Why I Don't Write With Pen and Paper

By
In these digital days writing with pen and paper seems all the rage.

A few decades ago I used these tools to write a full-length book, all 216 pages of it. Plus a third more material I cut while editing. And I kept a personal journal for years.

Although a practical necessity back then, it was an awful, time-consuming experience that brought no value to me. No more. Now I use pen an paper only for short notes of up to a couple of lines, and computers or other devices for all the rest.

You’ll have to pry my digital writing tools from my cold, dead hands.

Popular posts from this blog

Using a Bluetooth Keyboard on Android

By
Image
Two years ago I bought a cheap Bluetooth keyboard from Amazon.it. At €14, it was mostly an impulse buy for exploring mobile typing on the go and in similar settings , such as workstations with reduced desk space. My FREALL 7INKEYBD-BK Bluetooth keyboard. I initially used the keyboard with the Android tablet and smartphone I had, a 7” Lenovo Tab E7 and a Pixel 2 XL. I later repurposed the keyboard for the devices I replaced those with, a Lenovo Tab M8 HD 8” tablet and a Pixel 4 XL smartphone. Despite the simplicity of operation, it took me some trial and error to figure out how to pair the keyboard with an Android device and what keystrokes insert the characters I need, such as accented letters when writing in Italian. Moreover, I realized I never blogged about my experience with the unit. So I’m posting these notes in case you come across the same or similar keyboards. The keyboard The keyboard is a cheap, compact, plastic chiclet unit that comes with a small foldable stand for a ta
Read more

An Intel 8080 Assembly Suite in Python

By
Image
A blog post I stumbled upon made me start a new project, crank out lots of Python code, slip down a rabbit hole of arcane and fascinating corners of retrocomputing, and overflow with fun. The project is Suite8080 , a suite of Intel 8080 Assembly cross-development tools comprising an assembler and a disassembler. I developed it in Python entirely with Replit . At over 1,500 lines of code , it’s my second and largest Python project after Spacestills , a NASA TV still image viewer of about 340 lines of code. A hello world Intel 8080 program running in the z80pack CP/M emulator on Crostini Linux. I assembled the program with asm80, the Suite8080 assembler. Why did I write software for a half-century old CPU? This is the story of how I got started with Suite8080, how I developed it, the challenges I faced, and what I learned. Let’s start before the beginning. Background I’m a hobby programmer and a Python beginner, not a professional developer. To practice with the language, I finally set o
Read more

Lenovo Tab M8 HD Review

By
Image
I bought a Lenovo Tab M8 HD , an 8” Android tablet. It comes with a MediaTek Helio A22 SoC, an IPS panel, 2 GB of RAM, and 32 GB of storage. I ordered the device from Lenovo’s Italian online store for €134. In this post I’ll share my early impressions on the device. The packaging box of the Lenovo Tab M8 HD tablet. Motivation The Lenovo Tab M8 HD replaces the Lenovo Tab E7 7” tablet I bought almost a year and a half earlier. After enjoying the Google Nexus 7 2012 and 2013 tablets I left Android slates for several years. My return to tablets with the November 2019 purchase of the cheap Lenovo Tab E7 was a sort of impulse buy. I wanted an affordable Android slate small enough to be compact but with a large enough screen to help productivity . I also figured it would double as an ebook reading device and let me explore the Android ecosystem. The Tab E7 was nice but limited. The screen didn’t have good touch sensitivity, performance was poor, there was a lot of lag, and the screen was no
Read more