BYOK Arrives

I received my BYOK distraction free writing device today, which came as a big surprise. It’s a holiday here in Ontario called Family Day. I didn’t expect Canada Post to be working today. Granted it was delivered by a special courier.

The unit feels solid and is a little heavier than I expected. I updated the software, which contained some screen contrast and brightness settings. They added more connectivity to a wider array of Bluetooth keyboards.

There are three fonts available: Arial, Times New Roman, and Monotype. Each font has a small, medium, and large size. I prefer the size of the small font, but the medium looks the best on the screen. 

The backlighting and contrast work well, and I was able to connect it to all my Bluetooth keyboards, and I own many. My order came with two stands, a small and a medium, a Bluetooth keyboard, and a carrying case.

I am a little miffed by the keyboard they sent. It wasn’t the same one as listed in the Kickstarter, which folded in the middle along the long side. This one does not fold at all. Also, the stand they sent was supposed to be in matte black and instead is bright white.

They did communicate all this before shipping, but it’s still a bit of a pisser.

I was able to sync a test file to my Google Drive, which adds a great deal of usability to the device. In order to load a txt file onto the BYOK I have to connect it to my laptop with a USB-C cable and put the BYOK into disk mode. Or remove the SD card and insert that into my PC. A little bit of a pain, but functional. They do have an online app called Studio which might add more functionality, but for now I just use it to sync to Google Docs. There are no extra fees for that, but there is a fee to use all the editing and formatting tools if you need that much versatility from the device. I don’t think I’ll ever need more than the sync function.

The screen lags just the littlest amount. I am a fairly quick typist, but it kept up well enough. I did notice a few times I had hit the wrong key and didn’t see it until a few keystrokes later. But high speed typing is not the use case for these devices. It is for working distraction-free just about anywhere.

It appears to have good battery life and is about the size of a smartphone. I’ll give it a good test run this week.

We were up early to take my stepdaughter to the airport. She got the times wrong, had us thinking she had a 7am flight, but it turns out it was at 7:50 pm. On the plus side we missed any traffic that might have been coming our way. The highway was as good as empty, and we sailed home in no time.

We both decided to go back to bed for a bit as neither of us had slept that well. I went to bed after 1 am and was back up at 4:30 am readying the car and putting the luggage into the car. You know Dad stuff.

I am feeling drained as I write this blog, somewhere around 5:30pm. Might need to go take a short nap to keep me going the rest of the day.

I test out my overnight oats recipe today. It has oats, peanut butter powder, ground chia seeds, and oat milk. I thought the texture was a bit soupy for my liking and the flavour was missing something. I added a little splash of maple syrup and that made it taste great. Next time I’ll reduce the oat milk from 1 cup to ¾ of a cup.

I’ve been watching Peaky Blinders recently. It’s an excellent series. Lots of production value and a slew of talented actors and actresses. Cillian Murphy is perfect in this role. I just finished the second season’s finale, and it wrapped up all nice and neat. It will be interesting to see how the writers bugger up Thomas Shelby’s triumphs in the new season.

According to Chess.com I have a 39-day streak going of playing at least one game of chess per day. I started getting into chess in a serious way back in 2016 when I had a lunch game with one of my coworkers Josh. He did all the handmade sculptures for the first two seasons of Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood. I always enjoyed those games and the chats we might have while playing the game.

I still enjoy a good game now and then and often use it as a mental health break. My day job uses the creative side of my brain a fair bit and sometimes the logical side used in chess felt like a rest.

A ten- or twenty-minute meditation does just as well. Non-Sleep Deep Rest (NSDR) is even better if I can lie down on the ground. It makes you feel like you’ve had a couple hours of REM sleep and therefore is very restorative. I’ve used this method when I spent the entire day working on a short story and found it helped me stay on task.

I tried Dave’s Hot Chicken Tenders the other day. They were tasty and a good size. The order came with two pieces of chicken, two slice of sandwich bread, some pickles and tasty crinkle cut fries. The size of the tenders leads me to believe that they are using chicken breasts and not the actual tenders. None the less, it was enjoyed by me and Robyn.

Sounds like we are back on for Hot tub Wednesdays with our friends. They call it Pizza Wednesday, but I think my name for it is better. I believe they will be watching a show called Love is Blind, and if it’s the collection of narcissistic douche bags I think it is, I’ll be getting some writing time in using the BYOK. This means I have a few days to figure out what pizza joint to order from. Our friends often order from Toppers Pizza, and I go for a traditional Neapolitan pizza from Justino’s. Maybe it’s time to try someone new and expand my pizza horizons.

 You only live once after all.

Sounds like my stepdaughter arrived safely in Halifax and is back at her place. I think she was ready to go back to her own place. That means we’ve done our job as parents to make her want to leave the nest and go make her own.  We also thought she’d be with is for the rest of lives because she was always so comfortable living at out house. I mean why not, the food is good and free and there is Wi-Fi. And the rent is cheap.

But she has become an independent young woman now and enjoys living her own life in her own space. And that’s a win for everyone.

I’ll be up at seven tomorrow to give myself an hour or two to ease into the day. I’ll do tea and overnight oats first, then maybe get a half hour of writing in just get a win early in the day. It always feels great to write even 500 words before 9 am.

For a while, back when Robyn was leaving early to go into the studio, I would start the day by making a simple breakfast and watching an hour of tv before starting work. That hour made the day feel longer and gave me a nice on ramp to the workday.

As the sun starts rising earlier in the day, that quiet moment in the morning gets even better. Having breakfast out on the front porch or the rear deck makes the experience even more enjoyable. I love to inspect the flowers in our garden and see if our vegetable plants are bearing any fruit. Fresh strawberries or grape tomatoes right off the vine are amazing. I have a bell pepper plant that did absolutely nothing last year, so I brought it inside for the winter and put a plant light with a timer on it. It’s doing better than it ever did out in the summer sun for some reason. My wife loves yellow bell peppers, so I planted a bunch of them and then nothing really happened. They sprouted and they had leaves but they didn’t get above nine inches in height.

I am hoping to transplant it into the garden this year, maybe into a sunnier spot.

I need to do some research on how to properly grow bell peppers. I’ve never had any luck with them. On year we had a single plant that gave us one lousy green pepper. It was the size of a golf ball and tasted unappetizing. Time to do a course on good old YouTube University.

I have to get back to watching some writing tutorials from WGM as well. Rewatching the Information Flow course is top of my list as it has been identified by my mentor as an issue with my writing. I tried to be more vigilante while writing my last assignment. I guess I’ll find out tomorrow what she thought about the scene. Even if I didn’t quite get it, I feel I am getting a little better each time. I am at least conscious of the shortfalls now and that gives me a certain confidence going into the start of my first novel.

And tomorrow marks the first day of writing on that novel. I’ve taken a break from writing fiction for the last two days, using this blog to get my word count for the 2026-word challenge. But in truth, blog writing is not the way I want to achieve that goal. Eventually, I’d like to be writing over 2000 words of fiction per day and then adding more words with the blog. Seem to me, getting more words per day completed on the novel will be more beneficial than really long blog posts. Not that those don’t have their place in the scheme of things too. But even those long posts should resemble an article as opposed to whatever the hell it is I am doing right now.

I’ve watched some of the Pam Bondi Congressional hearings this past week. Ever meet someone and instantly dislike them? She does that for me. It is amazing how much deflection and feigned indignation she is capable of. It’s so clear she is manipulating her power to protect the President and a bunch of other wealthy people.

I mean just look at that face.

It’s nice to see people in power starting to resist the nonsense messages from the top. Even people who might have fallen in line in the past are crossing the partisan line in favor of doing what is right instead of what might make their own lives easier.

I just received my feedback from my mentor, and it sounds like I have more work to do. She’s having me redo the assignment, after explaining where I went wrong. I think doing it over is a good idea. If I can’t get it right the second time, then I ‘m not sure what to do. More studying and more practice.

The advice she game me make sense at least when I hear it. You hope to get it right straight out of the gate, but if I could do that, I wouldn’t have much use for a mentor. Sometimes it takes a fair degree of repetition for me to learn a new skill. I think if I can get this into nmy head it will have a dramatic effect on the quality of my writing.

It always hurts to hear at first, but I am already excited to give it another go. She has even suggested I look at some openings by Robert Crais to see when and where he lets us know what city the character is in.

I think this blog has gone on long enough.

Good night.