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Friday, June 08, 2007 - (see all news for this day)
smiley the gadget-master - 10:55 PM
(filed under 'smiley')
smiley is a child of the 2000s, that's for sure .. or, i suppose, he's just very much a product of his environment.
he can use a computer quite well & has been doing so since before he was two years old. he has no trouble at all using a mouse (even one that's set to very fast tracking) & is getting to know his way around a keyboard.
he's seen me using my handheld, the second-hand palm tungsten t which i bought from a friend, & has asked to play cards on it with me. i shouldn't have been surprised, but he took really easily to using the stylus to move the cards around on the screen & to tapping the screen where if you were using a mouse, you'd click.
i've been writing a number of blog entries on it lately & he asked on one occasion if i was playing cards. i told him that no, i was writing. today, after seeing me do it, he wanted to do some writing on it, too. i thought that using griffiti (where you form letters on a certain part of the screen to produce 'typing') might be a little beyond his current skills, so i opened up the notepad application where you can write or draw directly onto the viewing area & your 'pen' strokes appear directly under the stylus just as if you were writing on a piece of paper.
he did some writing & some drawing. a few times i showed him how to write some letters which he was writing a little bit off & then touched the place near the bottom of the screen to change to the eraser to 'rub off' my letters before handing the stylus back to him to allow him to write the letter again himself. after seeing this only three times or so, he then started using that function for himself, changing to the eraser, 'rubbing out' bits here & there to correct mistakes & then changing back to the 'pen'. i was quite impressed. he really is a bright little boy.
i told him that one day when i've been working for a while (doing proofreading, that's the plan), i'll probably upgrade to a newer model & that when i do, he can have this one (this one is about five years old which, in computing terms, is practically a dinosaur), but that in the meantime, he could share this one with me. immediately he piped up with, "buy a new one now?" i wish! lol! 
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can i borrow him? all the tech support guys are getting tired of me. lol!