This post will be a bit of a departure for me. Those of you who are regular readers or who have popped in once or twice to see what I have to say will know that I usually talk about my middle grade novel. Sometimes I talk about the process.
This is one of those. Kinda, sorta.
A few months back I confessed to my addiction to my iPhone and how I use it for everything, particularly with regard to my writing. Well, over the weekend I just enabled myself. They say the first step is admitting you have a problem, right?
As it is, between my iPhone, my wireless keyboard and my Dropbox account, I can write just about anywhere and anywhen. I even write my blog on my iPhone, and find and download the illustrations, too. As for research, I use a combination of ebooks, Wikipedia, good old-fashioned web searches, which I save very conveniently and tag using Pocket or Evernote. Right now I’m reading The Time Traveler’s Guide to Medieval England. In iBooks I can highlight the passages I want to remember (in multiple colors) and make notes, which I can search through later. Is it any wonder I never want to put my iPhone down or leave home without it? Oh, and there’s games.
Am I bragging? Yes, I am.
But the one dark spot in all of this technological glory has been the fact that I could not easily print from my phone.
“Aha!” I hear you cry.
Okay, first of all, calm down.
Second, I’ve filled that void. And for only $100.
Meet my Brother®.
Our eight-year-old inkjet printer finally expired peacefully in its sleep, last week. So I drove down to my local office supply store and picked up this brilliant little laser printer. He prints at 1200 dpi. He prints on both sides of the page, so we save paper. He’s completely wireless, so no more standing in the corner holding our laptops at the end of the USB cable to print anything. And for $32 I get toner that will print 1,200 sheets. The inkjet cost me $65 for all the colors and I got a couple of hundred sheets if I was lucky.*
And I can print straight from my iPhone. Which, to be honest, it completely cool. It even reformats everything to the proper paper size without me having to do anything. This will come so in handy the next time I need to print off a Groupon. Or an e-mail attachment.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have stuff to print.
*Sorry if I sound like a commercial. I’ve been watching a lot of Top Gear, lately (on my iPhone), so this kind of running specs list is coming very naturally. Imagine I’m writing this with an English accent.
Am I Doing This Right? 