Twofer

Despite my best intentions, I failed at the "blog every day in October" thing. I had an idea for a post last night, and then completely spaced off taking the ten minutes to write it. Oh, well.

That post was going to be a quicky, pointing out that one of my vacation photos is the Peek of the Week at the Piker Press. That is probably my cue to start uploading some more photos, since the editor is fond of nature pix, and I have them in spades.

Yesterday, I was reminded that NaNoWriMo will be upon us in a couple of weeks. Last year, I successfully avoided participating. This year, I even avoided remembering that they push the reset button on the web site in early October. I believe that means my recovery is on track.

I still like to check out their technology forum to see what's new for writers. This year, one of the sponsors is Yarny, a cloud-based writing app, which looks sort of cool. I have a love/hate relationship with the cloud, though. Ninety percent of the time, I think cluttering up the internet with my natterings is stupid, or selfish, or risky. The rest of the time, I'm completely dazzled by the idea of having my stuff available to me, no matter where I am. I mean, I have three computers of my own, plus access to some others. If you were writing something, wouldn't it be great to have access to the latest version, no matter which computer I was using?

(Full disclosure: I do have a Dropbox account, which I use infrequently, but happily. If you would like an account of your own, you can use this link and we'll both get an extra spiff on storage space.)


Then I remember that on my last vacation, we were a forty minute drive from the nearest wi-fi hotspot. If you aren't at home, there are still a lot of places that don't have wi-fi, and then where are you with your cloud-based novel? Taking notes on a napkin with a pen, that's where, and saving your typing to a flash drive.

That's right. We've come to the point where using a flash drive makes you a luddite.