Monday, August 13th
Aug. 13th, 2012 04:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexandraerinThe Daily Report
I had to spend a day and a three quarters away from the internet. I don't recommend it to anyone.
The word of the day is Google Drive!
I've been using this thing for months, but only in the sense that I'd been using Google Docs and was mildly annoyed that they'd rebranded it and messed with the default sorting. I was aware that it provided cloud storage for non-Google Doc-like files but I have a lot of storage pace and I'd never been terribly interested in using it.
Then a few days ago I noticed the little "Download Google Drive" link in the sidebar and clicked on it. A folder on all my computers that is automatically synced through the same account I already use for cloud computing and inter-computer file transfer?(A feat I usually accomplish by emailing myself. Sorry but not sorry, Randall Munroe.)
This is not going to change much about the way I write the bulk of my fiction, since I do that in browser windows anyway. I'm not going to start writing in a local app and saving to the cloud drive. But the fact that I can now find and open right up to a specific draft/story/file from my desktop without opening the browser first is going to make some difference. I mean, trying to psychologically separate out "going on the internet" and "going to work" has always been a tricky thing, and it's an important thing. The psychology of work and the psychology of creativity are both very important factors, especially when they're being ignored.
At a more obviously practical level... there are things I don't do in the cloud. I've never used Google Docs for e-book formatting. It's probably possible, I know pages can be downloaded in a variety of files and e-books are just bare basic HTML with a few custom tags. But a lot of things are set up to expect Word Docs, and Word has a pretty good HTML filter for stripping out extraneous formatting... I've also been doing my AWW drafting in Word because it gives more control over formatting. But if it's not in the cloud, then I have to be at the right computer... and the more I get used to cloud computing, the harder it is to plan for that and the more frustrating it is when it doesn't work out.
I'm still playing around with the Google Drive app but I'm already liking it.
I was excited when we got Windows 7 because of the "homegroup" feature that's supposed to make file sharing between computers on a network so much easier, but it requires all the devices to be awake and online, and it seems finicky in the way that only Windows networking things can be... sometimes it just randomly doesn't recognize something.
The State of the Me
Scalded my hand opening a steamed vegetable pouch Saturday night. It sidelined me for much of what would have been my day Saturday (sleep schedule was flipped around due to a lack of housemates) and all day Sunday. Felt like much longer, believe me. Doing okay now. A little bit randomly achey, don't know what's going on with that.
Plans For Today
I've got a chapter of Tales of MU that's two days behind where it needs to be. At one point yesterday, when I hadn't tried writing for a while I thought I could add a few hundred words to it and post it as a short one... ultimately decided, as usual, that posting chapters before they're really ready is always a bad thing. Today my hand is much more type-able. Between today and tomorrow I should have it into shape.
I had to spend a day and a three quarters away from the internet. I don't recommend it to anyone.
The word of the day is Google Drive!
I've been using this thing for months, but only in the sense that I'd been using Google Docs and was mildly annoyed that they'd rebranded it and messed with the default sorting. I was aware that it provided cloud storage for non-Google Doc-like files but I have a lot of storage pace and I'd never been terribly interested in using it.
Then a few days ago I noticed the little "Download Google Drive" link in the sidebar and clicked on it. A folder on all my computers that is automatically synced through the same account I already use for cloud computing and inter-computer file transfer?(A feat I usually accomplish by emailing myself. Sorry but not sorry, Randall Munroe.)
This is not going to change much about the way I write the bulk of my fiction, since I do that in browser windows anyway. I'm not going to start writing in a local app and saving to the cloud drive. But the fact that I can now find and open right up to a specific draft/story/file from my desktop without opening the browser first is going to make some difference. I mean, trying to psychologically separate out "going on the internet" and "going to work" has always been a tricky thing, and it's an important thing. The psychology of work and the psychology of creativity are both very important factors, especially when they're being ignored.
At a more obviously practical level... there are things I don't do in the cloud. I've never used Google Docs for e-book formatting. It's probably possible, I know pages can be downloaded in a variety of files and e-books are just bare basic HTML with a few custom tags. But a lot of things are set up to expect Word Docs, and Word has a pretty good HTML filter for stripping out extraneous formatting... I've also been doing my AWW drafting in Word because it gives more control over formatting. But if it's not in the cloud, then I have to be at the right computer... and the more I get used to cloud computing, the harder it is to plan for that and the more frustrating it is when it doesn't work out.
I'm still playing around with the Google Drive app but I'm already liking it.
I was excited when we got Windows 7 because of the "homegroup" feature that's supposed to make file sharing between computers on a network so much easier, but it requires all the devices to be awake and online, and it seems finicky in the way that only Windows networking things can be... sometimes it just randomly doesn't recognize something.
The State of the Me
Scalded my hand opening a steamed vegetable pouch Saturday night. It sidelined me for much of what would have been my day Saturday (sleep schedule was flipped around due to a lack of housemates) and all day Sunday. Felt like much longer, believe me. Doing okay now. A little bit randomly achey, don't know what's going on with that.
Plans For Today
I've got a chapter of Tales of MU that's two days behind where it needs to be. At one point yesterday, when I hadn't tried writing for a while I thought I could add a few hundred words to it and post it as a short one... ultimately decided, as usual, that posting chapters before they're really ready is always a bad thing. Today my hand is much more type-able. Between today and tomorrow I should have it into shape.