Again, catching up on some blogs while I am writing out future entries in long form. It isn't a luddite maneuver but a classic delaying technique. It isn't because I don't want to write. I am writing a lot. It is because I am trying to gather material so that I can post regularly, have meaningful articles to share and get my head back into the blogging game. I delay for a purpose this time instead of delay out of fear. HUGE difference. Huge! (Did you read that in Matt Smith's voice? I hope you did. I wrote in in ;) ) At any rate, one of the delays in regular posts is due to a technical issue...
I am way over booked on material for the art blog as I have changed my policy to reflect an understanding about art that should really have been very obvious to me. And that is drawing a lot of attention from this blog. Though perhaps it should not. Still working that out. The other delay is that I found an article in one of those blogs I was catching up on about an app for the Windows Touch (also available in a desktop version) that I have not activated since I got the laptop last Fall. Which reminds me; I need to get a check up.
The app is Evernote. It is similar to Goggledocs in that it is a form of cloud computing. However it is a little easier for me to use and it syncs better across a variety of platforms. Or so the claims go. I like Googledocs. I am just not sure I want a lot in the Clouds. My aspirations are all ready there an we see how well that works for me. What I did not know when I activated the app was that it was cloud computing. I thought that I was adding something to my hard drive. Silly me. I should know better; after all most all that we do is going to be done over the internet and not on hard data storage in a few short years. I guess this is how we are going to live with it.
At any rate Evernote is pretty damn good. And it comes with a fun little partner called skitch which is a separate download/activation. I had hoped that it would let me do my own quick meme kinds of work but I think that I have to have premium service for that. I do like the Skitch/Evernote combo a lot.
So much so that I might consider entering the cloud once the laptop sees the Geek Squad. Something I did with the antivirus software didn't work. So I need to get things cleaned up and then we will be good to go. Which will keep the spammers out of my status updates. But it will also allow me to be a far more prolific writer.
That being said I think that delay in regular posting is worth it. And I will have to make a confession here. One of my worst habits as a writer is buying a notebook(or 4) for every project, stashing the notebook somewhere and losing track of the stash (losing my brain) and thus losing the project. A notebook for every project is a sound organizational concept. Otherwise I would have a billion and a half ideas crammed into a dozen or so notebooks like da Vinci's and it would be as indecipherable. There would be a grocery list along side a materials list written over with a quote from Doctor Who; a random name scribbled in the bottom margin of either a real or imaginary person with no indication of which it would have been; a random rant about politics; a note to myself to tweak a recipe and of course ramblings in German language which is either me trying to get a Matthias Reim lyric out of my head/into my head or testing out an insult to throw at someone all dashed about on pages and pages of sketches.... I'd look like a madwoman. Or..... some art history student in the future would go mad trying to figure out what the hell "Verdammt ich lieb dich ich lieb dich nicht" has to do with a Hungarian needlework flower. The answer would be nothing. But how is that poor student to know? And if I can't decipher my own intentions when I look at those pages a mere 4 months later.... well....
And how do you carry an entire high school career's worth of notebooks to every coffee shop or shady park and not look like a complete idiot? You don't. And the strain on your back and shoulders is just not worth it. That is why, I think, most writers and persons like da Vinci kept to home like hermits on a mountain in Tibet. It's too much bother to cart all that about. Much easier to stay home and scribble away in your hovel amassing stacks and stack of ledgers. Of course it is also very likely that mountain of collected works will topple and crush you to death while 47 cats mill about waiting for the supper that would never come.... but I digress. Again.
Enter Evernote. I love living in the future. Evernote can be an entire high school, college, graduate, post grad and doctorate career's worth of notes all on your laptop because it is stored in this mysterious nebula of information. It promises productivity increases. But first I need to really understand how the whole thing works. Should be a short learning curve. And then Geekdom will be off an running with lots of good content. Or... I will get lots of practice writing.
One word of caution though. Evernote is a cloud service. It does require really good security protection. And you need to keep up on your updates. You can encrypt things so that if you are working on the next big novel, the one that makes JK Rowling uneasy about her position in literary history, you can keep it safe for yourself until it is ready for a publisher. If you don't encrypt it could be a disaster. Evernote warns you of such. And I suggest taking the warning seriously. If spammers can get through a firewall they can sift through the clouds to steal your seeds of genius.
Living in the future takes a little getting used to. And it comes with as many pitfalls as living in the past. In the end though it must all be worth it if it helps us each to realize our potentials.
No comments:
Post a Comment