I used to carry a mechanical keyboard and a cheap android tablet in my bag. I used these things to write when I had a spare moment, as a way to seperate my “personal” computing from my “business” computing. For a few months, I did the same with an old DOS laptop. A sizable portion of the posts on this blog were keyed in on one of those two machines.

This worked well! I can update the blog from the command line, it’s just a git repo. So Termux on android, or a serial connection to a raspberry pi from DOS and I could go to town. The tablet setup was pretty small, and I loved the feel of the keys on the keyboard (a vortext core 40%.) The DOS laptop was a Gateway Handbook, and was downright tiny. Slightly thicker than the keyboard and tablet, but weighed less and had equally wonderful keys.

But I’m not doing the road warrior thing anymore. I work from home, I walk to lunch. I don’t have a need to keep a go bag with dozens of computer bits in order to write the odd blog post over lunch. It just isn’t a practical solution for me anymore.

So I’m experimenting with using a folding keyboard and my cellphone. I bought two, I’ll try each for a few days and report on the overall merits and demerits of each. So far, while the keys are much less pleasant to type on than either of my previous two solutions, it looks like this will be a perfectly servicable option.

And the whole kit is small enough to fit in my pocket, so I don’t have to worry about the fact that I don’t carry a bag right now.

I’ll report back as I have more to report!

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