Archive
On computers: why I hate Windows
Do I really have to say anything?
No, I don’t. But I will. I have never, repeat never, seen this kind of nonsense on any Mac I’ve owned over the years, yet what you see above has been the norm on every Winblows machine I’ve ever owned. Thankfully, this is the state of my “work” computer and not my personal computer — a Mac — that I use for writing and everything else. My Mac simply works, as has every other Mac I’ve owned. Oh, and because I use a Mac, I also have the privilege of using the best version of the best writing software ever developed: Scrivener.
–dp
On writing: slow down to speed up
Doesn’t make much sense, does it? Write slower to write more. Yeah, didn’t seem reasonable to me, either … at first. But, after reading The Secret to Writing Faster, I thought a bit more about the proposition. And you know what? It makes sense.
If you didn’t go and read the article, I can summarize it by saying the author, Karen Dionne, believes that writing longhand can actually be faster, in the end, than using a computer. Pretty outlandish, huh? Well, not necessarily. Many years ago, I wrote a fair amount of my first novel by hand (I mention this briefly in an old blog post My first novel: a retrospective – part I) Though I didn’t expound much on the experience in the older post, I can say now that I did see some of the two main advantages Dionne describes in her article. She said that
My sentences are also cleaner. Because I write more slowly by hand than I can type, I give more thought to what I’m writing, and am thus more careful about what I put on page.
and
… that’s the corollary to writing faster. Slow down. Think about the words before you put them to paper, and the words you write are more likely to be ones that will stay.
Looking back, I can say I think this was true for me as well. Yes, I bemoaned the need for typing in all those well-crafted words after having already written them in notebooks, but I think overall the sentences and the story were better for having been written by hand. Now to be fair, even though I believe what I just said, I haven’t, as of yet, given up my MacBook and Scrivener.
My Desk
It should be noted that the idea of writing slower can also be applied even when sitting in front of a computer and keyboard. It’s just harder, that’s all 🙂
So, anyone out there like to do things old-school? Done it before and hated it? Loved it? Never going to give up on the computer?
–dp
An Apple trifecta
I’ve been an Apple fan since my oldest son introduced them to me some six or so years ago. I bought his old MacBook after he decided it was time to upgrade to the next best thing. From there on out, I was hooked, and I’ve “upgraded” myself several times since then.
But then Apple released a nifty little gadget called an iPhone. So of course, despite the fact that I didn’t need it, I bought one. And guess what? Each year since then, I’ve purchased the latest and greatest (except for the iPhone 4S … I kind of felt like it didn’t have enough new stuff to really entice me into buying it … so, I’ll wait for the iPhone 5 :-).
Oh, and then Apple came out with another device: the iPad. Though it wasn’t really a whole lot more than a large, glorified iPhone, it sure was cool. Suddenly you could read email, surf, and watch movies with a screen large enough to spare your eyes the agony of staring at your iPhone’s teensy, tiny screen. A real game changer in the world of personal computing.
The iPad, however, took some time to grow on me. Having spent many years in the world of software and computers, it seemed to me that the iPad was just too wimpy to be useful. I figured it would fizzle out after a short time in the spotlight. Despite my reservations, I bought an original iPad for my wife, Debbie, who loves it and uses it for all of her computing needs. Then came the iPad 2, which we happily purchased for her (and passed along her original iPad to our grandson 🙂 And of course, when the “new” iPad came out (come on, it’s an iPad 3, isn’t it?) we bought one immediately for Debbie. But that left us with an extra iPad. Or did it?
Yep, you guessed it. I decided to take her old iPad 2 and try it out. I was a bit skeptical at first, but after using it for a bit and customizing it to my needs, I must confess that it’s pretty darn good. It allows me to mostly do anything I want (or need) to do without having to lug around a heavy lap top.
The big win with an iPad is that it’s small and lightweight. That makes it ideal for travelling. So, to prove to myself that the iPad could handle everything I needed to do, on a recent trip I brought it along. Note that since I wasn’t completely convinced that it could do everything, I was paranoid and brought my laptop along … just in case. Guess what? I didn’t have to use the MacBook at all. Not once. I think that pretty much convinced me that from now on out, all I’ll bring along is my iPad.
You just have to love Apple.
I suppose the only place to go after this would be to get a MacBook Air. And maybe an iMac. Hmm …
–dp
According to Dave 