The various iterations all look quite attractive, and the final one especially looks kind of like if an Apple IIc and a computer from Brazil had a baby -- in a good way! I congratulate the creator on producing so much real hardware and not just renders; I've designed and made hardware and it's hard as hell!
But I've also written a pretty good bit (not just code documentation and emails but fiction, short stories), and it's also hard as hell, and like a lot of people who want to write things I've dabbled with all sorts of instruments that I'm convinced will finally be the trick to make the words come out good.
I've used legal pads, and composition books, and spiral notebooks, and grid paper notepads.
I've written with pencils, and ballpoints, and fountain pens, and dip pens with a whole variety of nibs and inks (admittedly that was mostly just for fun).
I've written in Acme on Plan 9, in Emacs and Vi on Linux, in Google Docs on a cheap Chromebook, and in BBEdit on a Mac SE/30. I've also used a mechanical typewriter, a Selectric electric typewriter, and an AlphaSmart Neo 2.
So I say the following from experience:
1. Writing is difficult to do well, regardless of how you're getting the words down.
2. It's easy to distract yourself, regardless of how you're getting the words down.
3. One of the easiest ways to accomplish #2 is by dreaming about the next perfect writing tool that will really make your writing sing just as soon as you muster up the courage to click "Buy".
4. Once you get your latest writing toy^H^H^Htool, it's easier to write blog posts about it than to write the things you actually want to write but are deep down too timid to try.
In summary, I applaud Unkyu for making these, and I don't think they're likely to help you write better.
edit: Anybody in the San Francisco area who has been dreaming about an AlphaSmart Neo 2 as the perfect writing machine that will finally take their writing to the next level, dig up my email address and you can have mine for free, I don't use it any more.
In the modular synth/music world, this is sometimes referred to as GAS… gear acquisition syndrome.
As always, it’s not the tool, it’s how you use it… and as always, being creative is always hard, and the challenge is (usually) within yourself and not your tools (setting aside accessibility concerns in which tooling obviously becomes more important; and at least a little small dose of mise-en-scene).
I bought a Freewrite Alpha last summer and which I'd gotten something like this instead. The Alpha's great in many ways, but has just enough aggravation that it makes me resent the thing a little:
* I have a model without a backlight, and the screen's all but invisible unless you're under a light. Wake up and think of something you want to write? Either turn on the lights, or hope it actually turned on when you hit the power button and that you're not typing on a powered-off device.
* Why, oh why, can it only remember 1 single Wi-Fi password? I write most of the time from home, but sometimes I like to go to a nearby coffee shop. If I connect it to the coffee shop's Wi-Fi, I have to manually re-enter my home password when I get back. I don't need it to remember thousands of networks, but maybe just the 3 or more most recent ones would cover the above cases, plus tethering to my phone.
I joined the BYOK[0] Kickstarter last year. I hope it turns into the device I hoped the Alpha would be.
[0] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/byok/byok-the-ultimate-...
Not really a fix, but I encounter this regularly (Usually with my e reader), I just named my Phone's hotspot the same as my home network (Same password too) and connect the phone to the public WiFi
It has other problems (Like security, if you're connecting other devices), but it makes it simple enough
Edit: Maybe make it the same SSID as a guest network, that way you avoid your other devices thinking it's a trusted network
That's an option, for sure. I've thought about doing exactly that, but stopped because of the security issues. And that doesn't help with the coffee shop / hotel / office issues, unless I want to use tethering 100% of the time I'm outside the house, which I don't.
I have a distraction-free writing device. It's called a notebook and it cost eight dollars.
Lovely! I envy your ability to handwrite my thoughts as quickly as I can type them.
I'm assuming this is a bit facetious, that said, I think it is worth exploring.
Yes, you can use short hand to learn to write words faster, such that you may be surprised at how fast people can actually write. Certainly, you'd be surprised at how slow some people type. Especially when thinking.
More pertinent for notebooks, though, is how unstructured it can be. Learning to use the space of a page is a big thing that I could never really replicate with text on a computer.
Easy places this is relevant. Math when trying to work out something. Anything pictorial that I don't know how to type out. Graphical spots where I want large parts of it "scratched out" such that it is not relevant for the note I am taking now.
I take plenty of paper notes, especially for math, diagrams, and other things. But we're here talking about an article about typewriting devices, and in the context of the kinds of things you'd write long-form on a typewriter, "just use a notebook!" is insultingly unhelpful.
I've tried for decades to write long-form things without it causing my hand to cramp up painfully. I know what's wrong, and I also accept that at this point there's not much I can do about it. If I could use an $8 notebook instead of a keyboard, I'd be doing it already.
Fair that "just use a notebook" is unnecessarily flippant. This sort of device is something that clearly some folks like.
I mention in another comment here that I have a Freewrite Alpha. It has a couple of issues that keep it from being my perfect device, but it's darn close. I genuinely love taking it out and cranking line after line of rough draft with it. Its deliberately pared-down UI removes the temptation to even try bothering to edit the words. That comes in a later step after it's synced to my laptop or its cloud service. But for raw capturing of my messy, unorganized ideas as fast as I can type them, it's brilliant.
I can sit down and comfortably type out several pages of content with it. If I tried writing that much by hand, I'd be nearly in tears of hand-cramping pain by the end. So the Alpha, and this device, and the BYOK device I mention aren't for everyone, and I wouldn't use them for everything, but they surely have their niche.
> I can sit down and comfortably type out several pages of content with it. If I tried writing that much by hand, I'd be nearly in tears of hand-cramping pain by the end.
If I had problems like this, I'd likewise assume mere contrarianism on the part of someone claiming a notebook can serve as well as a keyboard. That was why I refused to use pens or write longhand in school, except under duress. I had not then discovered that good pens solve this problem; writing a dozen pages with one, effectively without pause, can certainly be meditative but need not be at all painful.
Sounds like it is a great tool for you in generating prose/poetry? Do you not need to be more graphical for some of the notes? I'm assuming you just don't use this for the math or notes use case? I'm also having to assume that this is largely consumed on another device for editing and such?
I love it - at least the Platonic idea of it - for writing lots of scattered ideas quickly. The recommended workflow for the Alpha is to Just Write: sit down, hit the buttons to open a new, empty doc, then follow whenever your mind leads. You deliberately don't want to edit at this stage, unless it's a typo you can fix with a couple of backspaces. You're in writing mode, not editing or proofreading mode. Then you can pull the raw text into a full-featured editor on your computer and do all the editing you want later. And yeah, it's not even remotely decent at math or taking (or organizing) notes. It barely handles Markdown.
If I were in the middle of writing and got sidetracked, I'd probably insert something like
...were roasting hot dogs on the fire when the UFO came
TK NOTE Just remembered I should buy a suitcase
and sucked the alligator up out of the lake.
> I envy your ability to handwrite my thoughts as quickly as I can type them.
Not your thoughts, certainly. But for matters of any depth, not only code, I find the limit on speed tends rarely to be set by speed of transcription.
The limit on your speed, as you pointed out. There are times I stare at a screen for an hour and then add a comma to fix a bug. There are other times I'm writing long walls of text as fast as I can get them out of my brain. That's the sort of thing the device in this article we're discussing is meant for. And for me, I cannot possibly put pen to paper as quickly as I can put chars on a screen (or ribbon ink onto typing paper, for that matter).
It's hardly as if one doesn't switch to a keyboard when a keyboard is indicated. Just that it seems a bit silly to start with whatever hundreds of dollars or hours of investment this device requires, needing also to learn how to use and fettle it and tolerate its various inconveniences, when the need it addresses is so relatively rare compared with what a simple, inexpensive pen and notebook, or even a $160 Decimo and a Mnemosyne or Webnotebook, can serve. The device is the distraction.
This reminded me of "Pomera" from Kingjim: https://getpomera.com/ I tried it a long time ago but it didn't stick. Still glad to see a similar concept coming back here. It's just cool.
What I like in this Micro Journal is the real keyboard though. The Pomera keyboard was very cheap (for portability.)
Check out the Zerowriter Ink. Similar features/hardware but a slightly different form factor. Seems like a pretty attractive niche for startups.
Available for purchase on Battlestar Galactica.
One of the most brilliant pieces of production design (in my opinion) is the choice to make paper octagonal via trimmed corners in the BSG universe. Such a wonderful way of communicating that the world is other, or ours but through some strange looking glass, or to borrow from Gibson, a mirror world, where things are just so barely surreal in their subtle differences. Those paper corners suggest some contingent, divergent history in the development of printing technology that implies some larger world of divergences. The impression of depth! Always loved that.
Reminds me of the Alphasmart, it was such a great device: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AlphaSmart
> Reminds me of the Alphasmart, it was such a great device: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AlphaSmart
Agreed. I own one of the early AlphaSmart devices (I own and collect some old-school software and devices) and I plan on keeping it for a long time.
I love the idea of it, but I would get bothered working with such a tiny screen. I understand that bigger screens lead to more things going on and greater distractions, but I want to see my writing with some structure, paragraphs, margins, indentation. Some of those tiny screens with their tiny text, it looks comparable to typing through a keyhole! But I would still love to try one.
Pen and paper, thank me later.
I can type a sustained 90 wpm. I can write about 10 wpm … for about five minutes before I’m in severe pain.
Another option is an iPad and keyboard in Assistive (single-app) mode, give the password to someone else or write on paper.
This looks really great! I am glad you are also selling them, I might give it a go. Love that you can send to Google drive too!
Reminds me of a typewriter, but without the solid and satisfying thunks.
sounds like freewrite but in name imho
What software is used for this?
depends on the edition
https://github.com/unkyulee/micro-journal/tree/main/micro-jo...