Not much to say in addition to what I wrote above. Just a couple points.

1. As previously stated, bleed- and show-through are complete non-issues. I'm writing on the back of the above sheet of paper now, and you pretty much cannot see anything through the paper. If you stare at if for a few seconds you can see faint marks that could just as easily be tricks of the light.
2. The sheets are excellently perforated and slip right out.
3. For more information on the paper characteristics, see the links below.
4. Though the paper is double-sided, I'm not quite sure how you are supposed to effectively write on both sides without tearing the sheet out, especially if you've got the pad in a leatherette holder, as I do. If you fold the page back, you lose a lot of writing space on the other side. If you're going to try to write on both sides without removing the sheet, you might want to change orientation on the back (i.e.: write in portrait orientation on one side {shortest edge on top} and landscape orientation on the other {longest edge on top}). Or just don't worry about it, I suppose.

Here's some useful links (I have no affiliate relationship with any of these people or entities).

Goulet Pen Company sells both a huge selection of Rhodia pads (including top stapled pads like this one) and Private Reserve ink, including DC Super Violet. If you buy the premium No. 18 leatherette pad holder (available in either orange or black) it includes a NO. 18 grid pad. Their selection and customer service is unmatched, and no one packs fountain pen and ink supplies as securely as they do.

My Theory of Alternate History Literature

Generally speaking, I think there are two kinds of alternate history fiction. More specifically:

1. Everything You Know is a Lie: Recorded history is a--usually extravagantly crafted--lie. Here's what really happened. Example: The Matrix
2. Everything You Know is (Technically) True: Recorded history is true. But there is a whole great swath of events going on behind the scenes contributing to the outcome we know and study in our history classes and books. Example: Men in Black

In my opinion, the first type is much easier to consume and create. Because it basically gives the reader and writer license to ignore and or toss out whatever annoying details of reality might otherwise get in the way of the story. Historical accurracy is nether required nor expected.

The second type is quite a bit harder to deal with. You have to take recorded history as-is, and use it as the the superstructure of the story. Truly impressive Type 2 alternate histories weave their impossible tales in the shadows and eaves of proven facts, thus becoming possible.

But in my opinion the second class of stories has the potential to be vastly superior to the first, because if you pull it off--if you make people believed that the fantastic events of your tale happened between the pages of real history, you do more than entertain. You leave your reader wondering, and maybe even wanting to explore deeper into the reality of what really happened to catch the details the History Channel approved retelling might have missed. Any time a reader comes away from a book asking why or what if, you know you've done your job well.

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

Buying Advice: I cannot reccomend this book enough. I actually experienced giddiness after finishing it. Buy it now, if not sooner.

• Buy at Amazon

Alternate History Type: Type 2

Cover Blurb:

Indiana, 1818. Moonlight falls through the dense woods that surround a one-room cabin, where a nine-year-old Abraham Lincoln kneels at his suffering mother's bedside. She's been stricken with something the old-timers call "Milk Sickness."

"My baby boy..." she whispers before dying.

Only later will the grieving Abe learn that his mother's fatal affliction was actually the work of a vampire.

When the truth becomes known to young Lincoln, he writes in his journal, "henceforth my life shall be one of rigorous study and devotion. I shall become a master of mind and body. And this mastery shall have but one purpose..." Gifted with his legendary height, strength, and skill with an ax, Abe sets out on a path of vengeance that will lead him all the way to the White House.

While Abraham Lincoln is widely lauded for saving a Union and freeing millions of slaves, his valiant fight against the forces of the undead has remained in the shadows for hundreds of years. That is, until Seth Grahame-Smith stumbled upon The Secret Journal of Abraham Lincoln, and became the first living person to lay eyes on it in more than 140 years.

Using the journal as his guide and writing in the grand biographical style of Doris Kearns Goodwin and David McCullough, Seth has reconstructed the true life story of our greatest president for the first time-all while revealing the hidden history behind the Civil War and uncovering the role vampires played in the birth, growth, and near-death of our nation.

My Review

I don't really like spoiling works of fiction in a review. This is one of the reasons I'm nearly 30 and have only read, at most, half a dozen movie reviews in my lifetime. I've already told you I love this book and I think you should buy it, and given you the official description. Instead of risking ruining the plot by giving more details, I want to talk a bit more about the structure and mechanics of the book, and why I loved it as much as I did.

Structure

The narrative is interspersed with journal entries from Lincoln's secret vampire hunting diaries as a framing device. Lincoln's personality, at least as established by the book, all but bleeds off these pages. This creates a very immersive experience and really makes you feel like you're reading an account of a real person. I was reminded of those great History Channel specials we used to watch in school that were laced with narration of actual correspondence and jouranal entries from the time. It doesn't take long before you feel like you're reading a real Abraham Lincoln biography. Just with, you know, the extra stuff that The Man leaves out, so the people never discover The Truth.

Slavery

It's the key to to the game, so I won't give anything away, but this book presents one of the most visceraly horrifying, hopeless depictions of slavery I've ever read. It's already well established that evil vampires use humans as cattle, and the juxtapositions of humans treating members of their own species no better is masterful and strikingly done.

The role of vampires in the Civil War and their tie in to southern slavery is likewise inspired, though I'm sure it will rub some people the wrong way. The book does not spare criticism for those in real history it considers evil, and extended metaphor aside, I don't think anyone can argue that the author does not know how to write some seriously compelling and despisable bad guys.

The twist on the idea that real Abe always had some ulterior motive for ending slavery is viciously obvious in hindsight, but an absolute shocker when it's revealed.

Jefferson Davis especially doesn't come off well. But then again, he's also firmly positioned as hero's (Abe's) arch-nemesis in an epic fantasy/war story, so that should be no surprise. This is not so say the author paints all Lincoln's enemies and ideological counters in the same light. Steven A Douglas is a nuanced, rational, complicated character who, from start to finish, is always trying to do what he thinks is best for the United States. His gradual shift from oppenent to ally to friend is a tiny, subtle sub-plot in the overall story, but it's one of the best parts.

Unique Vampire Lore: The Unsexy, Complicated Undead

Buffy and Angel to some degree, and most certainly Twilight, represent the modern romantization of vampires. They may be mosterous unholy killers that want to eat you, but they're going to be terribly erotic and handsome about it.

Not these vampires. They are demons, and humans are their food, and the books don't let you forget it. They move with animalistic grace and ferocity when they hunt, and there is nothing at all erotic about how they feed. To most vampires, humans are something lower than cattle, and the book hits this point home with all manner of violence. The older ones are immune to sunlight, and the stress of long-term immortality makes suicide a real risk.

The entire book has the grim, violent, yet strangely alluring feel of an early 20th century monster movie. It really makes you feel like you're watching an earlier, rougher time.

At the same time, unlike Buffy or Angel, where vampires are by definition souless killing machines, the vampires of ALVH have consciences and free will. This allows for heroic/anti-heroic vampire characters--still blood drinking monsters, but they're good about it (think Dexter Morgan)--and makes the evil vampires that much more deplorable because they choose to treat humans as chattel and revel in it. This is a much more complex moral canvas than most modern popular vampire lores care to deal with, and the book as a whole is richer because of it.

Miscellaneous Awesome Bits

• I loved all the historical figure cameos, even though some of them could be a bit grisly. They really give the book a sense of authenticity, of something that could have actually happened, because here are people you read about in school and watch TV specials about, doing the things they're famous for and also, you know, dealing with vampires.
• I don't know how accurrate it is, but the level of detail and thought put into the non-vampire parts of the narrative make the entire work read like the most cracked out Abraham Lincoln biography ever, from the detailed discussions of where and how Abe grew up, to his time as a legislator, to his behind the scenes maneuvering and planning during the Civil War. If you pulled all the vampire stuff out of this book, it would read like an incredibly thoughtful piece of historical non-fiction chronicling the personal triumphs and tragedies and inner thoughts of a very complex man.
• Book Abe is more than slightly sarcastic, and his secret life as a vampire hunter means the Honest Abe trope is demolished pretty quickly. The part of the book where he discusses "noble lies" is particular interesting as an establishing character moment. He is flawed and secretive and prone to righteous fury and hilarious snark, and all the more real and engaging for it than the paragon we have spent the last 146 years constructing in our collective consciousness.
• The author chooses the words, diction and syntax of his characters' speech patterns wonderfully. You feel like you're reading real 19th century speech, without feeling like it was overdone or ham-fisted.
• Abraham Lincoln's decision to become a vampire hunter and subsequent training reminded me in a very positive way of Bruce Wayne in Batman Begins.
• The explanation for why vampires came to America is a brilliant and horrifying echo of the "freedom from persecution" rationale that brought so many real settlers to our shores.
• For all his necessary heavy-handedness, the author demonstrates a clear mastery of knowing when and how to use a subtle touch. Young Abe's awe at first brush with a modern 19th century urban environment does a wonderful job of emphasizing his rural roots.
• Edgar Allan Poe could not be more comically disinterested in the existence of lesbians if he tried. Just, throwing that out there.
• I really, really liked the prayer on page 331.
• The surprise ending is wonderfully executed. It's not a twist, but the setup is so arduously subtle you'll never see it coming. I couldn't quite believe it was happening. Uplifting and bittersweet. Do not flip to the end of the book.

The Use Case

Problem 1

As I type this, I have a mammoth flatbed scanner behind me. I seem to use it about once every week-and-a-half. I tend to let documents pile up on top of it before scanning them in, because it doesn't have an automatic document feeder and scanning huge documents into it can be a bit of a hassle.

My humongous, high-quality flatbed scanner, by the way, refuses to scan black-and-white PDFs, for whatever reason. Well, technically it's the ScanDrop software, but the end result is the same: huge color PDFs that take up far too much room (over 1MB/page) and are a real hassle to send by email. Submitting bug reports to OfficeDrop has so far not had any results.

Problem 2

I scan all my documents into Evernote for organization and storage/cloud sync. If it's in Evernote on my computer, it's in Evernote on my phone, and on any other computer I get my hands on, etc. Unfortunately, up to now I haven't had a way to scan documents on the go to get them into Evernote -- something I really want to be able to do. When you're doing legal work -- or any other work where you've got huge swirls of paper flying around you, I suspect -- it's much more convenient to get documents into your computer in searchable PDF form than to try to keep them organized floating around your desk or filed in a filing cabinet somewhere ... away. Like Vegas.

There are apps for your iPhone (and I suspect, Android phones) that let you use your phone as a makeshift scanner, but cell phone cameras weren't designed for that, and if you've got shaky hands like I do, you'll be lucky to get anything even close to legible.

The (Attempted) Solution

Doxie's Doxie Go seems to fit my needs: it's a portable sheet-fed scanner that runs off an internal battery when not hooked up to a computer, can hold hundreds of pages in its memory until it's synced back up, and does a more than passable job of scanning text.

The software looks svelte and actually designed with Mac users in mind. This is actually a huge selling point for me: a lot of scanners, including the mammoth behind me, include Mac drivers, but they're designed, written, and packaged almost as an afterthought. My scanner drivers and support software are often some of the most inelegant, aged-looking, unintuitive, buggy pieces of software on my computer.

With the wireless syncing kit, it'll sync to your iPhone, Evernote, etc.

It might not give you quality equal to a high-performance desktop scanner, but I tend to think its 300-600 DPI quality settings are almost certainly more than enough for most use cases.

So I've decided to try it.

I'll report back with my thoughts after I've actually gotten to use it.

	Doxie Go - Cordless Paper Scanner (DX200)
	Doxie GoKit - Worldwide Charging Kit for Doxie Go
	Doxie, the amazing scanner for documents

A short writing sample using a Field Notes County Fair edition notebook and my Pilot Capless Fermo with Pilot Iroshizuku Tsuki-yo (blue black) ink.  I feel like the paper quality on these booklets is noticeably improved over the 2010 Field Notes printing, though I haven't gotten official confirmation of this.  The ink is behaving better on the paper, at any rate.  You can barely see anything on the reverse side of the page.  You can see slightly more than is visible in the picture, but both sides of the page are completely usable. Really love these little memo books.

Field Notes County Fair Writing Sample Side 1

Field Notes County Fair Writing Sample Side 2

Been seeing lots of these lovely little flowers all over Dallas.  Really enjoying the cooler weather ...

Nothing special here.  Just a round-up post of some very (IMHO) useful links for getting started with iOS 5 and Apple iCloud.  It changes a lot of how Macs and iPhones talk to each other, so getting it all set up right can be a bit tricky at first.  Maybe some of these links will help you avoid some of the pitfalls I went through.

Note: I wouldn't rush to update to iOS 5 quite yet.  This is the biggest update Apple has made to its iPhone/sync infrastructure ever, and there have been and will be bumps in the road.  Apple's servers were under major strain Wednesday night.  At one point I had a completely useless phone, as the update installed but couldn't reach the software verification servers, and forced the iPhone into recovery mode.  That lasted a couple hours.  Right now, iCloud email is completely down, and has been since late last night.  If everything is still working fine for you, you might want to wait till later this afternoon, or perhaps Friday.

• Lifehacker: "How to Set Up and Configure All the New Features in iOS 5" Though it looks the same at a glance, iOS 5 has a lot of new features. This article links to great tutorials (with video!) for setting up wireless sync, iCloud, Notification Center, and Text Expansion. Bonus: "Everything You Need to Know About iOS 5 in Seven Minutes." I'd start here.
• TiPb: "iOS5 for iPhone and iPad Walkthrough" Comprehensive and lengthy examination of everything new in iOS5. Much more in-depth than the above set up guide.  Bills itself as a "Complete feature guide." I haven't had a chance to read it yet.
• Macworld: "Getting Started with iCloud, Apple's New Sync Service" Now that your phone is up and running (theoretically), this article will give you a nice overview of what, exactly, iCloud is. It slices, it dices ... and is complex enough that Macworld has put out several in depth articles.  Ones I find particularly useful are:
  • "iCloud: Syncing" Well, now that you've set it up, what does it sync, and how?
  • "iCloud: Backup" introduces and describes how to use iCloud's wireless backup service for your iPhone or iPad, and what exactly it will back up for you.
• Macworld: "Hands on with Find My iPhone, Mac, and Friends" This is a great article if you're unfamiliar with what the se services are, or how to get started using them.  I had no idea the Find My Friends service -- which lets a group of people share their location privately -- was so versitle.  Temporary Events (i.e.: track your friends only while you're together at, say, a concert) looks particularly useful.  The article also covers privacy settings.
• Macworld: "iCloud: Purchases and iTunes Match" Information on the new automatic downloads from the iTunes Store, which makes syncing between phone and computer even easier, as well as info on iTunes Match, which is a subscription service allowing you to access any music in iTunes from anywhere else in the world -- for a modest yearly fee, of course.
• Macworld: "Apple iOS 5 Mobile Review" A review of the new iOS from Macworld's Dan Moren (4.0/5 mice). Something else I've not yet had time to read.