Why Animals Don’t Need a Savior
No deep theological treatise here, just a case study courtesy of The Wuffington Wag:
I admit it – The Notebook is the New Desktop
Perhaps one day your children and your children’s children will whisper stories of me around late-night campfires, or under sheets on weekend slumber parties, flashlight held under the chin. “His screen was deeper than it was wide! His mouse was almost the size of his hand, and he dragged it ape-like across the surface of a desk! And his computer was a Lovecraftian horror he hid under that desk — a giant box with writhing, twisting tentacles flailing from the back, and so hungry it could only live plugged right into the wall!“
Like Robert Neville in the classic story, I may be the last of my kind — the last desktop/tower-using human in a world overrun by battery powered vampires.
I am legend.
*
OK, that was a slight exaggeration. My way of recanting the heresy of Towerism and embracing the one true Church of Mobility. In short, I’ve accepted the trend of the past several years, and declared my notebook PC to be my primary computer.
To be fair, some of you reading this may not have been born when I began using home computers. Back then, a “portable” computer was a 25-pound suitcase that still needed an AC receptacle to run itself and its built-in 5-inch monochrome screen. It cost several thousand dollars more than the several thousand dollar desktop models, and only the truly wealthy indulged in the luxury of a second built-in floppy drive.
It was then my prejudice was formed, that only desktop computers were adequate for a power user. That bias persisted through the “laptop” years and well into the “notebook” era. I assembled my own tower PC’s according to my own ever-changing specifications — a new video card here, a new audio card next month, a whole new motherboard in the spring — all the while sneering at the $2,500+ laptops with their feeble components, neutered for the sake of battery life. Don’t get me wrong, I bought and used laptops the whole time. But these were often flea-market remainders or the cheapest closeout models I could find. They were my glorified PDA’s, or network terminals connected to my real computer while I watched TV in the living room. Some of them could run WordPerfect or even OS/2, but I would never think of doing serious work with my cyber-environment’s cyber-stepchildren!
Years later, the computer marketplace changed while I didn’t. Today’s notebooks, like the one I’m using now, are priced only slightly higher than equivalent desktops. Their screens, keyboards and built-in components are competitive with most desktop equipment, and more than adequate to handle things unimagined in portables a decade ago.
When I left the Information Technology field (two years ago this August 1, in fact), I retired, donated and gave away some of my excess equipment. As part of my pending relocation to a new house, I’ve been looking for ways to reduce the excess even more, and the answer is clear. This HP notebook, built to handle the specifications of the elephantine behemoth Vista, has more than enough power to run my bantamweight Slackware Linux environment, and I no longer need to be tethered to a tower to do real work. The tower has replaced several of my old home entertainment center components as a rudimentary media center PC, and can still act as a file and backup server. From now on, I’m mobile!
Housing Developments
or “Trumbo: First House Part II”
or “Hey! Didn’t I used to have a blog somewhere?”
I’m back with a story that’s strange but true. The deal on the house we thought we bought last month fell through in the strangest way. No one knew it at the time, but through some bizarre oversight that house was scheduled to go up for auction at the same time it was offered for general sale to the public. The bank counter-offered to us with terms we could accept, but in fact the house was sold at auction that very weekend.
So it was back to house searching for us. Not to worry — two weeks later we found a nice fixer-upper in a more central location. Not only is this house cheaper, but it’s a shorter commute for my wife.
Any money we’ve saved in the purchase price will go into making some light repairs and completing some renovations rudely interrupted by foreclosure. All things considered, it’s a great deal for a neighborhood we had given up hope in ever finding a home in our price range.
The adventure continues.
We bought a house!
At last I can reveal the Project that has kept me offline and preoccupied for so many weeks.
My wife and I have just accepted a seller’s counter offer on a home purchase. We expect to take possession of our new house before the last week in July.
I sound pretty calm for someone about to sign away our inheritances, savings and tax refunds.
Review: the 3M Renaissance Ergonomic Mouse
My right wrist and index finger have been demanding I find an alternative to the traditional computer mouse. I considered and dismissed the more common options (trackballs, touchpads) before settling on an unusual design from 3M, the Renaissance Ergonomic Mouse. After three weeks of steady use, my finger and wrist fatigue is gone.
How does it work?
Like the Matrix, no one can tell you what the Renaissance Mouse is, you have to see it for yourself:
(Images courtesy of 3M’s web page)
At first, it looks like a device that would have been more at home connected to a 1980’s home computer or gaming console. Don’t be fooled by the joystick-like appearance — the Renaissance is a true optical mouse, as shown in the third picture. Like a joystick, one grasps a handle rather than twisting the wrist into a flat position on a surface. Unlike a joystick, the handle is solid-molded to the base, and one moves the entire mouse around a desk surface (second picture.)
I ordered a Large model (a Small/Medium is available) and a USB connection with a PS/2 adapter (a wireless version is available at a higher price.)
The Renaissance uses two buttons to provide a standard complement of three — the standard left and right mouse buttons are one button, mounted for thumb use on top of the handle. Pressing down with the thumb on the left side of this button produces a left click, raising the thumb slightly to press the right side of the button produces a right click. The “scroll wheel” function is provided by another large button on the handle itself, for use by the middle fingers — press the button and drag the mouse for rapid scrolling. Note that while the mouse connects to PC’s or Macintoshes, the scroll wheel button is unsupported on the Mac.
That’s weird!
Yes it is, and it takes some adjustment before becoming proficient. The first thing I noticed in using the Renaissance Ergonomic Mouse was the need to use my whole arm from the shoulder, rather than just flicking my wrist for a quick motion. This is good mousing behavior in any case, but the 3M will enforce it by its very design.
What’s not to like, then?
Anything designed for broad muscle movements like this will naturally make fine resolution work more difficult, at least without more practice than I’ve had. If I were more involved in image editing, I might have found the Renaissance Mouse too much of an adjustment to make.
The thumb button feels flimsy, and sometimes it’s relatively difficult to generate a double left click with the thumb.
The Renaissance Mouse is currently only available in a right-handed design.
Conclusion
The 3M Renaissance Ergonomic Mouse has taken some getting used to, but less than I anticipated. It has relieved the strain I had been feeling from using a standard mouse, and for that alone I can recommend it to anyone who’s having difficulty now or thinks they might be getting there.
I’m back!
A thousand pardons for my shocking neglect of the blog these past few weeks. Something came up that has occupied my every spare moment, and will likely keep me busy through the summer. I hope I can go into detail later.
I have the 3M Ergonomic Mouse and I’ve been using it for nearly three weeks. I’ll post a proper review as soon as possible, but for now I’ll just say I’m generally happy with it. Stay tuned…
Chihuahua blown away by windstorm; found alive and well!
I just have to share this local story.
Even by our standards, southeast MIchigan has been having some wild spring weather for the past several days. Last Saturday. a young 5-pound pet Chihuahua was picked up and blown away by intense winds:
Waterford Township winds blow Chihuahua away
Don’t worry, this has a happy ending. Two days later, the 8-month-old pup was found alive and well, three-quarters of a mile away:
Wind-tossed chihuahua found safe; owners credit psychic
Feels good to read about something besides automaker bankruptcies and swine flu, doesn’t it?
Could this be my perfect keyboard?
Although I haven’t tried it yet, I may have found the closest thing to my perfect keyboard.
The Kinesis Freestyle has nearly every attribute I’ve been looking for. Not only the absence of right-mounted number and control keys, but the presence of two rows of five custom keys on the left, and not requiring custom drivers. I expect I could remap those in Linux to serve as my F1 through F10, and remap the top-mounted F1 and F2 to be F11 and F12!
I think I’ll be ordering this soon. Stay tuned for reviews of the Freestyle and the 3M Renaissance…
Of Mice and Men (and Women, and Children…)
I wrote previously about my difficulties with the computer mouse, and I’m pleased to report I’ve made some progress in relieving the strain on my wrist and index finger. I disabled the mouse wheel — the temptation to use it while scrolling was just too strong, and I believe it was the main source of my finger stress. In my main applications, I’ve disabled as many toolbars as reasonably possible, opting to use keyboard shortcuts instead.
Given an opportunity I would use the keyboard exclusively, but the design of most websites would make this impractical. Additionally, there are some applications where some kind of pointing device is necessary. As long as I must supplement the keyboard with a device capable of interacting with the graphical world, I want to be sure the device I’m using won’t damage or cripple me, while still providing all the speed and convenience of a mouse.
I’ve used the three mainstream mouse alternatives — the trackball, the touchpad and the TouchPoint “eraser-head” — and find none of them an adequate replacement. Either they lack speed, sufficient fine control or they become too difficult to scroll while holding down a button. Sometimes for the sake of convenience I’ll use these if they’re already embedded in my laptops, such as the touchpad in my HP Pavillion or the TouchPoint in my Fujitsu Lifebook, but for anything elaborate I resort to an external mouse.
This past week, I discovered alternatives that make me wonder why these haven’t become more mainstream. There are two styles of traditional mice designed to operate vertically, as opposed to the forearm/wrist-twisting horizontal mouse:
– the Evoluent Vertical Ergonomic Mouse
– the 3M Renaissance Vertical Mouse
Right now, I’m leaning toward the 3M model — its joystick grip and thumb-accessible buttons interest me. I plan to order one and I’ll post a review here soon.
Building the Perfect Keyboard
As a writer using a computer exclusively, nothing is as important to me as good keyboard design. A keyboard that’s physically comfortable and arranged logically can be the difference between a productive day and one filled with frustration every minute.
Nearly two years ago I replaced my old IBM Model M (the legendary “battle-axe”) with a Microsoft Wireless 6000 series keyboard and mouse combination. After a short adjustment period, I’ve come to favor some aspects of the new design, particularly the curved layout of the keys on a flat surface and the relatively short key travel similar to a notebook keyboard. Still, in many ways it’s far from my ideal.
During the past week, I’ve been researching available keyboards and came away disappointed by everything I’ve seen. I would find one model that met certain needs but failed in some other area, and some preferences of mine are rare or non-existent. So, I’d like to fantasize about my perfect keyboard, and perhaps someone can steer me to a model that won’t involve too many compromises.
Short and silent keys
After two years on the Microsoft keyboard, I brought out the Model M and tried it last week. The keys felt absurdly tall, loud and too far apart. Perhaps it doesn’t help that I do some work on modern notebook keyboards as well, where I’ve become accustomed to relative silence and ‘tap-able’ rather than ‘punchable’ keys. This is one of many aspects of keyboard design constrained by compatibility with obsolete technology — we are still making keyboards as though they were mechanical typewriters. I’ve come to favor the feel of short-travel keys and a quiet click.
Flat or backward y-axis tilt
Twenty-three years ago, I used spare particle board and doweling to build a custom keyboard tray for my little Commodore 64 home computer. It was remarkable for one thing — I built it to tilt the keyboard’s y-axis twenty degrees backward, to compensate for the Commodore’s ten degree forward angle. The forward tilt is another relic of manual typewriter design and an ergonomic catastrophe for the touch typist. Any keyboard of mine must have a flat surface or slight backwards y-axis tilt.
Left-handed function keys
The programmable function keys of a computer keyboard were a boon to software developers, especially when they were located originally along the left side of the keyboard. Not only were there ten or twelve custom keys available for menus or major functions, they could be combined with the computer’s Shift, Control and Alt keys to provide up to forty-eight combinations, all accessible with one hand.
Unfortunately, some MS-DOS programs began presenting a “cheat sheet” menu bar along the bottom of the screen, listing that program’s definitions for the function keys. This gave engineers the idea to move the function keys to a horizontal row above the main keyboard, to align them visually with the onscreen menus. Thus was born the single worst design change in computer keyboard history — isolating the function keys from both hands and removing them from easy access with the other modifier keys. I doubt that the WordPerfect word processor was the only application harmed by this decision.
For several years in general and the past week in particular, I’ve been unable to find even one keyboard on the market that corrects this epic disaster, and places the function keys where the laws of God and man demand they must be — paired with the modifier keys for one-handed access.
Left-handed keypad/cursor control
Although I’m right-handed in general, I’ve always favored my left hand for fast and detailed work such as 10-key operation. Years ago, I read an explanation for this — while women tend to have greater manual dexterity overall, men tend to have greater dexterity with their non-dominant hand and are better able to ‘multi-task’ with it. I haven’t found a current citation for this phenomenon, but it is certainly correct in my case. When I have to use the number keypad, I’ll shift my keyboard or my chair to be able to use my left hand for fast data entry, or resort to plugging in an external keypad intended for notebook use and placing it to the left of my keyboard.
“Left-handed” keyboards, with the cursor and number keypads mounted on the left side, are available as special-order items. I’ve considered some of them, but so far they all have other design problems that make them not worth the effort or expense.
Big modifier keys, in the proper places
I’ll start by stating the obvious: Caps Lock does not belong in the home row. It never did, it doesn’t now and it never will. In fact, it doesn’t belong anywhere in the main body of the keyboard, it has no more claim to prime keyboard space than SysRq, Scroll Lock or other arcane relics. I have remapped mine to its original definition as the left Control key, as essentially demanded by all software since the advent of the PC. But rather than require all computer users to correct a design blunder, one at a time, I hope that keyboard manufacturers will take the hint and fix this permanently.
There is a disturbing trend toward making the Control and Alt keys smaller, no doubt to make room for the addition of custom Windows and Menu keys. I don’t know why Windows obligates us to offer space for dedicated keys duplicating the function of existing key combinations, but I’ll choose my battles and won’t argue it here. It’s enough to say that I consider appropriately large Control and Alt keys a selling point in any keyboard I would choose, while small ones are a distinct turn-off.
Angle and curve
Keyboards split and slanted on the x-axis have been mainstream for years now. My current Microsoft keyboard doesn’t use this design, but it does have a slight curve in the main keyboard area. I think I could get used to a split keyboard, and if I could find one that satisfied most of my other requirements I would likely switch to it. There are a few completely sectional and hinge-adjustable keyboards available, but for the non-trivial cost involved I wouldn’t be willing to compromise on any of my design factors, especially the left-mounted function keys.
Dvorak vs. QWERTY
This is not really a physical design factor, given that computer keyboards are so easily re-mappable. I’ve been looking into the competing claims for the Dvorak and QWERTY keyboard layouts, and I can see where the Dvorak layout might have some advantages for long-term comfort if not greater performance. One thing would hold me back from switching to Dvorak — many of my applications have had their keyboard shortcuts designed to be convenient for the QWERTY layout, and not all of them allow those to be remapped.
Conclusion
My quest for an ideal keyboard continues. I have seen many close contenders, but so far the one layout attribute I want most — left-mounted function keys — seems to be unavailable anywhere. I’m open to suggestions…
The Best Writing Advice I’ve Ever Received (or given); Conclusion
7. Publishing is selling
I started by saying “writing is selling”, and with this we have come full circle.
Editors and agents must cast a critical eye on the manuscripts and queries they receive, but ultimately they are in the business of sales, not literary criticism. Once they’ve winnowed the submissions that are truly not ready for publication, they face tough decisions about the worthy work that remains. If they only have room to publish one more article, a budget to take on one more book or the capacity to take on one more client, their decision will be based on their best guess about which work will sell the most copy, for the most money and for the highest commission. And every time they are almost persuaded but have to pass in favor of another work, they risk a future being known as “That Guy” who turned down the next Stephen King.
From the other side of the aisle, it is here where I have the most sympathy for fiction writers. In my field, the salesmanship and risk of rejection are mostly up front — once I have sold myself, it is rare that my work will face anything more drastic than ordinary edits for space. But who hasn’t looked at the bestseller lists and thought, “By the lidless eye of Sauron! How did that literary puddle of cat sick get represented, sold and successful, while my polished and compelling manuscript collects new choruses in a litany of ‘not-for-us’ rejections?”
To writers of every kind, I can say only this: once you are sure your work is the best that it can be, it all comes down to finding the right market at the right time. Don’t be discouraged by rejection, even frequent rejection — it’s not about you, and often it’s not a rejection of your ability. Study the work of the inexplicably successful — learn why their writing finds an audience, apply that to your own work and leave the drivel behind.
Both writing and publishing are fiercely competitive fields, but in both opportunities can always be found, or made. There are no experts here, only those in varying stages of beginning.
The Best Writing Advice I’ve Ever Received (or given); Part 2
4. Be prepared
Many people have vocations they can leave at the “office”, but writing is not one of them. Writing is mind work and your mind is always with you, active in every waking moment and, for some, active even while we sleep. That random observation that can become part of a character or story, that stray idea that can shape the angle for a new article — such opportunities can strike at any moment. A writer knows to not rely on memory while dealing with other stresses and obligations. We document our ideas, that is exactly the essence of what writers do.
Fortunately, the tools of the trade are simple and unobtrusive. A paper notebook serves nearly as well as any computer for capturing a quick note. Today’s digital voice recorders are smaller than a cell phone, and easier to use while driving. Certainly, there will be circumstances where immediate access to these tools would be impossible or inappropriate, but likely less often that you may think.
5. Have more than one project at a time
If only we could be so lucky, always to have multiple commissioned projects heading toward submission, acceptance and pay! But even when our workload is light, it helps to keep us motivated and avoid burnout or “block” when we can turn to another writing goal for a little while.
Specifically, I’m referring to another writing project — not research, queries or any other obligations in life. For my part, deadlines and emergencies permitting, I’ll spend most of my day on a primary job, but set aside at least an hour to work on an unrelated assignment the rest of the day. Sometimes it won’t be an assignment for pay, maybe just a writing project of my own.
6. Never have just one of anything you need
This is related to ‘being prepared’, but important enough to warrant its own place in the list. What would happen if your paper notebook were lost or damaged? How long would you be ‘out of commission’ if your computer failed (even assuming you have current data backups?)
Years of dealing with Information Technology taught me the next step beyond backups — disaster recovery. That means having a spare for anything you would need to continue or finish the job. I would never show up for an interview with just one pen or one digital voice recorder, any more than a professional photographer would bring one camera to a wedding. For that matter, computers capable of handling basic writing needs are cheap enough that no writer should take their chances having only one.
To be continued…
