Chasing the rainbow and looking for love

[austin_dern]

On trying some out, I think I'm falling out of love with the palmtop concept. The ones with miniature keyboards seem right out; the keys are too small. The buttons are easy to press, but I can press only one or two at once. I type fast; my last measured speed was around 105 words per minute, and that's low as I ran out of typing material during the test and had to find the examiner for instructions. I don't type letters; I type words. Anything slower is achingly slow. Plus their miniature keyboards don't have semicolons, insufferably cramping my style.

The ones with freeform writing letters don't fit me either. I write small, newsprint-type small. This is small enough the devices can't make out my letters. Yeah, the cure is to write larger. I have tried for thirty years to write larger, in response to the pains I've given parents, teachers, friends, coworkers, and students. I must at this point conclude I'm not going to ever learn to write bigger.

The freeform draw-and-sketch-out types don't really work either; I tried scribbling a little spectral analysis and found the symbols turned to pixellated gibberish. Yeah, yeah, write larger. Not gonna happen. The stylus is part of the problem; my ideal writing instrument is a fountain pen, delivering precise lines exactly as thick as I want just where I want while gliding frictionlessly over paper. It's the only graceful thing I do, but I do it well. I'll try again, but I'm leaning towards the scanner and reference books.

Trivia: To raise money for his rubber research, Charles Goodyear pawned all his possessions, including his children's schoolbooks. Source: Life Science Library: Giant Molecules, Herman F Mark.

Currently Reading: Development of the Space Shuttle, 1972-1981, T A Heppenheimer.