I just discovered this amazing bit of freeware. When I use my laptop, I'm *constantly" frustrated by the touchpad--my palm brushes against it, or I breathe heavy, or a crumb dribbles on it, and POOF! It selects and deletes massive amounts of text. These "ghost strokes" make using my laptop for composing impossible and infinitely frustrating.
Until now.
I found this freeware called "touchfreeze." Basically, it senses when you are typing and disables the touchpad. I've typed this ENTIRE NOTE without a single glitch.
When you stop typing, the touchpad works fine. It just doesn't have a mind of its own and randomly select/delete stuff.
If you want to try it, it's on Gethub or MajorGeeks: https://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/touchfreeze.html *BEWARE* of downloading from non-trusted sites, as there is malware out there masquerading as useful programs like touchfreeze. If you're unsure, use your antivirus (you've got antivirus, right?) to scan any download.
Charles's Cauldron 🎃 - Yes indeed! I still play, as a matter of fact. (I copped to knitting on a different thread. WdC is learning all my secret Other Hobbies...) But I also learned to type on a manual typewriter, which I think made me both learn to keep my wrists up, and made me hit the keys somewhat harder than most people who learned to type on a computer keyboard. (And my mother insisting I type the alphabet on that thing, over and over again until I could do it without looking at my fingers, made me a dang fast typist. You don't need Mavis Beacon, kids! Just a typewriter with a sketchy ! key and a dream.)
Scary_Soldier_Mike - I have similar issues with features like selecting text, copying/pasting, etc. I have even worse difficulties trying to do any kind of writing & typing on this phone, and I detest the little, blue teardrop that pops over the top of where I'm trying to type after I use a formatting feature like 'indent.'
This morning I wrote 1500 words of a new Jase and the Arlo-nauts story set on the planet Hopeulikit. Manda Sue gets kidnapped, and two new Arlo-nauts, fraternal twins Cas and Perce, get added to the team and help rescue her. It mostly happens at the Mechanikerstadt Handelsschule—Mechanicsville Trade School--on the continent Ostland.
Story is about half done...but I'm drained for the day...will finish tomorrow.
I understand what you're saying. Even at my peak, I was good for about three hours a day, and after that, no matter how interesting the narrative, my brain was mush until I'd had a night's sleep. Could be frustrating, but you don't trifle with the muse if you know what's good for you! ~ Jack
Sent out the contracts for the Winter issue of Tales from the Crosstimbers. Three of the ten stories are by WDC authors!!! Also designed the cover for the Winter issue featuring the opening scene from the lead story.
Dental appointment this morning...not up to real work, so...more doodling. I decided to make a separate map with settlements and dim out most of the topography. I intend this to be a thinly-settled world with only one large city (over 100K), and everything else much smaller. I really am thinking of setting at least one story here...
For reference, here's the topographic map. I changed the map's scale, too, making the whole world much small by a factor of four.
As before, higher resolution images are on my website
Ghastly Grim And Ancient Raven - It's cool to be able to look up locations (especially fictional ones) on a map or even on a globe while reading a story.
Ah, look at me being difficult. What else is new, huh, Max Griffin 🏳️🌈? Hahaha!
You could just make like 15 different maps, since you obviously have work you are avoiding -- population density map, geopolitical (before and after gerrymandering...or is that only an Earth thing lol), weather, resources, geologic, nautical (or whatever it's called when you map the ocean around the land -- important impact on protection, fishing, swimming safety, etc.) and I'm sure you can think of other types of maps. lol
Grave Pryin' - I was thinking of Eagle's Nest, New Mexico. I should probably make the valley longer and maybe put a small lake in it. Easy enough to do since this is built up in layers...
Schnujo's now Cujo -- Run! - There are plenty of jagged edges on this one, but they don't show at the resolution of the WDC image. On the original, you have to zoom in at several times the magnification to see them.
How I wasted today (instead of, you know, writing): I re-taught myself how to make maps with Photoshop. This says it's of Calydon, but it's not really associated with any story--it's just practice.
I could see this getting really nerdy - working out where the mountains should be through plate tectonics, effects of ice age erosion etc so that it looks believeable. (I always find the three-sides-of-a-box mountains round Mordor in LOTR to be ludicrous.) Then that leads to realistic rivers and lakes, and so on. I'd end up spending more time building the maps than I would doing the writing.
Amethyst SkellyBones Angel - I think cartography is cool, too!! My favourite thing to do with a map is put it in the trunk (for my Ma's friend Justin Case), start driving, and see where I end up and who I meet. Ma used to drive when she and my siblings were kids and we'd go for Sunday drives and end up getting home days later. (I'll always be a young kid. Just ask Bren. She'll tell you I'm an old goat who acts like a child. )
My local writing group meets tomorrow night, so I made 4-layer brownies today for the meeting.
Layer 1: peanut butter cookie dough
Layer 2: Oreo Cookies
Layer 3: Chewy brownies
Layer 4: Chocolate Ganache and sprinkles
We just stumbled across this new FX series Lowdown. It's set in TULSA! The first scene is in Harweldon, an oil-boom-era mansion now owned by the Tulsa Arts Council. They clearly spent a lot of time here filming--I recognize almost all the backgrounds, including the run-down strip malls. It stars Ethan Hawke, and is based on a locally famous journalist who helped write the acurate history of the Tulsa race riots. We're only 15 minutes in, but it's pretty good--MUCH better than the Stalone thing, also set in Tulsa.
Max Griffin 🏳️🌈 - I fell in love with him in Gattaca. I think it hampers an actor, sometimes, to be such a beautiful youth, but he's always seemed to work hard on his acting and has done a lot of really interesting roles.
Ghastly Grim And Ancient Raven - Very surprisingly, I actually know the name Ethan Hawke but he has no face in my mind and I don't know any of his work. I've been to Tulsa a few times. The first time was in October 2012 for the birth of our daughter's first baby.
I don't know many current actors. Probably my favourites (are these current actors?) are Jonny Depp, Jack Nicholson, and... Are there any others? Seriously. We watch DVDs (as soon as we get a way to watch some again) and older DVDs at that.
Instead of working on my Novel-in-progress, I've wasted the last two days writing a short story. Now that it's more or less done, it looks like it could provide a frame for a series of stories about the future adventures of the three characters. There's even an obvious underlying mythological frame. So, it's looking like I've added another, longer-term project (thanks to Ghastly Grim And Ancient Raven, who came up with the idea). Here's a link, if anyone wants to read it. (It's a little long). The title is "Three Moons Over Calydon" . It's set in the same universe as Escape from Cabot's Landing and Murder on Cabot's Landing, but on a different planet.
Last night, for want of anything better to do and because I'd never seen it, we watched Rosemary's Baby. I was surprised, since I'd heard this was a scary movie.
Mostly, my reaction was "meh," along with a lot of eye rolls. I suppose it was innovative for 1968. In contrast, though, Murnau's 1922 Nosferatu is still scary today, so it can't be just that Polanski's film is dated and has been imitated to death. (I note in passing that I found the imitative 2024 remake of Murnau's classic to be painful to watch and not at all scary.)
I did enjoy Ruth Gordon's performance, though. Her Oscar was well-deserved, a moderately surprising outcome from the sometimes brain-dead Academy. If I'd known she was in it, I would have watched it long ago. It might even have scared 18-year-old me, but I kind of doubt it.
Max Griffin 🏳️🌈 - my favorite Columbo villain is difficult to choose, but I love John Cassidy. Such a natty dresser and wonderfully oily. (I saw an interview with his son where he said Cassidy brought *his own clothes* to wear as his Columbo characters, which makes it even better.)
Ghastly Grim And Ancient Raven - I like Cassidy, too. His characterizations oozed sleaze. I liked Patrick McGoohan, as well, for suave arrogance. For cameo appearances, Vitto Scotti has to be my favorite.
I was 16 when I saw the film (on VHS), not long after reading the book.
They were both okay, but the horror was more in the concept than the delivery. I did like the setting - a normal apartment block in a city. Nothing spooky or anything about it - the mundane made horror.
Another day with no creative progress. I spent the morning figuring out how to put the 20-year-old website for the class I taught at OU, "Research in Human Relations," back online. It uses a proprietary Microsoft web technology, Active Server Pages (ASP), which my current web hosting provider doesn't support. Rather that re-write everything, I cobbled together a work-around on a domain that's still active with my old provider. If anyone is interested in touch-feely statistics for human relations professionals, it's at https://statistics.osfw.online/statistics/
I spent quite a bit of time developing the modules, including problems sets that come up with different numbers every time they launch, building in statistical tables, and even an online HTML calculator. I guess I wasted time even back then...
I've never worked with ASP, but then I'm not a Microsoft fan and I'm constantly looking for alternatives to everything Microsoft --- with one exception. My desktop publishing program of choice is a dinosaur called "PictureIt! Publishing 2001." I need to find an XP machine to run it on. It is IMHO the only thing of any kind that Microsoft ever got close to right.
Even so, it seems like every webhost with a computer would support ASP.
PNGravebound- 📓 - Bluehost does not support ASP. In every other possible way, they are better than my prior host, iPage, which, paradoxically, they own.
BTW, like you, I love coffee. I'm having my morning mocha as I write this. The Ninja espresso machine is truly awesome.
I decided to republish my out-of-print probability and stochastic processes textbook on amazon. I don't really expect any sales, but I may as well put it out there since I wrote it. It's a essentially a compilation of the lectures I gave in teaching the two topics to doctoral candidates in electrical engineering and telecommunicatons systems.
The PDF version has slightly different typesetting conventions including, for example, color coding for definitions, theorems, and examples, and a different selection of fonts. I left out the color coding in the Amazon version since it would have greatly increased the price.
* Content and content ratings in this area are monitored solely by this member. Page owners have the ability to remove posts and/or block posters who do not follow the content rating or who post unwanted content. In addition, each member can block/ignore another member using the Block/Ignore Members" link on the Account
Options screen.
Printed from https://writing.com/main/profile/notebook/mathguy
All Writing.Com images are copyrighted and may not be copied / modified in any way. All other brand names & trademarks are owned by their respective companies.
Generated in 0.77 seconds at 6:48am on Oct 25, 2025 via server WEBX1.
- Yes indeed! I still play, as a matter of fact. (I copped to knitting on a different thread. WdC is learning all my secret Other Hobbies...) But I also learned to type on a manual typewriter, which I think made me both learn to keep my wrists up, and made me hit the keys somewhat harder than most people who learned to type on a computer keyboard. (And my mother insisting I type the alphabet on that thing, over and over again until I could do it without looking at my fingers, made me a dang fast typist. You don't need Mavis Beacon, kids! Just a typewriter with a sketchy ! key and a dream.)
Reply
- I have similar issues with features like selecting text, copying/pasting, etc. I have even worse difficulties trying to do any kind of writing & typing on this phone, and I detest the little, blue teardrop that pops over the top of where I'm trying to type after I use a formatting feature like 'indent.'
- Of course there would be lots more villages...I just didn't want to clutter it up with too much info. 
? Hahaha! 
- I was thinking of Eagle's Nest, New Mexico. I should probably make the valley longer and maybe put a small lake in it. Easy enough to do since this is built up in layers...
- If you're in Tulsa, you're welcome to come to our meeting! 
, who came up with the idea). Here's a link, if anyone wants to read it. (It's a little long). The title is "Three Moons Over Calydon" 
View Portfolio
Visit Notebook
Send Gift Points
Awards
Badges
Send Email
Community Newsfeed
General Discussion
Sponsored Items
Book of Trinkets
Static Items
Books
Groups
Interactive Stories
Audio
Campfire Creatives
Community Notes
Crossword Puzzles
Documents
Folders
Images
In & Outs
Madlibs
Photo Albums
Polls
Product Reviews
Quizzes
Survey Forms
Web Pages
Word Searches
