Celebration

H's bday, off to fancy dinner.

Yard work tomorrow!

Thinking of project for the ASmart, casual and posthumous. Might work out. We'll see.

AlphaSmart lives!

Go to neo-direct.com and you'll see the AS family still lives. Neo 2 is a clone, 700 hrs on 3 AA batteries. Fair price and you can add a router for wireless.

Much much cheaper than a tablet or netbook! But it just writes. But what a tool for writers on a trip or job with many hrs away from power or charging convenience. 700 hrs! Who can beat it? And I love its feel and use ... less distracting than a computer. IT JUST WRITES.

Power player

Finally have the Fire back, better than ever. Now if I can avoid another accident ... gotta see about backup.

Happy bday, Sketch!

11 today, the old man. Need to do something special.

Serendipity

i Market is a clone of Google Play that I can access! Read about it in Chron this morning.

What?! Fantastic!

Just checked and my app rejected by Google for tech reason I don't understand is APPROVED by Amazon. In shock. Not online yet but this is very hot stuff re its distribution. Amazing.

Returning

Back with the SF Chronicle. Blogs and apps miss too much. 2 reasons I chose this instead of LA Times ... much cheaper, only $6/mo. ... 20 cents an issue! ... and a feature I love, bylines are hot links. Love a story? One click and you're into an email to tell the writer so. Started several conversations that way. But downsizing means this is it ... and the NYer, which I kept.

Thinking very seriously of returning to AlphaSmart for routine writing, brush up on all the wp shortcuts I've forgotten.

Also learned there are well reviewed, inexpensive solar chargers for the Kindle.

I seem to be preparing for writing periods without electricity!

Geek roll

Doing geek chores all night. Corrected a typo online with the Fire more quickly than going downstairs to use the netbook.

Alphasmarts no longer made ... but there's a couple used for sale under 20 bucks! Felt like buying them to give away. Didn't.

Bought some cheap fittings to see if I can make a cable to hook up AS, can't find one I had. Surely in mess of my office somewhere.

But I still have 2 to read. 5 a.m.!

Damn!

I love the new ability to manage and edit all my html files ... in the archive, the tutorial, the journal ... from the Fire. Hot stuff re my "productivity profile."

Adventures in Cyberspace

Able now to ftp to and from the Fire, I looked for an android html editor. What I found required access to Google Play. Amazon's great app drawback. No luck.

Then I found - and here's the net at its best - a trick: change the html extension to txt, then it shows up in Documents and can be opened in word processor to edit the code. Now I can edit code on the Fire, adding great mobility and flexibility to my work habits.

ftp

Did my first ftp on the fire with nifty app called FTPCafe.

Gadgets

I do my work on 4 things: a pc, a netbook, a Kindle Fire and a Kindle reader. If I were resizing. I'd trade all for an Ipad and reader.

And then there were 3

Down to pdf's online to download. I have a great program that lets me comment in margins of pdf doc, perfect for teaching.

Amazing adjunct security, fall class full with waiting list. I am leaving teaching as Rocky Marciano, not Joe Louis.

Merle Travis

Damn, what a great album! Been too long since I listened.

Merle Travis on it is great. I have a story. 1950s, LA, early days of TV. Time to fill, not many shows. One station had long weekday afternoon live country music variety show. Travis was a regular!

The station was located near the great Farmer's Market. Moms would drop their kids, like me, at the station to watch the show while they shopped. The kids might become part of the show, getting on a haystack. The first daycare in LA?

Anyway, one of these times I got a guitar lesson from Merle Travis! End of story. Well, not quite. He became a sort of hero after I got my Gene Autry guitar, so I was really upset when he made the front page of the paper after going after his wife with a butcher knife or some such. Innocence and Experience, as Blake says.

Travis had unusual TWO finger picking style. Doc Watson picked it up when not flat picking. Doc named son Merle after Trsvis.

Today Travis best known as songwriter: Sixteen Tons, Dark As A Dungeon.

Will the Circle Be Unbroken?

I remember it well. An album with this title by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band took the Eugene folk community by storm. It became a ritual in our house to play it every Sunday morning. I have it and I will, still, 40 years later.

Man o man

M's take 4-2 lead into bottom of 9th. So what happens? Closer walks three straight! 5-4 loss.

When the game ends ...

... need to work my butt off to read my quota before my energy crashes! A fun morning but not getting any reading done.

Android browsers

Silk, the browser that comes with Fire, but the new Chrome is great. Not the C sync but actual beta browser, which I got at Mobo Market, not Amazon Store.

Baseball

Nice to listen to M's game on the Fire. The MLB game day audio is terrific, $20 for entire pre, season and post games, every game, no blackouts, choice of either home or visiting radio broadcast. Plus the free video game. Can't beat it ... and I prefer bb on radio anyway.

Not so fast

In LA Times, big deal about South Coast Rep doing all-black Death of a Salesman in its 50th season. In the 1980s, Portland's Golden Age, this was done here with Tony Armstrong brilliant in the lead.