Saturday 12 January 2013

Foiled again

I wrote my first four novels longhand sitting in a car, which is where I spend most of my life. That in itself is some feat as I'm left handed. My writing looks like an ant crawled through some ink to die a slow and messy death.

   So, before Christmas, I saw a tablet advertised on a  shopping channel. I know, I know I shouldn't have fallen for it. I never do with things that claim to prepare supper, cook it to perfection before washing themselves then conveniently leaping into a cupboard.

   
   Anyway, perhaps it was one too many eggnog, but  I did. All I needed was a tablet, a convenient supply of open WiFi and with the new Kingsoft Office I downloaded. All was set. It's a bit fiddly. First I have to write, then send it as a gmail to myself, then cut and copy it into my MS then reformat it. No problem. I wouldn't have to spend hours trying to read my own writing. Piece of cake in fact. Cloud and Drive simply refuse to work for me - or perhaps I'm just too much of a dumbkopf to understand them.

   Except, that in the two weeks I've had it, I've yet to find an open WiFi hotspot in the whole of London. And I should know, I drive through all of it every day, nothing short of a major disaster would persuade me to go into one of those coffee shops - you know the ones I mean.


   And the final thing is, and this was something the TV presenters conveniently forgot to mention; it doesn't work with talktalk, my preferred internet provider.


   As it works well in every other respect, I can't return it, so it looks like it's back to the trusty Bic.


   The other problem is that now I have a tablet with a three day battery, high def Spider Solitaire has never looked so good and I haven't done any writing, anyway.

5 comments:

  1. Give your tablet time. I'm surprised you're not finding more hotspots. Can't you type on the Kingsoft office, then when you're home hook the tablet to your computer and transfer the data?

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  2. That would be too easy. There's no cable link. I'm going to buy a MiFi. Then I can create my own hotspot. Or if I can find my android phone, I'll just tether it and again, create my own hotspot. All sounds easy in practice.

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  3. Sorry it is giving you so much difficulty! I hope you find a way to use it. I still prefer to write in longhand out of habit? Just more comfortable and then I type it in. At least the original script. Good luck, Roger! And get back to writing; enough solitaire! :-)

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  4. Thanks. Yes you're right, enough solitaire.
    Now I'm playing Angry birds.

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  5. "...My writing looks like an ant crawled through some ink to die a slow and messy death.."

    I love this sentence!!!

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