Hemingwhat?

So have you seen the Hemingwrite? Here's a rendering:




 In a nutshell:

• "Mechanical" keyboard (meaning using switches like the coveted IBM Model M)
• e-ink screen
• Aluminum body
• Aiming for 6-week battery life
• Magic hand-waving about saving to the cloud (Google Docs, Evernote?) over WiFi

Knowing my gadgetry predilections, my well-meaning family keeps emailing me stories about this mockup/prototype/thingus.

My honest take: I don't like it.

Or more specifically, I don't like what it touts itself to be: some kind of a return to the "simplicity of a 90s era word processor" (their words.) Really, I think it's just trying too hard, like the highly-priced reproductions of vintage technology from Restoration Hardware. It's just so... twee. And I remember the word processors of the 90s, and they were far from simple. Disk drives, endless functions and modes and styles and so on. Hateful things.

But why stop at the 90s? Why not go back another decade or so? What's that old quote about failing to learn from history?



Tandy Model 100





Cambridge Z88/Sinclair Z88


And of course the modern incarnation, evolved from decades of being in the single-purpose device market. A market that has shrunk drastically, alas.



This is a well-worn path, and I'm just a shade skeptical of the Hemingwrite, if it ever comes to pass at all. Six weeks of battery life, you say? Yeah... maybe. The Neo claims about 700+ hours on AA batteries, with no WiFi on board. Oh, and it's light, durable, and dead simple.

But maybe Hemingway would have thrived on a more high-tech typewriter? Ruben Bolling speculates...

(click to read on Boing Boing)

Hello, World!

Typed on a 1957 Underwood Universal (from the post-ENIAC age)



What I didn't mention in the typecast is that this means I'm also dipping my toe into being a mobile-computing-device-owner, although I have yet to desire or need a "smart" phone. What's driving this decision is mainly my desire to edit my novel, and not having any time in which to do it, or access to the home computer (where the draft resides) when I do have the time. Inspired by this photo of an AlphaSmart/tablet hookup and Mr. Speegle's own foray into the tablet-driven revision lifestyle (and emboldened with unspent Christmas cash from my family) I'm dipping my toes in. So it's all for writing, you see, and not solely gadget lust.

That's my story, anyhow. If you could have told 30-years-ago-me that I've be able, in my lifetime, to have Star-Trek like technology in my lap, and program it, I would have scoffed you right out of my room. Not that I would have been able to hear you over the din of the cassette drive, mind you.

Call Me (Maybe)

Typed on a Smith-Corona Silent-Super

Simplicity Redux

For those of you playing along at home, the process was:

1. Write post in LibreOffice
2. Unnecessarily save as HTML
   
3. Realize USB cable is sitting at home
   
4. Walk to electronics store on lunch to get another cable
5. Connect reader to computer
   
6. Run Calibre to convert to .epub and install on reader
7. Scan reader, paging between scans
8. Re-scan for pages that changed accidentally due to button presses
   
9. Open scan in gimp, realize it is in Black & White and not Greyscale mode
10. Edit out the frame from the scans, which was the whole point
11. Post anyway
    

Ah, technology. How you simplify our lives!

Reading and Scanning

I've been throwing the bulk of my online energies into the relaunched NaNoWriMo forums, so I've got just a few musings here today:

• The letter-exchange program trundles on. I've decided that getting real mail that's not a bill is one of the most honest pleasures one can get for $0.44 (the other being dark chocolate Reese's cups.) Though in this age of instant-twitchy-"like button" feedback, I usually start feeling guilty the moment I open the envelope, like I need to stop wasting time and reply. This isn't significant or profound, but just another shade of neurosis you can use to paint your mental picture of me.
• The Typewriter Brigade is an enthusiastic bunch, and if you haven't signed on, you should, especially if you're waffling about whether or not you're going to participate. Even the young'uns in the group are well-spoken and classy. Seriously: what a nice group of people to write with. You should do it, too.
• And related to that, I've wheeled The Beast into its writing home for the next two months. I am trying very hard to resist the Royal Empress that Jay Respler has offered up. Fairly easy, since he's on the other side of the country, and shipping that behemoth would be crazy expensive. But my God, I love the look of the thing. (That one's Olivander's.) It's like a hunk of functional Googie architecture... on your desk.
• So the plan is: get published, get crazy rich, move to a bigger house, buy an SG-1 and an Empress to keep one another company. That's the plan. Yup. Starting... now!
• Actually, that's not the plan. For a little perspective on writing, check out this post on dreams versus expectations, and keeping the one from turning into the other. Luckily for me, I'm still living in the dream world. Ha!
  
• Eats, Shoots & Leaves should be required reading for everyone on the Internet. It's ideal book for nitpicking neurotics like me who freak out about apostrophe mis-use. Lynne Truss is the patron saint of the fussy.
  
• Yes, I read humorous punctuation guides for pleasure. This is a problem why?
• Once fine point that Truss makes and that I just re-read last night is the difference between reading on a page, and reading on a screen. On the page, your eyes move across and down, across and down, across and down. On the screen, your eyes stay fixed, and the page moves across them. To me, it's the difference between reading and scanning, and that could be why I generally hate the experience of screen-reading so much; I'd sooner print out a multi-page document and read it at my desk than sit at that same desk and read off my monitor, even though I have a nice, bright, large screen that can adjust its type size to even my lousy vision. Reading on a screen feels different because it is different. Well, duh.
• I mention this also because Staples appears to be selling the Kindle in their stores, and I was oddly compelled to pick up the sample model and hold it the other day. It sure is... pretty. So hard when the gadget-lust intersects with the reading-lust. Or in this case, partners up with it. And never mind that Amazon is generally behaving only a shade less evil than Apple when it comes to supported formats on their devices, and how they appear to be trying very, very hard to place themselves between readers and any title we may want to read... I was still tempted. Didn't give in, though. Not this time.

Edited to add:

To get on the mail-exchange list, send a note to typed (dot) letter (at) gmail (dot) com. First found out about this in February on Strikethru. Has it been that long already? Wow.