Glassholery

Faux-typecast courtesy Richard Polt's Oliver Printype font

Faster Food and the New Luddites

Typed with Morticia, the curbside Olympia SM-3: operational again!

Big Value, Small Package

Sorry for the half-letters. This is the ribbon found with the machine, and the vibrator and some of the keys still require some de-gunking. I'd also like to note that the iPhone comes with no user-serviceable parts.

Projecting

Hope in a box

After spreading doom and gloom about film's desperate future at another typer/photog-blog (sorry Chris), I spent some time poking around flickr, trying to encourage myself into thinking that we won't be living in a celluloid-free world anytime soon. I'm always on the lookout for new things to add to my "dates of interest" section on the site, and I'd forgotten about the upcoming "Take Your Box Camera to Work Day" in February. Certainly more boss-friendly event than Bring Your Offspring to Work Day (at least for those of us with curious tykes) and a suitable salute to the dying art of film photography. Box camera photography would be the original Lomography, minus the jazzy colored flash and hipster overtones. There's certainly a greater dependence on chance and luck and your ability to estimate a 7.5-8 ft distance between your lens and the subject. Exposure is a matter of chance, too -- just hope you hit that magic combination of light, film speed, and shutter timing (dodgy even when the cameras were new.) I'm thinking about participating this year, respooling some 120 film to fit into the Brownie Flash pictured. I've already tried my hand at using the faux TLR Duaflex IV, but even that camera offers options. The Brownie Flash is literally a point-and-click (and hope) in a box.

I'm also thinking that this might be a good time to dig out the old film developing equipment again. I'm not equipped for color film, which requires a far amount of noxious chemistry and preciseness with temperature. Black and white can be done at the kitchen sink, and allows a certain amount of latitude (i.e., fudging.) Since the local camera shop can provide me with film and chemistry and they're just a quick walk from the office, this seems like as good as a time as any to get back into processing. I hope that I'm wrong about the extinction of film, that it doesn't become such a novelty item that it is priced beyond the range of mortals who just want to drop a roll into a decades-old camera with shaky optics and minimal choices ("wind" "shoot") and see what develops.

The death of Mom and Pop

• Stacey's Bookstore closing
• Is the Library a Museum? (blog entry)
  

A rambling history of planning

I've used a variety of planning systems over the years, ever since the company I was working for got into talks with the Franklin Quest people (now Franklin Covey.) We were a tiny spinoff company from an established printing firm, and after flailing around for a year or so, we somewhat accidentally fell into web development, making some of the earliest commercial web sites (ask me about meeting Fabio.) Franklin was one of those sites, and my future wife and another co-worker got shipped out to Utah for a meet-and-greet and to become One With The Planner People. Soon after they returned, we were all treated to one of the planning seminars and given our choice of planners.

Now, I've never actually been indoctrinated into a cult before, but this sure felt like it. I'm a pretty type-A kinda guy, so the thought of having a System for capturing your day, your to-dos, all the loose bits of information swirling around in your life was oh-so-very appealing. So much so that I went for the "Monarch" size, the full 8.5"x11" magilla, with leather cover, desk stand, fancy punch, snazzy ruler page marker... the works. It was Big. It was Black. It smelled Great. I wrote down everything in that monster, including plans for the wedding and honeymoon. Oh, and it went on the honeymoon, too. Yes indeedy, it was The Answer. Sort of. What it was was Heavy. And Bulky. And Awkward To Use. My new bride had the good sense to go with a half-page size, which didn't require a regimen of bicep curls. Buyers remorse had settled in with a fury. Then came the Newton.

Sleek. Black. Digital. Full of coolness and elegance and intelligence... most of the time. I lusted for one being a long-time Apple junkie, but was well-behaved and Did Not Buy. The Franklin looked more like a boat anchor and less like the One True Path. I opted to trade down a size on the planner as a nod to my need for portability. I even got the one made from recycled soda bottles, so I was feeling very green indeed, before being such a thing was cool, at least in the Midwest. Flash forward a few months: a new job opening in California, and me fully disgruntled at the old one. My new bride had quit some weeks before, and I'm thinking should I do it? Can I do it? it was time for a clean break. I did it. Ditched the barely-used planner along with about a third of our mutual belongings as we prepared for our Grand Adventure West.

No time to think or plan in the new job, at least not at first. Working in San Francisco during the height of the dot-com boom, who had time to plan? Everything's emailed anyhow, just get it done, chugga chugga chugga. Ooh! Palm Pilots! Gotta get one of those. And then the upgrade. And a keyboard. Ooh, and the new model! Even better. The most used feature of all: the beeping alarm warning me that I have a meeting to be at in 10 minutes. Developed mad graffiti skillz and was inseparable from the little digital brain for a few years. Oh sure, it ate batteries, and yes, firmware upgrades were a nightmare -- don't unplug it halfway through or it's ruined! And lo, a son was born.

Suddenly the commute seemed offensive, taking me away from my family. Time became the enemy, up at 5:30, on the train by 7:00, in the door by 8:00, and then reverse it all at 5:00. "He walked today" was the impetus for change. A few re-organizations later, and I worked out a telecommuting deal, home in the extra room with the laptop and DSL, my toddler son coming in to share his goldfish crackers. Meetings became a non-issue as I was out of sight, so far more important became the Work Log, my own system for keeping myself honest and focused by jotting down what projects I had worked on. Just an old spiral notebook from college and a Bic. The Pilot's batteries died and I never noticed.

A few more reorganizations later, and I'm back on the commute again, showing up with New Responsibilities. Managing staff! Preparing presentations! Arranging weekly meetings! It was all so complicated... perhaps it was time to dig out the old Palm again, fire it up, take it to meetings... hrm... still kind of clunky... and slow... and battery-gobbling... um, maybe not. On a lunch-break walk one day, I stumbled across the San Francisco Franklin Covey store. Maybe just a quick peek inside... what harm can it do?

Sigh. Back in the cult.

And that's where I was in spring of 2004, with my shiny new "Pocket" size planner (kangaroo pockets, maybe.) Diligently filling out the daily to-do list and its A/B/C priorities. Buying the annual refills and archiving the previous year's. A good little soldier, I.

Now flash forward to spring 2007, me with credit card in hand on the Franklin web site, trying to find the cheapest refill possible. I had just dug out my old Shaeffer fine-nibbed fountain pen, and was trying it out on my planner. Horrible, horrible bleed through. Luckily, I had my share of empty pages to test the pen on. And then something finally clicked: I've spent over $120 in four years to buy paper I barely use. What am I doing? Vast swaths of the planner went totally unused, except for days when I filled the pages. To-dos were either mostly empty, or completely packed. This was not a workable system. So I started reading up:

• hPDAs looked useful and low-budget, though I'd like to use my Sheaffer...
  
• FPN recommended Levenger papers pen-friendliness, and luckily
  
• The Levenger catalog kept gracing my mailbox thanks to my regular Franklin purchases
• But... what is this D*I*Y Planner thing I keep reading about?
  

And that did it. My self-imposed "trial year" ended in May, and I'm pleased to be using a system that actually works with me. 3x5 cards handle the bulk of my task-tracking needs, and they are punched and bound with the Rollabind system (equivalent to Levenger's Circa product.) My tickler file keeps me on track with all the little reminders that need to get done on a certain day, and my DIY planner handles calendars, book lists, birthday gift ideas, typewriter models, and all the other mental detritus that needs a reliable place to be noted down. And at the core of this is David Allen's Getting Things Done methodologies and their emphasis on offloading your brain into a trusted, physical system. I cannot praise this enough, since the combination of all of these factors really loosened me up, loose enough that I was willing to try a little something different last fall and write a novel, and then think about doing this year's novel on a typewriter, and then bothering my father to send along his mother's old typewriter, and then growing impatient and taking matters into my own hands, and then starting this silly blog about it and all the other little mechanical obsessions I have, and in turn meeting a number of people who share the same manias.

Anybody need a Franklin planner?

UPDATE: photos posted on flickr

Vanishing touch

I will blame most of the mistakes in this typecast on the fact that this is really the first time I've used Zsa Zsa for anything longer than a typing test, and so was distracted by a drying/fading ribbon and not knowing her touch. Yes, the irony is not lost on me. What is very much my fault is that Strikethru said that pinkies will go away, not ring fingers. This is a much more sensible, and a mistake I did not see until I was several lines down the page.

Curse the first-draft nature of typecasts!

• Apple keyboard
  

Low-tech in a high-tech life

• Tony Buzan's mind map site

How do you integrate fine old machines into your working life, or do you?

Eat your machines, it's good for you

Moore's Gnaw

I'm becoming more aware of the natural tempo of using mechanical things. Most of my professional and personal life is spent interacting with electronics in "standby" mode, waiting for the slow human to do something. Thanks to Moore's Law, the computer that I'm typing this entry on can now wait for me over one hundred times faster than my ten-year old laptop at home. Although this is convenient for my job, it does tend to add a certain note of guilty urgency to anything I do. I try not to think about it: I have enough angst without fretting about my machines sitting around waiting-waiting-waiting for me to tickle one of their buttons.

Computer chip designers are constantly working to improve the speed and performance of their devices; I suppose they're driven by the unconscious guilt of breaking the Law, of falling behind that 12-18 month doubling benchmark. I call this guilt Moore's Gnaw: it's that constant nagging push-push-push to make it faster-faster-faster because... well, because Faster is Better, I suppose. I'm not complaining about this upgrade cycle, as there's not doubt that I can do a lot more tasks on my computer more rapidly, and as a software guy, I like being able to run all my tools in one place, in a reasonable amount of time. Retro-minded I may be, but I'm not crazy enough to want to go back to running FORTRAN batches stamped out on punch cards. Thanks, but no. What I am disturbed about is how the hungry maw of the Gnaw has eaten into our culture, and how it's changed us into an instant-consumer as well. The things we make now are designed, used, and disposed of with munching of the Gnaw in the background.

I've proselytized about mechanical machines having a "soul" which microprocessor-based machines lack. It's easy to make comparisons: this computer? Soulless. The Underwood on my right? Full of soul. My cell phone? A husk. Rotary phones? Packed with the stuff. Why? Why does something with a microprocessor on board (my car! my TV! my microwave!) very obviously have no "there" there? I've puzzled about this for a while, and then it hit me. It's been Gnawed away. The tendency to imbue all of our devices with sparkly anxiety-inducing microbrains-that-wait has caused that intangible quality of soul-ness to be eaten up. Without a soul, we don't really care as much about the things we use, or how we're using them, and this gets us on the dreaded upgrade cycle, gathering in new devices in magpie fashion: new phones every year or so, new computers to feed this-year's operating systems, new cameras that double the capacity and quality of last-year's model. Just a lot of husk-swapping, really. And I don't think we're doing ourselves any favors in the process. I am distressed by the trend/fashion statement of wearing Bluetooth headsets permanently stuck in one's ear, little blue light blinking away as the device Gnaws into the owner's brain, waiting-waiting-waiting for some human to pay attention.