Euan Semple's Blog, page 19

Finally

It is easy to find reasons not to write – there’s too much noise, my desk position isn’t right, my keyboard isn’t right. Well, I have finally removed one of those for good.

I have been using my iPad as my main computer for a long time now and really love the writing apps that I use on it (Drafts and Ulysses). But the one issue has been that if I want to write in our van the table wasn’t right and writing on my lap didn’t work with the keyboards that I had. I was beginning to think that I was going to have to buy a laptop (don’t get me wrong buying a new M2 MacBook Air would be no hardship but I don’t need that much computing power).

I decided that the keyboard that was going to do the job was one made by Brydge. They didn’t have any suitable for my now six years old iPad for sale on their site so I did a search in Amazon. Unknown to me the one I found was fulfilled by a third party supplier and they turned out to be the supplier from hell.

My first order didn’t arrive, my second order didn’t arrive and I was on the point of giving up, getting a refund and putting up with my current setup. As a last ditch attempt I emailed support at Brydge and it turns out they offer older keyboards as “open box”, returned keyboards that have hardly been used and work perfectly well.

So, as you can see from the photo above I am now the very happy owner of a Brydge keyboard which is exactly what I wanted and will allow me to write from wherever in the world we manage to get with our little campervan.

First steps

So I took my first steps as a freelance writer today with a review of the Apple Watch Ultra published on Creative Bloq.

Hopefully the first of many so if you know of anyone who has any writing jobs done…

Tacit knowledge

I was approached today about getting involved in a conference on tacit knowledge. It took be back to all of those angels dancing on the head of a pin over definitions of knowledge and the nonsense about capturing knowledge and harnessing knowledge.

We know what we know when we take action and even then it is just a passing thought, a fleeting sense of being in control. Until then it is just part of the constant chatter of a mind that likes to think that it is in charge.

Show, don’t tell

The old adage in novel writing that it is better to describe situations and action than it is to tell people what is happening and what they should think about it, applies just as much to blogging.

As I get older I have less and less interest in experts telling me how I should live my life. But hearing other people talk about the challenges they have faced and how they have overcome them is fascinating and useful.

I have always maintained that my blog posts are more often memos to self than they are instructions to other people, and I aspire more to describing the world as I see it in ways that might pique your interest than telling anyone else what they should do or think!

An unknown intruder

I’ve set up a security camera in my office so that we can see Ably coming and going when we are out and have left the window open for him. I occasionally forget to turn it off when I am in the room and end up on the recording and getting alerts to my own presence on my watch and phone!

We have all had the experience of looking at ourselves in the mirror and wondering who we are looking at. This is worse. I am not looking at the camera and am just moving around the room naturally.

Well, I say naturally, but I look so stiff and awkward. Years of back problems have made me move defensively, even when I think I am relaxed. The outer me is so unlike the inner me.

It is like watching a stranger moving around my own home.

Distraction

Not being distracted all the time is much easier now that I spend so little time in social media platforms but it is still a struggle.

The inclination to reach for my phone, or a book, rather than just sitting is still almost irresistible. Doing nothing, really nothing, is hard. This is why meditation is hard, why yoga is hard.

When we try doing nothing our mind screams out for entertainment, for something to chew on, something to avoid it having to just sit there and be still.

Ingratitude

The chances of the meeting up of the sperm and egg that led to our existence were infinitesimally small.

We find ourselves on, as far as we know, the only planet in the universe capable of supporting human existence.

Despite the war, pestilence, and sheer bad luck that has killed hundreds of thousands of those sharing our time on earth, we are still here.

And in response to the utter miraculousness of our very existence we spend much of our lives feeling sorry for ourselves.

How ungrateful!

Not my finest hour

We have a small utility room in our house in which we have some cupboards, our washing machine and tumble dryer, and a shower for guests. On top of the wall cupboards we keep old tins of paint.

Today when I opened one of the cupboards a large paint tin dropped, hit the edge of the sink, burst open, sprayed paint all over our new washing machine, the walls, the door, the floor and me. Lots of it. It also filled the sink with paint which immediately blocked.

I knew that if I panicked things were only going to get worse. I managed to reach for a plunger to clear the sink, found some cloths, and started what turned out to be an hour’s work clearing the mess.

I couldn’t move to begin with because to do so would spread the paint. I had to keep the tap running to keep the sink clear (thank goodness it was emission paint and hence water soluble) but every time I used a cloth I had to rinse it out, over and over again. The hot water running turned the room into a sauna.

I was in the house on my own. In retrospect this was probably a good thing as it meant that I just had to knuckle down and get on with it.

The inclination to run away when it first happened was almost irresistible. If it had been oil based paint I would have done, leaving a trail or white footprints out to the van!

Algorithmic inappropriateness

I am thinking today of all the owners of online systems that are driven by algorithms who are bricking it in case the wrong ad appears in the wrong place, on the wrong page, on a day when their content is dominated by the death of The Queen.

A different world

The other day when I was looking after Dad he got confused about breakfast and the following exchange ensued:

“What do I do now?”
“Have an oat cake”
“What do I do now?”
“Have an oat cake”
“Have an oat cake?!” (In his slightly aggressive sceptical tone) “Why would I do that?”
“Because it’s what you’ve done every morning for nearly 100 years Dad!”

Nearly 100 years! He is 92. He was nine when the war started, old enough to remember the navy dropping depth charges on a U-Boat that had entered The Clyde. Old enough to have grown up in a radically different world. A world with very different attitudes, attitudes that explain a lot of his views that I sometimes struggle with.

I need to remember this.