Last week was the first time that I actually considered my iPhone as an actual computer. The reason for this was actually out of necessity rather than me trying to be clever. I had the morning to myself, and I’d decided to go the mall, do some writing/creating. The issue was that my computer’s battery was completely drained and even so, it doesn’t typically last more than like 2-3 hours depending on what I’m using it for.
I solved my battery issue by dusting off my wireless keyboard (originally bought 4 years ago for my mac mini) and decided to use my iPhone instead. Bluetooth’ed the keyboard to my iPhone and I was off. The really surprising thing is of course that the size of the screen was more than adequate for my needs. In fact I was on such a roll that I reduced my inbox down to no emails (by replying to all the people that I kept putting off), wrote 7 scripts for my comic strip, wrote the previous post and this post - in short, a lot of writing.
Then I got to thinking why I was able to do this? Why was I able to focus so distinctly? Basically this setup is the ultimate in distraction free computing. The iPhone will allow you to work in one environment at a time. There is a focus that comes into play in the constraints of such a system. There are no other things that can distract you from actually doing other things. No comics you’ve downloaded, no music you could be fiddling to download. Hell, my computer system can be a distraction in and of itself.
This setup stops that dead in it’s track. The biggest part of the whole setup is the keyboard, and that is without a doubt the smallest keyboard on the market. 4 years later it’s still and industrial marvel for me. Sure it would be great to have a larger screen, but it’s not terrible. It’s a minor constraint. The great thing that you get from such as set up, is carrying is much much less and the battery life is INSANELY good compared to any single computer.
So I sit here actually computing while listening to internet radio (which I’m recording as well), while typing on a bluetoothed keyboard wirelessly and can go on for hours without having to really think about battery life or whatever.
The whole thing really blows my mind.
All the keyboard fuctions work as well, from the volume controls to the brightness functions. The elegance is insane. For those that have the above items, I strongly urge you to give it a go sometime, you might be surprised by what you end up coming up with.
I know, it’s been a while and by this stage I’m probably talking to myself, which is fair enough to be honest. There have been several things that have prevented me from actually writing and posting, which is really down to both environment and workflow. I was originally going to write a separate post for each topic, but I found that the two topics were closely interrelated.
The environment to help me publish hasn’t been ideal. The first reason was due to the fact that I don’t have any internet access in my home. It’s been like that for over a month now, and it’s really starting to become disruptive to me. I could post from work, however the firewalls are restrictive and that makes it a colossal pain in the ass.
Apart from the technical aspects of my current situation, silence is reflective of the mood I’m currently in about the internet. Once upon a time I used to love the internet. I used to live it on a daily basis. I was actively involved in trying to bring something different to it on a regular basis. Over the last few months and even years now that has changed. I think the problem is that the internet has changed considerably - and I have not found my place in it.
The barriers are smaller and the noise is much, much larger. Over time I could see less and less people commenting on my website, and my silly Facebook posts would garner more attention and responses. And so you loose a certain amount of interest in keeping things fresh, keeping things moving on the site.
The great thing about this site is that it has a history and it has a distinct style about it. I’ve written some good stuff and some shitty stuff as well. I’ve learnt a great deal, interacted with some great people.
Is it time to retire the site? I don’t think so - after years, I’ve finally got it into a state that I like it (I’ve had this site design for nearly 2 years now). As I write this I wonder if I could take it to part of it’s previous glory. Of course the main issue here is that it’s a completely different place and time, so things will be more difficult and that took a hell of a lot of commitment.
The reason I am still confident in the future of words on this website, is because of my new found love for simple text. I have this appreciation now of words that I have written. I think part of this new found love is down to a few tools, Notational Velocity, my iPhone, Simplenote and the brilliance of Markdown. The seamless integration between these tools, and the fact that all of my thoughts and notes about anything and everything are always with me, (obviously organised in a meticulous fashion) helps me to feel more empowered.
Which happily brings me to my next point. Once my technical barriers that have an affect on my environment, the next barrier which needs to be removed are those to my workflow. I’ve outgrown the current CMS. The current crop of content management systems don’t really provide the level of respect to text files that I would want.
So what is the system that I would like to adopt right now? Well after trolling through the internet, I’ve not found something that actually fits my requirements (well nothing that is fully baked).
One solution which I thought had some potential (so much so that I actually coded the next iteration of my site using that system already), was Stacey. This had a couple of problems, mainly the lack of an iOS text editor that could be readily integrated into the workflow (there’s that word again) and secondly there is no archiving system, even though this could be a prime solution if something like this was added, although I have no idea how active the project currently is.
Marco does seem to be working on something that might be exceedingly interesting. He’s not published the source code, because he’s tinkering around with it, which is REALLY annoying. Get on with it and just ship the damn thing Marco. Geeks will huddle around it instantly.
Trolling on Github, I found a bunch of options available that actually do this (clearly I’m not the only one that feels this way). The most promising of the lot was MopBlown, which I’m actually talking with Chris about at the moment, to try and help him move things along, we’ll see how that moves along.
The existing paradigm where you login into an admin panel, wait for shit to load, then click on pages, wait for more shit to load, then you type in things, the wait for shit to get published or built or whatever is not for a small website. There is a better solution for this. Here’s a list of the things that I would like to see in the next generation of website management system with a direct focus on text and markdown.
As you can tell, I’m in this weird transitional state at the moment. There are so many excellent and mature methods of publishing on the web, but none of them are for me at the moment, they don’t fit into my workflow.
I can’t get enough of Sandwich Video, which is the company run by Adam Lisagor. One of the things that I hate with a passion is a BAD advert, which is probably why I love a good ad so much. Adam has got one of those styles that you can easily distinguish recognise straight away. I suggest you have a look at the original Birdhouse video, followed by the Jawbox and finally the Square video as my top three favourites at the moment.