (there are quirks...like different texts, etc.). Still....

delete file Apple keyboard shortcut in Windows10

Quick Outcome: to delete a file in Windows, use Ctrl+D

The solution to this problem was so painfully simple that I can't believe it's not more easily available online-- maybe it's so simple everyone else already knew about it! At any rate, I'm making this post in case it helps others.

I'm a Windows user, but I prefer the mini Apple keyboard for it's size (I prefer the wired version rather than having to deal with wireless settings and batteries):

I also use keyboard shortcuts a lot and I could not for the life of me figure out the shortcut to delete a file in the Explorer window. When I googled for a solution, I came up with all kinds of answers such as Command+Delete (did nothing for me) or even downloading a program to write to the registry (a kinda scary proposition for me). Again, the solution is so simple-- all you have to do is look what the shortcut actually is by opening any folder in Explorer, going to ribbon (my ribbon is auto-hidden), and hovering your mouse over the command to see what the shortcut actually is. Here's an image:

You can see that the Delete command is just Ctrl+D and that works perfectly. The same goes for all other commands- and there you have it. Apple Keyboard shortcut to delete a file in Windows is just Ctrl+D-- just a Copy is Ctrl+C, Paste is Ctrl+V, etc.

The only other shortcut that's a little harder to find is the one to pull up the Task Manager-- and that shortcut is Ctrl+Shift+Esc on the Apply keyboard.

using Google Sheets with Google Finance

One assignment for a class I teach is having students create a stock portfolio. To track the class portfolio's performance, I used Google Sheets so I could share it with  students (I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to share a portfolio created in Google Finance). Lucky for me, Google Sheets can easily work with Google Finance to pull data about stocks. I am very indebted to this post for helping me create the portfolio: https://business.tutsplus.com/tutorials/how-to-track-stock-data-in-google-sheets-with-googlefinance-function--cms-28182

And then I decided I wanted to track daily record of the value of the portfolio and decided to automate the process. To do that, I am indebted to this post: http://www.gadgetsappshacks.com/2013/08/how-to-automatically-record-daily.html

Just some notes on the process since I was a little confused (and I view this blog out as a kind of code-help for REALLY, REALLY non-coders :) ) This is the script that automates the recording of a daily value of the stock portfolio. Here's the script:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

function recordHistory() { var ss = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSpreadsheet(); var sheet = ss.getSheetByName("History"); var source = sheet.getRange("A1:B1"); var values = source.getValues(); values[0][0] = Utilities.formatDate(new Date(), "GMT", "MM/dd/yyyy"); sheet.appendRow(values[0]); };

Notice that the script references only one worksheet-- the "History" worksheet (line 3). For some reason, I didn't pay enough attention that, but what that means is that any cells you reference must be in the same worksheet. In my case, the total value for the portfolio is calculated in the main worksheet so I also need to create cells that in the History worksheet that pull the values from the original worksheet.

• Create a new document in Google Sheets
• Create two worksheets in the document
• Worksheet 1 should contain all the data (using Google Finance)
• one cell in this worksheet should be designated "=Today" to pull the current date, and 
• another cell is the day's portfolio total value
• Worksheet 2 will contain the daily record (in the code above, worksheet 2 is the "History" sheet)
• set up one cell in worksheet 2 so that it references Sheet 1's "= today" cell (this is the reference A1)
• another cell should reference Worksheet 1's portfolio total (this is the reference to B1)

Don't forget that after you run the script and it works, you'll also want to create triggers to automatically record the date.

I'll post a template for the entire thing later, but I hope this helps someone.

more pen refills

If you've visited here before, you know my obsession with pens. Since the last pens post, I've added a few pens to my collection and fallen in love with another pen. My favorite ink is usually a Pilot G2. But almost by accident, I found myself writing with Pentel's Energel pen in 0.7mm because in my search for a clickable all metal body for the G2, I accidentally hacked a Pentel Energel into the Pilot Axiom. That mistake led me to realize that I love the Pentel Energel pens. Here are the colors for this refill:

from JetPens

Compare the Energel colors to the Pilot G2 refills: