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So, I've been using TextPad as my text editor for the whole of my quantitative-researcher-in-Windows life. However, Eszter needed only a few minutes to convince me to switch to UltraEdit. Seriously, this was one of those moments when one has an entrenched way of doing something, is shown an alternative, and thinks "Well, I'm never doing it the old way again." A friend of mine prone to overdisclosure on his blog would take this occasion to give as an example when he was sixteen and tried on boxers for the first time. Anyway, I've already installed UE and deleted the TextPad shortcuts on all my machines here in Cambridge.

One might not think there would be much difference among text editors anymore. However, TextPad has not been updated by its developers in a long time, and meanwhile UltraEdit has all these cool features that I didn't realize I would like until I had them. My original plan for this post was to actually list some of these, but then I decided that it's not really my job, even as Your Ever-Loyal Blogger, to go out of my way to sell you on a software alternative. I've told you my preference; download and peruse if you care.* UE does rock, though.

In any event, I'm tired and giving a presentation tomorrow in Washington DC that I still haven't figured out (and not because I've been playing with UE advanced configuration features). This trip to DC, incidentally, will be my round-trip flight where I leave in the morning and return the same day. It's more expensive, but still not as expensive as staying overnight in DC. More importantly, I've got a bunch to do and so can't dally at the Smithsonian or Spy Museum just now.

* If you use Stata for Windows, I would strongly recommend getting and setting up Scott Long's syntax highlighting file to work with UltraEdit.