I rather enjoy writing longhand, and closest in feel to it is Dasher[0]. Don't get me wrong, keyboard entry is, in my opinion, a superior option for moving across large amount of text; and Dasher is indeed an accessibility writing system, but I like it's single-handed interface and _ex tempore_ feel that I also get from writing by hand.
And the fact that the right hand side of the GUI is in fact a Borges' Library of Babel, is extremely suggestive to my mind.
Ask HN: How can I use my phone to create things rather than consume them?
41–50 of 84 posts
Re: Ask HN: How can I use my phone to create things rather than consume them?
#42Use the phone's web browser, open eBay and buy a laptop
Re: Ask HN: How can I use my phone to create things rather than consume them?
#43Propellerhead Figure + Loopy HD = make electronic music entirely on your phone. You'd be surprised how far down the rabbit hole you can go for less than $20 invested.
Re: Ask HN: How can I use my phone to create things rather than consume them?
#44I still don't get the motivation behind this. If you want to consume less stuff on your phone, you can reduce the consumption without replacing it with anything - you don't have a phone time quota that you need to meet on any given day, just cut down on the things you don't like. When you're creating anything, it makes sense to do it in the best possible environment that you have for it - I would rather write code on…
Thing is, people find themselves in many situations where they have a spot of free time, and the phone is the only object available at hand. How can one use that time to create/build something rather than using it in consuming some sort of media.
It’s actually okay to do nothing instead! Constantly keeping the mind entertained doesn’t give the poor thing any breathing space or time to come up with it’s own entertainment!
Re: Ask HN: How can I use my phone to create things rather than consume them?
#45This is a great question! I think other commenters miss the basic point that mobile is frictionless and can be used anywhere. I think OP is thinking along the following lines: I’m on the bus / in the loo / waiting for my lunch to heat in the microwave. How can I use these moments to produce creatively? I already have a great tool that I know can deliver content efficiently and accessibly to me in these situations—I u…
I really dislike long form articles, I feel like the author never gets to the point, only jumping from one digression to another. Perhaps difficulty in writing could be an incentive to write shorter and more focused articles :)
Essays historically originated---with Montaigne's Essais---as discursive, digressive, long-form prose. They are a prose artform that attempts to achieve more than a straightforward information dump.
You might not like the form, and there are certainly many bad examples, but a long essay is no more a failure to write a short blog article than a poem is a failure to write a news report.
Re: Ask HN: How can I use my phone to create things rather than consume them?
#46i am using it to learn music and modulate my voice. it's an app called Riyaz for indian classical music training. there are so many apps out there and during covid time, i can brush up on my forgotten childhood music lessons. i just got a controller board and i am learning a different kind of music theory. none of this would be possible without my phone and how it connects me to the rest of the world.
i listen to audiobooks constantly when i walking or gardening or practicing my punches.
but here is my favourite: i am learning astrology and i have downloaded an astrology app which gives me info at the fingertips..something that would have been pretty unthinkable a few years ago. there is a technique called prashna with indian vedic astrology. you can make predictions based on the positions of planets at that exact second when a question is posed. you dont need to know anything about any person's birthtime etc. it is the astrology of 'that moment' in time..not a person.
so far, this has only been theory from the books. experienced astrologers good in math can calculate in a jiffy. not for the newbies or the students. they can also tell the time by watching shadows..not everyone of us can do that. anyways.. now we can test it and draw prashna charts on demand to learn and cross check. i know there arent a lot of astrology buffs here..much less indian astrology. but as a student of jyotish and i am sure for others who have more experience w/astrology too, this is a game changer. and now we can conduct more research and test everything from the reams of ancient texts. it is very exciting.
Re: Ask HN: How can I use my phone to create things rather than consume them?
#47Check out this video from MylarMelodies about playing Moogfest with just an iPhone.
Mobiles have a pretty great ecosystem of audio creation apps. Standard synths and sequencers abound, and there are lots of weirdo instruments to play with too. Using Audiobus or AUM lets you drop effects onto audio synths (or any sound source really) and control them via sequencers (check out Fugue Machine), most apps support this. It’s a lot like playing with modular synths, and you can stick GarageBand or some other DAW at the end to record your improvised sessions; I believe some can do multitrack recording as well.
I bought an iPad Pro back in 2016 specifically for music production. I got a lot of mileage in particular out of Loopy, the most versatile loop “pedal” I’ve ever seen. $5 gets you a 12-track looper/mixer with an intuitive touch interface and lots of advanced features. It’s iOS only though.
Re: Ask HN: How can I use my phone to create things rather than consume them?
#48This is a great question! I think other commenters miss the basic point that mobile is frictionless and can be used anywhere. I think OP is thinking along the following lines: I’m on the bus / in the loo / waiting for my lunch to heat in the microwave. How can I use these moments to produce creatively? I already have a great tool that I know can deliver content efficiently and accessibly to me in these situations—I u…
Yes, this is exactly what I mean. I feel your pain for writing. This morning, I accidentally deleted all my notes from yesterday and could not recover them from my phone because there is no undo (!!? How can phones still not have an undo?) in my note-taking app. I had to get up and recover the version from my desktop because I wasn't signed in to dropbox on my phone.
In Apple's Notes, there is a top level folder called Recently Deleted - you can move things from that folder back where they belong.
Re: Ask HN: How can I use my phone to create things rather than consume them?
#49Having tried to do a lot on smartphones, I'd say I have given up most of them. Editing texts on a touch screen is quite miserable for me, and I get thumb cramp after sending a lot of texts. Speech-to-text is great, but I still have to edit a lot, especially when what I talk about isn't pure English. I now carry a notepad and pen with me.
One thing that can be done effectively is recording. Whether it's recording a video or audio, modern smart phone is better than cameras in terms of usability. I don't edit on the phone though. It's still too small a screen to be comfortable.
I also want to point out that not all consumption is unproductive. If you are reading/watching videos critically, it's a very enriching experience. You can learn a new recipe, analyze some music, etc.
Reading emails, sending important texts, making reservations, etc., especially if you are going to do it at some point anyway, are also productive.
Re: Ask HN: How can I use my phone to create things rather than consume them?
#50This is a two part problem. One you need a better input capabilities than what a normal touchscreen keyboard provides. For this there are only a few options that are mobile. Either whip out a blue tooth keyboard, which is hardly applicable if you're standing, or use a chording keyboard such as the twiddler[0]. The later take some time to learn, and are still somewhat awkward, in that you look like you're carrying a detonator device in your hand at all time.
The second problem is that most mobile devices are walled gardens that don't allow you full access to your pocket computer's sensors and filesystem. This makes piping the output of one program into another (even say an editor, to email or a compiler) difficult, to say the least. In this case you really need to jailbreak your phone, or purchase an open option such as a PinePhone.