Seems like all I write about lately is moving. Well, if you had been moving all month that's what would be on your blog too. Headed into the last weekend, I feel confident that we are in good position and all the furniture movers will have to deal with is the furniture. My major concern is the cleaning. Judging from the other units I've seen, our place will be fully gutted and redone to convert it to a condo. Still, I would not put it past the new property owners to give us crap over a few holes and stains in things they're going to replace.
One good thing about moving is that I can reconfigure my den setup. For example, my wife is tired of having our DVD player connected to our "big" stereo, so I'm moving it to the den. Only problem is my Tablet PC doesn't have an audio output other than the headphone jack. Fortunately, Creative Labs makes a USB audio card and I just bought a refurb from them on eBay for less than half price after shipping and sales tax. Better sounds, one less thing to plug in because I use a USB hub. Good deal.
As I sort through the mountain of crap I need to move to my new apartment, I run across old files and records and decide if they are worth keeping. As I do this, my mind runs through a vision of a nearly paperless future, one that replaces fifty pounds of paper with a single optical disk. No more wirebound journals. No sketchpads. No loose pages in varying states of wear. Just a short stack of discs with digital copies of everything I will ever write or draw with redundant backups so I will never worry about losing data again. Paperless future, here I come.
TabPCMan has reported on the Buzz forum that TabletPCBlogs.com is close to implementing true ink blogs, i.e. blogs you can write directly using the pen, instead of doing image and text conversions like I do. Based on the fact that my pseudo-ink blog already has gotten at least one person interested in the Tablet form, I think this would be a great popularity booster for the TPC. I look forward to reading details.
I moved a lot of stuff to my new apartment this weekend, including our 20 inch TV and Tanya's first gen iMac with 15 inch screen. Guess which one was heavier. I can't wait to lug up my 17" CRT monitor. After nearly a year of carrying my 3 lbs slate, I'd forgotten how heavy computers can be and how remarkably light mine really is.
In another example of how my life runs along odd lines of coincidence, I have learned that Warner Crocker, who has been following my progress on his blog (Life on the Wicked Stage) works at Wayside Theatre in Middletown, VA. I work at Wayside Manor outside Middleburg, VA. Cool, huh?
After a week of experimenting, my handwritten blog now has an official look and name. The stark black and white color scheme is inspired by the look of graphite and ink on paper, as well as the look of its namesake, my "Scribbler"'. My TPC is solid black with white print, plus red and white Autobot decals. Hence, my largely grayscale "scribble" blog.
Again, if the wifi is on and connected to a server or turned off, iTunes works fine. Plays for hours without a glitch, playing online radio, MP3s, or Apple Lossless format (my choice since I play through external stereo systems). If I turn off wifi when the bug occurs, then stop and restart the audio, it plays fine once again. I use 4.7 because. the more recent versions do not work with my CD burner. Clearly though, there is a connection between the iTunes glitch and the unconnected wifi.
I've discovered an interesting bug involving iTunes and wifi. I use iTunes for playing music and podcasts at home and in the car. Even though I use a lighter adapter for power in the car, I usually turn off my wifi since it goes unused... or so I thought. Today and a day last week, I forgot to turn it off and after about fifty minutes, iTunes started to skip like a bad CD player. If I stop the song or podcast and restart, it plays fine for exactly one minute, then starts glitching. Yet if my wifi is connected to a hotspot, iTunes plays fine for hours. It is as if iTunes is looking for a server.
Now that my blog is off and running I think now would be a good opportunity to promote my "Tablets for Tabletops" concept. Basically, I have found the Tablet PC to be an amazing tool for playing tabletop role-playing games and I want to set up a resource to promote the practice. Using my TPC, I have access to a library of eBooks (with no added weight), an endless supply of note and sketch paper, customizable electronic dice (I can roll twenty D10's and tally the results in an instant), and any other resource I might need. As time permits, I will add a section to my game site - Haven of Angry Dreams - to share material I use in gaming and post entries about my experiences here.
Okay, still using the same Journal template, square white page, but I thought I'd try jazzing up the posted image. Just added a fuzzy border to a plain white square using a filter in The GIMP. Then I cut out the outer edge leaving the fuzzy part. Played with the brightness a little and wound up with a simple border to frame my uploaded image entries. I use it as an underlay in Corel Grafigo and paste the ink on top of it. the image dimensions are 550 x 550 and I have a plain white image saved so I can try out other designs and use them as desired.
When first asked about the possibility that someone in the White House had leaked a CIA agent's identity, President Bush claimed anyone involved would be dealt with appropriately. Apparently that means doing nothing unless that person is convicted of a crime - http://tinyurl.com/8wj6r Pathetic, but not surprising. Right now, I just want a President who will act as a check against the power of Congress (perhaps veto a bad bill every now and then) and read his daily intelligence briefings. My standards are ridiculously low, yet they aren't being met. Now, I learn W won't deal with inappropriate behavior from his staffer[s] unless they are on their way to prison and therefore unable to show up for work. How low is that?
I know mine is not the first handwritten blog created. However, the majority of others I have seen post photos of the things users write on. Usually paper journals, but other things too. I have seen another blog with a handwritten entry (http://polylithic.net/blog/), but it only has one handwritten entry (out of two total) with only part of the entry posted in ink. While I have not done an extensive search through every blog on the web, it is possible mine is the first to feature full ink and text. If not, please let me know where I can find another.
Well, Tanya and I are in the process of moving to a new apartment. It's more of a lateral move than a step up, but I'm pretty happy with it. That said, the move itself is wearing me down. We are moving in gradually over the course of this month. This month, unfortunately, happens to be July and the heat and humidity have been incredible. I don't even want to go outside, much less carry boxes and bags up and down stuffy staircases to and from the car. Still, it must be done and I must suck it up and pick up the pace this week. Doesn't mean I can't complain though.
Warner Crocker, the first person to comment on my handwritten blog, has blogged about my post on the Tablet PC Buzz in which I reference my blog. So in a circular move I want to post a link to that blog entry. Only issue is that the URL is very long and would be a real pain to write and convert to text. What to do? Paste the link as text and break the unwritten rule of ink only? I think not. Instead I have opted to shrink the URL using tinyurl and its Firefox plug-in. Great tool for posting long URL's on forums too. Oh, here's the link: http://tinyurl.com/awnqy
For those who don't know but would like to, my name is Mark Sumimoto. I am a tech enthusiast and fanatic supporter of the Tablet PC. The tablet PC is, as I have stated in the past, the computer I never knew I always wanted. I believe it will ultimately usher in a new era of mobile computing. Even after months of owning one and testing its capabilities, I still feel it has more to offer that I have yet to imagine. Certainly, this handwritten biog falls into that category. Okay, perhaps this entry really was not about me, but that's okay. More will be shared over time.
One downside, if you can call it that, of owning a Tablet PC is that I really don't mind standing in line. The longer the line, the more time I have for computing. So, when I'm in line at Starbucks, waiting for our turn to buy the new Harry Potter book (see previous post), I really don't care that it's been thirty minutes since I got in line. Either I wait here or wait out there, makes no difference to me. Tanya, however, came to get me at the thirty minute mark. She got tired of waiting for me before I got tired of waiting.
So, my wife felt the desire to be on the scene of the release of the new Harry Potter book. We are at the Barnes and Noble in Reston and it is packed. It is currently around 11:30, thirty minutes to sell time. Just about right for someone who hates crowds - like me. I don't even read the books, but I figured I would hang out, use the T-Mobile wifi at Starbucks, and surf the web. Really nice to be able to do that while standing up because there is no place to sit in here and it is ultra humid outside.
Part 1: Tools. Obviously, the key tool required to create the blog is my Tablet PC. I own an Electrovaya SC-500. It's a first generation slate, so it's not the hottest device out there. It does, however, have one of the most powerful batteries, providing a full day of use on one charge. In addition, a comfortable pen is useful. I rely on a Wacom eraser pen as my primary. It's a full-size pen while the stock stylus is short. Plus, the eraser end works just like a pencil eraser but cleaner.
Part 1: Tools continued. The software I use consists of Journal, Corel Grafigo and Firefox. Journal is included with Windows XP Tablet PC Edition. Firefox is free, but any web browser will do. Corel Grafigo was available for download before version 2.0 was released. Now it costs $99, which is well worth it for such a powerful app. However, for the blog, it is only needed to export ink to GIF image format. As long as I can turn ink to GIF, then I'm all set.
Part 2: Setup. First thing to do is set up a Blogger account as usual. Nothing special there. Second, I needed a square page template for Journal. Square maximizes the size of the Blogger image - max dimensions are 400 x 400. I used a 400 x 400 plain white TIF, imported into Journal, then saved as a template and viewed at page width when writing. Doesn't seem to stay at 400 x 400 when I convert. Gets larger for some reason, but it's still close enough. Plain white minimizes the file size of my locally saved Journal entries.
Step 3: Writing Entries: Okay, now we get to the actual writing. Using the previously created template, all entries are written in Windows Journal. It is the most basic note-taking app, but powerful enough for this operation. It's important to limit entries to one page each, even though Journal offers nigh-limitless pages. It just keeps the blog neatly segmented and orderly. If desired, I could upload a ton of images for each entry, but that gets cumbersome. Besides. keeping one's thoughts focused is a lost art in this age of endless cyberspace; I prefer to keep my ramblings concise.
Step 4: Creating the Image. Once the entry is written, I "Select All" and "Copy" to gather up all the ink. Then I paste it into Corel Grafigo. Takes a good number of seconds to paste but it requires no special steps on my part. Once pasted I export to GIF format, which maintains crisp text and tight file size. For some reason, the export is slightly larger than my original template size, but Blogger crunches it back down. I might investigate this further, but it is of little consequence.
Step 5: Saving the Text. the key problem with [a] handwritten biog is the lack of searchable text and titles. Not that anyone is going to be subscribing to this blog, but if someone did, it would be a real pain to not have entry titles. Fortunately, Journal allows me to copy the ink as text. Since I already selected the ink when copying to Grafigo I just select "Copy as Text" and clean up the conversion. Again, single page entries are helpful so I don't have too much to clean up. Once cleaned, I paste to a text box in the Journal entry, so I have it saved with the ink.
Step 6: Publishing. With image and text ready, I can now post to my blog, now or later, whenever I have access and time. Just log in to Blogger, start a new post, upload the image, paste the text and title, and just that easily, my handwritten blog entry is published. the process breaks out into many steps, but it is very simple once a routine is set. Now, let's see if I can post some handwritten entries about things other than how I post handwritten entries.
Okay, since no one is going to see my entry template, I decided to scrap it and go with a completely blank square page. The file size savings is tremendous, so it is well worth the minor sacrifice of looking at a plain white background. Seems a little trickier to write in straight lines for some reason, even though the other template was also line free. Odd phenomenon.
Since uploaded images peak at 400x400, I need a template to keep me within those limits. You won't see the template because I only post the ink from the entry. However, it looks something like this (see image) except in gray. I thought about including lines to help me write straight, but I figured I'd try freehand and see how that works out.
Well, why not? I have a Tablet PC so I can hand write entries anywhere. Blogger just added the option to upload images (which I could do with Hello, but it only works for JPG's). And this is something I wanted to do for my Japan vacation blog, but couldn't really get done due to. connection issues and time restraints. Well, now I have the time to do this and do it right. It's an organic process so expect gradual growth and more info about the concept.
This is a "proof of concept" post to test the prospect of creating a blog featuring handwritten entries created on my Tablet PC. Creation process will be posted once I finish testing.
Seems like all I write about lately is moving. Well, if you had been moving all month that's what would be on your blog too. Headed into the last weekend, I feel confident that we are in good position and all the furniture movers will have to deal with is the furniture. My major concern is the cleaning. Judging from the other units I've seen, our place will be fully gutted and redone to convert it to a condo. Still, I would not put it past the new property owners to give us crap over a few holes and stains in things they're going to replace.
