Exile

I sort of went into an exile since the last post. I think none of this blogging platforms in working for me. I hate to type with my phone, in spite of its bigger screen. I don’t carry my pad everywhere either. Not so much of the mac too. Basically, I travel only with my phone and I don’t want to have to type with the phone. That means, I lose all the brilliant thoughts for a post by the time I get to the mac or to the office laptop that I usually write these posts from. Last week, I tried another “brilliant” attempt. I quickly logged in from the phone and wrote the title alone for two posts. I forgot about this when I got back home. Then when I logged in over the weekend, I have completely forgotten what those titles are for. So lost two more posts, effectively.

I really need to hack this up for a better experience. I don’t understand why I don’t like to type in my phone. I think one sure way to solve this problem is get used to typing from the phone. One reason is quite simple: In portrait mode, the keys are too close for comfort. So anything more than a tweet is painful to write. In landscape mode, the keyboard is just so different, that you need to practice using this mode. I don’t think it is fun to learn more and more stuff to do even simple things like writing a blog post. I am not even asking to write rich text here! This space is really asking for innovation, don’t you think?

I can think of a third solution, perhaps one that is used by a lot of people. I could just record my thoughts as voice memos, diligently play them back and compose blog posts. Of course, I should delete the recording with the same diligence. That calls for forming a habit, but maybe forming a habit is still better than having to learn typing all over again. I’ll see if I ever get to form this habit.

One last fix I really want in my phone is for its voice recognition to just damn work for my voice and pronunciation. While Siri seems to have no problem recognizing my commands, the dictation is painfully bad. I spent half an hour trying to get it to spell “Towner” for me. I eventually memorized that “over there” is the new “towner” and got away. In another case, I had to write – “tour” and it never budged from “door”. Again, I memorized “door” as the new “tour” and moved on. While this can work for reminders – basically in reminders, you only need cues for brushing up your memory – I doubt if it would work for a post. A rather hilarious thought could get entirely boring and diluted if I had to recollect all the words from their “new” forms.

Technology hasn’t really made life better. It just made us more dependent.