Lessons that go pop...

Call this an extreme delayed reaction. I was walking out of my house a few days ago, thinking about one of my works-in-progress, and, suddenly, part of Uncle Jim's VP lecture Made Sense to me. (Please note the Capitalization of Significance. It gives you a +2 to your Pretentiousness Check.) Of course, the proof of this will be in the writing. (There's also the whole issue of understanding the lesson and applying it. I mean, I thought I understood it at the time. Nope. The whole metaphor with the boundaries of the model house makes much more sense to me now in terms of how one actually applies it to writing fiction.)

Along those lines, am I the only person who horribly overwrites his first draft? I just cut 1000 words (out of 8500) while adding text. Apparently, what I learned from VP was how to cut ~10% of text from my first draft while adding telling details which build the world, advance plot and develop characterization. I didn't used to be able to do this. But I've been doing this pretty regularly since late last year. The funny thing is that I don't remember learning how to do this.

Oh, one more thing about writing process, my Newton actually works surprisingly well as electronic notebook. I jotted down a few paragraphs of a WIP on it. I realized how a story should start. I was nowhere near my computer, but I had my Newton with me. It all pretty much worked as I hoped it would work (including the bit where I transfer the text to my computer). However, having now done some web browsing with it, I can say that 10 year old technology deals with modern web sites really slowly. So using it as a general laptop replacement might be a tad optimistic.

Besides, aside from web browsing, I use my laptop for two programs: GIB (which plays Bridge) and Wenlin (which I use as a Chinese-English dictionary). This, unfortunately, keeps me tied to, at least, x86 and almost certainly M$. (Wenlin supposedly partially works under WINE. Wenlinux has been under development since 2002. There is also a Mac (PowerPC) version. There is an x86 Linux version of GIB. GIB is no longer under development, AFAIK.) So anything which truly replaces my current laptop either needs to be x86 based (or fast enough to emulate an x86). I'd also like for it to fit in my pocket. It's supposed to be my electronic notebook. So, ideally, it goes where my moleskine currently goes, in my pant pocket. (Note: Newton doesn't fit there, obviously.)

The interesting thing is that, thanks to M$, we're starting to see computers in the Newton (or sub-Newton) form factor again. The UMPC is essentially the latest incarnation of Newton as designed by M$ and its partners. (So, sadly, it runs XP or Vista rather than something more suited to the form factor.) Of particular interest to me is that we're starting to see pocket computers again (as opposed to PDAs). The flavor of the moment is the OQO Model 02. (It's about the same area as a pocket-size moleskine notebook but twice as thick.)

Now, for me, I can't replace its OS with Linux because I need to use it as a tablet. Its thumb-board based input is biased against left-handers. (That's ok. I'm biased against thumb-boards.) Linux doesn't do very well in the tablet arena. Also, it's supposed to be my electronic notebook (which also runs GIB and Wenlin) and I don't know of a viable handwriting recognizer for Linux. Also, I'd like a Chinese handwriting recognizer. So I'm stuck with XP or Vista. My experience with English handwriting recognition in XP has been lackluster. Certainly, I couldn't compose text with the XP recognizer like I have with the Newton one. (In Chinese, it's actually been not bad. It's not without its moments of frustration, but it's usable. Or maybe I'm just happy when it misrecognizes my mistakes and comes up with the characters I meant to write rather than the characters I wrote.)

AFAIK, there are two after-market recognizers for XP and Vista: PenOffice and ritePen. Both claim to be the progeny of the Newton recognizer. I tried both of them. PenOffice, I couldn't get to work right. It refused to adjust for screen orientation which makes it a non-starter right there. When I used it in its preferred screen orientation, it wasn't all that accurate and I found it hard to use. (It sounds terrific in theory though. Maybe my XP Tablet install is messed up. I can't imagine they'd ship a handwriting recognizer that works in only one screen orientation.)

ritePen, OTOH, recognizes really well. It claims to run both its and M$ recognizer in parallel and picks the most likely result. However, when it's wrong, it can be really wrong. Worse, correcting recognition errors is like playing a video game. Whenever it recognizes something, a box fades into view with its main choice and a set of alternatives. If you don't tap the box before it fades back out again, you've missed your chance to pick an alternate recognition. (There is a gesture you can draw to bring it back up again, but it only brings up the most recent one. This is invariably not the one I wanted.) This recognizer might be more accurate than the Newton one, but correcting its errors is more exasperating. Vista is supposed to have better correction facilities. So a combination of the ritePen recognizer and Vista's correction facilities might be workable.

Anyways, as a test, I wrote a few more paragraphs of the same WIP that I wrote on the Newton on my tablet using ritePen. The process is definitely workable. I could compose text far more fluently and accurately than I could with the XP recognizer. (Correcting errors was annoying, but I did start getting the hang of playing "tap the box before it goes away.")

I think the OQO model 02 could actually work for me as an electronic notebook which fully replaces my laptop. (Keep in mind that this is possible because, apparently, I don't ask my laptops to do very much.) Of course, it also costs just under $2000. It has a fan which makes a high pitched whine whenever the processor gets stressed. It's not yet shipping in quantity, and I'm not in the market for a laptop. I only ask my current one to do two things and it does them fine. The only reason to replace it is to do the electronic notebook in my pocket thing. (The Newton fits fine in my jacket pocket, so the only times when I can't use it to jot something down is when I'm without my jacket. i.e., the summer.)

Since it's been three years since my last laptop, I'm supposed to be shopping for a new one. But I think I've just decided that my next laptop should be about the size of my moleskine. So I'd like to see if there will be more competition in this form factor first. Most of the current entries target the Newton form factor (but with more screen area). I don't find them that appealing because, while they can actually replace my laptop, they won't be any more convenient than my Newton. (Actually, they may be less since the Newton still does a better job at the primary function: electronic notebook.) It's interesting that every 10 years or so, the "VHS tape" size form factor pops up again. Does anyone remember the Atari Portfolio? (Or ~10 years before that, the Radio Shack PC-1? Ok, this wasn't VHS tape sized. One of it's successors, the PC-3 was even actually pocket sized. They all had a one line displays though.)

Also, historically, it takes M$ three tries to get to something adequate. Now, Vista has taken so long to come out that this may actually be its third try. But I'd rather wait to find out. Maybe, in the meantime, a solution I can get more excited about will pop up. e.g., a better OS, a computer where the premium for the form factor isn't quite that high. Actually, it's much more likely that said solution will show up after I've committed to an existing one. *sigh*

So I end exactly where I started. There's probably a lesson there too, but that one hasn't popped yet.

(On the plus side, I got ~600 words of a promising short story out of this experiment. Yeah, it's probably only really 500 words. :-))