Shld i use ugly abbr [Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος]

←

→

Shld i use ugly abbr sms wrtng style 2 make msgs fit on cell n edit thm later on computr or s tht 2 annyng?

←

→

There are 26 comments on this entry. (Reply.)

There are perfectly good abbreviations that have been used on narrow-bandwidth communication links for decades, some of them for a century. Why not just start using the Q- and Z-codes and the rest of the conventional Morse abbreviations?

Seriously, though. I much prefer telegraphic non-grammatical but mostly fully spelled style to the abundance of abbreviations.

Why not use Morse abbreviations? Because I don't know them. Off to Google, wheee! (I wonder how many folks reading my journal know the Q- and Z- codes.)

The non-grammatical style is something I resort to on a real keyboard when I'm Just Too Tired To Deal; it's also the first trick I resort to when sending an SMS message, but the message I tried to post this afternoon was too long even for that to work. (So I split it into two messages, only one of which seems to have gotten posted. Drat. This entry was the third, and an afterthought.)

Hmm. Evil plan sneaks into brain ... instead of using LJ's post-via-email feature, if I go back to mailing to myself and having Procmail pipe messages to a command-line LJ client for posting, I can stick an "expand the abbreviations" filter in between. The key question is: can I predict enough of the words I'm going to want to use and give them sufficiently short codes that I'll remember when I need them?

[link] [parent] [reply]

WA 2 FN ANYNG

Noted.

[link] [parent] [reply]

It's too annoying if you don't edit them promptly. :)

If I know I'm going to be able to edit them from a real computer soon, I can just wait until then to post (usually). So we can assume that the abbreviated messages would wind up sitting for several hours. So "too annoying" is nearly guaranteed then.

Oh well, it turns out other people hate reading that style as much as I do. I should've guessed.

[link] [parent] [reply]

Use the computer and screw the abbreviations! It's frelling *annoying*.

There is a language known as English. I know you know it, I've seen you use it before. Please (on my knees begging) use it.

And try to keep warm my dear.

-m

He's trying to post from a cell phone. The computer, for whatever reason, is not in reach.

When he was at Pennsic, I tried Latin to him, being more compact, but he it got lost in the message flood. Oh, well.

[link] [parent] [reply]

And, of course, you have to try to fit it into the wee bit of Latin I actually know, which doesn't amount to very much more than, "Ita, nos habemos non ullas bananas."

Oooh, just thought of an experiment I need to try...

[link] [parent] [reply]

Proper English is my own preference; I was trying to sort out what compromises are reasonable when no computer is within reach but my cell phone has adequate signal. Then I'm limited to ...

[... actually checks, discovers the answer is less than I'd thought ...]

... 160 bytes, including address. Effectively 125 bytes when sending to my LJ post-by-email address. (No wonder it felt short; I kept thinking the limit was 200 or 210. Whoops.)

Based on folks' responses, the answer seems to be that the fugly abbreviations are not a reasonable compromise.

As for keeping warm; we've got a bunch of cold nights in the forecast, but I think it's supposed to get above (or at least near) freezing every afternoon this week, and that detail makes a pretty big difference in this house! I forgot to listen for what the wind is supposed to be like though.

(When I'm about to say, "getting up to freezing", I'm always tempted to rephrase it, "getting up to melting", because that seems to make more sense.)

[link] [parent] [reply]

It's not that annoying, no, if you're going to edit them sooner rather than later. It certainly works if there's an important message you need to get out quickly.

As I responded to

kelly_lynn above, if I know I can get to a computer to edit them sooner instead of later, I can usually just wait to post, so they'll be around long enough to annoy anyone who'll be annoyed.

I've got these options:

Use the ugly abbreviations to make the entry fit into the limits of an SMS message,
Split the entry across multiple messages, resulting in multiple, very short entries continuing a thought,
Set up, and use, voice posting instead of text,
Consider blogging not sufficiently urgent and wait until I'm at a computer to say whatever I was going to say,
Consider the entry not sufficiently important and don't post it at all.

(What did I overlook?) While I can see there being a message I feel I need to get out quickly, the vast majority of the time I'll be inclined to post from my phone it'll be a "want" situation, not "need". (Email directly to one or more individuals is more likely to actually be urgent. But that also will annoy a much smaller number of people if I do use the ugly abbreviations (which I have, on occasion, done when emailing from my phone).

The other situation in which I'll post from my phone is when I'm really really tired, already in a warm bed, and not wanting to get cold again just to go to the next room to post the thought-I-really-want-to-share-now from a computer. Again, I can imagine situations where such a message could actually be urgent, but most often it'll be "I feel like posting this, but not badly enough to get out of bed," which probably isn't sufficient excuse for doing it in an annoying manner if people are in fact going to be annoyed. *shrug*

(Yeah, it's my own journal and I can write in it however I want, but there's no point in making it unpleasant for people if I've got a choice.)

So far the responses seem to be mostly, "It's annoying but we'll cut you slack if it's important and you can edit soon after," (phrased less presumptiously), with some, "Dear God No" mixed in. So I'm taking that to mean that it's not a reasonable way to handle posting-by-whim. At least not for the audience I've got. I'm sure that if most of my friends were kids who type like that all the time, none of them would care.

[link] [parent] [reply]

*laughs* the phone posts are incredibly simple to set up, I'd try that for the whim option.

[link] [parent] [reply]

*nod* Except that I almost never get around to listening to anybody else's voice posts -- between sometimes having something else going on in the audio realm, being at a machine where I don't have sound set up, or (in the case of the phone posts LJ itself supports) not having a player that handles the file format correctly (everybody sounds like a chipmunk and I can't make out a single word), it's just not usually worth the bother. Though I do wonder what people are saying (and once in a while I'm late enough getting to one that somebody else has already transcribed it).

So I guess I should ask how many of my friends would actually listen to voice-posts if I make them.

(OTOH, since I'm using a prepaid cell phone, there are no "included in plan" minutes; every minute I use translates to cash spent. I try not to have to talk on the phone very much these days. Sending text messages is a whole lot cheaper. Voice entries do seem like a fun thing to play with though.)

[link] [parent] [reply]

I listen to at least one of my friend's phoneposts because I like to know how they sound. From then on I can imagine their journal as if read in their voice.

If it helped you, I could convert the ogg file format into an mp3 for you, should you ever wish to hear me.

[link] [parent] [reply]

I vote for either option 2; the procmail filter you suggested; or a combination of option 2 and leaving out some words (rather than using SMS-style abbreviations).

I don't listen to phone posts, but if someone on your friends list does, and will transcribe them, that might also work.

[link] [parent] [reply]

Very annoying for anything other than something vitally important, sorry. Tho typing full english into the average cellphone for an sms is a pain for awkward fingers, I much envy Forest's fancy Nokia which has a full qwerty keyboard - weighs a ton and cost a bomb mind you!

My old Ericsson phone had this "T9" text entry system that took one keypress for letter and figured out what word you were probably trying to spell. I recently heard others complain that it was too annoying to use, but I found it very effective. My current Motorola has something very similar, but its implementation is awkward enough that I wind up using the manual "press the key enough times to get the letter you want" instead.

You're right, stroking English into a cell phone that way is a pain (and if I've got certain types of pain in my forearm, using my thumb that way will make it much worse in a hurry). But what I'm running into here is the 160-character limit, more than the nuisance of keying English in that fashion.

Just how large/heavy is that Nokia? (I'm not going ask about the cost, 'cause I know I can't afford one, but I'm curious as to what it's like to carry and use.)

[link] [parent] [reply]

I can't get the hang of those predicitve ones, first time I had a phone with that I was so frustrated, till Forest showed me it was able to be switched off, so I did! Never comes up with words *I'd* want to use for a start! :)
I think the more modern phones allow more characters, not sure what LJs limit is mind you.
His is the Nokia 9210 which is basically a PDA stuffed inside a phone, phone on the outside, keyboard and large screen inside, its not amazingly heavy but obviously much larger than the average pocket size cellphone.. I'll get him to reply here and give you more details :)

[link] [parent] [reply]

I have the 9210 Communist. In addition to the PDA, I really like the speakerphone feature.

Cannot say about the mass here, but the linear measurements are about 14 by 5.5 by 3 cm. It is a bit large as a phone, but I usually use mine as either a speakerphone or by the earplug. That leaves my hands free to use the PDA functions.

[link] [parent] [reply]

Yes, the speakerphone function is excellent, very clear also.

[link] [parent] [reply]

Wow, typing English on a cell phone is bad enough, but having to press each key so many more times to get all the way to the Greek letters, that's a real pain. Just tried that for the first time. (And Motorola has such a bizarre notion of what a lowercase gamma looks like that I had to go through every other letter on the phone to convince myself that's what it had to be. Yow.)

[link] [parent] [reply]

Ugh, Motorola. The first phone I had was one of theirs, and my dad has one now and I ended up borrowing it briefly while mine was out of funds - couldn't beleive how tricky it was to SMS on it. Not saying all their phones are that bad, but of the two I've used they sucked, whereaas the 3 Nokias I've had access to have been much more user-friendly, you've not had to press so hard on the buttons either.
I agree regardless of the having to type real English on a cellphone - my sense of language refuses to let me use u or 2 or b4, but last time Forest was away and we'd been texting a lot and i was tired I just gave up and went for the easier options, fingers and brain were getting worn out!

[link] [parent] [reply]

There is one other option.

If you can trust someone with your password, you can give them a phone call and have them type in a message you need posted. In English.

I sometimes have my partner post when I am in the hospital.

Yes, it's annoying, but I'd rather hear from you than not under any circumstances. Probably especially ones involving a cell message.

can you use http://www.binaryuprising.com/mojo/#home to post? If so, are you still limited in characters? Mojo allows you to set a post private which I use for short notes to myself that I don't want to lose track of before I can get to a computer, would that be helpful?

Also there is wapblogger http://wap.ubique.ch/wapblogger/ which allows one to edit more recent posts that have already been made... is that something that you could use to extend a post?

Links

January

Sun	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri	Sat
1 1	2 1	3 1	4 1	5 1	6 1	7 1
8 1	9 1	10 1	11 1	12 1	13 1	14 1
15 1	16 1	17 1	18 1	19 1	20 1	21 1
22 1	23 1	24	25	26	27	28
29	30	31