A Friday and Its Small Acquisitions

Please click the photo above to play the daily videoFriday again, and it arrives now with the quiet familiarity of an old acquaintance — the same face at the same hour, no longer surprising, still welcome. The week has a way of folding itself up by this point, and Friday is where the creases finally settle.

The morning clinic was a long one, but efficient with it, which is the best a long clinic can hope to be. There's a meaningful difference between a morning that drags and a morning that simply contains a great deal — the first wears you down, the second merely fills you up. This was the second sort. Names came and went in good order, the list behaving itself, and by the end I felt productively tired rather than simply depleted.

The afternoon turned to procedures, that more deliberate kind of work where the hands take over and the mind narrows to the task immediately in front of it. There's a particular focus to it that I've come to value — the world shrinks to a small, manageable size, and for an hour or two there is only the next careful thing. Then paperwork, inevitably, which has never once narrowed the world to anything but tedium, and I left late on its account, as one does.

Home, dinner, and then the proper business of a Friday evening: something to watch. We started Star City — the Soviet spin-off of For All Mankind, which Anita and I have followed faithfully for years now. It takes the same alternate history and walks it round to the other side of the Iron Curtain, all cold and watchful and grim in a way the parent show never quite was. Bleak, certainly, but compelling. There's something fitting about ending a long week in the company of people having a considerably harder time of it than you are.

And then the small triumph of the day, which had arrived earlier and waited patiently for attention: the Lofree Flow 2, finally here after its slow passage from China. I'd ordered it some weeks ago and half forgotten it, so it had that pleasing quality of a gift from one's past self. It's a low-profile mechanical thing, all milled aluminium and quiet, satisfying keystrokes, and I'm pleased to report it was better than expected — which, given my expectations, is no small claim. It types beautifully. It looks faintly too good for my desk.

This is, I should confess, the beginning of a plan. I've decided to buy one keyboard a month — a resolution I've dressed up as a measured, disciplined enterprise rather than what it plainly is, which is a hobby acquiring momentum. One a month sounds so reasonable. So sustainable. I'm aware of exactly how these things go, and I'm proceeding anyway, which is rather the point of a hobby.

So the week closes on a good clinic, a grim Soviet drama, and a keyboard I didn't strictly need. A fair haul, all told. The weekend can take it from here.

Nifty Little Keyboard

I have been eyeing a Bluetooth keyboard for a while. I have one attached to my iPad and it had revolutionised the way I used it. It was a Logitech variety and for the past year, it had been working a treat.

While walking around earlier, I spotted this one, the k810 also from Logitech which allowed me to connect to 3 devices. So, got it hooked up for the Android tablet, the iPhone and maybe the S6 since I have a spare slot.

The keyboard itself was very well constructed, with very tactile keys and can be charged using a micro-USB interphase. No issues there. It is also illuminated, so I can type in the dark with no issues, something I couldn't do with my iPad folio keyboard.

Definitely would recommend it although it was a bit on the pricy side. It could also do well wth a dedicated case so that I could carry it around better. But as it is, it stays in my office and maybe I would get a stand for my tablet with a built in charger. That would be a great combination.

Go Fleksy

I thought I would give this app a go after reading about it on the RED feed. A few suitor though that I may have to get used to. But it was almost similar to the Blackberry OS 10.

I must confess that I am a fan of the Blackberry software keyboard and Fleksy seemed to be a great addition.

Typing speed was definitely faster and the autocorrection algorithm was excellent. Much better than the stock iOS. In fact, I would be as bold as suggesting that Apple should acquire this product and integrate it into the iOS as a standard input.

It worked much better on the Android architecture as it appeared as the default keyboard. There was no such thing for the iOS though. For Apple, we had to do the typing input in the app and copy and paste it onto where you want to place the text. Cumbersome. As a result, I wasn't able to use it for tweeting. Such a shame!

For the time being, I would be mainly using it on my Android device. Have to develop some muscle memories before able to adept it fully.