Tools of My Trade: Day 4 Bluetooth Keyboard Case

As I mentioned in an earlier post this week, I was without my Mac laptop for a few days after the catastrophic loss of my hard drive, and during the time before I replaced it, the iPad became my best friend and so today’s favorite tool is the Poetic leather bluetooth keyboard case.  My friends gave it to me for Christmas last year after they got tired of me bitching about the virtual keyboard on the iPad. The death of my laptop happened just days before I was to leave for the RT Convention, as if things weren’t hectic enough. Out of necessity, I got used to typing on the new external keyboard pretty quickly. In fact with the iPad and the keyboard case, I was able to type notes as fast as the speakers could talk during the RT panels. After the sessions and convention were over, I had all of my notes and my ToDo list saved to DropBox thanks to yesterday’s favorite tool—the free PlainText app I used. While we’re on the subject of making the iPad useful through accessories and apps–while still at home before the convention, I’d downloaded the PDF of the RT convention schedule into […]

Tools of My Trade: Day 3 PlainText

When last I left you yesterday, I was in the air somewhere between NY and Chicago, about to work on my WiP when I discovered I couldn’t access CloudOn or  any of my Dropbox files because I had no internet connection. It wasn’t a huge deal. I was planning on writing a new scene so I just opened my next featured tool–the free PlainText app, which I had previously installed on the iPad. During the plane ride I wrote 1500 words in this useful app. PlainText saves documents automatically and locally, until it syncs to the PlainText folder that is in Dropbox once there is an internet connection again. So I wrote offline, then later I copied what I’d written in Plain Text and pasted it into my existing WiP document in Dropbox on my Mac. Note: PlainText only edits Word documents that are in the folder synced with PlainText in Dropbox, while yesterday’s tool, CloudOn, allows you access to all the Word docs (and also Excel files) on Dropbox in any folder but alas only if you have internet. I suppose ahead of time I can put anything I’d like to work on offline in the PlainText folder before I leave on […]

Tools of My Trade 2012 Edition: Day 1 Sleep Machine

It’s been a full year since July 2011 when I did a weeklong series of the favorite tools of my trade. Things that make my life easier. Some for work. Some that do double duty for work and for play (because you know what they say about all work and no play). It’s time to revisit the topic. A year later, what am I still using? What new things have I discovered? And have I changed my mind about some of my last year favorites? Stay tuned all week and find out. Today’s featured tool is new to me and good for anyone, doesn’t matter if you’re a writer or not. You can use it daytime or nighttime. You can be 8 days old or 80 years old and use this tool. What is it? Sleep Machine Lite by SleepSoft LLC (www.sleepsoftllc.com) is a white noise app that I’ve fallen in love with. How did I find it? I was watching two authors I know chat on Twitter about how much work they get done while traveling. I chimed in and said I wish I could but I can’t seem to write when away from home. I also find I […]