I was happy to type stuff, 4K at a time. I didn’t even mind that the Bluetooth sync connection was much slower than wired. I still miss it. Palm (and Handspring) devices has that brilliant design that makes data entry so convenient! This and brilliant Time Management tools meant I was extremely productive.
I still keep my last Handspring device. I dropped all my WinCE devices.
So, any Writer’s tool replacement suggestion, other than Chromebooks? I’m currently on Neil Gaiman’s Writer’s setup: Lamy 2K, Leuchtturm A5, and Pilot Iroshizuku.
Mod: Unsure whether I should’ve put this under Technical Development - Tool, but I still design IF using analog tools.
Hey, i used to do the same thing. I had a folding keyboard for mine tho (Targus i think).
However, i found i can now do almost the same thing using a folding BT keyboard for my mobile. That’s what i do now. When the weather’s good, i go out and make notes. Then i sync the mobile to a cloud, then sync it back to my PC. Also the reverse to keep it all up to date.
I had a Casio version toward the end of that era. They were the “THING” at the time.
I do still have a Tandy Model 100 in working condition. It was more functional though limited to a 40 character wide LCD screen. A lot of reporters used them for writing in the field. A set of four AA batteries would last a month.
Does that also work for plain files For example text files? I had a lot of trouble finding a way to sync files on mobile. There are various “notes” programs that sync notes, but not actual files.
I create a bunch of files for each game idea project. Also pictures. Also files with game source code. I’d like to be able to say “sync this directory to the cloud”. But mobiles tend not to do that, annoyingly.
I use a mix of analogue and digital to develop ideas, brainstorm, write chunks of design notes etc,
I usually have a dedicated nice journal (normally Rhodia paper) for writing in for each game in progress. And I’ll normally be writing in it with one of my fountain pens. Which yes would often mean a Lamy 2000 for me too! I find it really helpful creative wise to brainstorm on paper, write chunks of text re descriptions, likely interactions etc.
Alongside that I use the Ulysses writing app (for Mac and iOS) to type up more formally. I have an area in it set up for each interactive fiction game I’m developing. And then create separate pages/sheets for different scenes, locations. I can work on this on my desktop, laptop, iPad or iPod touch devices, syncing changes between them all.
Ultimately I transfer chunks of text to Inform 7 on my laptop. So that’s the ultimate goal. But if I’m out and about and wanting to work on a game I will always have a notepad and pen, and my iPod touch as a minimum (it’s like an iPhone without the phoning) for reference.
I would probably give Ulysses a shot if i used a mac. It looks good. Instead I use Obsidian for developing game ideas. I like the way it just presents markdown files and all the data is in those files, without any other magic formatting.
For sync purposes and backup, i want simple files.
Regarding Google drive; This doesn’t support syncing files to mobile. Obvious as it sounds, it doesn’t do it. For that matter nor does, Onedrive, dropbox etc. It seems that mobiles (android in my case) do not like people to use them for plain files. They want the file system to appear to not exist.
Anyhow, there are some apps to fix this. For Google, you can use
Autosync
For Onedrive, it’s OneSync (the same developer)
I’ve been using the free version, but I’ve been impressed and will probably upgrade.
I have been drooling over this thing, even though I rarely handwrite notes. But perhaps some expensive tech would encourage me over a pen and paper!
I love new notebooks and specific pens (give me 1.0mm wide nib-gel pen) but I enjoy them so much I find I don’t want to spoil beautiful blank pages by writing on them. Which is ludicrous.
I actually had a Handspring in the day before cell phones, and got really good at the hieroglyphic shorthand version of the alphabet you would write with the stylus to produce characters.
Not a problem. thanks for looking into this anyway. As it is, i do currently have a workable solution with files. You are right that most things have their own built-in sync, which is often not a generic solution.
I have yet to find an encrypted cloud sync solution. I currently have both icedrive and sync.com, but these wont sync files to mobile either.
So i wind up syncing my game ideas and images to onedrive via onesync. Although this tends to pollute onedrive’s idea of my picture galleries, mixing up pictures I’m making for games with those from my everyday camera. Quite annoying.
I saw that a while back. It looked really neat. Aside from being quite expensive, I’m totally against the idea of paying them a “connect plan” subscription just to sync with your own google drive. What are they thinking??
I’m looking into Onyx Boox, model Note and Nova (4096 color eink android tablet) for the price. The only thing stopping me, beside the price, is the fact that it is made in China and security factor is unknown(1) and you have to connect to your personal Google account.
Research showed that a lot of extraneous internet packet traffic was found. You have to install an app and net filter it yourself.
Interesting products. Nova C has only 100dpi in color. That’s a bit low.
My phone transmits a lot while it’s “off”. Only thing to stop it is a real powerdown. I think devices send when you’re not looking. ie while “off”. Phones seem to initiate activity when you move them. I need to check this more though, as sometimes it could just be coincidence.
Lenovo Yoga to type (any other ultrabook would do, as long as it’s reasonably small and super light). Word, Scrivener and Trizbort to type into. SugarSync to keep the output sync’d over four devices (two of them mobile). Dropbox is superior to SugarSync. When swaying in hammocks, although I bought the Yoga for exactly that purpose, I prefer analogue paper notebooks and type in the notes manually later.
Numerous activity is one thing, but there’s something unsettling about Google Play activation process. The info says to wait 6-24 hours to activate registration. Yet, my experience is that registering new devices only takes seconds.
This can only mean one thing: A human is involved in the process somehow. Google doesn’t do that. Coupled with the fact that the company doesn’t have a definite address, either in US or HK, it certainly looks suspicious. China recently enacted “security law” and who knows what’s in it? Even if the law is legit, doesn’t mean it’s always followed.
So, I fear the corrupt, internal hidden actor who steals info of random user. Usually, it’s not the random thief you have to worry about, anyway, but the internal ones that can do the most damage.
As much as I want to have the device, I won’t jeopardize my Google account for it.
I got one of those about a week ago. I’m still setting it up. took a day to remove all the crapware. then other day to try (and mostly fail) to disable everything it’s doing in the background. Still can’t prevent it from updating.
the screen is 16:10, so i was hoping to get a few more lines on the screen when editing. But windows 11 prevents you from moving the taskbar to the right (which you could always do before even on 10). There’s a hack, but then the task bar functionality is broken.
It comes with a pen, in a few days i might get far enough to try it out.
the cloud is always the backup copy and local is the master.
assume anything not (1) is public.
Consequently, i do not use any of the built-in sync features which phones and (now) desktops really want to activate. Although, I’m increasingly worried this is going on regardless in the background. Or soon will be.
Client-side encryption increasingly does not work with the likes of Google drive, Onedrive, Amazon etc. When they can’t scan your data, you’re sent a rude message telling you your cloud service has been “hacked”. But don’t worry, they can delete all the “bad” stuff for you.
I prefer to use syncthing for my “not just on this one mobile device” sync, because it does not rely on a third-party storage site for my data: it synchronises folders between systems I own directly.
On the road I tend to use markor on my LineageOS Android phone to write documents in markdown, and then use pandoc on my laptop or server to actually build HTML or PDF files from that.
If I’m doing more advanced layout, I actually use LaTeX with the document classes commissioned by Ed Tufte to use his layout rules, and I tend to build those in termux when I’m looking to do this on the road, but by and large I save that kind of layout work for a large screen. Of course this last option is…not for the faint-hearted. Markdown is much easier to just generate on the fly, usually.
@SpaceHobo I tried syncthing, but found it a bit clunky. I’ve been using rclone.com which supports a huge range of clouds including encryption.
Thanks for the tip about markor. I’ll give it a spin. I’ve been using obsidian, because there’s also a desktop version. But Markor was able to load all my design files no problem. I guess this is the win when using standard markdown in plain files - you can switch editors when you want.
For more advanced layouts, I’ve been using typora.io, which is now paid, but not expensive. You can chuck in some HTML for extra layout and i use it for pdf and html export. Although i have used pandoc for this as well. pandoc is quite useful, but i wish there were a handy set of themes/styles for markdown → html/pdf conversion. typora has a few, but it could also have more.
