The New Kid

It's here! That was pretty much the reaction when I saw the big brown UPS truck pull up outside my house on Monday evening and drop off my new toy, this Neo2 (nee Alphasmart) which I'd traded in my old Pro model for. Rather kindly, the folks at Renaissance Learning threw in a sizable case free of charge, with various pockets and pen loops and things with which to tote the new gadget. To be perfectly honest, though, it's a bit of overkill, as this is an incredibly light, and relatively small device: much slimmer than the old Pro, and having the benefit of 25 years of technological development behind it in terms of a nicer LCD screen with proportional fonts, a very quiet and light touch, and the classic near-infinite battery life. It is as close to a portable typewriter replacement as you are likely to get these days.

I've already started redoing the novel that I dictated back in June, and although I'm not able to type as quickly as I can speak, I also can type far more reliably, and away from the main computer. I managed to knock a few paragraphs out last night in the bedroom, for example, far from the confusion of our kitchen after dinner. Already I'm pleased with the purchase.

My loyalties still lie with the Typewriter Brigade come November, of course, as I'm still hooked on marking up a physical written draft, and appreciate the permanence of a typed page compared to the nebulous nature of bytes, even those constructed on a device as reliable as this one. I did make one recent concession, though, and buckled down and bought a copy of Scrivener, after reading the countless accolades online from various amateur writers. Since I already do quite a bit of pre-organizing and am typing on paper, some of the tools meant to aid in drafting may not be as useful to me, but just going through the tutorial has shown me how I might use it to my advantage for rewrites. As nice as the Neo is for writing, it is still not a viable solution for large-scale edits -- nor was it meant to be -- and it's difficult to get a "big picture" view of my writing through a 5- or 6-line window of text.

Typed on a Neo2

On Libraries

Why didn't I spend more time in the library?

That's my regret du jour. I certainly developed a love of reading as a child, and had paperbacks that I read enough to wear the words from the page. But I don't remember actually going to the local public library much as a child: trips were few and far between, and generally tied to school assignments for research papers. Admittedly, our town library was small, and not an easy distance from our home. I actually had to consult a map of my hometown to locate it, and I now realize that it was on the outskirts of town, out by the county high school. Well, no wonder.

Still, what a shame. I made regular trips to our library in grad school when I lived in the Midwest, mostly to rummage through their meager CD collection in the basement to put together mix tapes for myself for the walk between my apartment and campus, or to raid their twice-yearly massive used-book sale. I don't think I ever actually checked out a book from there, though, which is also inexplicable, considering the typical impoverished lifestyle of your average graduate student. I didn't have a lot of leisure time for reading, I remember, typically trying to squeeze in a chapter or two of something at night before I fell asleep.

I'm making up for lost time now, with a monthly trip or two out to the local branch that sits an easy mile from my office. Fifteen minutes to walk out, fifteen back, and that leaves half an hour of browsing time. Since our system is computerized and has many branches, I'm able to tap into the large virtual corpus and request materials to be shipped to my local branch, and am emailed when they arrive, to really maximize that half hour. Today I was back in my old habits, checking out CDs, although this time it's to use for seeding my "songs heard" in the online music streaming service I use at work, and not copy to a cassette tape.

So why didn't I spend more time in the library? Access, I suppose, and general ignorance, and laboring under the false conception that I needed to own something to enjoy it, I guess. I've become a lot more borrow-friendly as I've aged. I still have those old favorite books at home on the shelf -- new hardback editions, most of them -- but I'm kicking myself retroactively for not taking more advantage of the great facilities I've had access to over the years.

The Magic Touch

Safe travels, old friend. We typed many a word together!



A tip to any other AlphaSmart-hackers out there... Kryon plastic paint does all right, but it's still not optimal for this application. Very soon after this picture was taken, areas of paint started to rub off from the frequent contact with my hands. Either prime first and/or sand the plastic and/or use another product (like vinyl dye?) to personalize your Alphie. I'm leaving the new one alone.



What brought this sudden turnabout on was the fact that I won* Camp Nano this summer, by pulling a Kobayashi Maru and declaring that "winning" meant "transcribing my already-written 2011 NaNoWriMo draft The Ballad of Congo Willy." I'd done some small-scale tests of the Dragon Dictate software before with some success, so it seemed reasonable for me to read the draft into the computer, tackling each day's worth of typing into a day's worth of speaking.

Sadly, me reading my novel aloud into perfectly-digitized prose was not in the cards for a number of reasons:

1. It annoyed my wife for a month, since I was in front of the main computer all the time, which meant I was sitting in the kitchen, shushing people as they tried to go about the business of cooking, cleaning, or just walking through the house.
2. The draft is very rough in spots, and I wasn't sure what to do about it. Revising as you talk isn't an option, honestly. I eventually gave up trying to fix as I talked, and just read everything.
3. Horrible, horrible performance anxiety, if one can get such a thing sitting in one's own kitchen, reading a nasty draft into the computer. I, apparently, can.

Basically, I rushed through the reading so I could be done quickly, and so I could squeeze it in while I knew I'd be alone and not mortified that someone might overhear parts of the draft-in-process. That, coupled with my already shady diction, lead to winning sentences like this one appearing on screen:

For just a 2nd I caught a glimpse of someone else, dressed in gray, questionable or small tables traces of Honda wafted through the air.

What is this I don't even.

Worse yet, I realized that I want the main story to be written in present tense, not past tense. That means a stem-to-stern rewrite. And that means digging out the Pro... or choosing a replacement. And as much as I mockingly bad-mouth AlphaSmarts during NaNoWriMo, they have the same dead-simple operation and no-distraction philosophy as the typewriter. (And the 700 hour battery life kicks complete butt, too.)

Most importantly, Mrs. Clickthing approved of the trade-in deal (she who scored our trio of AlphaSmart Pros in the first place.) It's not Another Damn Typewriter coming into our house, after all, despite her enabling ways.

We'll see if the Neo 2 has the magic touch.

Heavy Metal Lifestyle

Typed with a 1958 Olympia SM-3 (italic)

A Quick Pen Review

In yesterday's typecast, I mentioned getting a bonus prize from Exaclair, the U.S. importer of Rhodia products. This all came about because I entered a drawing to win a Rhodia "dotpad" notebook, which uses a fine grid of dots instead of a lined graph. About ten days ago -- long after the contest was over -- the VP of marketing sent out this email:

Dear Friends,

I am sorry for the delay.

We did not like the original batch of orange dot pads so I didn’t send them out to the winners. I have been waiting for the 2nd batch to arrive from France and they finally did. I am now waiting to receive them from our warehouse. I will have them out to the winners, plus a surprise for your wait and time and trouble early next week.

Before I go on, I just want to point out what a class act this is, and I'm not just saying that because I've managed to secure great free stuff from Exaclair. This is exactly how customer service is supposed to work, even if your "customer" is some random shlub on the Internet, as I am. A big hand for Exaclair and Karen A. Doherty, their VP of Marketing. You can send me free awesome stuff anytime...

---

A couple people asked for my impressions of my bonus prize pen -- as you do -- so here's an impromptu what's-at-hand review for you.

This is not a very expensive product, but it's still a first for me, as I don't own any pens of this style: a ballpoint that accepts a fountain pen ink cartridge. Strictly speaking, this would not be a pen that you'd be heartbroken to lose, if only because it's almost entirely plastic, except for the clip, a decorative metal ring where the cap snaps on, and the point itself. I'd put it in the league of the Pilot Varsity, which is a disposable plastic fountain pen (although it can be refilled.)

Here they are side-by-side:



The weight is almost identical, making this pen very light and easy to carry around. It's also about 3/4 of a inch shorter than the Varsity. There's a definite feeling of "smallness" to the ink roller, which, again, makes it very portable and pocketable, but may be awkward to hold in larger hands if you don't post the cap on the back of the pen, like so:



Even posted, it's noticeably shorter than the Varsity, but not awkwardly. Conclusion: this is a pen meant to be used posted, or by the tiny-handed. Again, since it's all-plastic, it's not like you're doing damage to a valuable writing instrument, but like a Space Pen (which I also own) posting the cap feels necessary.



The feed in the roller is visible, just like that of the Varsity. They're very similar, and cleaning between inks may be an issue. To refill the Varisty, you pull the whole feed out, making it available for rinsing.



The roller takes standard "short" international-end cartridges, which always makes me happy, since those are pretty easy to come by, often masquerading as calligraphy pen refills. Long cartridges -- like Waterman -- will not fit in this pen, alas. There's a gap once the cartridge is pushed into place, but it's still not enough of a gap to get a long cartridge in there.



Because I am impatient, I gave the cartridge a little squeeze to get the ink into the feed. I don't know if this is necessary, but it's part of the ritual I have with my fountain pens, and bad habits die hard. Of course this splooged ink into those nice, clean feed fins.



Oh well. At least we know it's mine now, right?

There appears to be a very, very tiny breather hole in the end of the pen, down near the writing point. The ink leaving the cartridge needs to be replaced with air for everything to keep flowing. I don't know if you can see it in this photo, but it's there, right about at the 12 o'clock position.



The dedicated pen hacker (or ink lover) could easily convert this into an eyedropper pen. The cap seals tight with a click, and there are no holes in it that I can detect: the clip is affixed to the outside.

The back of the barrel has a tiny hole in it, which may just be leftover from the molding process. A drop or two of hot glue or clear nail polish would probably seal it up tight.

So, how does it write?



Not bad at all. You're writing with a very fine ball, obviously, so it's not going to be as smooth as a fountain pen, but using the same water-based ink makes it seem slipperier to me. And since it's using a thinner ink, you can also get shading as seen above (and seen better in-person.) Plus, you get the advantage of being able to use all the colors and styles of real inks. There was a blue cartridge inside the pen when it arrived which I used for this test, and Karen thoughtfully added a tiny tin of six dark-green cartridges to use when this one is gone. That's probably the best part of the whole thing: replay value!

Dot's Life

Finding the Signature 100 in the wild (recreation)


Surprise! It's a typewriter. Never expected to see that around here, did you?


Something unexpected (but not at all unwelcome)


Typed on the recently Silver Surfer-ized Kmart 100