But really, my ideal setup is pretty close to how it presently is: tiny little keyboard on my knee, and probably some kind of whiskey within reach. Simple stuff.

Writers, take note!

So what’s Leigh Alexander using then? An 11” MacBook Air, or the equivalent Windows clone signed Samsung?

No. He’s got two netbooks: an Asus Eee PC for events, and an Acer Aspire One “for slightly more things”. That’s right, a writing professional who’s relying on two netbooks, old ones at that since these things went away with the dinosaurs.

Writing on the iPad mini

It just proves that you can write on just about anything. I almost long for the simplicity of Alexander’s setup as I look at my retina MacBook Pro on the table. Then I remember that I’m thumb-typing this on an iPad mini and realize that I’ve already got it. I guess I got a bit blind after writing The Writer’s iPad, testing and researching all those magnificent apps further showed me the plethora of possibilities that the iPad offers. I almost forgot why I wanted to write the ebook in the first place: the simplicity that is the iPad as a writing tool.

Read the Leigh Alexander interview, consider your own setup for a while, and indulge yourself with a copy of The Writer’s iPad. Then forget about all these things and go write something with whatever tools you have.

Let me instead answer some questions from the modern mailbag, which would mean anything from my email inbox to Twitter, App.net or Facebook. There might be questions directed at me over at Google+ as well, but those will continue to go unanswered.

Are you writing any books right now?
Yup. I’m working on the fourth edition of Smashing WordPress: Beyond the Blog, and I’m working on two novels at the moment.

When will Smashing WordPress 4th Edition be released?
When it’s ready… Seriously though, we (meaning me and my publisher, John Wiley & Sons) have decided to revamp it a bit and get it up to speed with the upcoming 3.6 version. That means a release sometime this summer.

When will the follow-up to your free short story be released, and what’s it called?
Expect it in late June, it has to go through the editor as well. The title is, tentatively, The Cutter Letters. There will be both cutters and letters.

Are you contributing to Fireside Magazine?
No, although who knows what’ll happen in the future. I was just giving them a helping hand during the crowdfunding campaign, that’s all.

Will there be an iBooks release of The Writer’s iPad, and when? Will there be a mobi release?
The iBooks Store has proven to be a pain in the ass, something I didn’t expect. Best case scenario you’ll find The Writer’s iPad there sometime late next week, but I wouldn’t hold my breath. I’ll update the package for customers buying the ebook from TDH.me with a mobi version at the same time, and this will obviously be a free download for all of you who’ve already bought The Writer’s iPad.

Will there be more post on [insert your favorite topic here]?
Most likely, if the topic in question has been covered here previously. I’m planning to ramp up the publishing schedule a bit, to three posts per week, so you might be in luck. In all seriousness, thank you all for your interest in my articles here, especially the Thoughts on Writing series.

That’ll do for now. Hopefully this will answer your questions, and if nothing else I can save time just linking to this little thing whenever needed.

Let me wrap up with some news, as I’m already blabbering about me and my projects here.

• Appricorn is on hold, but not abandoned. There’s details on the Behind Appricorn blog.
• I won’t announce any of the two novels mentioned until after summer. In fact, I haven’t even decided how to publish them yet…
• I’ve been meaning to put together a newsletter for quite some time. Expect that this summer, along with an explanation as to why I’m doing that. It’ll be free, obviously.
• There are some things missing on this site at the moment (if you missed them, good!), but when I’ve gotten around to fixing them I intend to take a look at the two previous themes and decide wether I should release them or not. They might cost a little something, they might not. I’m not making amy promises on this one though.

That’s all. Get back to your whisky drinking, folks.

That kind of snark is common these days. Everyone is doing touchscreen, Blackberry obviously doesn’t “get it” and thus they’re stuck in the 00s. It’s almost Bill Gates bad, you know!

Except that it might not be, of course.

The Blackberry Q10 has a physical keyboard

We’ve been through this before. The industry is so certain of something, the (so called) analysts know precisely what everyone should be doing, retail knows what sells, and the customers know exactly what they want.

Just like with the netbook, and where is that now again?

It’s easy to proclaim the truth of today as universal. It’s hard to remember that what might seem unstoppable at the time, might in fact not exist in a year’s time.

Remember these?

I think Blackberry are digging their own grave; they’re doomed. I think the notion of a mobile phone with a physical keyboard is ridiculous most of the time, but I do realize that it will sell because some people are still more comfortable with these bulky things. In a similar fashion, I’m “certain” that the touchscreen can’t nor won’t replace a physical keyboard for my longform typing.

Which it will, there’s no doubt about it. After all, I can thumb-type this on my iPad mini despite the fact that the MacBook is literally three steps away. Yet I’m certain I will always prefer the physical keyboard over the touchscreen.

Or at least I would be, if I was daft enough to not heed my own words.

I don’t know, and neither do you, nor anyone else. We can guess, we can say what we think now, but tomorrow’s another day.

Godspeed Blackberry. There was a time when I really wanted one of your phones, just as with the Nokia E series. Then today, or yesteryear or something, caught up with reality, and I joined the sighing masses for a while, forgetting all about netbooks and how fast things can change.

Whenever you think something is an universal truth in technology, you’re wrong.

All hail The Next Big Thing. I’m thinking drums.

If Fireside Magazine gets funded I’ll write a short story and give away for free. It’ll be about a guy with a sword.

At the time I had no idea what that meant, but for some reason “a guy with a sword” felt right. I might’ve been tired, slightly drunk, or both. We’ll never know because I have a lousy memory.

The cover for Fireside Magazine’s first issue (2012)

Time flies, reality’s a bitch, and shit gets in the way, but here we are and here’s the promised short story. It’s called My Name Is Estam and ended up being the first of three short stories that I’ve decided to write. Part two and three are outlined but I don’t expect to get started with them until late next week at the earliest.

Anyway, My Name Is Estam is indeed about a guy with a sword. I wrote the first 3,000 words that night Fireside Magazine got funded, and when I thought I was done I realized that I wanted to keep telling the story. So I did, and in the end My Name Is Estam clocks in at just over 9,000 words. I gave it an edit pass, put some of my beta readers on it, and when it seemed to fly I passed it onwards to my excellent editor Brian, who got it back to me promptly.

Then the poor story sat on my hard drive, since I just didn’t have the time to complete the edits, export all the necessary files, and write this bloody post so that I could offer the promised short story to y’all. Yeah, I suck sometimes, I know.

Enough flavor text, here’s My Name Is Estam, a 9,000+ word short story about a guy with a sword. For free, in whatever format you fancy. Enjoy.

Download links (small file sizes):

• My Name Is Estam in ePub format (great for iOS)
• My Name Is Estam in mobi format (for Kindle)
• My Name Is Estam in PDF format (last resort)
• The complete package in ZIP format

I’d love to hear what you think of My Name Is Estam, so don’t hesitate to get in touch. I’m @tdh on Twitter, @tdh on App.net, and there’s even a Facebook page that focuses on my writing if that’s your thing.

Oh, and do pass this thing along to anyone you think would like it. Thank you, and enjoy.

Bill Gates obviously lives in an alternate reality, in which Windows 8 is a success and people really just want to use Windows with their greasy fingers.

I’m afraid that’s not the case in the real world. The reboot of Windows 8 should be evidence enough of that.

The Microsoft Surface Pro, pretty in pink

The Surface line is pretty decent as far as I can tell. I have no doubt that they’ll take a healthy chunk out of the competition among the boardroom crowd, and if I ran a company selling high-end Android tablets, I’d be fidgeting by now. But overall the concept of an OS built both for traditional computers and tablets is severely lacking. These are completely different beasts, and if the Surface is a winner just because it relies on the keyboard, I fail to see why I shouldn’t get a (far superior) laptop instead. Anyone who have tried a laptop with touch screen will tell you that it’s awkward at best, and although we all really want it to work well, it just doesn’t.

Want to know what it feels like? Just prop up your iPad on a stand, connect a bluetooth keyboard, and run an app that requires a lot of touching as well as writing. Yes it works, but it doesn’t work well.

Bill Gates and Microsoft are clinging to the notion that what was, still is. They’re gambling their flagship product on this idea, and the massive backlash should tell them that they’re doing it wrong. No amount of claiming that millions and millions of tablet users are frustrated because their gadgets aren’t behaving like a late 90s computer will change this.

Removing comments have had these effects, both immediate and long term:

• The conversation rate has increased, but moved. We’re now talking on Twitter and to some extent on App.net.
• The tone of the conversation was always pretty decent here, but it has improved nonetheless. Criticism is constructive, praise is just as nice as ever.
• There is no moderation, and no missed comments, to manage and apologize for.
• I don’t have to worry about spam, which includes both it spam bots and the occasional trolling.

This would’ve been the perfect opportunity for a graph of some sort, but I’ve got no numbers to share. Sorry.

Photo by Connor Tarter (CC)

Some claim that a blog without comments isn’t a blog. I don’t care about this, as I’ve never really bothered too much about what you call a site. I publish stuff on TDH.me, how you categorize it is more your problem than mine – at least that’s my approach.

Others think that removing the comments is a way to distance oneself with the readers. Since the conversation has increased, and I’m easier to get hold off than ever, I disagree with this notion. The same goes for the argument that removing comments is a way to not stand up for your content. Again, I’m available, and I give you more power to criticize me since we can talk on even ground, as opposed to within a comment box where I, the publisher, am in complete control.

Should everyone remove their comment boxes then? Probably not. I’m actually having a hard time deciding wether the next version of my Swedish site will have comments or not. There are so many good discussions in the comments there, but there’s a lot of nonsense as well. It’s a tough call, even with the positive result from this very site.

Your mileage will vary has to be the safe wrap-up to this post. If you have something to say, I’m @tdh on Twitter, and @tdh on App.net.

Amazon recommends The Writer’s iPad to me

No Amazon, I won’t be buying my own book from you, but thanks anyway. It’s not that far off actually, if I hadn’t written it myself I’d buy it in a heartbeat.

Here’s hoping that same recommendation went out to a bunch of other people as well. I could do with a sales bump on Amazon.

It’s over a year ago since I stopped using Simplenote, instead relying on Apple’s stock Notes.app. It’s not as pretty as Simplenote, and I’m not as organized perhaps, but since I process all my notes on a regular basis I found out that Notes.app did its thing. The iCloud sync gives me access to all my notes, on both iOS and OS X. Simplenote did that too, but I just don’t see the reason for additional apps on both iOS and OS X. And Notes.app just works, thanks to iCloud.

It doesn’t stop there. I use Apple’s word processor Pages on both OS X and iOS, writing quotes for prospective Odd Alice clients mostly, but sometimes for other writing as well. The iCloud sync is working perfectly.

One more? OK. I changed my syncing preferences in iA Writer to iCloud sync when Dropbox altered their API in some fashion. The change made files synced with Dropbox vulnerable when on a spotty internet connection, which is almost always the case when I’m in my summer home. I ended up with data loss, which I was able to recover thanks to Dropbox’ most excellent versioning feature, but it was unnecessary stress and lost time. When I switched to iCloud sync, as developer Information Architects advised me, this wasn’t an issue anymore.

The iCloud website

The fact is, iCloud just works for me, across the board. I haven’t had a single issue yet, not counting the occasional outage, but that can be said for every online service. And yes, your mileage may vary, and obviously does since there are horror stories.

That said, I’m scared of iCloud. I’m using it because it works well, but I consider it a major risk.

My biggest fear is the file system model iCloud relies upon. Let’s take the iA Writer app as an example. I’m writing a lot in iA Writer, and thus the content, or files, are saved to iCloud, and also stored locally. However, “stored locally” actually means that the files are stored in the iA Writer app’s local storage, on my iOS devices, and on its equivalent on my Mac version of iA Writer.

What happens if the iA Writer app stops working? As in, crashes upon launch, and the developer can’t or won’t fix it for some reason? This isn’t something I fear with iA Writer since the developer is serious, but humor me.

If I can’t get into an app, such as iA Writer, I can’t get to my locally stored content. A discontinued app that suddenly stops working means that you can’t get to your content.

Think about that for a moment, and then consider what apps you’re using that are the only means of accessing the content you produce in them.

For some reason I can’t go to icloud.com and download my content. Why Apple has neglected to offer this is beyond me, because iCloud as a service is just as vulnerable as the apps you’re using. To be fair, they do offer it for some of their own apps, like Pages for instance, but not all. It’s just not enough.

On OS X you can dig out your local iCloud content even if your Mac app stops working. This is because the Mac app’s local storage is hidden somewhere on your hard drive. All you need to do is find it, and there’s your content. It’s a nuisance, but at least you can get to your content this way.

With iOS, it’s a different story because there aren’t any obvious file system for you to break into. You can sync documents through iTunes, but this isn’t a feature that all apps allow. Basically, if you can’t get into your app on iOS, then you can’t get to the content in there. Jailbreaking your device might be your only solution, and that’s not a pleasant prospect for most users.

Scary, isn’t it?

I wish Dropbox worked as well with iOS apps over spotty internet connections, as it does on OS X. I’m a big Dropbox fan, I’ve got everything there, but it manages poorly when used in apps, compared to iCloud that is. Perhaps it needn’t do that, perhaps it’s the same as with iCloud and in the end the developers aren’t implementing Dropbox well enough, I don’t know, and frankly I don’t care.

The iDisk icon of yore

I might switch back to Dropbox just to know that I can reach my data whenever I want, without hassle, through the Dropbox apps or the website. Then again I have no quarrel with iCloud, it just works, and so on. For now.

If Apple would just let me get to my content on iCloud through the icloud.com website, much like Dropbox does, all would be fine. It’s such an obvious little thing, letting people access their content. We used to be able to do that, with iDisk in the MobileMe days.

Here’s hoping iOS 7 brings a less vulnerable iCloud. If not, I think I’ll just have to go back to Dropbox again, despite it being the inferior product in this case. It’s not the way things should be, but there’s just not much to do about it at the moment.

Unless Apple either buys or integrates Dropbox into iOS and OS X. That would be just dandy.

Hello TDH from another TDH.

I landed on your website while looking for whatever Facebook users are called. I enjoyed that and your Inspiration, Infinite Scrolling and especially What to Write articles. Thanks for posting them!

Mostly I’m just glad that if someone else is going to use TDH, I’m glad it was done so well and positively. People might even think it’s me if they don’t look at your picture! Or read much.

Good going!

This is why you shouldn’t hesitate to get in touch with some kind words every now and then. Not just to me obviously, but to people who do something you like. There is so much negativity online, and it’s so easy to post a snarky comment, so these things stand out. They can be heart-warming, even.

If you’d like to talk to me, I’m @tdh on Twitter, and @tdh on App.net, got a Facebook page, and a Tumblr blog too, and you could even email me if that’s your poison. I love to talk, so don’t be a stranger. Even if it’s just a quirky little email like the one above.

Write shit.

I’m quite mad, that’s what some keep telling me. Others have tried to find a diagnosis, some sort of psychological branding that would explain my inability to actually cash in on every thing I do, no matter how successful they might be in the end.

I never claimed to be a businessman. There are others better suited for that.

I just get bored.

Photo Credit: Gabriel Rojas Hruska (CC)

At any given moment I have a handful unlaunched projects that I’m fiddling with. It could be books, websites, publishing outlets, EPs, designer clothes, apps, or something completely different. I have a problem sticking to one thing, and why should I? It’s all in good fun, and despite all my problems I seem to pull out alright in the end.

I won’t stop juggling projects. I don’t think I can.

But this year I’m trying something different. I wrote a list of goals (not to be mistaken for this more general list-thingy[http://tdh.me/the-2013-list-of-things-to-live-by/] I published on January 2nd), things I truly want to achieve this year. The list grew by one in February, so I guess I cheated from the get-go, but I’ve yet to receive a formal complaint so I think we can let it slide.

The first item on my goals list will be checked in the near future. When The Writer’s iPad is available in all bookstores I want it to be, that’s one down, six to go. It might come as a surprise, but The Writer’s iPad is long in the making, it’s been in the back of my head for years, ever since I started writing on the iPad. It is one of those projects that have drifted in and out of active state, weighing me down with its urgency. The Writer’s iPad is a project that would’ve been done so much sooner if I’d scrapped other things. If I would’ve been more focused.

Focusing on one thing is boring.

Building whatever you want to be doing at this given moment, creating something from scratch, taking control of what you do – that’s not boring.

I hope the list of goals will bring balance to whatever I’m doing. I try to look at it a few times every week, to remind me what I used to think was important a while ago. So far it has focused my efforts, igniting the spark and the will to do more relevant things.

But who knows when I’ll get bored with that?