Under the wire

Almost missed today, and it didn't help that I ran out of hotspot data (our only home internet comes through our phones), so I can't use my computer to write this blog post. Doing it on the phone is pretty much the worst. Except that I found something super cool: an app called Gboard keyboard. I'm still getting used to it, but the basic idea is that you can swipe through words instead of hunting and pecking, and the keyboard figures out what you're trying to type. I'm using it right now, and it kind of feels like magic.

Speaking of phone hacks, my wife just showed me this thing where you can hold down the space bar and then move the cursor kind of like a mouse. No more poking with sausage fingers and praying the phone figures out what you're trying to do. Though if it was designed by Google like this keyboard, I might trust my fat little fingers to do just that.

Seriously, still seems like some kind of magic here as I type this. I barely have to fix anything, and it's so much faster and easier.

I heard about the keyboard, btw, from this article about the way that the author sets up his phone to maximize productivity. I've really only started digging into his suggestions, but a lot of these look like game changers.

Of course, the mobile version of my blogging site is not all that phone friendly. It's impossible to see the whole thing you're typing on here, and even worse with the keyboard up to type. Sooner day we will live in a digital Utopia where everything is optimized for mobile while also still looking good on our computers, but now is not that day.

Also, no keyboard on Earth, no matter how advanced, can currently make the process of inserting a link on here, especially when you need to look up the URL from elsewhere, so I cheated and commandeered my wife's phone to use HER hotspot data to get on my computer to do that.

Just a side note: I'm still very much in the "playing around" phase, where it's really cool, but also not yet in any way natural. It feels weird, which makes it kind of challenging to write the post and also type it, if that makes any sense.