Category: blog

This Sunday is Super Sunday in Phoenix. The 49th Super Bowl will be kicking off at 4 p.m. at the University of Phoenix Stadium. Which is in Glendale, Arizona. There are about a dozen cities that make up the Greater Phoenix Metropolitan area. I think there are people who think there are differences. I would not be one of them. The only way to tell is occasionally you might see a “welcome to” sign.

This is a follow up to my distractions post. The Neo2 arrived today, and I’ve been testing it out. This post will be the first thing I’ve written on it. Keyboard The typing experience is good. The keys themselves are solid, and use a plastic spring mechanism. I like the feel. It’s somewhere between an old clicky-clack keyboard and the newer chiclet style found on MacBooks. It’s quiet and I’m not worried about the noise being a distraction in quiet places like a library.

Film isn’t cheap and won’t develop itself. That was the message I heard growing up. We had a family camera. First it was an old Exakta without an internal light meter. An example of an old Exakta, via Flickr. This was the camera-not-to-be-touched. It was so truly awkward to use, photo-hipsters would love it today. Because of the time needed to get a photo “right” and that we shot slide film1 exclusively, I wasn’t allowed to touch the camera as a child.

Tell us a story about little known fact about yourself. § A little known fact about me is: my father built spaceships. Building spaceships takes a lot more than what’s shown in the movies and news. Today media focuses on the strong personalities that drive a space program. This is new. In the recent past, before the NASA resurgence we’re seeing today. Before the ISS, even. Before the private investment in spaceflight we have.

It’s time for my weekly word count check-in. At the end of every week, I post a screen shot from my writing results spreadsheet. This shows the current week and the three before. This week was remarkable close to last week. I had two days this week that were completely wrecked for writing. Working on a longer landing page project on Sunday night saved the week’s productivity. My week starts on Monday, the numbers are current through Sunday night.

Just for laughs I just bought a used Alphasmart NEO2 “keyboard computer” from eBay. I’m not entirely sure why. I think it might be a “I can do better for cheaper” response to the Hemingwrite. I had been following the Hemingwrite Kickstarter since it launched. I was mildly interested, but the overall workflow seemed contrived. I didn’t become a backer, and mentally “saved” myself about $400. The most important difference between the $45 Alphasmart and the $400 Hemingwrite is: the Alphasmart will be delivered next week.

sed is a useful command-line program with a horrible syntax. It is a stream editor. This means it operates on text flowing through it. Words are poured into one end, sed does its thing and the edited text spills out the other. It’s most useful inside shell scripts when text needs to be changed, but there’s no file to open. The stream of text can be from the output of other programs.

I first bumped shoulders with James Stark in a dark alley called Aloha From Hell. Richard Kadrey’s third book in the Sandman Slim series. I faithfully followed the series through the next three books. Watching Stark adapt to life outside of Hell has been a roller coaster ride through Los Angeles. But what was Stark like when he first came home? Reading the first book never quite made it to the top of my to-do list.

It was the one thing I owned with the most inertia attached. A 2001 Ford Ranger, with alloy wheels and dent in the bed. I haven’t been driving it as I prefer my motorcycle. The insurance was coming due tomorrow. I needed to either renew the insurance or tell the state it was parked. This gave me a deadline to decide. It’s been shambling along for a while now. I bought it with 101,000 miles and drove it for another 40,000 more in four years.

How are you removing distractions so you can write? § My first response was “focus.” If I am fully engaged in a task, a bomb could go off and I won’t notice. I think this is a universal concept. Books have been written about The Zone or getting into Flow. The fastest way for me to realize that I’ve been in a state of focus is the surprise when I’m knocked out of it.