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Now if only it had a backspace key.
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Jun 15, 2016 04:57
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They're no longer being made but they're hella cheap: https://www.amazon.com/Alphasmart-NEO-AA-0410-10971-AQ-Neo-Handheld/dp/B007BHWRII
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Jun 15, 2016 11:45
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Just use a laptop. Just use a laptop.
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Jun 15, 2016 12:38
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Volcott posted:Just use a laptop. Like all the plebs? Never
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Jun 15, 2016 12:50
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One of the advantages of something like an Alphasmart is that it's got no internet and it's really, really hard to edit on. You'd be surprised how much work you can get done on a device that you can't second-guess and delete something on or distract yourself by alt-tabbing to Chrome every 30 seconds. They definitely have a use case for writers. 99.9% of people will do just fine with a laptop, or a cheap Chinese tablet with a decent Bluetooth keyboard, though.
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Jun 15, 2016 13:00
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Aaronicon posted:One of the advantages of something like an Alphasmart is that it's got no internet and it's really, really hard to edit on. You'd be surprised how much work you can get done on a device that you can't second-guess and delete something on or distract yourself by alt-tabbing to Chrome every 30 seconds. They definitely have a use case for writers. I got an eeepc laptop which can barely do one thing at a time and has an ugly as sin OS with no games. It's absolutely perfect for typing on which is why I keep it around.
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Jun 15, 2016 15:01
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Saint Isaias Boner posted:I got an eeepc laptop which can barely do one thing at a time and has an ugly as sin OS with no games. It's absolutely perfect for typing on which is why I keep it around. Heh, I installed Lubuntu on mine  I use it to play and showcase music I write and compile for YM2203, YM2608/+86, and YMF288... which I write and compile on my main machine as it's not easy to distract me from this task.
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Jun 15, 2016 15:52
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Aaronicon posted:One of the advantages of something like an Alphasmart is that it's got no internet and it's really, really hard to edit on. You'd be surprised how much work you can get done on a device that you can't second-guess and delete something on or distract yourself by alt-tabbing to Chrome every 30 seconds. They definitely have a use case for writers. This is true. I get SO much more work done sitting somewhere typing on my Alphasmart than I do at home on my computer. Plus, not being able to edit more than a couple sentences back has the added benefit of keeping my brain from tricking me into going "no, there's no need to do an involved edit on this, you've already fixed everything, dude." The writing that comes off the NEO puts the 'rough' in 'rough draft.' I agree that 99% of people don't really need one, but if you have a job that involves writing more than say 1.5k words per day, it's absolutely worth chucking $30 at on eBay.
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Jun 15, 2016 16:07
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Noyemi K posted:Heh, I installed Lubuntu on mine mine spent a year playing youtube videos of nursery rhymes before it was pressed back into service. I have a weird attachment to the machine which is odd because it's a lump of crap less capable of any task than the average phone
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Jun 15, 2016 16:11
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Volcott posted:Just use a laptop. The thing is with one of those alphasmarts or similar devices, they're a) dirt cheap and b) you don't have to worry about them getting beat up c) ain't noone going to steal one.
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Jun 15, 2016 16:28
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I’ve heard of writers carrying an AlphaSmart when backpacking. That seems like a reasonable use, especially in the days before OCR that could handle handwriting.
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Jun 15, 2016 16:44
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I just find it amusing that in the 70s and 80s so many prolific high-profile authors went out of their way to write on the most cutting edge word processors and now that such things are common people are rejecting them out of some mistaken belief in the talismanic powers of The Old Ways.
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Jun 15, 2016 19:47
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How many of the annoying hipsters using these pieces of poo poo have actually published anything?
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Jun 15, 2016 20:57
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Non Serviam posted:How many of the annoying hipsters using these pieces of poo poo have actually published anything? Does fanfiction on the Amazon Kindle marketplace count?
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Jun 15, 2016 20:59
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I have a typewriter sitting in the next room. I could get a ribbon off Amazon and be clacking away by Friday. But I'm not going to do that because I'm not a loving grognard.
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Jun 15, 2016 21:01
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"Pounded In The rear end By The AlphaSmart I Used To Write This Novel"
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Jun 15, 2016 21:03
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Non Serviam posted:How many of the annoying hipsters using these pieces of poo poo have actually published anything? The Alphasmart, or the Freewrite? Because I use an Alphasmart every day and I literally make my living off the Kindle store, although you've probably never read anything I've written unless you're into smut or cheesy romance novels. Also this should probably go over in the video game Kickstarter thread, but the people behind cancelled horror game Alison Road finally put their "statement" up on Facebook. It's a paragraph long and contains nothing but platitudes. As a reminder, don't ever back a video game on Kickstarter unless the people doing it have a string of hits behind them, and even then it's 50/50.
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Jun 15, 2016 21:06
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Popular Human posted:The Alphasmart, or the Freewrite? Because I use an Alphasmart every day and I literally make my living off the Kindle store, although you've probably never read anything I've written unless you're into smut or cheesy romance novels. Link your smut, smutpeddler.
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Jun 15, 2016 21:30
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I'm Chuck Tingle IRL
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Jun 15, 2016 21:36
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I used to work in publishing. Every professional writer i know uses a laptop/desktop and word processor software. Every hack writer struggling to get work or publish at all used a typewriter.
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Jun 15, 2016 21:48
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Popular Human posted:The Alphasmart, or the Freewrite? Because I use an Alphasmart every day and I literally make my living off the Kindle store, although you've probably never read anything I've written unless you're into smut or cheesy romance novels. Alison Road cancelled their Kickstarter as soon as they got an actual publisher so they don't actually owe anybody anything since they collected nothing from their backers.
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Jun 15, 2016 21:50
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You'd also see a bunch of journalists using Alphasmarts for a while, when they switched off their Tandy Model 100s and similar devices.
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Jun 15, 2016 22:16
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Madcosby posted:I used to work in publishing. This makes sense to me, because what publisher would even accept a fuckin typewritten anything in this day and age? That's a whole extra layer of work you're creating for no reason.
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Jun 15, 2016 22:53
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one thing i've found is that the more you write the less important the thing you're writing on is, so long as it can do the job. Hipsters use moleskines and e-ink typewriters with mechanical keys but if you have to get work done a cheap notebook and a laptop does the job just fine
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Jun 15, 2016 22:59
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Light Gun Man posted:This makes sense to me, because what publisher would even accept a fuckin typewritten anything in this day and age? That's a whole extra layer of work you're creating for no reason. Ray Bradbury insisted on still doing everything on typewriters up til he died in 2012, because he was the crankiest old man possible and believed any computer that wasn't a mainframe was the devil. But he got to pull that poo poo because he was already a multimillionaire.
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Jun 15, 2016 23:09
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Light Gun Man posted:This makes sense to me, because what publisher would even accept a fuckin typewritten anything in this day and age? That's a whole extra layer of work you're creating for no reason. What publisher hasn’t license OCR that makes this a non‐issue?
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Jun 15, 2016 23:12
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Guy Mann posted:I just find it amusing that in the 70s and 80s so many prolific high-profile authors went out of their way to write on the most cutting edge word processors and now that such things are common people are rejecting them out of some mistaken belief in the talismanic powers of The Old Ways. The really amusing thing is that George RR Martin has done both. He started writing on a dumb terminal with WordPerfect when that was cutting edge, and 20+ years later he refuses to switch to anything modern.
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Jun 15, 2016 23:27
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Platystemon posted:What publisher hasn’t license OCR that makes this a non‐issue? Is OCR up to a 99%+ success rate these days? I actually don't know.
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Jun 15, 2016 23:39
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Jedit posted:The really amusing thing is that George RR Martin has done both. He started writing on a dumb terminal with WordPerfect when that was cutting edge, and 20+ years later he refuses to switch to anything modern. A lot of it has to do with the idea of 'flow' - writing's really a momentum-based activity. Once you find a system that works and lets you build up speed and thrust in, then that's really what you should stick to. So I can totally understand sticking with something that lets you get into that state easily, even if it's vastly outdated. The problem is everyone else seeing them use these outdated systems, and romanticise them without realising why the writer is using it.
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Jun 16, 2016 00:01
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Light Gun Man posted:Is OCR up to a 99%+ success rate these days? I actually don't know. Not for handwriting, but I suspect for something typed with a typewriter probably over 99%.
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Jun 16, 2016 00:02
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USPS cites 98% accuracy rate for handwritten addresses, and that’s the whole block correct, not per‐word or per‐character.
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Jun 16, 2016 00:10
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I was in sci/math textbook publishing, so edits were endless and being able to do them swiftly without redoing an entire section or chapter were super important; page enumration constants and page layouts would alter too so I'd say it was impossible to expect scans. Anyone that submitted scans of materials were quickly met with "NEED a .doc asap" especially since we used Word's editing tools (just great stuff) to pass along all the edits Admittedly, whenever I would run through a final edit of a chapter or text I'd print the whole thing out just to get a fresh perspective, but that was because I was assuming no more changes would be made (more changes would always be made) People working on Lit textbooks had a plethora of writers and writer submissions; they had the same exact qualms and got about 50 times more scans or hard copies than I did. They were furious. Even if youre writing a novel, the ability to edit any element of your work, as insignificant as a spelling error, is so key to doing it all right, that I would never recommend using something like a typewriter or AlphaSmart
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Jun 16, 2016 00:18
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Platystemon posted:USPS cites 98% accuracy rate for handwritten addresses, and that’s the whole block correct, not per‐word or per‐character. I also can't imagine writing anything but perhaps the Chuck Tingle level stuff without constantly referencing external material. From experience, writing academic, technical or business stuff all requires jumping between a bunch of different spreadsheet, papers, data sheets, etc. At this point you're either dragging around thousands of pages of this stuff to Starbucks, or already using a laptop for it thus completely defeating the purpose.
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Jun 16, 2016 00:25
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Madcosby posted:
The AlphaSmart is designed so that you write your first draft on it, doing some minor text correction on the way, then bring it back to your real computer to put it in a proper word processor for edits and major revision. With the latest ones that added a full on screen you could in theory do more editing on the device, but most people wouldn't.
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Jun 16, 2016 00:38
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https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/165355717/lemmon-glass-cartoon-manga-australia?ref=city
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Jun 16, 2016 12:02
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I'm the giant opaque "COPY RIGHTS" watermark over each of the "how to draw animes" figures that no one would ever bother stealing.
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Jun 16, 2016 12:09
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I'm the time spent making cat dolls instead of learning to art.
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Jun 16, 2016 12:19
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I think they'd make more money selling the cat dolls than doing that manga.
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Jun 16, 2016 12:21
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im the australian guy trying to sell an amateur comic about his boring job and friends for fifty grand
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Jun 16, 2016 12:22
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Saint Isaias Boner posted:im the australian guy trying to sell an amateur comic about his boring job and friends for fifty grand
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Jun 16, 2016 12:36
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