While I just wrote about the search I made for a computing device that fulfills my needs, I'm still a bit irked. The truth of the matter is that I still rely on a paper notebook stuck in the back pocket of my jeans for most things. Why? Because I grew up using pen and pencils. I flow better when using a pen (but not with a pencil, for some reason). Granted, I can type up a storm and can sometimes blaze past 120 wpm, but to get into the groove is a little more difficult with a QWERTY keyboard and mouse. A pen doesn't require a physical ambidextrous rhythm. Or maybe it's just that I learned the keyboard after I learned to scribble hieroglyphics using a pen.

The point is that there's no device right now that I think really improves upon present writing instruments. Sure, they're making better ways to read things - the Kindle gets a lot of buzz for being easy to read, but I've not seen one and I probably would find it useless because of it's geocentric features and DRM-wrapped-tighter-than-a-wet-dream. It's even more useless to me because I can't very well write with it better than what's out there.

And don't get me started on the mobile phone. With SMS text messages as prevalent as they are, you'd think some rocket scientist would come up with a decent input device instead of offering software that guesses the word based on a dictionary. { Read more }

I thought of a post while in the shower - it was two lines that I was very proud to have hammered together. It was powerful, and... it was forgotten.

Mental note: Grease pencil for shower.

Lunch with a friend last week reinforced some of my own behavior. She's pursuing her Master's Degree, and because of that she's slowly pulling herself out of other activities - something that I've done more than once over the years to the seeming dismay of varied social networks. One day I'm really interested in something and immerse myself in it. Weeks later, it no longer interests me and I seem to disappear from that region, perhaps still existing on the fringes - sort of like what I have done with Second Life recently. Why? Much the same reason.

Time is finite. Time management is imperative for one's sanity. And thus, triage of interests happens at times. A long trail of interests and people I know because of them follows my lifetime, but no one branch defines my life. Instead, my life defines the branches - and long ago I learned that Life is something that takes you along it's own path despite your interests elsewhere.

I remember a time when I was not connected to a collective consciousness known as the Internet. Even when I got connected, reading Levy's Collective Intelligence: Mankind's Emerging World in Cyberspace (Helix Books) had me stretching for more. For over a decade, I have drank of the collective consciousness and have added to it a bit, here and there.

So why was it an advertisement for a writing tablet, the Neo, caught my fancy? Was it that it's an electronic device that is portable and would allow me to write anywhere? No, that wasn't it. I'll quote what caught my eye: { Read more }

For centuries, writers have experimented with forms that evoke the imperfection of thought, the inconstancy of human affairs, and the chastening passage of time. But as blogging evolves as a literary form, it is generating a new and quintessentially postmodern idiom that’s enabling writers to express themselves in ways that have never been seen or understood before. Its truths are provisional, and its ethos collective and messy. Yet the interaction it enables between writer and reader is unprecedented, visceral, and sometimes brutal. And make no mistake: it heralds a golden era for journalism.

— Andrew Sullivan

When I read Andrew Sullivan's article, 'Why I Blog', I was interested to find out why he blogs. While his well written explanation of a ship's log holds true, I don't know that one would feel as if one was 'going backwards in time' when reading it. If you read a log from front to back, you progress through time and move forward. Unless, of course, you read from the back of the book. Maybe he knows something I don't. The world is full of things I don't know. But I have read logs, and they always seem to move forward.

A weblog, however, does go backward because of the way it is presented. The first page of the log is constantly shifting to be the last page written. If you try this with physical writing you'll find that there is a mechanical problem when writing in a log book: You can't add pages at the front. { Read more }