Markdown is a type of computer language… hold it, don’t switch off just yet, it’s not that dull. Those of us who write blogs sometimes have to deal with HTML, and that’s ugly and a whole lot more typing than we really need to do to say what we want to say. Markdown lets you avoid _most_ of the HTML you are likely to need to type. Let me explain…

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vi, the unix text editor, is an incredibly useful and powerful piece of software. It is daunting to learn at first, but it’s the one piece of software that you can be 99.9% certain of finding on any *nix type system. And if the machine isn’t working right, it may be the only tool you have to fix it, so it’s useful to know how to use it.

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