Onegin Off Again

Eugene the typopigeon is winging his way to his next destination: stay turned for his further adventures.

A little birdy says that he's wanted and welcomed in Australia. Perhaps a trip across the Pacific is in his near future? Can one kickstart-fund a pigeon delivery? How does one begin to declare this sort of thing on a customs form ("Contents: One well-traveled squab, plastic. Charming.")

Space Considerations

Typed with the Remington KMC


Inspired by Strikethru's writing shack post. I concur: Cameron is really in isolated writing heaven up north. I think I need to wrangle an invitation and then never leave.

Getting a Head

Typed with a 1968 Hermes 3000 

Catch a Wave

One side-effect of finding this machine is that I'm incapable of remembering the model name properly. It is truly "Tropical" as I eventually stated. You can see it among the other Olivetti machines on Will Davis' site. Imagine the name badge says "Hermes" and you'll have it.

Also, this typecast topic got away from one of my original points, which was the documentary being filmed right now by the crew from LA. After some back-and-forth trying to get me to find a location, we met last week in a local used-book store, and I managed to sweat and mumble my way through a series of innocuous but otherwise mind-blanking questions ("What's your name, and what do you do" and "What's your first memory of a typewriter.") If I make it into the final product at all, it will be a testament to their editing skills. I know that folks at the L.A. and Phoenix type-ins met Gary and Chris and praised them for their professionalism and unobtrusiveness. They were particularly patient with me the entire time, despite me trying (and failing) to not stare at the one customer who hung out and watched the first half hour of the interview.

True to form, I managed to not even think to grab a crappy cell-phone photo of the experience. If you happen to get contacted by these guys, please do your best to be courteous and polite to them, so they can get some usable quotes out of the experience. And pick someplace air-conditioned, so you don't look like Nixon sweating his way through a debate.

Typed on "Lennon", a 1972 Hermes 3000 with only a slightly confused heritage

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!

Update Time

No time for a typecast this week, so just a digital update to let you know I'm still breathing.

The Typosphere is growing strong. A writeup in the NY Times, and now a followup gallery from LIFE magazine? Sure, it's just the short-attention span of the media, distracted by the novelty of young 'uns at the keys, but that's OK. Maybe we'll convert a keychopper or two to the dork side. Fear of a typewriter-availability-Armageddon as as result of the publicity may have happened: Craigslist is strangly silent these last few days, except for the same Selectric being flogged over and over again. ("Worked last time we used it." Encouraging.) If a tulip-bulb-style price craze starts, rest assured that I will miss it entirely despite a keeping few adoptable machines around. I could pat myself on the back for showing Exceptional Restraint for bypassing the Royal 10 standard machine at the thrift store, but a) it's $50 and b) it's in bad, bad shape, certainly not $50 shape. Barely typeable. Lacks a pair of feet. Actually crusty in spots. Nothing like Richard Polt's (ahem) April First Find, but still pretty bad.

Ryan P.'s mail exchange is awesome. I know I've said it before, but Google says I suddenly have more readers (waves hello) so I'm going to promote it again. I've been exchanging mail with various people for -- let me check -- a year now, or even slightly longer in some cases. If you don't get any Real Mail any more (bills and catalogs are not Real Mail), then you owe it to yourself to sign up. Do it. Do it now. All of my mail was outbound, and I've been eagerly checking the mailbox for a week to see if anything came in, and then trying to hide my disappointment when it didn't. And then all of a sudden, I've got six letters in, all at once, typewritten, handwritten, artsy and plain. I feel like a king. It doesn't take much: just shoot Ryan your snail mail address and get a few in return. You'll like it. And did you put your name down for the Round Ribbon exchange as well? Just tell Ryan you want to do that, too, when you send him your address. He's a one-stop-shop for snail-mail delight.

Speaking of mail, Flat Stanley's addresses were due into the classroom today. My daughter picked the first address -- Rino! -- and then we'll go from there. It didn't feel fair making other people pay international postage, so I think we'll send Stanley out-and-back to non-US friends first, and then manage some kind of loop through the US typecasting community. That means Adwoa, you're likely to be next. I'll probably stick a "Where's Stanley" page up here once he gets going.

Speaking again of mail, next up from Clickthing Mad Science Labs: Cheap-Ass Crafty-Guy Mail. A few of you have already received my tests: wax seals, random rubber stamps, perhaps an interesting envelope... a photo-heavy post is planned. Until then, typecasters, keep spreading the word, making the posters, and checking those lonesome thrift store corners...

UPDATE: Following some advice I read... somewhere, I had the computer read my revised to me aloud last night. Oh the mistakes! So, I've yanked the .pdf down for now as I clean it up. If you have a text-to-speech program, I highly recommended this. Hearing the draft spoken aloud by a disinterested third party uncovers a lot of goofs that my eye glossed over, like missed articles, and redundant word usage. So, it's once again not ready for prime time.

And one last item. I've put up the first three chapters of One Last Quest, my 2009 NaNoWriMo novel. Back in college -- the old days! -- one of the guys in the dorm turned me on to Terry Pratcheet (now Sir Terry to us peasants) and I ripped through the few Discworld books that were available at the time. They were a lot of fun, and I appreciated their blending of humor and fantasy, and their light-read-ability. (Far more readable than a certain other title in my life at that time with a fantasy theme, at least on the cover.) I think being a geeky, computer-loving kid growing up in the 80's pretty much ensured that you would also get into Dungeons & Dragons, and the whole fantasy sci-fi thing, and I was no exception. I just recently unearthed an oversized index card at home, in fact, that outlined the algorithm for my "Random D&D Character Maker" program (TI-994A BASIC for the win, baby.) I found Douglas Adams and Piers Anthony then, too, and I think all of those things together give you a pretty clear picture of my world view at the time: swords and sorcery and geekery and Dr. Who on PBS late Saturday night. Sci-fi... skewed.

I tried my hand at a Serious Novel in 2010, a Serious Sci-Fi Novel, in fact, and although I told the story I wanted to tell, I didn't have nearly as much fun writing it as I did Quest. I'm catching up on the many Discworld books* that have come out in the meantime, and during this slow slog through Quest, I've realized that I'm probably aping Sir Terry more than a real author should -- in genre and tone, at least. (That sound you hear is my ego inflating.) But I have decided, thanks to the whole rewrite process, that this is the way I'm going to go from here on out with NaNoWriMo. Some people are destined to write Great Serious Fiction, and some are just not. I'm not, but I hope you enjoy it anyway. If you've got the chance, please read through it and let me know what you think.

* Going Postal: highly recommended. Hogfather: not so much. Monstrous Regiment: I'll let you know.

We are GO for Stanley!

Well, I wasn't sure that was going to happen, but details have finally come home with my daughter. Flat Stanley is ready for his travels through the typosphere if you, gentle readers, are willing to receive him. It looks like we need to gather at least five names and addresses, and then Stanley will make round trips from here to each destination. From the assignment sheet:

We will ask each host to keep [Stanley] for a short visit and then send him back telling us something about their city and the exciting things Flat Stanley saw or did while he was there. Some Great Flat Stanleys we have heard about have come back dressed in clothing from the area, with souveniers, area-appropriate mementos, travel brochures, photographs, postcards, and more.

Thanks to the kindness of Strikethru, we've got a selection of flat typewriter stamps to choose from, and one may get tucked along in the envelope. More details are coming, but for now, I need the names and addresses of anyone willing to act as a host for Stanley, to be turned in by this Friday. You don't have to post them here if you don't want to, just send them to mpclemens at gmail dot com and we'll take it from there.

Thanks typosphere!

Scribomechanical

Typed on a Sperry-Rand Remington Premier

The Amazing Floating Olympia

I like to use "Bibb washers" from the plumbing aisle of the hardware store, although these photos show the machine using rubber gaskets from an auto parts store. You have a fair amount of flexibility here: you primarily need to accommodate the screw, and have something thick enough that it will support the weight of the typewriter and hold the workings up above the frame. Most carriage-related ills that I've seen on SM-x machines magically resolve with this fix.


Old washer on the left, replacement on the right.


Time + gravity does this to the original rubber washer: the synthetic replacement should last another 50 years, easy.

Typed on Morticia, the Olympia SM-3

A New Blog With Which To Waste Your Time

Hello all, just a brief word of shameless self-promotion. After picking up the name and then ignoring it, I'm finally getting off my duff and trying to start dumping a little content into a new blog:

http://typosphere.blogspot.com

I have no Grand Plans yet, but first order of business is to try and put together a map of where all the fine typecasting folks are located. I think the typosphere community has really boomed as of late, and I'd like to see this evolve into some kind of community blog, for general notes-of-interest -- type-in announcements, for instance, when I forget just which of the many Washington-based bloggers is hosting one, and when and where. As the community grows even bigger, I'm imagining some kind of virtual kiosk that we can all contribute to, beyond our own personal blogs. This is just a silly little side-project, and should in no way be construed as a power-grab, or some kind of mandatory administrative thing with Committees and Dues and Rules.

In other words, one of these:


by Jeffrey Beall

not one of these:


by Frozen Grapes

Thanks everyone.

Flat Stanley Redux: We Are Go For Launch

Thanks to all the folks who indicated they'd be willing to take in my daughter's "Flat Stanley." I checked with her teacher, and it's perfectly fine that Typosphere Stanley spends a little more time on the road than is typical (I guess they're normally sent to one place and then returned.)

Based on the many responses, it looks like Stanley will be able to circumnavigate the globe. The tentative route is: California -> Hawaii -> Australia -> Switzerland -> Maine, and then a westward trek across the U.S. to be determined. (Any readers in Japan or central Asia out there?) I'm planning on turning this into a mini-geography lesson for my daughter: we'll dig out an atlas and trace out his route, and cross our fingers that he doesn't get lost on the way!

I'm guessing that Stanley is just a small paper cutout meant to be fit into a regular envelope. I'm planning to include a typed note "from" him to my daughter which you're all encouraged to add to. Crafty people: if you have a typewriter rubber stamp, I'd love a scanned copy that we can print out and color in and send with Stanley. No jet-setting world traveler should be without his writing machine.

Again, thanks to everyone who offered to take him in and pass him along; I'll let you know when Stanley gets ready to go.

2010: A Year in the Sphere

Another year is winding down, so I thought I'd round it out with the lazy blogger's equivalent of the clip show: the year in review (from a slanted perspective.) Though there was nothing to equal the auction of Cormac McCarthy's battered beloved Lettera -- and you have to admit that the idea got us all looking a little more closely at our collections -- there were still some notable high points in the past year, arranged in no particular order:

• The loss of the typewriter repair man. You'd think that this isn't exactly news, and yet it seems like a story that keeps popping up this year, usually alternating places with stories about how "the younger generation" is embracing the tactile world of the typewriter. Like all of you, I'm rooting for the latter and fearing the former. There have been some rumblings that Progress is happening despite hipsters pecking out streetcorner poetry, and that our supplies of spools and ribbons won't last forever. There is no better time to experiment with ribbon re-inking and laying in carbon paper supplies. The type-pocalypse is coming! The crazy old guy on the corner with the sandwich board said so.
  
• Gadget compatibility. It may not be coming all that soon, though, thanks to the creation of the USB Typewriter and the subsequent online coverage, which goes to show that the best way to preserve a dying technology is to give it the full Irony treatment. I don't know about the wisdom of using a typewriter and all its swinging metal hammers as a prop for your $500 web browser, but it's a damn sight more useful than keychopping. I'm still waiting for the clever egg to make an electric typewriter/USB hybrid that also acts as a charging base. Now that I would buy. (Not really.)
  
• The growth of the typosphere. Some notable names joined the blogging ranks this year: Richard Polt and the Davis brothers got their blog on this year, as did the Cambridge Typewriter Company. All three sites leave me feeling smarter, and not a little bit envious at the same time. So many shinies. And around the Big Names, there's been plenty of ordinary folk embracing the power of the typer. I'd do a poor job of trying to name you all, so I'll defer as always to the big blogroll on Strikethru for your link-building pleasure.
• Silent Type II: Electric Boogaloo. What more can be said? It's awesome. You should download a copy now. Heck, download two. And that poem on page 11? Genius.
  
• Fame, with a dash of civil unrest. Typer-lovers did make some news this year, beyond the bomb-squad-found-a-typewriter-case-and-didn't-recognize it variety. The ouster of artist/writer Skye Ferrante raised enough ire in our circles to send sternly-worded typewritten letters to The Writers [sic] Room, and wag our ink-stained fingers in Stern Disapproval at their sudden dissolution of their typewriter-friendly policies. And just maybe that was the motivation for the upcoming Type-In in Philadelphia? Local friends of the 'sphere: represent! We need photos from this, and audio recordings, too. (And please note the links at the bottom of that page for some familiar blogs.)
• Meets and greets. Seems like everyone was off at a regional typewriter meeting this summer, including one literally just up the road from my old hometown (sniff.) Thanks to those who documented them, and posted videos on the Tube of You for us far-flung relations to ooh and aah over.
  
• Another month with the lunatics. The NaNoWriMo Typewriter Brigade was loud and proud again this year, with even more members, more winners, and more pointless posts that forced us into a second topic even earlier than in 2009. Big kudos all around! I especially like how the Brigade is self-perpetuating, as winners drift in to the topic near the end of the month and post variations on ZOMG! I totally love typewriters! I'm doing this next year! On the follow-through front, I see that Duffy (founder of the Brigade, for you whippersnappers) is trying to drum up some support for the idea of a virtual writing group. I personally think this is fine idea, since I'm all for having people read my stuff as long as I don't have to, you know, see them do it. Please comment, and congratulate Mr. Moon for taking on this noble task (see how I did that, Duffy? That's called management.) Seriously, though: consider.
  
• Lucky finds. Those of us collector/users who acquire machines outside of the major online auction site that-rhymes-with-Flea-Day know that finding a typer locally is mostly hit and miss, with emphasis on the "miss." But every now and then you get lucky: a tell-tale case, stuck on a shelf or in a corner, with a criminally low price stuck on it. And then the days or weeks or months of fruitless looking melt away and this is your New Favorite Place. Unless you're Richard Polt, and live in a place where typewriters appear like mushrooms after rain. I had a couple of "hits" this year, but by far my best find was Morticia, the curbside SM3 from this summer. Even though it's a "double" (I have another SM3), and even though it was hopelessly gunked and frozen up, time and cleaning and vigorous swearing loosened up the works where it now types like a dream. It's surely my best find of the year.

Your turn: post your own recollections and reminisces of the year past. Any high or low points for you this year? What was your lucky find?