Miscellany: Back to Basics

During the trip to California, I spent a lot of time either at the hospital or out and about with family. I decided to go one step beyond "paleolithic computing;" I went out and bought the cheapest blogging device in the modern age: a pen and a shirt-pocket-size memo pad.

There are certain advantages to going back to pen and paper when traveling. It's cheap, obviously - the whole shebang was about 75 cents (would have been less, but I decided to spring for the fancy memo pads). You can bring the memo pad through security without having to lug out some electronic device for the TSA to inspect. The package is light, quick to start up, durable, and almost completely inconspicuous.

One big problem is that you have to retype everything once you get access to a computer. Another is that not everyone has great handwriting; it took me a while to decipher my own chicken scratches, for instance. But if you never want to lose an idea on the road, and if you don't want to carry any CMOS circuits on you, then paper it is.