I recently decided that I needed a change with respect to my desktop setup.  Out went the old Microsoft Wave keyboard that had served me so faithfully.  I replaced the keyboard with apple aluminum keyboard.  I thought I would have a tough time with the apple keyboard given that it is incredibly small.  As it turns out, that has not caused any problems for me, whereas the tactile response from the keyboard is phenomenal!  I now use an apple keyboard for both home and work.  At work I also got rid of my trackball and replaced it with the Apple Magic Mouse.  That also surprised me.  I had no intention of getting the magic mouse, as I felt that I wouldn’t be happy without a trackball.  I happened to be in an Apple Store in Reston and decided to give it a whirl.  I was very impressed, and I haven’t thought twice about the purchase.   As an added bonus, the combination looks fantastic on the desk.  Now I’m only missing an Apple Cinema Display, but I somehow don’t think that one is in the cards for me.

Scrivener cork board in action

I have to write a number of proposals this week.  My work on these proposals is mainly about technical implementation and feature benefits.  I am an outliner.  I make lists, I love white-boards.  I also find that I tend to write from inside-to-out.  I start writing specific pieces of information, expand that into an outline, provide more details, and then write introduction and conclusion text.  Up to this point I have done this in Wiki and/or Textmate.  Recently, however, I had stumbled upon Scrivener and decided to give it a chance.  Scrivener is a tool for writing; whether a screenplay or a research paper, Scrivener wants to help you.  I’ve only used it for three days so far, but the cork-board feature has fit nicely into my workflow.  So far I like it, although I do feel like I’m either not using it to it’s potential.