Tourma's Longform Ramblings

I have not done much longform writing these past several years. “Longform” in my case being, “more than a page for fun.” I used to do more. Tumblr allowed it, and I took advantage of that. I got away from the site after the Great Porn Ban of 2018, and everywhere I’ve been since has been a microblogging site instead. So the skill has atrophied.

Sure, I’ve done years in review pretty much every year. On a different site every year I think. I’ve done threads on Twitter, on Mastdon, on Cohost, and now here on Write Freely. But other than that...not really. Maybe here and there, but by and large, writing a lot for fun has been happening a handful of times a year for...a handful of years.

So I’m trying to get more in the habit again. Maybe something more creative will turn up. Maybe the pain in my right pinky finger from typing(?) will go away. I think it might be more due to my phone, but I’m not sure.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about extended chattering the hard way, (“thank” you Meta the Corp,) is to write it out on a word processor first, then copy and paste it into wherever I’m posting it. I have lost multiple pages of writing multiple times when Facebook designs that I’ve got too uppity trying to writes something, upload a photo or three, tag someone, AND change my mood. Gods forbid I try and use all of the aspects of their site. And it’s done that to me on the website on my computer, though also on every possible way to post on a phone. Facebook gets reaaaaaal pissy if you try to use something other than their intrusive af apps, but even the app does this to me.

So yeah...fuck Facebook. :P

I’m also writing this at work, (Hi IT overlords! I know you can look in on monitors without our being aware. Hopefully whatever I’m doing hasn’t warranted your attention,) but I’m not using MS Word. We absolutely have it, but since it can synch with the company’s SharePoint, I’d rather not give the chance. So I’m using LibreOffice Writer for my personal writing. I also installed it because Microsoft, though more usually Adobe, will just take a shit after an update and refuse to boot. I then have to contact IT and they have to do something to get it to work again. It’s a hoot. So I have LibreOffice on here for those times so I’m not without/have to use the shittier online versions of MS Office.

Not being able to open PDFs really sucks, so LibreOffice Draw comes in real handy. Its much easier to edit PDFs on it too since my library doesn’t pay for the paid Enterprise edition of Acrobat. In general I just dislike Adobe. Microsoft can be questionable, but by and large they’re about as good as one can expect from a hegemonic corporation. (Pat on the back for spelling hegemonic correctly, though I lose a finger or two for misspelling corporation.) Adobe on the other hand is just shit. Adopting as many bad practices as possible, all of their products taking way too many resources, etc. I haven’t had an Adobe product on one of my computers since my ‘07 Mac died. I had Photoshop CS4 onto it thanks to to magic of going into Terminal and telling it to not check in with the servers on if my demo time expired or not. I did that with Apple’s iWork suite too.

Apple got me back in the end though. I have a bunch of .pages files from college that I can’t open because my Mac died. Lesson learned. Always save in an industry standard or OpenSource format. I think I’ve found a program on F-Droid that would let me convert them to .docx files, but its been so long I don’t really give a shit anymore. Unless I need something from one of those papers. Yikes did I have to write a lot of papers in college. Don’t mind not having to do that constantly anymore.

As I write this, I have Word open for a thing I’m working on for my job, though it’s far more cutting and pasting than this. By and large, I like LibreOffice. Its the best/least creepy free office suite that I know of. It’s got its quirks, but hey,MS Office is weird af and it’s industry standard. (Much to Google’s chagrin I’m sure, {fuck ‘em.}.) I’m sure there is a fix for it somewhere, but my main complaint with LibreOffice is that the buttons are tiny in comparison.

I’ve shifted it from the default design that was a knockoff of the old MS Word in favor of the alternate design that’s a knockoff of the new MS Word. I’m used to it at this point, so it’s easier to find things this way at this point. It’s not a total 1:1, but close enough for my purposes.

Well, I went to break and lost my train of thought, so we’ll wrap it here.

Remember to save your stuff locally!

#Writing #TourmaPosts #LibreOffice

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