darkemeralds: Photo of fingers on a computer keyboard. (Writing)
On November 2 (in the endless year of our lord 2020) I launched a writing sprint group on Zoom.

It was a bit of a marketing thing, a tie-in with NaNoWriMo and a goodwill builder for Pages & Platforms (where we offer content to help writers write a better story and build a marketing platform).

It went well so we kept going.

A Zoom meeting of 19 people, faces pixelated

And now it's just an ongoing thing that I do every day at 9:00 a.m. Pacific Time: get up, deploy my green screen, brush my pandemic-length hair, open the Zoom meeting, and write quietly with about 15-20 other writers from as far afield as New Zealand and Ireland.

In the process I've made great strides on the current novel (working title The Footman) and have taken a technological step backward to the AlphaSmart.

An AlphaSmart keyboard from the 1990s


It's a mechanical keyboard with a 4-line LCD screen and a tiny memory. No wifi, no internet, no apps, no backlight, no color. No distractions. No temptation to scroll around and edit yourself. It's too much trouble.

It runs on three AA batteries. When you want to save what you've typed, there's an old-fashioned USB cable that connects to a real computer.

The beauty of this $50-on-eBay, refurbished typing device from the early Aughts is that that is all you can do with it. So that's what you do.

Plus it's built like a tank. I can throw it in my bike basket and take it to the café (when those days come again), and I don't need a power outlet or wifi or anything. The memory is persistent, and big enough for text.

Also, hello everyone. And if you'd like to join the sprint group, you can sign up here.
darkemeralds: Baby picture of DarkEm with title 'Interstellar Losers Club' and caption 'Proud Member' (Geekery)
Gosh, it's the third of September, which makes me three entries behind in my putative Post and Read Every Day In September plan, which I told no one about and only vaguely hinted at to [personal profile] ravurian. I guess it will be make thirty posts in September, a slightly different commitment.

So, thing the first: Google+ Hangouts. Really cool. My sisters and I have been using Hangouts for a few weeks now. We all live in the same town, but getting together in person is a big production number. We're working on manifesting improvements in our lives (me: remodeling), and we like to meet to share our progress. Hangouts work perfectly.

What I like:
  • The interface is reasonably intuitive
  • It's free
  • It easily accommodates several people and switches focus seamlessly to whoever's talking
  • The sound quality is good, and the system eliminates cross-talk and echoes amazingly well
  • You can start a Hangout on your phone, then switch to your tablet or computer, also seamlessly

What I don't like:
  • It's a wee bit glitchy and isn't 100% reliable on all devices and operating systems (yet).
  • It's a bit of a shock seeing myself as if on live TV. But I'm getting used to that. I'm figuring out makeup, lighting and angle.

It would be really cool if the geniuses of technology could figure out one thing: how to make it so that when I'm looking at you on the screen, I look like I'm looking at you. As it is, I have to gaze interestedly into the tiny pinhole front-facing camera on my device in order to look like I'm listening to you--and then I miss the nuances of your expression. Someone get on that, please.
darkemeralds: Naked woman on a bike, caption "I don't care, I'm still free" (Bike Freedom)
1. Suddenly it's summer here in Stumptown. I got double-bridged on my way to work this morning: some river traffic going downstream caused the Steel Bridge to lift, so I made my way to the Hawthorne just in time for a barge heading upriver to raise that span. The bike traffic backup was considerable.

Pretty day for being stuck mid-bridge, though )
darkemeralds: Manga-style avatar of DarkEm with caption Hee (cartoony me)
I just finished Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives, by Nicholas A. Christakis and James H. Fowler, and found it such compelling food for thought that I turned around and dived into What Technology Wants, by Kevin Kelly.

Sometimes I get in these moods.

Connected )
What Technology Wants )

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