I see ... I see ... an I-Pad in my future

Recently I had the joy of showing my potter friend, Sarah Houde, the sites of St. Petersburg.  It just so happened that Sarah had brought with her a glazed pitcher she made of Highwater Clay and Amaco Glazes.  She saw on the website that Highwater has a distribution site at St. Pete Clay.  Sarah had questions about the compatibility between the clay and the glazes she used on the pitcher.  Well, weren't we lucky to find that the President of Highwater Clay and a V.P. of Amaco were on site for a pottery demo celebrating Highwater's grand re-opening in their new location in the historic train station that houses St. Pete Clay and the Morean Arts Center clay studios.  Whew! ... that was a mouthful and it isn't even the subject of this post.

Sarah came up with the bright idea that I should use a voice activated dictaphone to "write" my book on torch-fired enamels.  Well, one thing led to another and after some serious investigation, I decided on the Apple I-pad.  The I-pad is already available, but the one with the 3G network for email and internet access when you're not near Wi-Fi is not available until May 7.  So we ordered one during our drive back from Florida last week.

I had been researching programs such as MacSpeech Scribe and MacSpeech Dictate.  I am jumping for joy over the possibility of using MacSpeech Dictate for the book.  You speak and your words appear on the screen.  So, imagine, I'll be using tools and making pieces and it will go something like this ..."round nose pliers" ... and those words will magically appear on the screen. Woohoo!

I am so excited ... It will alleviate the tedium of cursively recording your movements in making a piece.  Special thanks go to Sarah ... who is also a dynamite potter.  Check out her work here.