Do you feel that there is a lot of potential in the pop-up box?

The pop-up box can be used for all sorts of things and we have only begun to scratch the surface, or scroll over its substrata.

I would love it, for example, if I could read (i.e., try to read) an article written in French that were festooned with pop-up boxes pop-uppable over every word, you’d just glide your mouse and the illumination would come, the English translations and concise explanations of every nice grammatical and stylistic point. Maybe some of the pop-up boxes would have other pop-up boxes that pop up.

It turns out that pop-up boxes can even be used to express coy reservations or second thoughts. Instead of sticking such asides in brackets or footnotes or addenda, you could have a little pop-up box ready to leap out of the text you wish to nervously explicate. I saw this form of annotation in an essay on authority and authoritarianism by Timothy Wirkman Virkkala (I hope I’m pronouncing that correctly), to which I was led by an article about presidential candidate Ron Paul’s disowned newsletter copy, long story.

With regard to the line in Virkkala’s piece about “who is he to tell me to accept his categories,” I thought it was obviously a little ironic joke about authority and questioning authority, in line with the button slogan that annoyed Lew Rockwell, not a seriously indecorous implication that in the essay to which Virkkala was responding Rockwell had offered no argument but only demanded agreement with tough-sounding authoritarian assertions. Be that as it may, Virkkala now disparages the wisecrack as “indecorous.” He has had second thoughts about it; the tone is too jarring in light of the relatively elevated tone of the rest of the essay or whatever.

But…indecorous?! Why do persons kick themselves in the groin like that, accusing themselves of indecorousness and the like?

Hold on, though. Our pop-up box encases one of the more-sinuous sort of second thoughts, those that come with their own airbag and trampoline. Note, uh, Benny, the full text of the apologia that will accost you if you take the trouble to scroll: “Does this seem harsh? An editorial snafu led to this indecorous moment.”

Huh? Are you like me? Are you shaking your head, tall, just showered, enjoy books and movies, and making yourself a glass of chocolate milk as you get ready to turn in for the evening?

First of all, the author says he’s guilty of indecorousness, or rather that the moment was (hmm…), but then fobs off the responsibility for this renegade moment on an anonymous factor called “editorial snafu.” See, these Editorial Snafu gremlins clatter across escritoires at many an inopportune moment, and there is nothing to do about them but sigh and erect your self-accusatory, self-exculpatory pop-up box which nobody will ever see who does not click on hyperlinks expecting to be led to yet another damn web page….

We’re just at the beginning of all this. The more we see from the pop-up box, the more we can expect to see.

Why add a typewriter to your writing-tool pool?

In the previous blog entry I reported that I had hauled the typewriter out of the hiding place and might try to use it now and then as an alternative to the PC.

In general I want to increase the ubiquity and variety of my writing tools as an aid to productivity and bulwark against sloth. The typewriter is on a stand in the bedroom, along with a few books I need to consult for the writing chore I have in mind. I figure if I don’t want to stumble into the office and fire up the PC I might still hack away at a job on the typewriter, then port it to the PC once there’s a draft. The retyping won’t be that much of a loss of efficiency, at least not for short projects.

Another addition to the pool is the NEC MobilePro 900 mini-laptop that I picked up second-hand from an Amazon vendor recently (the model is also available from eBay sellers). Circa year 2000 vintage, of a line that isn’t produced any more. There’s a certain skimping on programs and memory for the sake of the light weight (about a pound) and the instant-on capability. With the appropriate wi-fi card it can hook into the Internet at hotspots. Surfing the web is a trawl compared to what a regular PC can do, but it’s still cool to be able to check email online or scan some headlines. While the MobilePro’s keyboard is usable, the care required to type on it does slow down typing speed. But the little critter also has a USB port. I’ve used it for a flash drive and also to plug in a regular keyboard. With a splitter, it can accommodate both a keyboard and a separate mouse. (What I need is a keyboard integrated with a mouse pad.) The MobilePro’s screen isn’t that great for outdoors, but it’s visible enough indoors.

The tradeoffs are fine if the main reason for having the machine is to be able to take it anywhere and turn it on and start typing a second later. Price was an issue when the MobilePro was new (about $900, about the same as a fully featured if more cumbersome laptop). But now you should be able to pick it up from the secondhand market for less than $200.

The third tool I’m adopting is a simple memo pad for jotting chores and notions that occur to me before they fade into oblivion. One for my pocket, another for bedside along with the yellow legal pads for longer scribblings. Seems obvious, especially for a “Columbo” fan, but yeah, I’m just getting around to it. I used to call my voicemail a lot to leave messages and reminders to myself, but that’s going to be a little harder to do now that I’ve discontinued my landline phone service (still doable from my PC or with my Tracfone). But that’s another story. Anyway, transcribing a litter of phone messages is cumbersome too. Might as well just retype the scribblings.

Update 12/29/07. You know, scratch all that. I ended up stashing the typewriter for now and buying a new laptop that I recently set up in my bedroom. And although I used the memo pad for a while, I don’t bother any more. Still the most efficient way to leave a note-to-self when I’m away from the computers is to leave a mesasge on my voice box or call Jott to send myself a (possibly typo-ridden) email. I don’t use the MobilePro very much and once I get an ASUS eee, a more functional light mini-laptop that is going for about $400 or less (I really want one!) I doubt I’ll ever use the c. 2000-issue MobilePro with its relatively rigid and limited capabilities.

Can you turn a typewriter into a word processor?

A long time ago in a technological environment far, far away, an article in Writer’s Digest proposed a way to keep up the flow of writing that is repeatedly interrupted by the necessity of putting another sheet of paper in the typewriter once every 250 words or so.

The advice was to use a long continuous roll of suitably wide paper, obtained perhaps from factory overstock. The roll, perhaps 8 and 1/2 inches by 50 feet in dimension, would gradually be used up as you typed away, but not so fast as an 8 and 1/2 by 11 sheet of paper would be used up.

Of course, you were supposed to try this with first drafts only, not final copy. Until electronic submissions became commonplace, editors still always wanted manuscripts to be submitted in sheets. Market listings never included a request that manuscripts be submitted in the form of tubby industrial paper rolls. But the point was that by obviating the need to replace pages as you went along, you’d enhance the creative flow that was most important when you were first coming up with the words, not quite so important when pruning and polishing them.

The piece appeared probably in the late 70s. Has the advent of word processing killed the utility of this notion? Maybe. But there is something to said for handwriting or typing as an alternative to electron juggling, to relieve sameness or to ward off the demon of obsessive-compulsive blue-penciling. It’s easy to edit as one goes along on the computer; and hard, at least for some writers, to train oneself just to let the words flow happily or crappily and amend and repair later. So maybe I’ll try to scrounge up one of these paper rolls and see how it goes, now that I’ve hauled out the electronic typewriter.