May 2006 Archives

Well, I've decided to give Dvorak a go, just for the hell of it. I downloaded Master Key, a shareware typing tutor with Dvorak exercises, and so far I have completed the home row exercises. My plan is to get through the alphabet and punctuation as quickly as possible so that I can go "cold turkey" on the laptop at least, even if I have to stick to Qwerty at work until I'm more proficient at Dvorak.

Of course I'm writing this blog in Qwerty - I'm running on the remains of my second iBook battery, so I don't want to waste time!

I just found a link to a very useful webpage (www.apecode.com/appletrack/) where you can track Apple shipments all the way from China. According to the system, my MacBook is now booked onto a flight from Shanghai, dated 27/05/06 - though it's not clear if that's when the flight is scheduled to leave or that's just when the booking was placed, what with China being ahead of us by several hours.

To my delight, I just found out that my MacBook is now on its way. The bad news is that, according to reports on the web, new MacBooks are shipping direct from the factory - in China! Delivery date is estimated at 6th June; I shall try to curb my impatience...

Following my Dvorak investigation yesterday, I loaded a file onto my Palm which would allow me to change the layout of my BT keyboard to Dvorak. I don't know if it was this file, or a BT bug reported on other OS5 units, but this morning my LifeDrive went into an infinite reboot loop, and the only way out was to hard reset it :(

As a result I have lost what little I wrote on the Palm this week - mainly some character mini-biographies - so now I'm having to rewrite them from memory. Anyone would think that the universe is trying to prevent me from getting this novel written!

Well, I finally got around to uploading my website to my new account! I had hoped to wait until it was finished, but the demise of my iBook made it more urgent to get my blog set up where I could get to it more reliably. So, at the moment there are some blank pages and the design is a bit spartan, but at least I haven't lost all my hard work!

Whilst browsing Holly Lisle's site the other day, I came across her posts about switching to Dvorak for the sake of her RSI. Since I also get some problems after heavy use of my laptop, I'm thinking of doing the same. It's very easy to switch layouts on both OSX and my Linux box at work, and there are typing tutors for both platforms (KDE has a free typing tutor and you can very easily write your own exercises for it). The main problem I forsee is that I don't have much time to make the transition; unlike a student, I don't have several weeks' summer holiday when I can go "cold turkey" and abandon QWERTY altogether. Also, at the moment I am of course dependent on my Palm for a good deal of my computing, and there doesn't seem to be a way to change the layout of the onscreen keyboard.

Having slept on it, I've decided on a compromise - I've ordered a MacBook direct from Apple at the ordinary education discount rate - not as good a deal as the HE discount, but it will ship a lot sooner and I can track it online, whereas if ordered through work I would have no idea when to expect it. The initial acknowledgement says 3-5 days to dispatch and 3-9 days to delivery - much better than the 6+ weeks option!

Continue reading "Replacement ordered" »

I took my iBook in to Cancom this morning, and the cost of fixing the internal charger will be about 160 quid. Worse still, there may be additional, possibly invisible, damage to the motherboard, etc. Now I have to decide whether to spend a lot of money trying to fix it, or write it off and get a replacement (hopefully on our home insurance).

Continue reading "Write-off?" »

Yesterday evening I found out that my iBook did not escape the bookshelf collapse unscathed after all :(

Continue reading "A nasty discovery" »

As I'm about to settle down to a serious bout of writing - and because I am trying to follow the advice in "Way of the Cheetah" - I thought I'd better sort out some dedicated space to work in. Also, my bookshelf fell off the wall a couple of mornings ago(!), so I needed a new home for all my writing books - and a proper backup plan, since my iBook was nearly a victim of the collapse :(

Continue reading "Writing space" »

I've just bought an ebook called "The Way of the Cheetah", by Lynn Viehl. It's a book of productivity tips for writers which I hope will help get me off to a flying start with my re-draft. My plan is to do some final preparation work this weekend, and start on the narrative by Monday at the latest!

I'm making a serious effort to finish the novel I'm reading at the moment so that I can concentrate on writing. It's a good book - the final part of the Rai-Kirah Trilogy, by Carol Berg - but I find it distracting to be reading one story whilst writing another.

Continue reading "Reading vs Writing" »

Having decided to get back to writing seriously, I tried to open my old CopyWrite files, but they aren't being recognised! I don't know if this is because I moved them, or if it's an upgrade issue; fortunately each file is basically text wrapped in a bit of proprietary formatting, so I can get back the actual content if I need it.

In the meantime, I'm trying out SuperNotecard, which one of my fellow CWILers alerted me to...

Continue reading "New software - SuperNotecard" »

Two months ago I said in my blog I was feeling inspired but was going to put the previous draft aside and try a completely new plot. Unfortunately inspiration was so badly lacking that I haven't written anything since :(

However, some more "percolation" time seems to have been beneficial, so on with the show!

Continue reading "Let's try again, shall we?" »

After much trawling of the web, and especially reading through relevant threads on webhostingtalk.com, I've settled on United Hosting as the new home for my site. They cost a bit more than my previous host but offer extra facilities such as SSH access, so I think it will be worth it. It's also a good opportunity to give the site a serious overhaul; after eight months online, I have a better idea of what works and what doesn't!

Continue reading "Hosting" »