flemmings | (no subject)

People are talking as if WriteRoom was the second coming of the Messiah. It fills up the screen! It removes your desktop! You can't click on your email or Firefox icons! No distractions!

My Word 2003 fills up the screen automatically, which annoys me because it makes the screen too big. So I stick the Find menu on the side to narrow my writing space. (Equally, I hate writing spaces that /don't/ take up the full screen cause the icons do indeed distract my eyes. Can't believe most people operate that way. Do they?) But when I get stuck or lose interest-- which is always-- I minimize the Word screen and go play Addiction Solitaire for hours instead. Unless I'm missing something, can't people minimize WriteRoom as well?

Possibly the option to get back the old WP green on black format (or white on blue in my case) might help productivity, but I remember the sense of freedom I found back in '99 when I first went to a black on white format. It looks like a real ms, glory be! Truly, those of us who started on typewriters think black on white is normal. Yes, that statement dates me, but then I'm dated by definition.

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I bruised my fingers pounding out my first "novel" on the ancient typewriter the mother had. And there was always a bottle of white-out handy. :p

I find anything that fills my 17" screen to be too big. I have the resolution turned up so it doesn't go wonky when I remote desktop to my 19" screen at work, but otherwise, I'd probably turn it back down to 1024 x 768 and STILL pull the corners of things in so that the windows themselves were only 800 x 600.

I'm not convinced about this "blot out your background" as the be all and end all of focusing. I get more distracted if my windows are too big. :p

à chacun son goût.

Ahh white-out. Saviour of so many uni essays-- at least until Corrasable Bond came along. Ahhh Corrasable Bond.

1024 x 768 is the highest I can go and not have fonts be thin and bitsy and unreadable; alas, on this monitor anything below is too raggedy edged. 800x600 is an ideal size for most things; why do people need 1440 x 900? I know-- for all those lovely graphics they want to look at. Nobody *reads* anymore, she mourns.

Mind, blotting out the background would help when you just want to resize; and WriteRoom narrows your text so it probably is 800 pixels wide. Alas, only for Macs. Where, for all I know, fonts don't go MS thin and pixellated.

Ahaha I remember the second (possibly 3-rd or 4th hand) type writer I boutght for 5 pounds in Huddersfield Market Hall!

It was not fun but much love and very satisfying. I can't remember the make or the details of it now but oh so much love for it! If I have it still no doubt I would use it with much glee. Sadly with so many moves since then and an attic fire in the m-i-l house many things have been lost. But we move on ... ^__^

I still type black on white.

A random note ... I had to fork out S$600 for a pair of Varilux lenses (http://consumers.variluxusa.com/) and it really hurt to hand over that money but ... but now I can read teeny tiny print!!! Whee! Birthday present to myself. I'd been holding off for about a year and a half ... but they have actually come down in price. Since they came out. I knew someone who forked out 1K roughly!!! EEP! But glasses .. or more specifically lenses here cost a lot. Frames ever designer/branded ones are pretty affordable. Sorry random is random I know.

^__^

At least those lenses might last you a while. I have to use disposible ones at $20 a pop (+- $19 US) that are meant to last a month max; and sometimes they do and sometimes don't. So yeah, best case scenario I spend $480 a year on my bifocal made-for-dry-eyes old lady lenses.

Bifocal *glasses* OTOH set you back $650 US and are useless. Never again.

Yes I'm hoping at least two years if I can stretch it to last more ... ^_^

I would have have gone the really cheapo way my (older) sis swears by. Those off the rack reading glasses, if you're lucky to find those that suit in Daiso for $2 or in the opticians for upt $10. BUT according to tests I cannot because my left and right eyes differ too much to be able to see through those! At least I can now return my mother's magnifying glass to her!

Hmmm bifocals are between 200 to 400 Sing. dollars here. Not too bad I guess then seeing US prices.

I still use reading glasses with my lenses for manga and small print. There's rarely bright enough light for tiny furigana. Or just take my lenses out and read happily without them. The only joy of presbyopia.

I remember learning to type at school, as part of an afternoon "learn to type" activity.

Ah, nothing makes me more appreciative of current Word packages on computers than remembering the days of white-out, carriage return, counting columns . . .

They taught you in an afternoon? Or, it was a regular afternoon activity?

Wish they'd taught *me* young instead of at age 22, though it would still have been like when they tried teaching me to dance. Didn't take: I have a seeming disconnect between my brain and my body that is currently giving me grief over physiotherapy. 'But just what is it you want me to *do*?'

It was an optional afternoon activity. As I remember it, the school week (boarding school) was all day Monday and Tuesday, Wednesday morning, all day Thursday and Friday, Saturday morning. There were various activities available most afternoons (there was a two-hour break after lunch before afternoon lessons), and you were expected to sign up for something. Including at least one sports thing per week, much to my dislike.

I remember that at that point (I must have been 16 or so) I really wanted to sign up for drama classes. Or for doing printing. My mother advised me to do a course in basic typing on the grounds that it would be useful. While I was a bit less than enthusiastic at the time, in retrospect I'm glad I did it and learned it then.

I am WITH YOU on the whole typewriter front. I had a lovely portable, manual typewriter I would hault into the bush camps with me to write over my summers.

Words still don't seem real to me unless they're pinned down on paper.

I may check this little application out, however, just for the novelty.