AHHH....MICROTECHNOLOGY
26 January 2003
The keyboard I ordered for my palm pilot arrived today.
It's absolutely astounding what modern technology can do! Just
look at this thing. Here I am holding the Palm Pilot in my right hand and the
keyboard, in its case in my left--a keyboard in that little thing???
You unzip the case and the thing unfolds like a
brochure:
You then lay it flat, close up the two sides so that
the keyboard is all one piece, like your regular keyboard, and you slip the palm into a
little stand that plugs into the keyboard:
And then you just type, the way you would on a regular
computer, and it all comes out just like it would on a word processor. I bought
"Wordsmith," which is a word processing program for the Palm, which will allow
me to write longer documents.
See how much I love you?
The plan is to take this with me to Australia. I
won't be posting daily journal entries, but I will be writing daily entries when
we go traveling and then posting a bunch of them at once (with photos) when we get back
home again. (When I get ready to leave, I'll let everyone know and if you want to
know when entries are put up, you can sign the notify list.)
I've been downloading other software for the
thing....and yet again discovering the range of subjects. You name it, it's probably
there.
 I finally found the perfect world clock. You
load your time zone (see upper right of the palm screen) and then you can choose four
other cities whose time you might be interested in checking.
I also added a BMI calculator (just so I can keep track
of exactly how fat I am), a Weight Watcher journal (after I check the BMI, which is
supposed to keep me inspired, I guess!), a timer, which I installed specifically so I
won't keep forgetting to put the speculums into the sterilizer when it heats up. (Of
course Cindy told me I could just as easily--and a lot more cheaply--have bought a little
plastic timer at Long's--but what fun would that have been?)
I now have "EZ Check," which helps me figure
out how much people owe when you're all splitting the check at a restaurant.
"How Long" lets me find out how many days it is from today to whatever day I
choose (like that it's 226 days until I arrive in Perth, for example).
Just for fun, I downloaded some sort of a patent
checker. This is for garage sale devotees (I am not one), who can check the patent
number on an item they might be buying to find out when the patent was issued. (This
is obviously for those who are used to finding cheap gold in other people's garbage).
I have a program to keep track of my biking trips,
another one for tracking Christmas stuff (cards, gifts, etc.), a rhyming dictionary if I
should ever want to collaborate with Steve on a song again, and a program where I can keep
track of my medical history (which is so uncomplicated, the program is pretty much
useless).
I keep thinking I have everything I could possibly ever
want and then coming up against other intriguing things. Doesn't everyone want
a Portuguese to Japanese dictionary? or a digital guppie? Don't you need to
keep track of your camera collection? Or your gun collection?
...maybe I should think about the bicycling journal.... |
