William Computer Blog

Introducing Markdown, a text-to-HTML conversion tool for web writers. Markdown allows you to write using an easy-to-read, easy-to-write plain text format, then convert it to structurally valid XHTML (or HTML).

Markdown is like textile by textism, but markdown works as a movable type plugin and a stand alone perl script — which means you can use markdown on other software written in perl (example: BBEdit).

I just installed it today along with the new version of smartypants and I’m going to use this entry to play around with markdown as a demo for you and myself. You can visit the Markdown web dingus to experiment with markdown.

The first test is to experiment with the markdown italic syntax:

*italic*
_italic_

Markdown will convert anything between the * and _ to italic with the <em> HTML tag. Wouldn’t it easier to use *stars* instead of typing <em>stars</em>. The second experiment is the bold/strong syntax:

**bold**
__bold__

Example:

The quick **brown** fox jumps over the __lazy__ dog.

Results: The quick **brown** fox jumps over the __lazy__ dog. Ordered list test: Example:

1. Item one
2. Item Two

Results. 1. Item one 2. Item two

Let’s stop the experiment right here, since I know markdown works and I hope you get the idea of how markdown work. I find this plugin very useful because it saves my time. Instead of writing down markup on my entries, I just write my entries as if I’m writing in a word processor software.

MT’s default templates are great but I don’t use them because I like to create my own template. However, everytime I create a new blog on my current movable type installation MT always provide me with a default templates.

I know I can change them, but I don’t want to copy and paste everything to the new blog’s template. So, I decided to change the default template whenever I create a new blog.

After I did a little searching on the MT source code, I found the file default-templates.pl in the MTdir/lib/MT/ directory. Everything is in there and I tested it by creating a new blog on my current MT installation, and I no longer need to copy and paste my templates if I need to create a new blog in the future.

This is not that useful, you don’t usually create more than one blog in your MT installation, but it might be useful in the future incase you need one…

Apple store in San Francisco opened yesterday, the design of the store looks really nice both from the outside and inside. Take a look at some photos from Wired News and OSXFAQ. The all-glass staircase is wonderful and the powermac G5 looked like design from the outside looks really good too.

Apple also provided a “Lucky Bag” at the cost of $250 with seven or eight $600 - $1000 worth of products. The lucky bag is a trend in Japan where, during the New Year, stores offering these bags with many surprises inside. I know this trend for a very long time since I am a big fan of japanese comic book.

If apple is opening stores in Sydney, I would be interesting in purchasing the lucky bag. However, it’s the long queued line that worries me. Is it really worth it to wait two days outside the apple store just to get those “Lucky Bags”. I know $250 is a good price considering you get a a lot of stuffs worth more than $600 in it.

Wanna see how long it took to get inside the Apple Store? I got this link from avianto, Here’s a video of the opening day of Apple Store in Japan.