I was not having a good time writing via that Wolfram program, and came to figure out that it wasn't really meant for long documents. Page three or four, and there would be a lag between my typing and when the letters actually appeared on the screen; once the lag started, it quickly because much worse, until I ended up typing a sentence, then waiting to watch it appear, letter by letter. When there was a typo in the middle of that sentence, I would have to go back and fix it...which would take nearly as long.
So I did some more research, gave it another try, and successfully installed LibreOffice on my Pi. Oh my gosh, it works so much better, I basically could have cried.
I still haven't worked out the whole flash drive thing, but I may not bother. Emailing docs back and forth is no big, and for some things I can just write the whole story/chapter on the Pi and email it when I'm all done. No more trouble than all the times I've written at work and not been able to use a flash drive, or gone between my desktop, my laptop, and Drive.
I can seriously sit here and write forever, though; it's so much more comfortable, even on this fifty-year-old couch, than sitting at the kitchen table or in an office chair. And I find myself more focused, too, down in my quiet basement. (My
quiet, COLD basement - my feet are going numb, so I'm gonna call it a night!)
I like how this blog has turned into a record of my troubles writing on a Raspberry Pi. What dumb thing can I struggle with for weeks next...
Saturday, March 5, 2016
Wednesday, March 2, 2016
February New Media
Television Episodes
20. The X-Files – 1x03 - “Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster.” 2-1.
21. Brooklyn Nine-Nine – 3x14 - “Karen Peralta.” 2-2.
22. The Man in the High Castle – 1x02 - “Sunrise.” 2-5.
23. The Man in the High Castle – 1x03 - “The Illustrated Woman.” 2-5.
24. The Man in the High Castle – 1x04 - “Revelations.” 2-5.
25. The Man in the High Castle – 1x05 - “The New Normal.” 2-6.
26. The X-Files – 10x04 - “Home Again.” 2-7.
27. The Man in the High Castle – 1x06 - “Three Monkeys.” 2-9.
28. The Man in the High Castle – 1x07 - “Truth.” 2-10.
29. The Man in the High Castle – 1x08 - “End of the World.” 2-12.
30. The Man in the High Castle – 1x09 - “Kindness.” 2-12.
31. The Man in the High Castle – 1x10 - “A Way Out.” 2-13.
32. It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia – 11x04 - “Dee Makes a Smut Film.” 2-15.
33. It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia – 11x06- “Being Frank.” 2-15.
34. The Walking Dead – 6x09 - “No Way Out.” 2-16.
35. It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia – 11x05 - “Mac and Dennis Move to the Suburbs.” 2-20.
36. It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia – 11x07 - “McPoyle vs. Ponderosa: The Trial of the Century.” 2-20.
37. The Walking Dead – 6x10 - “The Next World.” 2-21.
38. The X-Files – 10x05 - “Babylon.” 2-26.
39. It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia – 11x08 - “Charlie Catches a Leprechaun.” 2-26.
Movies
2. Deadpool (2016). 2-26.
Books
5. Black Trillium, Andre Norton, Julian May, and Marion Zimmer Bradley. 2-29.
20. The X-Files – 1x03 - “Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster.” 2-1.
21. Brooklyn Nine-Nine – 3x14 - “Karen Peralta.” 2-2.
22. The Man in the High Castle – 1x02 - “Sunrise.” 2-5.
23. The Man in the High Castle – 1x03 - “The Illustrated Woman.” 2-5.
24. The Man in the High Castle – 1x04 - “Revelations.” 2-5.
25. The Man in the High Castle – 1x05 - “The New Normal.” 2-6.
26. The X-Files – 10x04 - “Home Again.” 2-7.
27. The Man in the High Castle – 1x06 - “Three Monkeys.” 2-9.
28. The Man in the High Castle – 1x07 - “Truth.” 2-10.
29. The Man in the High Castle – 1x08 - “End of the World.” 2-12.
30. The Man in the High Castle – 1x09 - “Kindness.” 2-12.
31. The Man in the High Castle – 1x10 - “A Way Out.” 2-13.
32. It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia – 11x04 - “Dee Makes a Smut Film.” 2-15.
33. It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia – 11x06- “Being Frank.” 2-15.
34. The Walking Dead – 6x09 - “No Way Out.” 2-16.
35. It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia – 11x05 - “Mac and Dennis Move to the Suburbs.” 2-20.
36. It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia – 11x07 - “McPoyle vs. Ponderosa: The Trial of the Century.” 2-20.
37. The Walking Dead – 6x10 - “The Next World.” 2-21.
38. The X-Files – 10x05 - “Babylon.” 2-26.
39. It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia – 11x08 - “Charlie Catches a Leprechaun.” 2-26.
Movies
2. Deadpool (2016). 2-26.
Books
5. Black Trillium, Andre Norton, Julian May, and Marion Zimmer Bradley. 2-29.
Tuesday, March 1, 2016
Ja'mie Dramatically Pulling Off Her Mask and Saying "Drama!" as the Camera Dramatically Zooms Out
I had a doctor's appointment today. Got there about ten minutes early, checked in, and sat down, prepared for a half hour wait at the least, because I've been to the doctor before.
However, there was a woman in the waiting room who had apparently not been to the doctor before. Ever. Any doctor. Because she went up to the receptionist about ten minutes or so after I arrived and said, "I asked you twenty minutes ago and you said I was next, but I have watched six other women get called back before me."
The poor receptionist was trying to explain that there are four doctors/nurse practitioners in the office, along with the people who are coming in just to get sonograms of their babbies, but the woman kept interrupting her. She absolutely refused to understand that she was next in line for her doctor but that there were other doctors in the office along with the sonogram technician and they all had their own lines. The woman got belligerent, and the receptionist said she would go back and see what was going on.
She came back riding upon a wave of righteous anger. "THE DOCTOR IS RUNNING LATE. SHE SAID YOU ARE NEXT IN LINE. SHE SAID YOU CAN EITHER SIT DOWN OR YOU CAN LEAVE, BUT THAT IF YOU ARE NOT RESPECTFUL TO THE PEOPLE WORKING IN THIS OFFICE THEN YOU CAN FIND ANOTHER DOCTOR'S OFFICE."
The woman sat down. Muttering. "Tell me I'm not respectful. I'm just asking. I've got to go to work. Not respecting me."
The receptionist: "ARE YOU DONE."
The woman, shooting back, apparently missing the gist of the previous conversation: "Are you done?"
The receptionist stood, ready to loose lightning bolts. The woman hastily adds: "I'm sitting, I'm waiting. Just have to go to work."
Now, my appointment was at 10:40am, but I scheduled a full day off work. Because I'm an adult. I've been to the doctor before. I knew there was a very good chance I would not be finished in time to make it to work at 1:00pm. (As it turned out, I left the doctor's office right at noon, and considering it would take me half an hour to get home, I would have had exactly ten minutes to change clothes, eat lunch, and grab my stuff, so it was the right call.)
It was such great drama. Enormously entertaining. I went up to the receptionist afterward and told her she handled it very well, and she seemed to get a kick out of that. I said so because the few times I've had honest-to-God confrontations with patrons at work, and I've had someone come up afterward and say nice things, has really meant the world to me. Poor thing; I bet she deals with that a lot.
However, there was a woman in the waiting room who had apparently not been to the doctor before. Ever. Any doctor. Because she went up to the receptionist about ten minutes or so after I arrived and said, "I asked you twenty minutes ago and you said I was next, but I have watched six other women get called back before me."
The poor receptionist was trying to explain that there are four doctors/nurse practitioners in the office, along with the people who are coming in just to get sonograms of their babbies, but the woman kept interrupting her. She absolutely refused to understand that she was next in line for her doctor but that there were other doctors in the office along with the sonogram technician and they all had their own lines. The woman got belligerent, and the receptionist said she would go back and see what was going on.
She came back riding upon a wave of righteous anger. "THE DOCTOR IS RUNNING LATE. SHE SAID YOU ARE NEXT IN LINE. SHE SAID YOU CAN EITHER SIT DOWN OR YOU CAN LEAVE, BUT THAT IF YOU ARE NOT RESPECTFUL TO THE PEOPLE WORKING IN THIS OFFICE THEN YOU CAN FIND ANOTHER DOCTOR'S OFFICE."
The woman sat down. Muttering. "Tell me I'm not respectful. I'm just asking. I've got to go to work. Not respecting me."
The receptionist: "ARE YOU DONE."
The woman, shooting back, apparently missing the gist of the previous conversation: "Are you done?"
The receptionist stood, ready to loose lightning bolts. The woman hastily adds: "I'm sitting, I'm waiting. Just have to go to work."
Now, my appointment was at 10:40am, but I scheduled a full day off work. Because I'm an adult. I've been to the doctor before. I knew there was a very good chance I would not be finished in time to make it to work at 1:00pm. (As it turned out, I left the doctor's office right at noon, and considering it would take me half an hour to get home, I would have had exactly ten minutes to change clothes, eat lunch, and grab my stuff, so it was the right call.)
It was such great drama. Enormously entertaining. I went up to the receptionist afterward and told her she handled it very well, and she seemed to get a kick out of that. I said so because the few times I've had honest-to-God confrontations with patrons at work, and I've had someone come up afterward and say nice things, has really meant the world to me. Poor thing; I bet she deals with that a lot.
Wednesday, February 24, 2016
Success!
Attaching an .rtf file to an email and downloading it to open in Wolfram totally worked! Not that it was one hundred percent smooth sailing after that. When I opened the file up, each paragraph was a single line, stretching out to the right and forcing a navigation bar at the bottom. As that is impossible to try and work with - especially as I have to use a goddamn track pad with my wireless keyboard - I knew I would have to fix that if I were going to be able to write.
Thankfully it didn't take long at all to find the setting to wrap words based on screen size, instead of the default, which for some reason is don't wrap words at all.
So I got my file open, it's looking right, I start writing...
...and two keys on my keyboard are flip-flopped. Shift-apostrophe gives me an @, and shift-2 gives me ". OMGGGGGG but I was able to adapt surprisingly quick to hitting shift-2 every time I write a line of dialogue.
Seriously though, like, this was a million times harder than I thought it would be. But my amazing sense of triumph right now!
Thankfully it didn't take long at all to find the setting to wrap words based on screen size, instead of the default, which for some reason is don't wrap words at all.
So I got my file open, it's looking right, I start writing...
...and two keys on my keyboard are flip-flopped. Shift-apostrophe gives me an @, and shift-2 gives me ". OMGGGGGG but I was able to adapt surprisingly quick to hitting shift-2 every time I write a line of dialogue.
Seriously though, like, this was a million times harder than I thought it would be. But my amazing sense of triumph right now!
Tuesday, February 23, 2016
Managing Frustration
I am having a much harder time working on my writing on my Raspberry Pi - which is the primary reason I wanted it - than I expected to. First, I tried to install LibreOffice, as I had read that it was available for Linux. Unfortunately, between when I was researching the Pi and when I got one, the Pi Store had closed and it was no longer a simple process. Now you have to do all these programming commands, etc. I spent an hour one night going through various tutorials and message boards and could never figure it out.
The Pi came installed with a program called Wolfram, which has a text editor. I looked up, and it opens/saves rich text files. So I saved one of the documents I'm currently working on as rich text to a flash drive and decided to give it another try.
Except you apparently can't just stick a regular flash drive into the Pi. You have to format it, and then program the Pi to accept the drive, which involved like coding some sort of dock for it inside the OS? I'm quickly learning that a lot of this stuff is sort of like the point for people with Pis, but I really just want to write.
So scratch that, I'll just operate from Google Drive. I'm not a huge fan of working on Google Drive, not really sure why. I think fundamentally don't trust cloud-based storage? And I don't really care for the interface, and it's kind of a pain in the ass to constantly be copying and pasting from documents into Drive and vice-versa - especially when I end up losing my formatting.
But you have to do even more coding and programming and whatever in order to use Google Drive. Like.
So my next plan of attack is to take the rtf file and attach it to an email and see how that works. I already experimented and was able to download a file my sister had emailed to me; it was docx, so it wouldn't open, but the Pi downloaded it and sees that it's there, so I'm hopeful that that will work. A bit clunky, but I've certainly emailed things back and forth to myself plenty over the years, and if it works it won't be too terribly much different than using a flash drive, since I would still be copying and pasting text back to master documents in that case.
But I'm at more than a week here of just trying to figure out how to do this, so it's starting to get a bit frustrating. I'm gonna make it work, though. I will.
The Pi came installed with a program called Wolfram, which has a text editor. I looked up, and it opens/saves rich text files. So I saved one of the documents I'm currently working on as rich text to a flash drive and decided to give it another try.
Except you apparently can't just stick a regular flash drive into the Pi. You have to format it, and then program the Pi to accept the drive, which involved like coding some sort of dock for it inside the OS? I'm quickly learning that a lot of this stuff is sort of like the point for people with Pis, but I really just want to write.
So scratch that, I'll just operate from Google Drive. I'm not a huge fan of working on Google Drive, not really sure why. I think fundamentally don't trust cloud-based storage? And I don't really care for the interface, and it's kind of a pain in the ass to constantly be copying and pasting from documents into Drive and vice-versa - especially when I end up losing my formatting.
But you have to do even more coding and programming and whatever in order to use Google Drive. Like.
So my next plan of attack is to take the rtf file and attach it to an email and see how that works. I already experimented and was able to download a file my sister had emailed to me; it was docx, so it wouldn't open, but the Pi downloaded it and sees that it's there, so I'm hopeful that that will work. A bit clunky, but I've certainly emailed things back and forth to myself plenty over the years, and if it works it won't be too terribly much different than using a flash drive, since I would still be copying and pasting text back to master documents in that case.
But I'm at more than a week here of just trying to figure out how to do this, so it's starting to get a bit frustrating. I'm gonna make it work, though. I will.