iPad Sketch #3: Two Pumpkins For Pumpkin

Originally published at Absentminded Author, v2.



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AD/HD: Speaking without Thinking

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I would like to thank Blogger for selecting my column as a Blog of Note . I am thrilled to find so many like minded individuals making the comments section an intellectual treat. Curse you! I haven't been able to get anything done for a whole week. One of the comments from last week's column was a terse reprimand by a woman (I assume) who urged me to not think so much and do instead. Ignoring the fact that her short comment judged my life by only the words of a humorous column I write each week, she also showed a lack of understanding of the AD/HD mind. Not think so much? If there is any one defining aspect of AD/HD it is the lack of contemplative thought before action is taken. We are masters of the instantaneous impulse. Take today's subject matter for an example. There you are, grieving family members around you, the organ plays in the background, and you've got this really funny joke to tell. Happen to you? No, me neither, but I do know a guy who appa...
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Is AI Good for ADHD or Just a Distraction?

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In which Douglas proves he’s not a Boomer I’ve been rethinking my engagement with AI recently. I’m too eager to be an unpaid beta tester for these guys. Companies that have invested billions into AI will gaslight us all day about how imperative AI tools should be in our lives. They’ll force us to deal with their AI, replace perfectly useful services with AI, and cram AI down our throats every time we turn around. (Microsoft 365 Copilot, I’m looking at you.) So what good is AI? Judging by how much trouble it gives me, I’d be tempted to say “not much”. ChatGPT once formatted CSS tables so poorly for me that I spent longer fighting with it than I did just coding them myself. Grok often hallucinates answers, gaslights me until I call it out, then it apologizes and gives me the information that I wanted. Just tonight I asked Siri how many kids Ronald Reagan had and what were their names (since his oldest son passed away today) , and it told me “five”, but withheld the names. ChatG...
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Byword, the ADHD Friendly Text Editor

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I warn you ahead of time that this is a geeky blog for a limited spectrum of my readers. What? You aren't all bloggers and writers? I've discovered a new text editor for the iPhone and iPad that I wanted to share with my fellow writers who have ADHD. It's called Byword . If you don't write for a living you may not appreciate why I am so excited about this app, and since I am writing for a living I need to be quick about today's entry. Here are a few highlights: iCloud sync. There are a lot of text editors out there, but most sync to Dropbox. But if Dropbox were to ever go down, I want an alternative service to work with. Since Byword syncs to iCloud, this allows me to still sync documents between my iPhone & iPad. If I had a Mac that wasn't ancient, I could sync it all to the Mac version of the app as well. Dropbox sync. If iCloud ever goes down, Byword can also sync to Dropbox, which means that my work flow doesn't have to be altered too d...
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