Dear Kilby, a weblog in letters signed Nat Foster

Archive for November 2008

A Solution to Distraction

16 November 2008

My fellow distracted writers,

All day yesterday, instead of writing, I typed in search for the perfect distraction-free word processor. Yes, I’m aware of the irony. If I’d just spent those hours pumping out words in Word I’d have a thousand good ones or more. Thus you can see what a weak grip my writing projects hold on my focus and why everything on my screen–my clock, my menus, my quick launch icons–must be blacked out!

I’d been devoted since August to JDarkRoom, “a simple full-screen text editor,” installing it on both my XP desktop and my linux netbook. Storage was the glaring imperfection in this solution. I first tried keeping my files online, emailing them to myself or uploading them to box.net. What a pain that was. And I never I could keep track of which hard drive held the most recent revision. So I picked up an 8GB thumb drive at Costco, which held all five of my stories with enough space left over for the collection to grow. Too bad it sported history’s most distracting LED. And what if I lost the little thing? I kept thinking: I wish Google Docs would just come out with a way to dim the lights on its full screen mode.

Turns out it’s been possible since the July update. Here’s the hack:

1. Open a blank Google document
2. Click View > Fixed-width page view
3. Click Edit > Edit CSS
4. Paste the following code:
   

   .pageview body {
   background-color: #000;
   border: 0;
   }
   html.pageview {
   background-color: #000 !important;
   }
   .editor div.writely-toc {
   background-color: #000;
   border: 1px solid #000;
   }
   body {
   font-family: Garamond !important;
   font-size: 12pt !important;
   color: #c0c0c0;
   }
   h1 {
   text-transform: uppercase;
   font-family: Garamond;
   font-size: 24pt;
   color: #c0c0c0;
   }
   h2 {
   font-family: Garamond;
   font-size: 18pt;
   color: #c0c0c0;
   }
   h3 {
   font-family: Garamond;
   font-size: 14pt;
   color: #c0c0c0;
   }

5. Click OK
6. Click View > Full-screen mode (Ctrl+Shift+F)
7. Press F11 to enter your browser’s full screen mode

Cool or what? Just keep a blank copy of the document as a template and do a “File > Save as new copy” whenever you start a new project. Install Google Gears to work on your documents while offline. And if Garamond gray on black isn’t your thing, you can always go back to “Edit > Edit CSS” to change the default styles. Or just use the dropdown menus.

I would also suggest the FullerScreen Firefox Add-on, and a Firefox theme with a dark scrollbar to remove even more distractions from the screen. I tried and tried to eliminate that dang bright line on the left edge, but I think I have to leave that one up to Google. Fortunately, the Full Flat Absolute Black theme masks it well:

I should give credit to S. W. Shinn, who came up with a similar, but resolution-dependent hack, and Pete Rugh, who took a ten minute break from Guitar Hero to save me hours. Thanks to them I have all I need to be productive again. Starting tomorrow.

-Nat Foster

1 comment

John Malkovich

9 November 2008

Dear John Malkovich,

I sometimes dream of a secret swimming pool, magical and unchlorinated, dug somewhere in the slot canyon labyrinths of southern Utah. According to legend, only you know the way. Last night Renee and I and hundreds of other lepers seeking the pool’s healing properties waited at the trailhead for you, our guide, to show up. But did you know that you can be a heartless prick sometimes? Well, in my dreams you can be. You and your two dirthead pals (you know the ones) pushed your way through the crowd and into the all day shade of the narrows, your squawk of a laugh echoing off the redrock walls as you vanished. The few of us lepers who still wanted healed after such an impolite entrance rushed in behind you, but now we had our doubts, which we voiced in noisier and whinier tones each time you tried to ditch us in some dusty deadend mothtrap. Some of us fell behind, but despite your best efforts, Renee and I, as robust as lepers come, managed to catch up each time you darted down some new, darker passage. Then we heard thunder, and I’d read about flash floods before. The second the first raindrop stung my arm, the water level rose from zero feet to fifty and drained just as fast, leaving Renee and me clinging half way up the slickened wall. I reached over to place her feet in better holds because I didn’t want her falling and hurting the baby. We waited five minutes or so for the next flash flood to lower us safely to the mud, but by then you were gone and so was your trail. We decided we’d wander in search of the pool on our own. We were sick of your attitude anyway.

And we found it, just around the next bend in fact, behind a wrought iron fence. Don’t ask me how, but the gate was locked from the inside. We rattled the bars until some dreadlocked hippie dude, tanning on a poolside lounger, woke up and, while the lifeguard on duty looked elsewhere, snuck over and let us in, welcoming us in a whisper. We stripped down to our suits, padded across the baking concrete, and jumped in. Renee dove without splash; I cannonballed. The water felt not warm, not cold, but wet only. They kept it at 98.6 degrees exactly. My wife and I surfaced smiling at each other, confident that we were healed.

My good friends were all around–Matt, Jesse, Eric, Blake, Pete, John Robert, etc.–splashing and dunking each other. And I suppose Renee’s old friends were among the extras at the party as well. I never really met them. But you, John Malkovich, were noticeably absent, swept away by the flash flood, or perhaps just plain uninvited. I do apologize, but in the end it was my dream.

Through the havoc I spotted Josh Farrer treading water beneath the diving board. I knew he’d be around. I always find him in places like this. I wanted badly to swim over and say hey, but now was not convenient. See, he was flanked on either side by the twins Brynn and Hailey (spelling?), and as easy as everyone claimed it was, I never could tell those two apart with any accuracy.

Briefly your disciple,

Nat Foster

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