Distraction free writing

 Since I first played with it a few years ago, I've become a quiet fan of Focuswriter, a distraction free writing tool.

Determinedly minimalist, it's best suited to the 'get it all down and edit later' approach. No structuring of the text, no inline formatting, no links, no images, it basically has the functionality of an old school mechanical typewriter.

Limited, yes, but it gives you a way either or recording verbatim notes or clattering out a first draft. Available for Windows, Linux, or the Mac it does exactly what it says. It even runs nicely in a linux container on a modern chromebook.

Now, I was idly surfing the web a few days ago looking for an old mechanical typewriter - more as an ornament than a functional device - and my search also brought up the Freewrite Traveller, a device touted as a distraction free writing device, and pretty expensive for that.

Given that you can pick up an old Thinkpad 11e with Windows 10 installed for a tad over $100 from a refurbisher, and a $10 donation to the people who produce Focuswriter, you can basically put together a distraction free writing solution for a quarter of the price of the Freewrite device.

And, of course with Windows 10 and Microsoft OneDrive you can save and backup your work to a secure location.

Of course the Thinkpad will be old and slow compared to a modern machine, but if you are using it as a minimal writing device to take anywhere, its compute power or lack of it isn't an issue - Focuswriter does not really need much in the way of compute resources.

What personally I find important is that these old Thinkpads have keyboards that are quite nice to type on and the screens are pretty reasonable, And because education authorities bought scads of them, replacement chargers and batteries are pretty cheap and easy to find - something to bear in mind when buying an old machine.

Coupled with Notable, and perhaps a markdown editor such as Ghostwriter, you also have the basics for a basic machine for research and documentation - the only real gap is the lack of a decent basic lightweight spreadsheet application to help tabulate artefacts, but Google sheets will do most of the work for you assuming a network connection, which is pretty much a universal these days.

And of course, the other thing about these machines is that they are cheap enough to be disposable. It really doesn't matter is you drop it or leave it on the bus.

I know I'm a bit odd in having multiple machines, instead of just one that you take everywhere, but I find it works for me - having an old machine that is equipped to do the task lets me focus on the task itself. What I wouldn't do is use such and old an underpowered machine (by today's standards) as general purpose machine.

Two months on from abandoning the socials ...

A couple of months ago I decided to abandon social media. 

No Insta, no Facebook, no Twitter, and none of the things like Tumblr and Pinterest that sneaked in as part of an experiment and decided to stay for lunch.

It’s true that I’m still on Mastodon where basically I’m a lurker. While I do post and comment occasionally on more serious things, in the main I’m just there for the train porn.

It’s also true that I still blog - my three blogs are really three parallel themed diaries with a bit of crossover, and of course I’m still putting together my wiki of newsworthy history and archaeology links, but as much for my own benefit as anything.

So, how’s it going?

Pretty good, actually. I have no temptation to go back and am happy enough to squat in my corner. I’m reading more, which is good, and I think I’m possibly less of a grasshopper than I was and able to focus more.

The only real problem is these idle ten minutes when you’re waiting for a bus, or in a doctor’s, when one might normally scroll through the socials for something to do, I do get a little twitchy - almost like when I kicked my Gauloise habit over 40 years ago, and even when the cravings had  gone I didn’t quite know what to do with my hands.

In the old days of course one would have read the paper or one of these tatty five year old National Geographics that you find in doctor’s waiting rooms. Actually you don’t any more - they banished the magazines as an infection risk at the start of the pandemic, and they havn’t come back.

Newspapers are of course largely a thing of the past since we gave up having a paper halfway through the pandemic, but as a substitute I do have a couple of news apps on my phone, pocket for saved articles, and if I know its going to be a day with a lot of hanging around I take the dogfood tablet with me with some stuff to read. 

(It’s a valid question, given both the Oppo’s excellent battery life, and that the Oppo’s screen is only about 10% smaller than the dogfood tablet’s whether, if I was to ditch my iPhone in favour of using the Oppo as my full time phone I’d need to take the dogfood tablet with me as an extra device)

But, basically, it’s working for me, and I see no need to go back the socials, I just need to master the twitches a little better ...

Oppo

 Well, I did go and order an Oppo phone and it arrived a few days ago.

Next to my existing iPhone 8 it's bigger, heavier than I expected, and a perfectly competent Android phone.

.

It makes calls, it lets you install apps on it, and it didn't come with a pile of pre-installed apps that you can't remove, something, which having sworn off social media, I was kind of dreading having to deal with, but the only pre-installed social media app was Facebook, and it was readily uninstallable.

Compared to my iPhone, what's impressive is how quickly it charges, and how long the battery lasts.

The weather's been singularly appalling recently so I haven't taken it for a walk to test out its capabilities, but it's looking good.

As always, when I look at mid range Android phones, I wonder if Apple is really worth the money - there are other just as capable phones out there that do the job ...

A phone to go travelling with

 Some time ago I wrote about the travails I had getting a replacement phone at the tail end of the pandemic before things began to become normal (well, normalish).

I still have that phone, and I really don’t have a reason to upgrade it - it works well enough and we still don’t have a rural 5G service, so having a 4G only phone isn’t a big problem. 

All good, but I’m going overseas later this year, and let’s just say that Telstra’s international roaming options are, well, pricy.

I’m going to Europe and the UK, with stopovers both ways, which makes the whole business messy.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

When I’ve been to Sri Lanka or Malaysia, the solution was simple, just take a second phone, either your old phone or one bought cheaply from one of the big box stores, and buy a sim from one of the airport phone shops. 

In Sri Lanka, it was incredibly easy, Dialog, one of the big networks there, allowed you to pre-order your SIM, and do your security verification online. In Malaysia, you had to show your passport, but basically the phone shop people just took your money and gave you a SIM that was good for 30 days - absolutely essential for getting rideshare cars to and from hotels and restaurants.

Europe, well, Europe has always been messy with lots of different countries  and phone companies. For a long time Jersey Telecom used to sell you a cheap deal allowing you to roam seamlessly across Europe. What’s more it never expired as long as you sent a text from your phone once a month, meaning that you could keep your number between trips.

Well they canned that deal during the pandemic, meaning it’s either back to Telstra’s pricy roaming or SIM swapping.

SIM swapping’s probably the most effective solution, but I didn’t want to swap the SIM out of my day to day phone, because banks do have a habit of sending you verification codes for transactions by text. As Telstra let you use wifi calling from overseas this shouldn’t be a problem,  all I would need would be to ensure I was connected to a decent local wifi network when doing something that might need a verification code.

But that’s not going to solve the problem of needing a phone overseas.

And that’s a problem in two parts - firstly I don’t have a decent spare phone anymore. Any old phone I have is years out of date as I traded in my old iPhone a couple of years ago meaning that my old Samsung Galaxy I found in a drawer is getting on for seven years old - hilariously out of date and definitely due for  a one way trip to the recycler.

The obvious solution was to buy one. Hunting around, I found I could get a 5G capable dual SIM phone from Oppo for a tad over $400, or a single SIM Google Pixel6a for a little under $500. (Other cheaper and slower options are available but I was looking for a reasonably well specified device.)

I’ll be honest. My first thought was OPPO???

But doing some checking the phones seem to be well made and have a decent enough reputation - yes there are always scare reviews about how they’re the spawn of the devil, but they’re outnumbered by decent, sensible,  positive reviews.

Even so, if I’d been buying it for use at home I’d have gone for the Pixel, but the dual SIM option was attractive as Belong, Telstra’s low cost operation, does a cheap roaming option that covered the UK, France and Singapore, but not Italy, which is a bit of a pain, as I’m spending 10 or so days there.

However, if I had a dual SIM phone, I could use Belong’s roaming in Singapore and the UK, giving me time to sort out a suitable SIM for the rest of Europe while I’m there - basically one with enough data to use comfortably with Google Maps.

Buying a second phone in advance also means that I can set it up in advance, stripping out the irrelevant and adding in the extra apps required.

I’ve never had an Oppo phone, or indeed a dual SIM phone, but they have decent reviews, and who knows, it might end up replacing one or other of our phones in time ...