596: .......

Is there a way that blogging can be done using only a pen and paper and then uploaded directly to iblogeveryday.co.uk without me actually going anywhere near the Internet? Someone got me a nice new pad of paper as a gift, and I just got three hard-backed pocket notebooks from the pound shop. Also there is the endless distraction of the Internet; watching half interesting documentaries on BBC iPlayer because you've already seen the good ones; waiting for something interesting to happen on twitter, or for the latest episode of the comedy podcast you like; watching old wrestling videos on YouTube. These are needless luxuries and crippling obstacles. A blank piece of paper and a ballpoint pen wont do this to you.

Once upon a time I couldn't write creatively on a keyboard. My typing was not fast enough, so it became an obstacle between the words appearing abstract in my mind to them being recorded physically as the written word. I would always write first on paper, scribbling quickly, almost unreadably, then second draft by copying onto the word processor. This was time consuming, but I felt it was the only way I could be creative. When I first started blogging I attempted to do it this way too. It quickly became evident that this would take forever. As it is now I spend too much time blogging (mainly because I waste a lot of time with distractions), but if every single one of these last 596 posts had been written first on paper there would be a lot more dead trees and pen-plants, and a lot of box files full of scribbles.

Has anyone invented a tablet computer with a stylus and handwriting recognition? One in which you can just scribble your handwriting and it automatically converts it into text? This probably exists, but doesn't solve the problem of the endless distraction of the Internet. See, I got so distracted by pointless asides that I forgot the focus of this though was preventing Internet distraction, and instead focused on the handwriting thing. I don't want a tablet that I have to hand write on. Handwriting is too slow and clumsy and causes much more aches and pains than typing does.

As I'm writing this I can barely stop myself from checking twitter or looking on iPlayer to see if I missed any interesting science documentaries on BBC4. What I really need to be doing is going to the shops and focusing on writing a speech. A groom's speech. For my wedding. On Monday.... OK, gotta go. Bye.