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I'm posting this on behalf of my brother, Sturton Buchanan,
who is the least creative of the triplets. This accounts for
the dullth of this idea.
He has noted that the smooth silvery surface of his
MacBook, either side of the trackpad, is covered with a
variety of phone numbers, sketches,
and a rough graph of
the Dow-Jones covering 1999 to 2010.
He has suggested that a shallow recess in one or both of
these surfaces could accommodate a small sheaf of Post-It
notes, perfect for the jottings which are invariably
required whilst at the laptop.
I have reminded him of the existence of 'Stickies' (the on-
screen equivalent), but he insists that paper notes are
essential in some situationstances, such as doodling, or
when it is necessary to write down a phone number or
price shown on the screen.
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Brilliant! Some of your best work, [MB]! |
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Good grief. I suppose I shall have to relay your
congratulations to Sturton. He'll be quite
insufferable. Still, you're American, aren't you? |
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I was so sure that I had already posted this idea, that I had to check a few times..... I have it drawn in my note book. Must be a good idea then! + |
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Why, of course I'm American. |
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Sturton? What the hell are you talking about? |
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and the view of the 2nd triplet - usually the jam in the sandwich? |
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The view of the second triplet is almost invariably
blocked by Sturton (although, at present, our
intercalary sibling is away, in pursuit of the
Surinamese large-eyed jumping spider). |
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//Surinamese large-eyed jumping spider// Almost
extinct, since the introduction of Sumatran Rats by
the Dutch in the 1870s. |
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Unfortunately, the trackpad on Apple laptops is
destined to grow, like the blind spot in hyperspace,
until it engulfs everything, leaving no room for post-
its. |
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[+] for //intercalary sibling// |
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//not convinced that writing is necessary if you're
at a computer// That is more or less what I said
to Sturton (after "Good evening, Sturton" and
before "Is that a badger?"). |
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However, he vehemphatically disagrees. There
are times, he says, when you need a simple paper
note of something. For example, you want to
write down an address so that you don't have to
open your laptop whilst driving to your
destination. Or some poor laptopless soul asks
you to get them the phone number of the nearest
tattoo parlour. |
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Moreover, if you halfbake at, say 1:10 instead of
1:1, a Post-It will be more than adequate for the
preliminary sketches. |
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We misread the title as "Lamp-post IT Op recess" which we
deduced would be a small fold-out shelf in the side of a lamp-
post, which revealed a power outlet and an RJ45 jack, allowing
peripatetic workers to replenish their computer batteries whilst
simultaneously accessing high speed networking and being able
to work without balancing the computer precariously on the
knees. |
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I am finding it hard to believe that the Borg require
reading glasses. |
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It's something to do with the way that the head-mounted laser
bounces back off the screen at certain angles and bings us in the
eyes. |
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As a fiction writer (no, really, I am), my creative process
naturally involves hundreds of scraps of paper, napkins,
and occasional slow-moving cats with bits of story ideas
scrawled on them, all taped to the wall of my library. This
idea would cut down on my tape budget and probably
eliminate that terrible noise the cats make until
they come unstuck. Where is the outline for chapter 3,
anyway? She was up there this morning... |
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If you find that you have no more need for the paper
notes, the recess can be repurposed to hold a few
saltine crackers. |
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Up until a year or two ago almost every idea I've ever posted was written in working-title form on the, front and back, of various sticky-note pads. How can I not (+) this?
I ask you?
There's just no doing it is there? |
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Is there no not bunning this? Yes, there isn't. |
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I knew it. I freaKIN KNEW IT. |
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...and now I have to take a shower. |
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[hippo] I accidentally deleted your anno instead of
responding to it. Please accept my apologies, and
feel free to reannotate. |
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I'm trying to remember what I said now. Maybe if you respond to what you think I said, I can then write something which makes sense in the teleological context of your response. I think it's a mistake to be bound by out-dated Euclidian constraints on the ordering of comments and their responses. |
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I think it was about using a dish-stacker mechanism.
However, that would require more gubbins beneath
the recess. |
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Oooh! You have inspired a further idea, much better
than Sturton's, which I shall now go away and post. |
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Yes, that was it, one of those stacks of plates with a spring underneath it that they have in franchised self-service restaurants, to keep the top plate always at the same level - the stack of Post-It notes needs a similar mechanism to keep the top note flush with the silky-smooth aluminium surface of your MacBook Pro. |
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Somehow I sort of assumed it would be like that. |
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Can't you just write on the trackpad with a stylus?
i.e. pull up a note and then electrically fill it in. |
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Sturton can't, apparently. I think it awfully kind of his non-
retar--excuse me, non-mentally-challenged brother Max to
halfbake this for him. |
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Oh dear, I believe I've been shot. Hang on, I've got to go
chase a political-correctness militia off of my killzone--er,
that is, my front lawn. |
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// just write on the trackpad with a stylus? i.e.
pull up a note and then electrically fill it in.// |
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Yes. But (playing Sturton's advocate), that (a)
requires you to have a stylus at hand (b) is
therefore too premeditated for effective doodling
and (c) requires you to connect to a printer, print
said doodle or note, discover that printer is out of
paper, get paper, load printer, re-send note to
printer, collect both (!) copies from printer, and
then hand one to your friend for whom you
urgently Googled
the address of the nearest toxicologist. |
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Sturton does have a point. It's just rather a dull
one. Even if, in ten years' time, Post-It recesses
are as common a feature as trackpads, I would still
not feel I had met my full potential if I were
known as "the person who invented that recess
where you put Post-It notes on your laptop". |
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(On the other hand, for Sturton it would be quite
an accomplishment. He works in Tactical and
Recreational Banking, and his only other claim to
fame so far is the invention of the 'Buchanan
Debt-to-Height ratio' [BDH] as an economic
indicator. Nobody yet knows what it indicates,
but it is the subject of several Ph.D. theses.) |
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How about an E-Ink touch screen. I'll call is a NoteScreen
1) Like a Post-Iit, you can read it while the laptop is powered down.
2) You don't need to find a writing implement to doodle on it.
3) The OS could have a "copy to NoteScreen" feature that allows copying phone numbers, addresses, etc to the NoteScreen. This is faster than hand copying and reduces the risk that I can't read my writing after an hour or I write down the first half of one number and the second half of another.
4) Doddles can be copied into programs on the laptop and of coures multiple pages of NoteScreens can be stored, combined, etc. |
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Disadvantage:
-1) Cost
-2) You can't add notes while the laptop is off (or flip through multiple pages of notes). We could add a low power processor that could do this sort of function with the main processor off, but then it starts getting too complex for its own good.
-3) It's hard to draw really detailed doodles with a finger unless it could zoom in for editing small details (again probabyl getting too complex. |
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Lets "compromise" and put the Post-It recess on one side of the tackpad and the NoteScreen on the other. |
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Its unappealing to go backwards to paper, but i
understand that paper has zero boot time, and that
give it some advantages over word, paint, or the
stickies app. |
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Someone just needs to make an app that boots, on
a keystroke, lets users write though a trackpad, and
can save and close, in a single step.
Im sure someone could to it pretty easily? |
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That app would also need to be capable of being
torn off and handed to someone who needs the
phone number. |
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[-] There's nowhere to keep the pen. |
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//There's nowhere to keep the pen.// |
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Sturton has a very surprising suggestion on that
topic. |
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