Friday, October 26, 2012
The voices in my head
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Photo illustration by Jeff Price
As my wife is fond of saying, "writer's block is when your invisible friends stop talking to you." |
No matter where I go, they are there.
Whispering their secrets in my ear, telling me their stories and filling me in on the intimate details of their lives.
Sometimes I’m shocked by the things they tell me, but I find their constant companionship rather comforting. They make my roughly 45-minute commute to and from work each day pass a little more quickly. They also keep me amused at work when I’m forced to wait for a slow computer or server to boot or to finish running a scan or diagnostic. They also keep me entertained on those now rather rare days when no one is having any computer problems and I’m just sitting around staring at the clock, trying to look busy, waiting for my shift to end.
My friends even keep me company when I’m making “saw dust” in my “workshop” (or as my wife insists on calling it, our garage), though thankfully they know to shut up when I flip on the table saw or other machine with sharp whirling blades.
Usually though, they become the most talkative at night, just as I am going to bed, holding off telling me their most juicy tidbits until I’m about to fall asleep. That’s really annoying, especially on “school nights” when I can’t stay up late, but nowhere as near annoying as those times that they suddenly clam up, refusing to talk to me despite my constant prodding.
Oh and there is something else you should know about these companions of mine.
They are all in my head.
Now I know what you’re probably thinking.
“Jeff, they make drugs for that, and you should probably be on them!”
But I don’t want to stop hearing those voices, ever!
“Jeff, you’re crazy. They lock people like that up. You don’t want us to call those nice young men in their clean white coats do you?”
Relax. The voices aren’t telling me to do anything harmful. They know I’m a writer and all they want me to do is be their biographer.
“Biographer? BIOGRAPHER! You talk like these voices are real people!”
To me they are real people! They are fully formed individuals with their own unique dispositions, hopes and desires, loves and losses. Like us, their personalities were formed by the events of their childhood. Ask me anything about them, from their favorite color or favorite food to the type of person they are attracted to and I can tell you. Sometimes I feel like they are my children, and seem so real to me that if one of them suddenly walked through my door as flesh and blood beings I would not be even a tad bit surprised.
Sometimes I even find myself wishing that the words I write about them could actually bring them to life like in that old “Twilight Zone” episode, “A World of His Own.”
“I don’t know. It still sounds kind of crazy….”
Oh, it probably is. But then again, I think all writers probably are a bit nuts. The only thing that keeps us sane is writing down those things that the voices in our heads tell us.
“Then why do you still sound so nuts?”
Mainly because while my characters are very chatty, they aren’t exactly disciplined. They tell me stuff out of order and often get side tracked and wind up talking about tons of extraneous stuff that’s unrelated to the story I’m writing about them. And because they are characters from science fiction, where alternate timelines are always a possibility, I get told alternate versions of those stories.
Sorting through all this takes a lot of time and can be exhausting and I wish I was able to write at the speed my imaginary friends talk to me. Yet even if I could, I still doubt I’d be able to keep up with them.
And you know what?
That’s okay with me.
As long as they’re willing to keep talking to me, I’m willing to keep listening.
Friday, October 12, 2012
Txtr’s Beagle may teach this old dog a new trick
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| TXTR BEAGLE: $13 for an e-reader? Count me in! |
Maybe it’s because I started my career as a reporter and still work at a newspaper that makes me resist giving up the “dead-tree” editions of the things I read and going totally digital, but to me there is something special about holding a book or newspaper in my hand that I find comforting.
I never have to worry about making sure my book is charged up when I finally have time to read, nor do I have to worry about getting it wet when reading in the bathtub, or at the pool or beach. I never have to turn it off just as I’m getting to the good part of the story because the airplane I’m on is about to take off or land.
I’ve also never been able to justify shelling out the money to buy one of these devices when I can buy up to three or four paperbacks for the same price. And then I’d still have to pay MORE money to buy the book I want to read in the first place.
But all that may be about to change.
A German company named Txtr is set to debut an ultra-cheap, no-frills e-reader for $13.
Yup! You read that right, $13.
Txtr’s new Beagle e-reader is missing a lot of what people now expect from devices like Amazon’s Kindle and Barnes and Noble’s Nook. It lacks 3G and WiFi, meaning you have to use your smartphone to buy and send books to it via Bluetooth; doesn’t have a touch-screen; only has 4 gb of storage, which means you can only store up to five books on it; and only has a smallish 5” screen. It also doesn’t have a standby mode. It’s either off or on. But as the company points out, “with this concept, two AAA batteries enable you to read 12-15 books per year.”
To some, these drawbacks might be deal-killers.
But not to me.
For one thing, a 5” diagonal screen is about the size of a standard paperback page and being small means it’s light, only weighing about 128 grams or a fraction of a pound (.282192 lbs, to be exact). I don’t care if it doesn’t have a touch screen as I actually prefer a button to turn pages.
The only potential drawback for me is the limited storage and having to use my cellphone to transfer books to it. But since I almost always have my cellphone on me and I rarely if ever read more than five books at once, I don’t think it will matter that much.
Plus if I accidentally get it wet reading in the pool, or drop it and break it, I won’t feel that bad. At $13 the Beagle will be cheap to replace.
I look forward to getting my hands on one of these devices and seeing how it performs in the real-world. With its 800x600 pixel resolution, will text be clear and sharp? Will the e-Ink display with its 8-levels of gray scaling be easy enough to read in bright sunlight?
I hope so, but I’m going to have to wait to find out.
The Beagle is set to launch in Europe in time for the holiday season, with a U.S. debut in the works.
According to the tech blog Engadget, the company's chief commercial officer Thomas Leliveld said the device is NOT being marketed as a standalone e-reader but more as “a smartphone accessory.” Leliveld is reported to have said that work is underway to get AT&T and Sprint on board, but that talks are still ongoing with providers.
Still I can’t wait to get my hands on one and test it out. For $13 how could you go wrong? Who knows, The Beagle might even teach this old dog a new trick or two.
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