Holidays, no laptop, and a Bluetooth keyboard

It has been a while since I’ve written an apropos of nothing blog post. They’re sneaky though: they actually demonstrate a point for another article I’m working on; one that’s too long to include in that post itself.

I used to take my laptop with me when I went on holiday. Self-employment meant I had my inbox to attend to, the occasional small job to deliver, or the odd bug to fix; I would disappear to a cafe for an hour or two each day to write some code.

In recent years I’ve tried to switch off more, so the laptop has stayed at home. I make sure my clients know I’m away and what to do in case of any urgent issues with their websites, and I try to check my inbox as little as possible.

Problem is, I’ve always enjoyed writing, so if an idea comes to mind, or an old draft crosses my thoughts, demanding I get back to it, I want to be able to do something about it. I use IA Writer, which is available on my iPhone, so that’s something, but writing an article on a phone is less than ideal.

I tried an iPad, since an iPad doesn’t have a decent code editor and can’t run a development environment, but writing on a software keyboard, even if it’s full-size, is arduous. I took to hooking up a Bluetooth keyboard, which was much better, then it struck me: why bother with an iPad at all!?

It turns out you can connect a Bluetooth keyboard to an iPhone, so now all I do is pack my Magic Keyboard in my hand luggage and I can do a bit of writing whenever the need takes me! My setup even fits nicely on aeroplane tray tables, where a laptop doesn’t quite. I do get a few funny looks from other passengers, but I can live with that.