This kind of needed an entry on its own. What would I do without it? I can chat to my loved ones, check my email and my buddies’ statuses on Facebook , note that it’s going to pour with rain tomorrow (and I don’t have any suitable shoes), find train times, and refer almost constantly to my pocket Italian/English dictionary. But the best thing, the Very Best Thing, is that it takes pictures. Nice ones of lovely urban wildlife like this cathedral gecko, but so much better – so, so, so much better – is that it takes pictures like this, and this:
Nobody minds. The librarians and archivists say, “Have you got a camera?” and I say, “No, but I have my phone.” They are slightly incredulous and give you that Italian look that means, “crazy foreigner.” But then I snap away! I can enlarge the teeny-tiny writing so I’ve got a marginally better chance of making out the abbreviations. I can print out the partbook and transcribe at my leisure. Useless publication but interesting dedication? Don’t transcribe it in the library! One snap and it’s on file. First the laptop and now this….
Technology could go one better, of course. It could come up with an interface between the word processor, the graphics programme and the Lexicon Abbreviaturarum (aka Capelli) that just reads the document for you and sends it directly to your book manuscript. Come on Mr Jobs, you know you want to.