Noises Off: Sounds in the Newsroom?

I contemplated posting this on Typosphere, but I try to keep the really grumpy/cynical stuff out of the way. I don't know if you've seen the piece, but it's bouncing around my "typewriter" newsfeed just about as fast as the Hanx Writer story did:

The Times' newsroom set to ring with the sounds of typewriters once more

And with a little digging, one finds a tweeted pic of one of the speakers in question.

Hmm.

On the one hand, I can actually see some benefit. My kids and I all find it easier to work with some kind of background noise going on. I got into the habit in college of packing my trusty Walkman, a couple of cassettes and some spare batteries and camping out in the library to recopy notes. (My wife is the lone dissenter in the house, and can't so much as read with the radio on.) Public typing aficionados in the 'sphere have reported favorable responses to the sound, too. ("I haven't heard one of those in years.") As a kind of productivity susurration, perhaps the recorded drone of a flotilla of typewriters will have the intended effect.

But what is the intended effect here? It feels more like cheap manipulation to me, like the old saw about piping in the scent of vanilla at amusement parks. It's like a sensory trick, isn't it? Wouldn't this get old after a while? Unless the sounds are truly randomized, I can see this being something of an aural assault. I hope that it's not just a single sound effect layered and looped upon itself, like an early Steve Reich tape composition. There is a point at which a wave of noise can be too much. Even I had to stop every now and then and flip the cassette over.

What nobody's pointing out, though, is that this is being played in a newspaper office. Not exactly the best place to work right now, given that the readership is almost certainly carrying around the latest news on a device in their pockets. A very, dark cynical part of me says: if they play it loud enough, they can't hear progress coming.

I will be the first to confess that there is certainly a lot of romance in the sounds of a typewriter, and as any type-in attendee can avow, a roomful is even more special. I don't know if piped-in sounds have the same impact, but if they do, I hope all the divisions at the Times get to choose their legacy-tech background music, otherwise the Times' web team will be stuck listening to the harmonies of a hundred screeching modems.

Boxing Day is Coming, an UJTU

Those of you waiting on an update from the Clear Out have just a bit longer to wait. I opted to go ahead and order a quantity of shipping boxes for both inner- and outer-layer packing, and even splurged on the double-wall box for the inside. I've read too many horror stories about typewriter shipments gone Horribly Awry to trust to anything less. The good news is that this should actually bring the total ship cost down slightly since I'll just pro-rate across all the machines going out.

Those of you (Joe?) asking for a semi-portable machine may have a little longer since those things are a tad bigger. I'm hopeful that I'll be able to repurpose a computer box from the office.

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In the meantime, Fate is greatly amused at my attempts to stop accumulating machines. Aside from the usual plastic wedges, I spotted a familiar-shaped case at Goodwill, though (luckily?) the lock is on and the key is missing. Hmmm... is it worth it? I never thought this hobby would get me seriously thinking about the value of owning a small set of lockpicks on a keyring... and possessing the skills to use them, too. I'm trying to stay true to my new mantra... One machine in, one machine out...

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News that the Kremlin is buying typewriters to presumably replace hackable computers is rocketing around my news feed now. I find it interesting that nearly ever news outlet that's carried the story has chosen to illustrate it with a photo of a vintage manual machine, instead of the electric wedges that they will surely be buying. There's a lot of debate on the various Yahoo typewriter lists about the hackability/spyproof nature of an electric machine. Physical access appears to be crucial, although there's talk about reading the electrical signals output by such a machine, too: monitoring the amount of energy needed to rotate a daisy-wheel print element, for example, or the drop in current as the typewriter is being used. It's all very James Bond. I'm sure the modern-day spy would just use a tiny digital camera, but if we're going back to typed documents, we really need a double-agent outfitted with a Minox.

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I'm also trying to work through my backlog of fountain pen ink cartridges. If you ever feel like complaining about the cost of inkjet printer supplies -- the consumables cost more per ounce than human blood -- then let me steer you towards your local office supply store. If you can find a package of cartridges, and do a little mental arithmetic, you'll soon realize that those tiny plastic tubes must be filled with unicorn tears. I just got a pair of "Universal" converters for my everyday pen so I can actually start working through the bottles of ink I have stowed around. Any Noodler's users out there? My wife is always asking for gift ideas for me for holidays-and-birthdays, and I'm at the point where something consumable is a lot more desirable than something that will sit around and need dusting (cf. the typewriter clean-out.) Ink is just about perfect,as I take copious notes at work, and like to mark up my rough drafts. Ink recommendations, anyone?

To Kanae Hasegawa

Kanae, you didn't leave me any way to get in touch with you. I see you've reached Matt Cidoni, though. Matt is something of an unofficial ambassador of the Typosphere, and has radio-interview experience, too. He'll do a great job!

Updates, Links and Sawbuck Restoration

It's time to sweep off the accumulated dust from my little corner of the typosphere. (Yes, I know that spheres don't have corners. Don't be picky.)

• Restoration/recovery continues on Morticia, my snatched-from-the-curb SM3 I wrote about last week. Although I cannot say with certainty what's freezing up the works, I've a pretty good guess that it was a once-benevolent coating of oil that has since gone to the Dark Side thanks to our generally hot, dry climate in these parts. Throw in a few years of disuse, and you've got yourself a recipe for complete machine seizure. I've been picking at it in free moments, though, with my carefully-assembled toolkit (see below) and things are improving. I can move the carriage, for one, though it takes a lot of steady pressure. Many of the keys work, and all work very well when the segment is moistened with isopropyl alcohol first. In my diagnostic zeal, I managed to unfasten the drawband, but have reattached it after a mental lapse on how to tension the drum (hint: turn it the opposite way, dummy.) And I've replaced the infamous "smooshed-flat" washers underneath the body with some roughly same-sized equivalents from the auto parts store. Morticia's lovely, and burgundy, not brown as I had first guessed.
• In one of those you're-joking-me moments, a twin machine has turned up in the hands of another type-blogger. I advise all members of the 'sphere to keep their eyes peeled for that tell-tale silver-swoopy case in their favorite thrift haunts. Two is a coincidence, but three is an invasion force.
• Numerous typewriter-related news items -- though none regarding a vintage Germanic invasion force.
  


• You've surely seen the write-up in Wired by now on Bay Area repair shops. Yes, I know that I have to make the pilgrimage at some point before they disappear. I worry about my resolve in the face of all that want, though. You folks who have made the Hajj to Blue Moon Camera are made of sterner stuff than I.
• A brief tribute to a pretty Smith-Corona, left out to gather stray thoughts of passers-by. Every well-furnished hallway should have one.
• A reminder that typing still holds on in some parts of the world. And yes, I I am very much a Mr. Ek Botte.
• Rowlf the dog types! And other Muppet mayhem. I do miss Jim Henson's lunacy. Who else is playing "name that model" when they watch the video?
  
• Love the following quote from this article, concerning a modern fixed-carriage machine to the ones we know and love:

  There is no click to it and I cannot adjust to that [...] You don't hear anything, even when the carriage goes back. That does not entertain me.

  Can I get an amen, brothers and sisters?
  
• Big Hurrah to Little Flower Petals for finishing her draft, and Mr. Speegle for losing his mind. We knew you both had it in you. I'm still slogging through my transcription, only about forty pages left to enter! And then the editing really begins. I'm going to pretend I'm working on this by reading a book about editing, instead of actually editing my book. Likely Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, which I see praised highly in various places and which my library has a copy. I'll report back on it if it's any good. (I'm holding another title as well, it just escapes me at the moment.)
• As promised/threatened: the Sawbuck Restoration list:

As I've pointed out repeatedly, I'm cheap, cheap, cheap. Conveniently (?) I work near a dollar store, a thrift store, a craft chain store, a drug store, and an automotive supply store, so I've been compiling a collection of low budget repair-and-cleaning items for your amusement:

• Dental tools: from the dollar store. A pair of menacing looking metal picks, a mirror on a handle, and a pair of toothbrushes: one "normal" and one with a round head. Brushes are always good to clean type faces, the metal picks are handy for digging out ink from the insides of closed letters ("e", "o", "b"), for reattaching springs, and for grabbing the end of a drawband that someone stupidly let go slack and now is wound around the drum grr grr grr.
• Cotton swabs: from the dollar store. These are very cheap and made from bendy plastic. I've since learned that you can make your own from bamboo skewers and a bag of cotton balls. I'm using this setup to swab out the gunk from Morticia's rails. A little bit of cotton wrapped around the pointy end of the skewer will reach just about anywhere.
• Artist's paintbrushes: dollar store, craft store, drug store. Dust's worst nightmare. Less nasty than canned air, but more time-consuming to be complete.
  
• Set of small screwdrivers: dollar store again. Nothing fancy, but handy. Also the screwdrivers on my battered up Swiss army knife.
• 35mm film cans: always save these, as they are godsends for keeping track of small parts, and can hold small amounts of your cleaning fluid of choice, when you don't feel like contaminating a whole bottle with your nasty home-made swabs. My dollar store sells film, which is great -- cheap film, free can!
  
• Rubber washers: plumbing section of the hardware store if you have one handy, but I found some "wire conduit bushings" at the auto store that also did the trick. They're donut-shaped and meant to snap into metal panels to protect wires passing through, but they also make good replacement washers when exact size isn't critical (like SM3 washers near the feet.)
• Oral syringe: free, if you ask at the prescription counter at the drug store. I had hoped for a real syringe for refilling fountain pen ink cartridges, but that was a no-go at my Walgreens, and I didn't feel like pushing the point. ("Do I look like a crackhead? Do I look like I'd do favors for crackheads?") Grab one of those little coffee-stir straws and you've got a way to drip solvents into your machine in a semi-controlled manner. Better lay down some paper towels first, though.
  
• Goo Gone: from just about everywhere. An effective gunk-remover from parts, and good to remove nasty price sticker residue from machines. Also takes off ink from the ribbon vibrator, if you obsess about this like I do.
• Isopropyl Alcohol: from the drug store. Not rubbing alcohol, which contains oils and sometimes colors and other additives. I can find the stuff that's 91% alcohol and the rest water. Very effective de-greaser, and well-behaved to a point. Try to keep it and all other cleaners/degunkers/solvents away from the rubber parts, though. It's very drying.

...and that's about it. It's not anywhere near a "real" typewriter repair kit, but it does the trick for me for the machines I pick up, which tend to be pretty operable to start with.

Oh, who am I kidding: if it's not bolted down, I'll pick it up. But at least I won't go broke trying to clean it, or hauling it in to Berkeley to pay someone else to clean it.

On Skye Ferrante, the Writers Room, Noise, and Advocacy

Obviously, we typewriter people are an excitable bunch. The news of the banishment of Mr. Skye Ferrante's typewriter from the Writers Room in Greenwich Village has rocketed around the narrow confines of the typosphere community, myself guilty of shoveling coals and dousing it in gas by posting to the Portable Typewriters group and encouraging type-ins, letters of protest, and sending industrial-sized packets of earplugs to the W.R. patrons who are clearly suffering from some sort of technology-induced anger management issues. In my head, I have drafted countless Nasty Letters to the W.R. staff, their membership, and their pets, shaming them for their close-minded stance on one paying member's choice of writing machine. It was his grandmother's, for chrissakes! Why not kick a few puppies while we're at it!

Luckily, I've slept on it.

First, it is perfectly within the rights of the Writers Room (say that five times fast) to dictate what equipment can be used within their space. It would be childish for me to point out that they still offer storage for typewriters, while simultaneously advertising themselves as a "a quiet, affordable place in which to work." (The "quiet" designation seems to have been added after their last site redesign. It was merely "tranquil" before.) Short of a thermal-paper-based typewriter, I know of none that are truly silent, as some kind of impact is taking place, either from a typeslug, daisy wheel and hammer, or pins on a print head. And it would be equally childish to point out that they have "a separate room for typing with four desks" which is different from the "[l]arge loft with 42 partitioned desks" that non-Luddites are forced to use. Maybe that dedicated typing room doesn't have a door?

Second, Mr. Ferrante is well within his rights to drop his membership -- as the article claims he will be doing -- in favor of finding a less-hostile work space. It's not clear to me whether the pressure to leave is coming from the W.R. staff, fellow members, or both. At around $100 per month membership, I'm sure he'll be able to find ample places where he can type undisturbed. I've been to New York City a few times: I do not remember it as a quiet place. He could easily apportion some of his savings into earplugs for himself, set up shop in a friendlier place -- say, anywhere -- and get work done. Our own experiences with writing show that: a quiet (or tranquil) place is nice, but for many of us, it's also a dream. NaNoWriMo has shown me that I can write "in the cracks" and still turn out a volume of words, even in my cramped behind-the-sofa writing space shown at the top of this post. It's not where you write, after all, it's that you write.

Finally, some thinking about my hostile letter to the puppy-kickers. I don't know Mr. Ferrante or his motivations for using a typewriter, though his comment about preferring it to a computer ring true to me. It's perfectly possible that he's an elitist hipster snob, looking for attention and raising a small degree of polite Hell. But even if he is, I applaud him for it. Dedication to a creative tool is nothing to be ashamed about, and in a truly public space, nothing to be apologetic for either. By the account in the paper, he was using the space set aside for typists, though I'm sure a larger number of screened-in desks can be wedged in there now for the laptop crowd, thus turning a quirky, creative space into something as exciting as the reference book section of the public library. (Free, by the way.) He's probably doing himself and his work a service by getting out of that place.

In the last line of the article, he's quoted as saying:

I just wish that there were some typists out there that would back me up, but I don't know any.

Rather than write my hostile, righteous, scathing, brilliantly-crafted and ultimately pointless letter to the Writing Room staff, I'm going to send a letter to Mr. Ferrante, before his June 30 expulsion, maybe invite him in to our noisy, weird, world-wide circle of retro-nuts. The world has enough negativity and exclusion and outrage already without me contributing more.

I'll be sending it to him c/o The Writers Room, of course.

The Writers Room
740 Broadway
New York, NY 10003

Only Her Photoprocessor Knows For Sure

More news and musings from this corner of the typosphere:

• Have you written your entry for Silent Type 2: Revenge of the Nerds yet? No? Egads, what are you waiting for? The deadline is three weeks from today. Send one in so you can bask in the awfulness of my poetical waxing. Go on.
• Typewriters in the news have been pretty quiet as of late, except for their use as a marker of time passing ("Joe Blow started when the city desk was a typewriter and a broken mimeograph...") A few are worth passing along, though, including the obligatory piece on a typewriter repair business that's still in business, an art show in the Twin Cities about the life of secretaries, and a meditation on the value of typed work then versus now. I'll spare Olivander's modesty by not linking to his writeup (with photos!) in his local paper, but he gets a little dig in at keychoppers there, so Viva Los Retronauts!
  
• My own adventures in camera restoration continue: the big Wollensak shutter I talked about here is humming along, as much as a seventy-plus year old shutter can hum. All the faster speeds are responsive, though I don't have a means to measure them. They sound fast, and given the latitude of modern films, it's likely fast enough. The challenge now is to make a measurement of the focal length of the lens -- the distance from the center of the lens to where the film would sit -- and then rig up something the same size out of cardboard. Sounds like a lot of work, but still simpler than what I had planned.
• Still de-gooping the shutter mechanism of this camera, too. Works great when the shutter is bathed in alcohol, not so much when it dries out and the old oils redistribute. Kindly light a candle for us, won't you?
• Also on the film front, I've tried coffee as a film developing agent for black-and-white processing, but now I'm reading about using hair dye for color processing. The process is slow, and doesn't sound as fussy as using a C-41 kit. In fact, it sounds like the opposite of fussy. I do have a copy of the Darkroom Cookbook at home which the thread author cites, so obviously I need to dig it out and do some reading. Can I say again: how cool is it that a trip to the grocery store could supply you with almost complete film-development chemistry? Answer: very cool. *
  
• Kind of quiet out there in the typosphere, what's happening with everyone?

* Update: Cancel that "almost." A quick scan of the Intertubes shows that hypo (the classic name for fixer) is also self-mixable, as long as you are handy to a place that sells pool chemicals. As there's a pool supply store about three blocks from my house, I'd say that's a yes. Chlorine-reducing chemicals reportedly work for this very situation. I reiterate: very cool.

Keys to Romance

Staying heads-down in NaNo land before H1N1 lands on my house (as I feel it is doomed to do) but I had to share this worthy op-ed piece from the Times of India, entitled "Keys to Romance"

"[Y]ou could fall in love with the typewriter. With the comp[uter], one is not very sure."

How true indeed that is. And not that I'm crazy about Geeksugar, since they have promoted/cooed about typewriter key jewelry, but I was surprised (and pleased) to see a pair of my very own machines show up in this post. (Etta the Quiet DeLuxe and the unnamed SM-9, for those playing at home.) I do have to admit to feeling all a-swoon when I open up their cases, which I do far too infrequently.

EDIT: Ah, Olivander has teh stronger Google-fu than I. Check out his link, and also this clip. I think we have a new name for the Brigade rock band: Duffy Moon and the Fate Machine.

Thickening

From the archives of Life magazine.

Fingers at the ready? We're on October's doorstop, perched to ring that bell...

• My second knit typing pad is complete. I learned some lessons from making my first one last year, specifically the importance of thickness, so I took a suggestion from Monda and made the entire thing a knit-one-purl-one rib knit, then folded it into fourths before washing. The good: this thing is crazy thick, and should be able to muffle my typing sounds, even if I choose to use a hammer on the typewriter this November (tempting, when the plot goes awry.) The bad: I threw caution to the wind and did not test a swatch of yarn first to see how it would shrink, so the result is less of a pad, and more of an elongated rectangle. Two typewriters could easily perch back-to-back upon it. This may not be a bad thing. The original pad is sitting under Norma Jean at the office. I might sleep on the second one.
  
• October also means that I start focusing on filling in the many gaps on this year's novel, which is going to be a comic/humorous fantasy-type story. My last two attempts have been serious works (ahem) and so I would not let myself take advantage of the "ceiling ninja" technique of unsticking a jammed plot ("Suddenly, ninjas leapt from the ceiling!") I'm going to rectify that this year. In 2009 I shall embrace the ninjas. The plot is thickening.
  
• I've been remiss in lazily re-posting Links of Interest, so here's a few to tide you over:


• Typewriters Fall From the Sky
• The Typer-Piper
• A Valentine Notebook?
  

Lazy Blogging: biographies, bomb scares, and braving hurricanes

A couple of items off the typewriter news feed:

• Why does it not surprise me that this local author still drafts by longhand and typewriter? Considering his colorful life, I'd be a little disappointed to find out that he switched to Word.
  
• Sounds like a collector or an eBay'er might have left a precious item at the gas station at their last fill-up. Interested parties should contact the Town of Ulster police and be prepared to do some splainin'. Typewriters as weapons of mass-hysteria.
  
• Please take a few moments to read this very interesting article by a Cuban author singing the praises of her old East German-made "Robotron" typewriter, described as "crude, heavy and indestructible."

Typewriters are the new brick

I guess this vandal gets points for style, though I can't say that I'm happy with the choice of projectile. I have to admit, though, that diagnosing problems (especially ones that surpass my limited abilities) often put me into this frame of mind:

Police Blotter -- Kane County

Someone threw a typewriter through a window of Bygone Days Antiques, 184 W. Main St., Burlington, removed a nailed-down rocking chair from the front porch, and used legs from the chair to break another window and a window on the property's garage, between midnight May 15 and 4 p.m. Friday, according to a police report. A piece of paper in the typewriter had curse words typed on it. The business has been closed for about three years.

(from Chicago's Daily Herald.)

Unloved and undervalued, once again the lowly typewriter descends into the crime world.

Touchstone, albatross, or punchline?

Wow, sorry about that sudden bleakness at the end. I've a birthday coming up, and I think that I'm beginning to feel it, despite my protests that I'm not. Here's that first typecast, by the way. My speed and accuracy have improved, although I still rush this old machine more than it wants to be rushed.

Lazy blogging: from the newsdesk

A few instances of typewriters in the news lately:

From the crime desk, a brief item on a typewriter being used to forge W-2 forms in Mississippi, and some details on the sparse offices of suspected Ponzi schemer, Allen Stanford. Remember people, if typewriters are outlawed, then only outlaws will have typewriters. Unless they can't.

On the literary front, a number of sites marked the passing of Christy Nolan, who managed to peck out novels despite sever mobility problems from cerebral palsy. From the article:

With the exception of email, which allowed Nolan to communicate more freely than before, the technological developments of recent years were of little help to him: his keyboard touch was too heavy, and, besides, he enjoyed the sound and rhythm of the typewriter.

Other aficionados include Pearl S. Buck. Her typewritten manuscript for The Good Earth is about to go on display. Contemporary raconteur Kinky Friedman likes to cause a little trouble with his typewriter:

Q: What do you never leave home without?

A: Cigars, No. 1, and a couple of good books. That's about it. I'm a pretty simple, Gandhi-like man. If I'm working or editing, I bring the typewriter. I carry it on the plane, and it makes me look like a mad scientist. People think it's some high-tech computer. Especially young people who've never seen a typewriter.

Finally, a bit of celebrity gossip, the fact that Tom Hanks is a typewriter collector (known to members of the portable typewriters group for a while now.) Reportedly he's got around 100, and my first reaction to this news was, "that's it?"

Wired news picked up on the Chinese typewriter but I think they've been scooped by about 70 years. If Eastern languages baffle you, though, you can still set up shop in your local gallery and churn out some poetry. I'm all for the starving artist, but you think this guy could invest in a slightly better machine.