While reading the BBC news website I came across this:

Electronic paper is getting almost as thin as the old-fashioned sort.

The pioneers of digital paper and ink have unveiled a flexible prototype display that is a mere .03mm thick.

Massachusetts-based E Ink said the development of the ultra-thin display should greatly increase the potential uses of its technology.

The company speculates that the development could help drive the creation of computer screens that can be built into clothes.


Now, how seriously cool would it be to be able to write your story wherever you were, when the Muse strikes, simply by writing it on your sleeve?

When I remember all those times I would be writing stories in my head on the bus ride home from work, then have to race up the hill and dive up to the pc, hoping fretfully that I'd remember it all by the time it booted...and how much material I lost because it didn't! ...how I could have used this then!

LabRat (who still wants one of those typewriters of Stephen King's that writes the story out of your head while you sleep...but this will do nicely till they invent one of those. )

Sounds great! Though I'm almost there, I don't go anywhere without Ed now, Ed being my handheld computer! He's really smart - he likes fic (though he doesn't do the long stuff - I need to cut that up for him), he has letter recognition for writing fic straight onto the screen, he's MS Word compatible, so I just drag and drop the files from Ed to my computer and did I mention that he likes fic!

Seriously, its really good. The letter recognition doesn't rely on learning special characters (except you need to write your 'i's
kinda funny) so its really straight forward to write fic on. And as for reading fic, its great! It takes a while to get used to seeing a much reduced line width, but other than that, there's not much wrong with it. It was definately worth getting!

Loriel (who, 1.5 months ago, would never have believed that she would actually name a computer! )

I'd seriously like to get a Palm Pilot, or something of that ilk. Admittedly, I'm really ignorant where they are concerned, so can anyone give me some ideas of what sort of thing might work for me? For sure I want to be able to read fanfic on it - I've heard that there are some models that have little mini-disks or something that you can plug into it, so you can carry your fic around like that. And now that Loriel mentioned her Ed, inputting on it would be great, too. I'd *love* to be able to write my fic directly into the computer even when I'm on the go - then the muse would have, like, *no* excuse!

Melisma (under her Rock, always happy to learn about new technology that would make her life easier...)

Any of the Palms (or their competitors) should be able to handle fic with the right software (a lot of which is freeware or shareware). I use TealDoc -- and a cool conversion program someone on the boards helped me find -- with my Palm. Since my Palm holds 8 meg, 1-2 fics at once (even long ones like Masques) are not a problem. In addition, I have one of those chips Melisma mentioned, which holds another 16 meg.

I like being able to read a few screens of a fic wherever and whenever I happen to have time.

on the one hand, it sounds really cool.

OTOH, it's a bit scary. reminds me a little too much of MIT's "cyborgs" (and, since this is coming from MA, i wouldn't be surprised if there were cyborgs involved in this)... i haven't seen one myself, but i know enough people who have... basically, they're the hardcore computer geeks, associated with the MIT media labs (which gets lots and lots of money from the gov't to come up with new and cool ideas, but if you suggest a practical application, they'll look at you in horror). they basically carry laptops in their backpacks, then have a monacle screen and a virtual keyboard (sensors on the fingers that detect typing motions and tranlate that to keyboard input, even though there's no actual keyboard involved). so, they walk around typing and surfing and whatever, one eye on where they're going (or the lecture they're attending), and one eye on the tiny screen right in front of it.

brings up a mixed reaction in me. part says "cool!!" and part goes "uhm... yeah. i'll just be backing away slowly, now..."

Paul

I've seen a similar article somewhere. I think the concept is cool. The question is, as always with computer technology, how many bugs will it have before the kinks are all worked out? And will anyone who's not the CEO of a large corporation (or even a small one) actually be able to afford it?

Oh, I saw those guys on Scientific American Frontiers! Too cool! I really want a rig like that!

My reaction was the same as yours, Paul. I was saying "wow, that's amazing!" at the same time I was staring at the screen with a horrified expression on my face. LOL.

Of course, you'd have to be a really good typist to be able to type 'virtually' ... or else not care about typos and mistakes. <g> Not that you can't fix mistakes, but it seems like it would be a lot harder if you couldn't see what you were doing!

As for losing ideas because you aren't by your computer, though, there is a new fangled invention that can help ... it's this odd flat thing they call "paper" and these really funny skinny things they call "pens". It's amazing what people can come up with these days!



Kathy

lol, exactly, kathy! i never go anywhere without my amazing carbon-based PDA. sure, i can't download fic or play solitaire on it or anything, but i never have to worry about data loss (except as related to coffee stains and such...).

actually, reminds me of a sign i put up on the family computer, back when i got tired of seeing the blue screen of death (and copying the exact error message so i could try to figure out what had happened).

"In times of crisis, it is sometimes necessary to revert to superior technology... therefore, please leave the pen and scrap paper here!"

Paul

Sounds logical and simple but...nope. No way in a cold day in hell would you get me writing fanfic on a bus with paper and pen. Too many nosey types around looking over your shoulder.

Whereas...sure that there must be some way you could hold your sleeve at an angle so no one could overlook you. <G>

Besides, am I the only one who, after years of using typewriters and pcs, is now completely unable to write more than two paragraphs before getting writer's cramp? I find that I lose streams of dialogue/paras of narrative that pop into my head by the time I boot up my pc and writing them down is too slow to get it down before they drift off into the ether for good.

LabRat

I still write using a mixture of paper and computer. Paper is good because my laptop often is on the fritz, and it's really heavy so I don't want to carry it around with me. With paper I can scribble down an idea out of order or in order, write between the lines if I come up with something in a part I'd already written, scratch out something I decided I didn't like, but still have it there in case I decide I need it after all...

At the same time, the computer is good because you get an instant spellchecker and grammar checker, and it's by far neater than my chicken scratches, and you can print something off to read over later...

I kind of like my system, even if it's not perfect

Melisma (slinking back under her Rock to look at all her WIP printoffs to see if they will give her any inspiration...)


EDIT: Rivka, what breed of PalmPilot do you have? My work colleague's mother just showed me hers, which doesn't have a chip option, and it's a Palm III something or other. So naturally I'd want a breed that had one...

Interestingly it wasn't writer's cramp that I had to overcome to be able to jot down notes or dialogue or even scenes on paper -- it was my own self-consciousness. For whatever reason, whenever I would try to write fanfic long-hand (say, when I was on vacation without a computer) I would find it extremely difficult to get lost in what I was writing and just let it flow. Even if no one was around, I felt as if someone was looking over my shoulder. But I finally just had to work through it, starting with notes and snippets of dialogue, then eventually full scenes. It didn't take long to get used to it, and now I won't go on vacation without my notepad. It's definitely harder than the computer, but it's better than losing that perfect scene when you are away from home.

Kathy

I can write better than I type, so writing is easier for me. However it takes me forever to type up something I've handwritten. Partially cause I can't type, but also cause I 'edit' it as I'm typing it up, or think to myself 'that's rubbish, why on Earth did you write it!' and get distracted from the actual typing up! There are also a lot of distractions on my computer - fic and Free Cell are prime candidates when, two paragraphs in, I get writters block.

Loriel

I haven't been able to write on paper much in the last few years (haven't been able to write much, period! ) but I'm trying to start up again. I always thought of my handwritten copy as the first draft, assuming I'd edit when I typed it in. Really, if I weren't editing it as I went, it might get awfully boring I do like writing at the keyboard -- I type faster than I write, and my hand does sometimes cramp up <g>

My main problem is finding a *quiet* time to write. I work best when I'm not hearing miscellaneous television shows, etc. And my computer is right next to our main TV... bad planning, that <g>

PJ

I've just got to reply to this . Am I really the only one who ends up at the end of the day with story notes written all over my hands?

Amen to that! Also, my folks think serial killers hang out online, so I have to write in secret. Now that I'm home for the summer, I have to wait until everyone either goes to work or sleep. :rolleyes:

Hey, ML, congrats on your first post <g>

Well, um... can't speak for anyone else, but that particular note-taking technique has never even occurred to me, somehow... Although now that you mention it, there are probably times that it'd come in handy <g> So to speak

Jen, a lot of people seem to think that serial killers are on the net... and it's always good to be cautious, of course! I've met a number of FOLCs over the past few years (I'm gonna meet Irene next week! ), and I always like to have the first meeting in public, just in case. But it's never been a problem. Um, point was... gimme a second, it'll come to me... oh yeah, the point is that FOLCs are among the nicest people you'll ever meet. Online or off <g>

PJ

Shadow, I hear you there. My parents were really nervous about my online stuff for a while, until I started getting together with online friends in RL - I made sure that whenever I could, at least at first, they met my friends. Now they are not happy with how much time I spend online, but they aren't as worried about me meeting a serial killer...

Actually, I have to tell you this story, although it's likely going to embarrass the heck out of one of our FoLCs - sorry hon, I won't mention your name...

A couple years ago I met this one FoLC in real life, and got to be very good friends with her and her family, as they lived very near to me at the time. (Her parents treated me like one of their kids, too.) Well, I went through a period of time where I had *very* bad financial troubles, and my landlord finally got tired of me getting behind with the rent, and evicted me. And I had very little time to get out of my apartment. It was my FoLC friend's parents who helped me move out, and indeed, it was thanks to them that I found a temporary place to live so that I didn't have to sleep on the streets. Thanks, you guys!

So yes, I echo Pam's statement that FoLCs are terrific people. Shadow, have you met any of us in RL? If so, introduce them to your parents if you can - let them see that online people are ordinary, decent people, and let them make up their minds for themselves...

(I did this a month or two before I left for a friend in another fandom, BTW. She was in her early teens, and her mother was nervous about us getting together, so I suggested that when we met the first time, her mother and my mother be there... Seemed to go pretty well...)

Melisma (shutting up for now, here under her Rock)

Unfortunately, no. I live in the absolute middle of nowhere when it comes to hanging out with people online (Alabama, along the Gulf Coast). One day, though. I'm moving up North (somewhere) for grad school, and I am going to be taking so many trips to meet all of my online folks (and FOLCs, if and when the opportunity presents itself).

wow, all these people writing while away from their desks...

i keep the notepads handy for random stuff.. writing ideas, inventions, lists, addresses, etc.

i don't actually write stories when i'm AFK. i type faster than i write, and it's far more legible, too. edit function is quite handy (far more so than an actual eraser ), and i even use spell-check when working on something important.

i remember when palms first came out... it was the summer before my freshman year, and i got a special ad offering to let me buy this new and cool thing before it officially hit the markets. i thought about it, realized it looked cool, and then realized that there was nothing i wanted it to do that i couldn't do with a notepad or my calculator watch.

never got one, probably never will.

i can't imagine trying to actually write a story on one of those things. scrawling it all out by hand on one of those little screens (or trying to work with one of those weird collapsable keyboards), hoping the derned thing would be able to read my writing...

i can almost see reading fic, but even that would be odd, i think.

so, how many people actually write stories on a palmtop?

Paul

I have a Palm m125. It's discontinued, but they replaced it with the m130 (same, but with a color screen). Many of the PDAs on the market now have the mini-disks of some type. My brother has a Visor with one. I researched quite a bit before I replaced my m100 when it died (it had been a gift).

I love using my Palm to read. I actually paid for an eboook a couple years ago. I liked it; but decided that since it cost the same, and could neither be lent out or resold, it didn't pay. But with fic, with no cost associated, it means I can read a story anywhere! This is a very Good Thing. Plus, I can read in bed with no light -- the screen has its own light.

Thanks, Rivka - I'll go out and do some research on it, then. (Unless you wanna share yours with me - email me privately if so...)

I've got a lot to learn about such things - I'm also trying to research laptops as I need to get a new one to replace my *very* old Toshiba Satellite Pro 435 that my dad gave me about 3 years ago and it was old then... It's giving me all sorts of problems these days...

Melisma (slinking back under her Rock to get ready for her Sunday evening classes)

My research mostly involved going to 5 stores and looking over what they had, discussing it with several people who had recetly purchsed one, and doing online searches to look at prices. Not too easy to share -- sorry Melisma.

LOL, Rivka, that's exactly the sort of advice I needed - I can check online and go to stores here in Seoul (and indeed, we have one of the biggest markets full of computers and other techie stuff here, so it's even fun to do ), and as for asking for advice of other people, well that's what I'm doing now

See? It *is* easy to share!

Melisma (grinning under her Rock)

I think the cool thing about E-ink isn't the writing technology, but the reading. They can make a book using thin computer pages and a memory chip in the spine. When you are finished reading the book, you press a button on the spine and change the book. The pages themselves, with the words on them, switch to the words to another book. So you can carry one book with you onto an airplane, say, and when you finish, switch to the next book. A library in one volume.

As for a handheld, I have a PocketPC. I could theoretically write on it, but it won't connect to my computer. Which means I don't write on it, because if I did, I'd have no way to transfer the file, and I'd have to retype it. Also, I have to hunt-and-peck with the stylus to type (or handwrite, but then what's the point of having a PocketPC? *grin*). But sooner or later I need to take it to Best Buy and get it to work (or get a new computer, *sigh*), so when I do that, I'll buy a foldout keyboard so I can type when I visit Annie, Tracey, etc.

Meerkat, when I have time, I do write on my Palm Pilot with a foldable keyboard and then hotsynch it to my computer. Is the hotsynch option not available with your Pocket PC? (Hotsynch - downloading information from either the main frame to the Palm or vice versa.)

I love my foldable keyboard. It's easier to make typos on, but I just edit them out later. It also has the 'ooh, that's cool' thing going when I unfold it in public. People are fascinated by it!

Irene

I have a Palm m130. Her name is P'da. She came with Word and Excel and a few games, then I bought more games for her. In Word, I currently have 82 documents (74 of which are fic) totaling 3599K. And there's still 1152K of free space. All that memory is without the available extra memory card. She also came with PalmReader which is a way to view e-books. I've purchased two books from the internet already. They were a lot cheaper than buying the actual paperback and a lot less to carry. They're not on the P'da now, but I can save them on my harddrive until I need to sync them to the handheld.

P'da was a birthday present last year, but I've seen ads for about $150-200 (US dollars). She is the absolute best present I have ever gotten. I especially loved that I could play games or read fanfic in the airport and not have to carry too much stuff.

When I read this, I took it to mean your parents are worried that you will become a serial killer because you spend so much time online... :rolleyes:

I know it's hardly in the same sphere, but this tickled me when I read it just now on the BBC News website. And the (tenuous) link to fanfic? Well, much more time to write and read it, of course, as your friendly little robot does the hoovering.

LabRat (who wants one, but ain't paying a grand for it... )

Robot cleaner hits the shops


A robot vacuum cleaner that cleans your carpets all by itself has gone on sale in the UK.

The autonomous, cordless machine uses ultrasound to avoid obstacles and to work out the most efficient route around a room it has been set to clean.

While other firms have shown off prototype robot cleaners, Electrolux is the first to put one into production.

Modelled on an ancient arthropod the Electrolux Trilobite is in stores from Friday and should cost around £999.

Electrolux showed off one of the first versions of its Trilobite robot vacuum in 1997 on the BBC's Tomorrow's World popular science programme.

Like a bat, but unlike a trilobite, the 35cm-wide cleaner navigates by bouncing sound off its surroundings.

It uses ultrasound to avoid bumping into things such as table legs and animals. The sound system also helps it work out the dimensions of a room after which it computes the best route to cover all the floor space.

Magnetic strips must be placed at doorways and near stairs to act as invisible walls and stop it plunging to its doom down a flight of steps.

Electrolux said the Trilobite was completely autonomous and could easily be left alone to take care of cleaning carpets while its owners were out enjoying themselves.

"As it is completely independent, quick and efficient, the Trilobite clearly helps make life easier," said Patrick Le Corre, managing director of Electrolux floorcare UK.

The Trilobite has been on sale in some European nations for a few months.

The cleaner is powered by rechargeable nickel-metal hydride batteries and returns to its recharging station when it has finished cleaning a floor or has nearly run out of power.

A fully charged Trilobite can run for about 60 minutes between charges.

The Trilobite has three cleaning modes; normal, quick and spot.

In the normal mode it cleans along the walls first and then covers all open floor space. In quick mode it only does open floor space and in spot mode it concentrates on a single area.

The LED display will warn owners when the dust box needs emptying.

Electrolux said that the low profile of the cleaner, 13cm, means it can scoot under tables and beds to get the dust that vacuuming humans often miss.

Husqvarna, another subsidiary of Electrolux, already sells two different models of robotic mowers that can trim the grass on a lawn all by themselves.

In contrast to the Trilobite the robot mowers require wires to be placed around the lawn edge to ensure they keep on the grass.

Cyclone vacuum inventor James Dyson is also working on a robotic cleaner that, so far, has yet to get beyond the prototype stage.

A spokeswoman for Dyson said the prototype was still being refined and no date was set for when it would go on sale.

In 2002 Matshushita unveiled another prototype robot vacuum that it too was refining and hoped to put on sale by the end of 2005.

I don't even though it would be easy to. P'da has a keyboard on the LSD screen that you use with the stylus, plus my mom bought me a separate keyboard that attaches to the bottom. It's kinda tiny but it does work (once I figured out how to turn it on).

I tend to write my entire story, in linear fashion on notepaper and type it later. I tried to write a story directly into Word once...but my computer froze and I had to reboot and I lost everything. You think it's hard to remember things while turning the computer on...try remembering everything you wrote and thought you wouldn't need to remember again!

Meanwhile, I don't even think they can grasp how much time I spend online.

And now attempting to stick to the topic, I used to always write fanfic in notebooks and then pick out what I liked to actually type up, but I got sick of writing the same thing twice. It does have its disadvantages. I lost 4 chapters of a Harry Potter fanfic a year or two ago when one of my disks stopped working. Never tried writing it again...just wasn't the same, and it's not like I can remember 30+pages off the top of my head.

Jen

Back-ups, people, back-ups! Jesus saves, and so should you

PJ
who doesn't practice what she preaches

I'm so obsessive about backing up - especially WIPs - I shudder when I hear other people saying they don't.

I learned the wisdom of frequent backups many years ago, when working on my little Amstrad WP. I still have fond memories of that little beast, despite it having some of the most illogical and frustrating features. Like no key to zoom down to the end of a file. On a particularly long story I could lose the will to write by the time I scrolled down through the pages to get where I'd last left off.

And then it had this wonderful habit of only telling me that I had run out of memory to save when I tried to save the ten pages I'd just spent an hour writing. There were two options you could try after that - one of which would have saved the text - but in reality that one never worked and either way, no matter which option you chose, the story was consigned to oblivion.

LabRat

Lab, thanks for the post about the robot vacuum cleaner. I think I need one of those! Just this week the lady who cleans my room pushed my wallet (which had fallen off the chair I had put it on) under said chair while she was mopping my floor. She doesn't have the brains to pick something like that up??? Anyway, I searched high and low, and frantically, visions of having to call the Canadian Embassy to report a lost passport and ALL my other ID, before I finally moved the chair completely out of position and found the wallet.

Strikes me that if I had a robot vacuum cleaner, it, at least, would have the sense (laser or whatever) to avoid obstacles on the floor...

Anne, your Palm m130 sounds exactly what I need, then. You have a keyboard, it runs Word, and it has an extra memory chip... Hm... I don't have a USB port on my laptop, but I think the school's computer does, so I could prolly sync it from there... I'll have to check it out some more.

Any more Palm-type users out there that can tell me about your device?

Melisma (under her Rock, off to do some research)

Me.

I went away for a long weekend while I was writing All Stirred Up, and it did me 'ead in. I managed to find some paper and spent a number of hours writing in longhand, because I was in that wonderful/terrible state where I have to write or explode. Then I had to type it all in when I got back, and that was extremely tedious and annoying.

Within about a week, I'd bought myself an HP Pocket PC. Hunt and peck with the stylus on the touch-screen keyboard is awful, but the character recognition is reasonably good, so I can write looking at the developing story instead of at the keyboard. And there's word extension to cut down the strain on my writing hand - I no longer have to type more than 4 letters of "Superman".

Best of all, it has a flash card slot, which it treats almost like ordinary memory. I've got a 128 MB flash card for it - that's a fair number of stories to read in the train or while the kids are at gymnastics lessons. And because we already had a flash card reader to read the photos from our digital camera, it's a quick and painless way to transfer files between the pocket PC and my desk-top. The alternative is to use a serial cable, which I believe is pretty slow and annoying (I've never bothered to try.)

So now I can write on trips away (like on the canal boat last year, when I would leave the tiller intermittently to scurry downstairs and scribble a few more paragraphs of Yvonne's birthday fic.) I can write in the garden, and while the kids are playing at the village playground, and on weekend mornings before I get out of bed, and even in the bath. I still need my desk-top screen for editing, because I need to be able to see more than a paragraph at a time, but it's a huge improvement over paper.

Mere

I babysat the other night and the kids went to bed at 9p.m. and their parents didn't home until nearly 1 a.m. I was stuck in a hotel room and trying to be quiet so the kids could sleep, so I figured it was prime time for writing. I wrote solidly the entire time and came back with pages and pages. Unfortunately, I still haven't got it all typed up yet, and I'm ready to tear my hair out. Never again. I write longhand all the time when I just want to write something brief - a snippet of dialogue, one quick scene - but I'll never write out this much longhand ever again. Maybe I can convince someone to get me Palm Pilot for my birthday....

As I've mentioned before I love my handheld! I actually went so far as to name it, he's called Ed. When he broke the other day and I had to take him back to get him fixed (I felt like I was missing a limb until he was fixed), I consciously had to stop myself calling my handheld 'him' and 'Ed' - they guy in the shop would have thought I was crazy!

Anyway, Melisma you wanted to know what everyone else had. Well, Ed is a Toshiba e330 pocket PC. I wasn't too sure about going for a pocket pc, as opposed to a palm, as Bill Gates is not my most favourite person. Windows/Microsoft/Excel and I haven't been getting on too well recently. However, getting a pocket pc meant it was easier to sychronise with my PC than a palm would have been. At least, that's what I was told. Plus, I know my way around Windows.

It came with the Pocket PC versions of Word and Excel. Its also got Internet Explorer (which you can surf the web on when the PPC is in its cradle connected to your PC), Mircosoft reader for e-books, solitare, adress book, task list etc.

There are 4 different ways of inputting text -

• Block Recognizer - lets you write on the screen an drecognises characters that the Grafitti hand writing recognition programme uses
• Keyboard - a keyboard appears on the bottom of the screen and you tap the letter you want with the stylus
• Letter recognizer - you write regular letters, individually, on the bottom of the screen
• and my new favourite, Transcriber - it lets you write anywhere on the screen in normal handwriting (as opposed to the individual characters for the Letter Rocognizer)

Ed has a screen light, which really has to be on for you to read anything, whic means the battery doesn't last just as long. It has 4 settings (low, medium, high and super ) and I find that for reading it has to be on high, tho medium does ok. Ed is also in colour, rather than B&W, it doesn't make much/any difference to the power consumption but I think it does bump up the price a little (Ed was quite expensive). It has 64MB of memory which you can divide between storage and programs (the guy told me I'd never use it all, and I thought to myself 'uh-huh, you have *no* idea' ), it has a slot for an expansion card, it will act as a dictaphone, has a headphone socket and proably one or two other things I'm fogetting

Oh, and Ed lasts 5 or so hrs before he need recharging, and that with the background light on high.

It took a little getting used to, reading fic that was only abouyt 3 or 4 word across, but now I don't even notice it! It really is great for reading fic on. I also found it really simple to get used to writting on, my note book has been consigned to the bottom of my drawer!

Hope this helps a little, tho probably way more than you ever needed!

Loriel

Oh wow, thanks, Loriel I was looking on the web at Palms and saw a mention of Pocket PCs, and wondered how they would work - your description helps a lot!

Thanks to everyone who has told me about their toys, too. I haven't decided what I will do yet, but I will try to let you know when I do...

Melisma (ducking back under her Rock to get ready for class)