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This is a follow up to my distractions post. The Neo2 arrived today, and I’ve been testing it out. This post will be the first thing I’ve written on it. Keyboard The typing experience is good. The keys themselves are solid, and use a plastic spring mechanism. I like the feel. It’s somewhere between an old clicky-clack keyboard and the newer chiclet style found on MacBooks. It’s quiet and I’m not worried about the noise being a distraction in quiet places like a library.

Film isn’t cheap and won’t develop itself. That was the message I heard growing up. We had a family camera. First it was an old Exakta without an internal light meter. An example of an old Exakta, via Flickr. This was the camera-not-to-be-touched. It was so truly awkward to use, photo-hipsters would love it today. Because of the time needed to get a photo “right” and that we shot slide film1 exclusively, I wasn’t allowed to touch the camera as a child.

Tell us a story about little known fact about yourself. § A little known fact about me is: my father built spaceships. Building spaceships takes a lot more than what’s shown in the movies and news. Today media focuses on the strong personalities that drive a space program. This is new. In the recent past, before the NASA resurgence we’re seeing today. Before the ISS, even. Before the private investment in spaceflight we have.

It’s time for my weekly word count check-in. At the end of every week, I post a screen shot from my writing results spreadsheet. This shows the current week and the three before. This week was remarkable close to last week. I had two days this week that were completely wrecked for writing. Working on a longer landing page project on Sunday night saved the week’s productivity. My week starts on Monday, the numbers are current through Sunday night.

This is the second popular revolt in Europe. The first was the Scotland vote. It failed due to massive propaganda and outright lies by the UK government. In Greece the people have now defied the money-men. It’s going to be an interesting few years. The anti-austerity far left party Syriza has won the Greek election by a decisive margin, but just short of an outright majority. With more than three-quarters of the results in Syriza is projected to win 149 seats in the 300 seat parliament.

Just for laughs I just bought a used Alphasmart NEO2 “keyboard computer” from eBay. I’m not entirely sure why. I think it might be a “I can do better for cheaper” response to the Hemingwrite. I had been following the Hemingwrite Kickstarter since it launched. I was mildly interested, but the overall workflow seemed contrived. I didn’t become a backer, and mentally “saved” myself about $400. The most important difference between the $45 Alphasmart and the $400 Hemingwrite is: the Alphasmart will be delivered next week.

Some media are reporting that the Asian H5N1 strain of highly pathogenic avian influenza has now entered the United States. This is incorrect. The avian flu that was recently found in a green-winged teal in Washington state is a different strain and is not known to harm humans nor has it been found in domestic poultry. This Washington state strain incorporates genes from North American waterfowl-associated viruses. Unlike the Asian H5N1 strain that has been found in Asia, Europe, and Africa, this Washington state strain has only been found in wild waterfowl and has not been associated with human illness, nor has this new Washington state strain been found in domestic poultry.

In the past two days, Project Zero has disclosed OS X vulnerabilities here, here, and here. At first glance, none of them appear to be highly critical, since all three appear to require the attacker to already have some access to a targeted machine. § When Google’s Project Zero starts dropping exploits on its own doorstep, I’ll be more impressed. Also, the OS X 10.10.2 update—which is currently in developer testing—fixes the disclosed exploits.

The red area above adds up to the approximately $25 billion total paid to developers. This view of the payments to ecosystem contributors shows how apps are now a bigger digital content business than music and TV programs and Movie rentals and purchases put together. This is quite a story. Put another way, in 2014 iOS app developers earned more than Hollywood did from box office in the US. § I boggle at how much money flows through the Apple App Store.

sed is a useful command-line program with a horrible syntax. It is a stream editor. This means it operates on text flowing through it. Words are poured into one end, sed does its thing and the edited text spills out the other. It’s most useful inside shell scripts when text needs to be changed, but there’s no file to open. The stream of text can be from the output of other programs.