8 Reasons Computers are Cooler than Crayons

Recently a visitor named Jake left an interesting query after reading my bio:

Why don’t you hire a stenographer? Then you can just write like scuba divers do, with a crayon on plastic, and have them transcribe it for you – might be easier than worrying about waterproof WiFi.

I’m ashamed to say that I had not even thought to research scuba diving as part of my quest for the best waterproof blogging technology before I saw Jake’s comment.    Now that I’ve done some research, here’s my initial take on the crayon versus computer debate:

1. Crayons are too big. Yes, I know, crayons are much smaller than laptops and are perfectly sized for human kids, but they’re not terribly practical for turtles.  (Disclaimer: I have never met a sea turtle, but hear they’re at least as large as some human children.  I can only speak from my own experience.) My hands happen to be perfectly sized for computer keyboards (with a whole hand per key), but they aren’t big enough to fit around standard crayons.  I looked into toddler crayons, but apparently the smaller the kid, the bigger the crayon.

2. Dive slates come with pencils, not crayons. Still working on confirming this, but it appears that most dive slates come with pencils attached.  Disappointing news, since I’d rather use a little color.  However, I should mention that there are glow-in-the-dark slates available, and anything that glows in the dark is inherently cool (e.g. laptops).

3. Slates are small. Pencil versus crayon distinction aside,  divers have a very small area to write on, so they either need to have tons of them on hand or deal with the hassle of copying their notes to paper or computer on dry land before wiping their slates clean to reuse them.  At least one diver is now using waterproof paper because slates are such a hassle.

4. Labor leads to lag time. I know, I know.  I’m a turtle.  Why should I care about lag time?  But I’m also a blogger, and bloggers are supposed to be able to provide breaking news to the masses, which is hard to achieve when you have to struggle to get your hand around a pencil, surface with tons of little slates, and then wait for someone else to interpret your sloppy handwriting and copy the previously fresh news onto a non-waterproof laptop to post.

5. No money for a stenographer. Poor dexterity, slate size, and lag time are all moot points in my case, as I’m presently between acting gigs and don’t have any money in my budget for a stenographer.  Unless someone offers me either a feature role or a free stenographer (hint, hint), it looks like Jake’s suggestion won’t work for me, and I’ll be continuing the hunt for waterproof PCs.

6. Dive computers aren’t, you know, computers. While checking out dive sites (the Web kind, not the underwater kind), I ran across someone discussing dive computers, and a great wave of excitement hit me.  If scuba divers are using PCs, I figured, there has to be a waterproof computer out there for me!  As it turns out though, these gadgets called computers are just decompression meters, which won’t help me at all with my shallow-water technological pursuits.

7. Computers are my connection to the world outside my tank. Last time I checked, neither crayons nor dive slates could offer me the latest tech updates or the world’s funniest pet videos.  So without a computer to surf the Web on, I wouldn’t have much inspiration for my posts.

8.  The best things come in small packages. There’s something about a laptop that appeals to my inner nature…fitting as much brain as you can in as small a shell as possible is a cause close to my heart.  (Yes, crayons are small too, but short on brains.)

It boils down to this: Crayons are colorful and creative, but laptops are just inherently cool, enough so that I’m happy to keep crawling out of the tank to use them until I can find the perfect one to join me in the water.