It's been a long time since I've written something for the web on my laptop keyboard. Of course, I try to write everything for the wordpress blog while I'm in front of an actual computer, but then I only write around once a week for that place. I think most of the past entries for my livejournal blog had been written on either my cellphone using the T9 input or on my blackberry using the posterous service. It's a real nice pastime really. Doing bits of writing while on the go, like waiting for the subway to arrive or in middle of waiting my computer to finish some huge work related stuff. Some people play games when they have spare time, I write meaningless ponderings on my mobile.
I was a little worried that I'd have forgotten how comfortable the thinkpad keyboards are due to so much blackberry writing. I'm rather happy to find that my fingers travel just as fast and accurate as before. Blackberry keyboards are definitely a step above that of T9 input in regular cellphones and even that of most touchscreen input systems, but they just can't replicate the feeling of using a real, full sized keyboard in terms of tactile feedback, speed and accuracy. It's much less strain on my fingers an wrists as well, meaning that I can write for longer periods of time without needing a rest.
While I find that I do my best creative works while I'm using pencil and paper, there is certain joy in using a good keyboard to jot my thoughts down in very instantaneous manner. Sure, the pencil and paper format affords me much more freedom in terms of the things I can do with them. I can draw, write in every language I can think of, including made up ones, I can rite and solve equations, and I can fold the paper and turn it into a neat origami bird containing all sorts of musings and ideas (it would be cool to be able to have a jar full of paper birds, each of them containing ingenious musings and stories). It's only that keyboards afford certain degree of spontaneity within the act of writing that's almost on the equal footing with being able to play an instrument. I type away at the keyboard inscribed with symbols of the alphabet and they in turn form patterns recorded down onto the screen as digitized information, to be recalled later into memory, evoking all sorts of thoughts and images into the reader's mind. Why would the act be any different from playing an actual instrument, other then the dilation of time involved in the act of recording the experience to be enjoyed later on? When I think about it, all forms of art I can think of seem to rely on a few fundamental and shared characteristics. Bringing together of random components into a coherent pattern by the artists' imagination, and recording of the process of the pattern so that the impression of the pattern can be recalled in minds of outside audiences. It's all about forming coherence within the chaos of the world.
How is it that living systems are capable of forming such coherence within the universe they live in? What kind of laws govern the impulses behind the creation of such coherences? What is the mechanism behind the creation and why? Is it psychology? Is it physics? Freak accident common to biochemical organizations?
I have another Monday off, so I will be spending the day at the central library in the city studying, getting stuff done that should have been done a while ago. I will need to think of bunch of diybio stuff as usual, not to mention read through the text book 'biotechnology for beginners.' I still have something more concrete to do though. I will need to do some finishing touch on the mathematica model for the plasma simulation, write some blog posts, get through my mails, and most of all, finish the processing project I started almost a month ago.
I've been trying to write an engine in the processing language that would take DNA sequence input, reinterpret them as codon sequences and generate music and graphics/animation based on the sequence. It would be a cool little piece of software that I plan to submit for a little underground webzine. Maybe later on I can do a little web based service that would identify the user's single point mutations, cross reference it to the base human DNA sequences, and generate customized music/animation for the user to download. Imagine being able to see and hear the mathematical permutations of your own DNA sequences, each of them unique to the single individual. My rudimentary understanding of the processing language had been getting in the way (not to mention I don't know the first thing about music theory, nearly flunked my jazz class during high school days), but I think I'm about there. It also helps that the processing language itself is really easy to use, at least compared to most of the alternatives out there. Since the processing language itself is a slightly modified Java, I'm hoping I would be able to put the whole thing on the net with minimal modification.
There's something I'm worried about using my laptop in the library though. While the clickiness of the thinkpad keyboard is good for receiving tactile feedback through the fingers (in turn allowing me to get an intuitive feel for whether some key registered correctly or not), it does make that mechanical 'click' sound you hear with older keyboards, which is a big no no in a silent library reading room. I would have to pay more attention to how I type so that I don't make too much noise in there. I've already sort of gotten into trouble with keyboard noise already, I don't need another one.
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