Many months back, I committed to edit a newspaper at Burning Man. I’ve edited newspapers and magazines before, so I know how they typically work: lots of document management, lots of single-person-doing-layout: screens, all the way down.
I didn’t want any of it, this time.
DanyQ and I designed and implemented a portable, battery-operated receipt printer typewriter:
We made five of them, each different:
They do have tiny screens to show you the current line you’re typing, but it’s a fairly direct way to type to physical newspaper columns.
Still working out some kinks, and we haven’t tested in harsh conditions, but we seem to get about 30hrs of battery life.
At first, I just threw something together on a Raspberry Pi, as I’ve done before. This time, we used an AVR microcontroller. It’s so much better: it boots up instantaneously—everything is faster—and runs seamlessly. (Almost: there are some quirks in the libraries we depend on.) It has me asking: what’s an operating system good for? What remains universal once the Desktop Computer paradigm dissolves?
Your correspondent,
R.M.O.