SeeDub's new toy
I've got a new toy. I am not at all a gadget guy, but this thing is awesome.
I have to write a lot of stuff in my day job, and I'm an easily distracted writer. We're talking Laurence Sterne level of distractability, except if Sterne always had the internet a click away and a blog to check for comments and new headlines on Hot Air and new email popping up all the time. It has been a problem.
Blogging is tough, too, trying to cram everything into that little Moveable Type window. The preview screen helps, but it's hard to really keep a handle on anything longer than a couple of paragraphs. Longer essays like this one tend to get muddled and run all over the place.
Then the other day I saw my old blog-buddy Jeff Harrell has the same problem (and we share another problem as well) and he found a solution. He uses a program called WriteRoom that just basically blanks out your whole screen and gives you words on a page. No menus, no taskbar. None of Microsoft Word's ten jillion add-ons and doodads.
Just your words, good or bad, up there all by themselves.
That sounded like something that I would like, but unfortunately it's a Mac-Only product. However, Jeff links to another blog that, in its comments, included a link to the site of Q10, which is basically the same thing for PC. Which is free. Which I'm writing in now.
You can configure it a little bit to give you the colors and the font you want. You can also have it give a little typewriter-like click with every key you press and a ka-ching for a carriage return, like this:
Ching!
Or not. Either you'll think this is a useless technological regression, or you'll go all nutty for it like Allah for an iPhone*. Anyway, awesome productivity aid, both day job and blogging wise. In the last three days or so I've been writing everything in this and pasting it into larger documents in Word. This is my first attempt at a blog post so I'll just paste it into the MT window and add in the links. And I think I'll add a screenshot beyond the jump so you can see what this looks like.
Anyway, thanks, Jeff!
*To reprise my point in the comments there, Allah: wants iPhone. SeeDub: wants guyPod.
That's it. That's the whole screen. You want to get out, you hit control-Q and you're back in Windowsland.
Not too sure about those colors, but it seems to work for me so far.