Back up! Back up! Back up!

Printer-friendly version

Author: 

Blog About: 

Just lost Chapter 49 of The Transit of Venus as I typed the final letter. Not recoverable it seems as I one finger type in the Notes app of my iPad mini.

I may be some time as my mind is not the sort that can remember what I wrote even so recently
My apologies if anyone is waiting for it and I hope this reminder to back up regularly helps someone

Rhona

Comments

"The fee doubles...

...if you can't show recent backup"
(Citation from memory, original can be found somewhere in Tuck saga of Ellen Hayes. BTW, anyone knows what happened to her? She promised new chapter soon one year ago...)

Oh my goodness, this is ...

... like a blast from the past (~1980s).

http://www.anvari.org/fun/Computer/Jesus_Saves.html

Seriously, I've told people that laptops are not going to be obsolete any time soon, as the "great American novel" isn't going to be written on a tablet. Maybe it's not so far away?

I know that there is substantially less than 100% overlap between i-devices and Android devices, but I use two apps that allow files to be saved "in-progress". One is "color note". It's a bit clunky, one has to scroll all the way to the top of the document to find the "save" checkmark. I also have no idea how big a file it supports, but I can't imagine that the info isn't on their site.

The other is ... well ... Open Office. Yes, it's available for Android. It tends to be a resource hog, but it creates files that are transportable.

I'm reasonably certain that there are more apps with those capabilities.

Hope that helps with the future.

Deni

I know it's a fee site

But I use Carbonite, which automaticaly backs up my material. After writing Assassin and Twins, I decided to try to finish Twisted, a story about a serial killer. Well I started to look for some of the chapters on my computer and some were missing. Went to the Carbonite site and low and behold everything was there and sorted by chapter. Still trying to finish the story, I'm lazy and finish the sequel to Assassin. Ho hum, one of these days, Arecee

Thank you for 'Back up' suggestions

Rhona McCloud's picture

This being my first attempt at writing I am doing it one-fingered on the hoof with my tablet and only intermittent expensive wifi connection so It was inevitable I'd mess up before too long.

It is reassuring that I am not the only one to have done this. The suggestion of Open Office for iPad was interesting as having paid I deleted it again within a couple of days as it appeared to be trying to eat my 16gb iPad mini. That must be the resource heavy comment!

Rhona

Rhona McCloud

I haven't looked, because I

I haven't looked, because I use a laptop, but I would suggest you do some searches for 'ipad editor with autosave'. There have to be some of them.

Generally, it means to start the document, save it once, then it'll go from there.


I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.

Recommend Pages

If you are using iOS, and on an iPad Mini you are, I recommend Apple's Pages program.

It is now free (used to be ($10 USD) and it automatically backs up.

I hope this helps.

Hugs,

Kathy

Pages iPad app

Rhona McCloud's picture

The description sounds impressive Kathy although in the UK it costs £6.99 and it requires IOS 7 which I don't have the bandwidth to update to where I am travelling

Rhona McCloud

Better reach for the correction fluid!

bobbie-c's picture

Someone over in the Chatroom mentioned that you lost a file :-(

I am a heavy iPad user myself. And I have had experience losing stuff when I used NOTES. Moe has seen me break down in tears couple of times when I lost a big Note - appropriately, a "Note" is what you call a file made with iPad Note.

Apparently, it is not meant to be a full-fledged wordprocessor, really. It is more akin to a simple utility for taking down quick notes and such. Such as eNote in Linux, or Notepad in Windows.

And because the iPad uses a keyboard-less interface, the likelihood for making mistakes that can cause you to lose an entire Note altogether is high. As I said, I have lost a few of Notes in the past myself.

So I would suggest you use a real wordprocessor.

Of course, in the world of Apple, most everything is for a fee. However, there is a handful of really good free wordprocessor apps. I would recommend two: Easy Writer Lite and Textilus - both robust enough for most enyone's writing needs, and come well recommended. A bunch of my friends use them a lot.

As to backing up stuff - both can send backups to Apple's iCloud, but for my tastes, I would prefer to back up by means of a remotely-connected drive like my Seagate Goflex Satellite - that's because I heard Apple iCloud's been hacked, and the free storage is limited.

Or, going back to basics, I could email a copy to myself or just plain make another copy - both of which are as easily accomplished with Notes as well.

My main problem with Notes, really, isn't the backing up, but more that I easily lose stuff.

Restoring stuff is always a chore, and the backed-up version is never as up-to-date as you want it to be. Which is very vexing especially if you were just recently hit with inspiration, and you've been feverishly typing away to write the newest little nugget given you by your muse only for it to *poof!* vanish with your lost Note.

I've been where you are, and I hope my advice is useful.

Oh! A final suggestion - if you have a nostalgic streak in you, for how writers used to write (as in write using old-style typewriters), Tom Hanks - yeah, the actor - made something called Hanx Writer, and it's pretty cool, if I say so myself. And it's Free!!!

It can emulate several kinds of old-style typewriters, complete with clacking keys and the ding! of the carriage return. You can even set it so that, when you delete something, it leaves marks on the "paper" heehee. Where's the correction fluid when you need it?

 
 
   

To read my Family Girl Blogs, click this link -
http://bigclosetr.us/topshelf/book/28818/family-girl-blogs
To read my old Working Girl Blogs, click this link -
http://bigclosetr.us/topshelf/book/19261/working-girl-blogs
To read all of my blogs, click this link -
http://bigclosetr.us/topshelf/blog/bobbie-c
To read my stories in BCTS, click this link -
http://bigclosetr.us/topshelf/book/14775/roberta-j-cabot
To see my profile and know more about me, click this link -
http://bigclosetr.us/topshelf/user/bobbie-c

Easy Writer Lite Installed

Rhona McCloud's picture

Thank you for those suggestions Bobbie - I promptly installed ' Easy Writer Lite' and am pleased to see it incorporates a word count and has adjustable size for the characters - lacks in 'Notes'

My own favourite iPad apps are

Book Author - which I use to save things to my kindle by email
https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/bookauthor/id662679692?mt=8

You Doodle - which despite the name is a very good Photoshop type app - (among other things I've used to make my BC offerings)
https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/you-doodle-draw-on-photos/id...

I do have a Seagate Wi-Fi Plus Hard-drive that I use to watch movies on my iPad but I'm not up to saving documents to it yet.

Rhona McCloud

You're welcome

bobbie-c's picture

You're totally welcome, Rhona.

Re my eBooks, I buy mine directly from the Appstore, and just read them off the native iBooks reader. But I'm more into audiobooks nowadays. There are lots of freebie audiobooks floating around in the web, but sometimes I buy a few from iTunes. Audiobooks are easier to "read" while riding in the car (I get carsick real easily).

For graphic stuff, I use Photogene, Phototoaster and Photoshop Express myself.

Oh, if you do try Hanx Writer, let me know how you like it. A lot of users have been raving about it, and it's been making a lot of buzz in many Apple sites. I'm curious :-)

 
 
   

To read my Family Girl Blogs, click this link -
http://bigclosetr.us/topshelf/book/28818/family-girl-blogs
To read my old Working Girl Blogs, click this link -
http://bigclosetr.us/topshelf/book/19261/working-girl-blogs
To read all of my blogs, click this link -
http://bigclosetr.us/topshelf/blog/bobbie-c
To read my stories in BCTS, click this link -
http://bigclosetr.us/topshelf/book/14775/roberta-j-cabot
To see my profile and know more about me, click this link -
http://bigclosetr.us/topshelf/user/bobbie-c

How Many Vicoden per chapter

I have a Samsung 10.1 which seems a lot like a lot of these um "Pads". I bought it to read books with and is the first one I have found that the print is large enough for me. It would be nice to be able to get the thing to impersonate a Word Processor but there is the issue of having a real keyboard. I have Electricians hands so use a funny looking "Ergonomic" keyboard and a bottle of Vicodin to write with. So far, I haven't found a way to hook one of those to the pad. Does anyone know how many Vicodin per chapter is acceptable?

Gwen

Bluetooth keyboard

Not sure if you are aware of the many Bluetooth keyboards that are available? Connect wirelessly to your tablet and give you real keys. I have large hands also, and despise typing on tablets and phones, my error rate is impessive...

IBHO (in Bobbie's humble opinion...)

bobbie-c's picture

Hey, Gwen. Were you referring to a Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 or a Galaxy Note 10.1? If you were, then you are talking about Android tablets, and there's no shortage of free apps for them. For word processors, you should look at OfficeSuite, Kingsoft and QuickOffice.

And, with the use of an OTG or micro-USB adapter, it will allow the connection of keyboards and other USB devices to the tablet. But if your "ergonomic keyboard" has the round cable plug, there are USB adapters for them, but even so, it's hit-and-miss with the round-plug ones - you'll have to experiment a bit. Or you can get a bluetooth keyboard, as Fletch suggested. Or you can get the ginormous tablets that are available now. The largest I've seen on the net are 15-inch Android tablets. (For comparison, the iPad's screen is a little smaller than 10 inches, while the iPad Mini has an 8-inch one)

But if you were referring to the Samsung eReader e101, or any of the other Samsung eReaders, then I'm afraid you're out of luck - these are purpose-built eReaders - no apps for them, nor any ports to connect keyboards or any other devices. And they have no bluetooth connectivity, as far as I know. But at least they can play music and audiobooks, too.

Hey, Fletch. Yes, connecting bluetooth keyboards to an iPad is easy, Apple has one of the snazziest wireless keyboards around, after all. But the point of a tablet (or at least one of them) is to use them AS a tablet. Connecting them to a keyboard would have just made them into laptops. Just IMHO, that is. :-)

Hey, Deni. I appreciate your point of view about tablets, but It's my feeling that what is needed is a paradigm shift. Typing and doodling on a flat surface that is also your display is a big jump from typing on a keyboard, and I think this will never be an easy shift.

It was a big jump from typewriter-and-paper-and-dictionary-and-rubber-eraser to keyboard-and-screen-and-wordprocessor, and there were many, many, many people who doubted the usability of microcomputers as wordprocessors then. My dad was on of them. He (and all the others) said the tactile feel of typewriters, the solid nature of paper, the direct interaction, and the physical security it gave would always trump electronic words on a CRT. But as more and more became willing to change their paradigm from keyboard to display, technology kept up, improving on how users interacted, how data was secured. Eventually, writing with a computer became so ubiquitous that the sale of typewriters went down so much that they became all but extinct.

But you know this, already, I'm sure.

I suspect that, to the up-and-coming generation of technology users, we sound the same as how my dad sounded like to me then. And for whatever shortcomings the current tablet paradigm has, technology is catching up to the users' needs, in the same way that it did when everyone was adjusting to the keyboard paradigm a few generations ago. I guess, for tablets, we are roughly at the equivalent time when the IBM PC-AT was introduced. And we are just waiting for something as game-changing as the GUI for tablets to become the platform-of-choice.

In the meantime, laptop sales are on the decline while tablet sales have been going up for a while now. Tablets have been having a 50-78% year-on-year growth since 2011/2012, depending on which publication you read. Here's one of them: http://www.maclife.com/article/news/tablet_sales_projected_o...

But numbers don't lie - tablet sales have indeed surpassed laptop sales last year. And it is projected to surpass combined laptop-desktop sales by 2015.

The writing is on the wall, I think.

But, as they say, the proof is in the pudding. There is a small handful of mainstream writers now who write their stuff exclusively on tablets. I am sure you can google them. And they are growing as better and better apps roll off the appstores, and tablets become more ubiquitous.

And even closer to home - as you read here, Rhona has written one of her chapters on an iPad (with a few hiccups, I admit). And I, for one, have been writing my posts exclusively on my iPad since about 2011 (including this one). My first tablet-written story here was Counterfeit Crusader, followed by a few others, including five installments of the... technologically-inaccurate story, Shepherd Moon.

Anyway... just an opinion lol

 
 
   

To read my Family Girl Blogs, click this link -
http://bigclosetr.us/topshelf/book/28818/family-girl-blogs
To read my old Working Girl Blogs, click this link -
http://bigclosetr.us/topshelf/book/19261/working-girl-blogs
To read all of my blogs, click this link -
http://bigclosetr.us/topshelf/blog/bobbie-c
To read my stories in BCTS, click this link -
http://bigclosetr.us/topshelf/book/14775/roberta-j-cabot
To see my profile and know more about me, click this link -
http://bigclosetr.us/topshelf/user/bobbie-c

Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1

I really only got it to read books, for the large print.

I still use a desk top because I can use a huge monitor and use gynormous print. My eyes are failing. However, when I get some matters settled, I might take a look at a wireless keyboard and explore further capabilities of the tablet.

It has been some time since I have seen you on this site. How are things going? I hope that you are doing well.

Gwen

I'm okay, and thank you for asking

bobbie-c's picture

Hi, Gwen.

Well, I'm not perfect, but doing well enough. Trying to get back to some of my old routines, such as posting stuff in BCTS, visiting the chatroom, et cetera, as you see. Maybe I'll even be lucky enough to post some stories soon (I hope).

I got my weight stabilized, more or less. No hospital visits for a while now, and no more of those goshdarned injections, too - keeping up my diet on my own with some "gentle encouragement" lol. And if I can keep it up until December, Moe's promised a nice vacation (don't know where to, yet).

Thank you so much for asking. Hope you're doing well as well, and hope your device problems are solved soon. And if all you're doing with your Samsung Note is to read ebooks and to browse... you should consider loading some more apps and maxxing it out to its full capabilities. But it's your tablet ;-) IBHO... lol

 
 
   

To read my Family Girl Blogs, click this link -
http://bigclosetr.us/topshelf/book/28818/family-girl-blogs
To read my old Working Girl Blogs, click this link -
http://bigclosetr.us/topshelf/book/19261/working-girl-blogs
To read all of my blogs, click this link -
http://bigclosetr.us/topshelf/blog/bobbie-c
To read my stories in BCTS, click this link -
http://bigclosetr.us/topshelf/book/14775/roberta-j-cabot
To see my profile and know more about me, click this link -
http://bigclosetr.us/topshelf/user/bobbie-c