Druid,
I thought we standardized on scriverati?
It really comes from having typed on a MultiTouch keyboard for years. Much of what is annoying are things that I am already used to, such as having to levitate over the surface instead of resting on it, having extremely accurate spatial awareness instead of tactile awareness of where each key is, and how to stagger key presses with a slight delay between each stroke, instead of lumping them all together like you can with a mechanical keyboard (that aspect is really more like going back to a typewriter and being aware of hammer cadence). All of this was not easy to pick up. For a long time I had to struggle along at 15 words per minute and an accuracy rate that made mild-mannered me actually get irate. I was able to get up to around 75 eventually (it took about two months, if I recall correctly, of steady use), which is about the effective limit due to speed of responsiveness in the technology itself. That is pretty slow for me, as I am more used to 100-120 on a buckling-spring keyboard, and 80-90 on a scissor-switch.
On punctuation: Do note that apostrophes in many cases can be left up to the auto-correction engine. Try typing in doesnt and you should get doesn’t. As for other marks, I have a feeling that if one used the keyboard a lot, they would get accustomed to where they are all located, and on which symbol menu. Try doing it in isolation from actual typing. Tap the symbol key with your pinky and the quote with the ring finger then symbol key again (you might have better luck with using the thumb and the right symbol key). Just like old school typing classes, with repetitive practice you can get your muscles to learn where these things are and eventually speed them up.
Hmmm…I forgot that. Should be scrivenerati, though. Or just scriveners?
Thanks for the correction.
My use of -nauts was in homage (oh-mahshuje) to Vic, and his good ship S.
BTW, I am knocked out by Amber’s wpm typing speeds.
How does one measure that, any way?
I am finding that a Tripel Belgian does wonders for back pain.
You start a stopwatch and start typing. 
Just tested myself, as I had been estimating based on intuition. On the MacBookPro I did 98wpm (@ 100% accuracy), and on the iPad, 41wpm (with auto-correction 95% accuracy). At 41 it is slow, for me, but totally feasible for writing small passages and notes.
OT for Druid only:
Yes, indeed.
Because we Brits have just elected a legislature, not an executive. The executive is the second stage. It forms itself from members of the legislature behind a leader who can convince the monarch that he or she (the leader) can command a majority of support in the House of Commons (essential to get “business” and legislation through). Usually this is simple: a single political party wins enough seats to allow its leader to command the majority. This time not so. The majority will have to be composed from the MPs of more than one party; hence the smooching.
The advantage of incumbency. Under our constitution, to ensure continuity the incumbent Prime Minister remains in office until it is obvious that he or she no longer has that elusive majority. Usually, this would allow the incumbent to have the first and possibly decisive bite at the cherry of forming a new government, but this time two things have happened. Last weekend Clegg pledged that he would talk first to the party with the most seats and votes, and Brown said this afternoon that he agreed that this should happen (not that he could have stopped Clegg). Although these statements were couched in terms of moral rights, in fact the voters would have regarded it as unacceptable if Clegg had talked first to Labour, who have two million fewer votes than the Tories, and would have punished him at a future election.
For the reason above: the election was for a legislature, not an executive or a president. (But because of our “first-past-the-post” electoral system, coalition-building, deal-making and pact-forming are much more alien processes for our politicians than for those in many countries where they’re familiar activities. So they’ve got to learn on the job, and the timescale could get stretched — too stretched perhaps for the financial markets.)
However, quite unusually Clegg and Cameron are in some ways extraordinarily similar: the same age, upper middle-class, products of top public schools and Oxbridge where they were both Young Conservatives (Clegg very briefly), similar lobbying/PR/political intern jobs on the way up, fathers both in the finance industry, independently minded wives, both Clegg and Cameron from aristocratic stock — though Clegg’s aristo ancestors were Russian, his great aunt having been a spy and a lover of (note L&L trivia) Maxim Gorky. Whether this will lubricate the smooching — being conducted even as I write — who can tell?
Please note: I hope you’ve found this stuff enlightening, though personally I only carry it around in my head — and sometimes I wish I didn’t — because I used to write about it. 
H
Thanks, that answered one question I had regarding why Clegg has made the motions he has. To me it seemed more ideologically natural to have Labour and LibDems gang up on the Tories, but I see better now how that would be viewed as… perhaps improper is the right word? It is more a political decision than a policy decision (read all by itself, that statement looks funny).
That’s correct, though there are deeper reasons as well. Superficially the LibDems are of the centre-left, though far more than the other parties they contain a wide spectrum of political tendencies. They’ve members who’d have got along fine with Ayn Rand, others who’d be impossible to place ideologically and others who are social democrats. We may be about to discover whether they’re a real grown-up political party, rather than a rag-bag of opinions…
When it seemed conceivable earlier today that Labour and the LibDems might gang up on the Tories, the Tories started sharpening phrases like: “The Losers’ Alliance” and “The Coalition of the Defeated”. So it would have been politically very difficult indeed for Clegg to court Labour first. That definitely doesn’t mean, however, that he may not end up in bed with them, if the Tories can’t offer the right dowry — almost certainly a commitment to proportional representation in some form.
Someone on TV said just now about the overall picture: “The people have spoken, and they’ve said: ‘Err…’”
H
So your saying “the people” are all vic-k?
Ah, that sounds a lot like our Libertarian Party. Ideologically all over the place until you realise that they do have one binding principle, which is essentially social-anarchism. Within that band they go from socialist to capitalist. Likewise, they have a common reputation for not being a “serious” party, and wouldn’t know how to rule if ever put into popular power—probably because an authoritarian system full of Libertarians makes zero sense.
But, that does make them a good iPad analogy. Er, nevermind. I did try!
A one-man focus group. All our political leaders made stops at the Red Lion.
I’ve never some across them. In a journalistic capacity, I once visited the headquarters of an outfit called the US Labor Party in Manhattan. For some reason, I expected something along UK lines. Instead, it was one of the most bizarre organisations I’ve ever encountered, with some of the traits you list above.
H
I also tried. iPad… LibDems… Atlas Shrugged… Nope
NY politics used to be very multi-party, with Labor, Liberal, Conservative, and several other groups. Almost like the UK, and as a colony NY was most full of Loyalists, many of whom emigrated to Lower Canada (eastern Ontario) after the Revolution. Then successive waves of immigration from Ireland, Scotland, northern and southern Europe enriched the mix. Like California, NY is both very liberal and conservative at the same time. This note relates to iPad because I looked up all the facts.
Keith and Hugh, thanks for the political explanations.
Given that I got a new iPad today, I’m sorry to say that I’m going to return to being on-topic. All things political are going to be drawn out over here anyway - let’s see what the Lib Dems have to say about coalition with the Tories, but I do wonder, as the Tories will never agree to proportional representation. Other than annual elections (unworkable), that is the one thing on the six demands of the Chartists (who failed at the time) that over the years never got put into practice… But really Rich Hall put it right in calling all three candidates indistinguishable potatoheads. That’s the trouble with British politics - the representatives of the parties - the leaders - are just so far removed from the grass roots.
Anyway… Ignore the above, as it’s written after a beer or two. The older I get the less enmity I feel towards those of opposite political persuasion, and the more it feels as though we’re all in the same boat but just prefer different indie bands.
So, the iPad. After an evening of using it - I LOVE IT. I hasten to add, though, that I still don’t see it as a writing platform. I can’t imagine using it for that at all. The one effect it’s had on that is that I now thing it would be nice to be able to lean forward and just move cards around in Scrivener on the Mac using my finger, so I hope that Apple do introduce touch interfaces to their desktop and laptop (sorry, “notebook”) machines. But I don’t want to use my iPad for writing - coming back to my MacBook to write this is a pleasure.
But… It really does have its uses.
PHOTOS: I loaded hundreds of photos on to it, and me and the missus went through them, reminiscing, and I can’t think of a better way of viewing photos. It will be a much better way of showing the in-laws digital photos of the kids.
VIDEO: I also tried out a video on there, and it was nice - it’s not something I’ll do of an evening, but as a film geek it will be nice to have some of my favourite films on there.
GAMES: Let’s face it, this is essentially a gaming platform. You can pretend it’s a serious work-platform, but it ain’t. It’s for fun. I downloaded ParaPanicHD - hilarious. A times-tables game for the kids, and Brushes - they were very happy. And Air Hockey - great fun. It definitely takes gaming to the next level (although it will never replace a PS3 or Xbox 360 - this is for the casual gamer; Jules, my better half, hates games, but got caught up in ParaPanicHD for a while).
INTERNET: I downloaded the IMDB app - this is what the iPad is built for, for me. I can’t watch a TV program without looking up an actor, and the IMDB app on the iPad is a really nice way of doing that - so much nicer to use than the regular IMDB site.
BOOKS: I can’t seem me reading on this thing. I managed to turn the brightness down, but it’s nowhere near as pleasant a reading experience as the Sony Reader. That said, sadly I think this sort of device will win out over e-ink. Not because it’s better - it’s far worse - but just because people want general devices and don’t care about what’s “best”. Well, let them ruin their eyes. Give me paper or e-ink any day. Still, I downloaded iBooks and exported some Scrivener 2.0 .epub files to it and they looked fantastic. So Scrivener 2.0 users are going to enjoy seeing their books in iBooks, I think.
GENERAL: This is a really nice device. Using it, it feels like you are in the future. I still don’t think it’s a writing platform; I don’t want to re-learn my typing habits just to achieve slower typing speeds, and I know from having explored the iPhone OS that it’s not capable yet of running full apps like Scrivener, and anyone outside of Apple is going to have problems creating programs with full text formatting. So even with a keyboard, I can’t see it as a writing tool - my MacBook is a beautiful thing indeed. But as a browsing device, the iPad is near perfect. And that’s actually a good thing for me. I have difficulties separating work from home. I bring my laptop downstairs in the evenings and I end up doing an extra bit of coding, answering customers’ e-mails and so on. But with the iPad, I could bring that downstairs and (given that I won’t be setting up e-mail on it) have an online browsing device available without the temptation of doing work. That’s a nice thought. And if I have an idea or a note to make, I can always peck it out, even if the touch-typing is rubbish (but how do I sync these ideas with Scrivener? Hmm…).
So: nice device. I still don’t think it’s a writing platform, but for reading and browsing it really is exciting.
All the best,
Keith
Coming up for air for a few moments, I will note that if Keith implements the stock ticker-like crawl of “magical and revolutionary seamless chunkification” at the bottom of the Scrivener main window, I want my fair share of the profits! Perhaps a half of Bass Pale next time I’m in the neighborhood… 8)
More brief notes:
My usage of the iPad is contingent on several factors, one of which is that I hate laptops. I bought one once and would really rather never have one again. I find them awkward and ungainly. I also have a 43-minute train ride several days a week, which is where I do a lot of my best work.
I used to carry a Moleskine in my pocket for jotting down notes, but that was replaced last year by an iPod Touch. While riding the train, I would work on papers by writing longhand in a five-subject notebook, but that, too was replaced by the Touch, which I also used for taking notes in class (I never did take lots of notes…)
Since I got the iPad, I can type way faster than I could on the Touch, my drafts are much less messy than the ones in the notebook or the Moleskine, and I can email them to my iMac, dropping them right into Scrivener, rather than having to copy them from a piece of paper.
My note taking has also changed, as I can now touch type (albeit more slowly than on a mechanical keyboard). I never used to write down more than a few key ideas in my class notes, but there are days now when I find myself writing several pages.
I have to say that iAnnotate has been perfect for me, as well. It’s so much better than carrying around sheafs of paper in my backpack. I have been having trouble with selecting and copying text in iAnnotate, but I am guessing I’m just doing something wrong. Other than that, it has really been great.
It is also very handy to use InstaPaper, which means I don’t have to finish a web page right away. Because of this, I can more easily tear myself away from something, knowing that I can read it later. And due to that feeling of security, I wind up not feeling like I need to finish things that are of marginal interest, the way I used to. So I have more time for reading things that are really important.
I wrote a good couple of pages on the train today (in Pages), jumping from topic to topic to work out the opening to one of my papers. After dinner, I emailed the file to the iMac and chunked it into Scrivener, where it is now nicely organized and ready for me to fill it out. It was a great feeling!
And if that was a brief post…
That pretty much nails it for me. It is the change in the human-computer interaction that is the quantum leap achieved in the iPad.
This is very stiff compared with US prices. It looks as if Apple’s plan has been to aim low in the US market to get word-of-mouth, and then milk the world. Perhaps we should be talking about the attractions of not the iPad, but Apple stock… 
The place I went to was staffed by a combination of the Midwich Cuckoos and the Mickey Mouse Club, Britney Spears era. Almost a cult, scary. Not like our own dear Labour Party at all.
H
The USLP was part of the LaRouche movement, which would explain the cult-like behavior you witnessed. They’re not linked in any way to the historical labour movement.
A modest proposal: When Keith accidentally starts programming for the iPad on the side, after an evening of IMDBing and Strongbow imbibing and involuntary code-doodling, his new subset of Scrivener for the iPad ought properly to be called Chunks: discrete little Scrivenettes meant to be fired back to the mother-computer with a tightly focused export button. Single chunks might be exported with the Hurl command; multiple chunks with Spew.
Back in the MotherScriv, these Chunks might then become part of the working Scrivener document, though you’d probably want to have a Clean Up command for spatter-control and seamless Chunkification.
I’d totally buy an iPad, just for that. Until then, I’ll have to generate my Chunks in Pages, I guess. Not Seamless, but we input our Chunks where we may.
Yew! Let’s not take this analogy any further.
It appears that Mr K has gained access to Capt. A’s account.
Although the style is a bit more polished than one would expect from those of us under the tables.