Second Tests, tastes, and other virtual wealth building exercises

So one of the things I like trying is new software. Of late, I’ve been looking at more than a few graphics programs but I really wanted a decent offline blog editor on Linux. The basic requirements are that I can do multiple “tags”, have a decent editing environment, be able to use colors, shapes, images, tables, lists, and the occasional quote or misquote. Now, I’m playing with JBlogEditor and it reminds me a bit of W.bloggar on XP. But of course I don’t need XP for it and its just one less application that I suddenly rely on on that other platform. Its at the 0.6 release and it requires a relatively recent Java download. I’ve also played a lot with RSSowl which is a really classy RSS/Atom/whatever feeder. It has that polished look that makes me happy to use it.

My primary goal is to not use Windows whenever I can these days and I think the OpenOffice drawing/charting program is another one that takes me to a place I need to be.

Finally, I wanted to be able to draw these so-called “mindmaps” for some work I am doing and Freemind really comes in handy there.

I’ll be blogging some more about a few interesting places I’ve been lately and how nice it is to see the applications maturing, new ones coming on board that extend Linux to new areas, and how nice it really is to just use Linux these days for things. Really great!!