The Fringes

The original typing spot, more comfortable than it looks



Pro tip: make sure your ribbons aren't dry before Typewriter Day, and allow settling time if you must re-ink. Splotchiness aside, it was good to get fingers on keys again, and I attracted only a small amount of attention from a group of passing students out early on campus. Summer sessions must be starting up since I saw more people during my half-hour typing walkabout than I have in the last three weeks. Or maybe it's just the attractive magic of the day.


The backup typing spot, once the aural assault began

The Corsair still surprises me for being less-awful than I imagine it to be. For this purpose, it's just about perfect as it is light enough to carry, with the enclosed plastic body and sealed bottom keeping it free of dents and making it suitable for just about any surface.


How convenient: waist-level typing stations with their own outlets for your coffeepot

Typed on a SCM Corsair Deluxe, nee Skyriter

A Cat Named Abraxas: the Mythos Continues

I'm not sure what brought it on, but the witchy gift prepared for my youngest last fall finally paid dividends with an outbound letter left on the porch last night full of questions in scrawly pencil. The response letter is below.

If nothing else, it's a chance to play with calligraphy nibs, which don't have nearly enough opportunities for use in day-to-day situations.





With a nine-month gap, this may be the slowest interactive fiction experiment ever... but it's still a lot of fun.

Weeding Wednesday, and the Battle of the Bloat

The task at hand

This morning I made a start on one of our summer obligations: working service hours at our local swimming pool, as per our membership terms.[1] Ten hours in total of some upkeep-related activity is required, and we habitually choose the weeding/sweeping of the parking lot. Done in the early morning, it's cool and vacant, and given our normally dry summers[2], once weeded, it tends to stay weeded for the duration of our duties, only needing the weekly sweep to keep it looking nice. Little maintenance is required if you do a good job up front.

My entertainment -- and the above photo -- is provided in the form of a hand-me-down smartphone from a relative that was mouldering in a drawer (the phone, not the relative) after being outclassed and out-spec'ed by the relentless advance of its successors, marching to the beat of Moore's Law. As urged by several articles on the Internet, and after being assured at how easy it would be by following the step-by-step instructions, I did what any sensible person of my technical background would do: wasted a lunch break or two trying to unlock it, then surrendered and handed it to my teenager, invoking the ancient ritual of "Root the damn thing for your incompetent father and I'll take you out for burgers." A day later, he dropped it off in my hands with the appropriate response ("Double-Double with an extra large vanilla shake and fries") and lo, it was good. Evidently, so was the burger, shake, and fries.

I've recently been in the phone market, since my current one is now at death's door, and, as the Son gleefully points out, "It's so old the keypad is in Roman numerals." Smart-assery aside, he's right. And thanks to a good decision by the federal government, the market for phones is as broad as the Internet itself. After researching and comparing, I've bought a phone online (Arabic numerals) and picked a carrier, and am getting hooked up. I'll miss my old phone somewhat, as it's dead-simple and survived much neglect at my meaty hands, not the least of which is frequent drops (the new phone is also rugged.)

Alas, in this enlightened iEra of iSmart iPhones, even a "feature phone" as mine is classed is not free of that most dreaded of infections, bloatware, aka, crapware or (politely) handy software add-ons from your truster carrier. Thanks to the "unlock law" cited above, the vendor for my phone is actually not my carrier, so not only am I stuck with applications that I don't want, but they are applications I can't use, since they are tethered to a service I don't have.

The Son was, as expected, not impressed. "Ugh, Facebook? Twitter? What's this 'YP' thing?"

Yellow Pages, I explained, and then I had to explain the notion of a phone book[4].

"Well, can I root this for you?" he asked, angling for another free meal.

"I don't think so," says I. "It's not Android. It's a proprietary closed OS. It's not like there's factory images out there." This is me, trying to salvage my own failure with the music player setup by recycling some jargon I read. It sounded good.

The Son handed back the phone and unconsciously wiped his fingers on his shirt, like they were soiled. Pah.

What's worst, of course, is that he's right. Bloatware really is a nuisance, taking up limited memory on an already low-power device, and I bought the damn thing. Thanks to the FCC, I even was able to snip the software tether that tied it to the old carrier. But the traces remain. Unlike the logo on the faceplate, there's no easy way to pluck out all the weedy code that's infesting my new device. Given my fruitless experiments with the supposedly open Android system. I know that if I suddenly lost my senses and wanted to blow a mortgage payment on a carrier-subsidized phone, it, too, would be saturated with useless and immortal apps and "features," testaments to a business partnership that may not have any relevance to the customer.

I know this is my usual sour-graping. I basically got the new phone for free, by converting piles of loose change from my drawers into online store credit. I'm only one phone-technology generation behind the curve, and because of my inherent cheapness and utter lack-of-being-a-teenage-boy-ness, I am squarely in the boring demographic of phone plans.[5] And this whole discussion is so #firstworldproblem that in the grand scheme, it makes little difference.

But dammit, I want my space looking nice.[6] I want to weed this silly thing down. Every time I have to jog past some useless icon -- looking at you, "YP" -- it's an automatic reminder of the automatic obsolescence that surrounds us, and the silent pressure that we're all faced with to stay ahead of that march. Eventually the teenagers will grow up and move out and buy their own burgers, and then where will we be?

---

[1] Unlike the pools of my youth, which were public, this part of California at least is very big on members-only neighborhood pools, usually the nexus of the other local phenomenon of neighborhood swim teams. "Our" pool is mercifully swim-team-free, which is why this dramatic low-angle photo of the parking lot shows no cars. Swim team practice usually starts at Ungodly O'Clock in the morning. This would have been packed if we had a team based at our pool.

[2] Except this morning, when it was -- and is still -- lightly raining. This is cause for celebration in our drought-stricken state, and especially coming a few days after a patch of baking heat. I have learned to appreciate water like no other resource since becoming an adopted Californian. [3]

[3] Can you tell I've been reading David Foster Wallace lately, he of the meandering footnote?

[4] And then a digression on public pay phones, and how it was amazing to me the first time I saw a major metro-area pay phone with a massive book suspended from a don't-steal-me chain, between those thick black plastic covers. The "Appliances" section alone was easily larger than the entire directory of my hometown. The Son tuned out about 3 seconds into this digression, as I'm sure you have.

[5] You know it's bad when the salespersons look at your current phone, shudder visibly, and then point you towards the Carrier Aimed at Seniors, with Very Basic Phones containing No Sharp Edges and having Large Easy-Read Buttons on them. And you know, I really did consider it.

[6] "My" meaning "really I'm licensed to use this device and theoretically don't own it, due to some Byzantine click-through contract, oh and by the way, the carrier now owns my teenage son in perpetuity under the terms of the Family Plan." They're welcome to him, I say. He's expensive to feed, and awfully smug.

Thixotropical disasters at dawn

After a brief Twitter exchange of you show me yours, I'll show you mine yesterday -- of pens, thanks -- and paring down the bag to a reasonable Every Day Carry configuration, I extracted my beloved Fisher Space Pen and got it packed up for my summer morning walks. I get an hour back in the morning where I'm not toting a child to school, and I've been using it for self-improvement purposes, i.e., undoing all the recent pinic-food binges and trying to crush my co-workers in our weekly office Fitbit challenge. Summer is advancing rapidly here in California, and by 8:00am it can get uncomfortably warm uncomfortably fast. Better to take to the paths at dawn, I say.

So in the pocketses goes all the Precious: step counter, music player, pen and index card... because always a pen and index card. The Space Pen is perfect for this task, and has given me years of trouble-free writing, despite being dropped, laundered, lost, found, lost again, lent to children, and tossed in endless pockets.

Evidently, today was the final straw, for when I uncapped the handy ball-point... no handy ball point met my eye. What did meet my eye is an overlarge quantity of thixotropic ink, which is a fancy science term for "an intensely gooey substance that stains everything it touches, especially skin, sinks, and pets." Somehow the ball broke free off the end of its little pressurized cartridge, and, free at last, the contents of the refill took that as an invitation. The ink didn't so much ooze out as erupt. The entire inside of the cap is covered in, to be equally scientific, inky assploded deathsplooge. Luckily the ink isn't so thick as to merely collect in the cap, and handily seeped backward into the body and grip sections of the pen.

It does not rinse out. It does not swab out. You can put a swab in the affected parts, but what comes out resembles less of a writing instrument's insides and more of an unfortunate sea bird after a run-in with BP. After covering my fingertips and most of my kitchen sink and parts of the dog with sticky indigo spots, the pen has been banished to a bath in the thrift-store ultrasonic cleaner in the garage. It's currently trembling like a beetle drowning in espresso and turning the water toilet-bowl blue. I think the ink is enjoying the ride.

Luckily, a refill awaits in the EDC bag. And hopefully this one will give years of splooge-free service, because honestly the last thing my wife needs to hear again is "Honey, there's a thixotropic storm in my pants, and I don't know how I'm going to clean it up."

Short Ride

Spring sports are winding down, and I've decided to draw my own volunteer involvement to a close and let someone else take the reigns of this particular tornado. Events of last fall have given me a new desire to better enjoy the time I have, doing things that I like to do. That means parenting, of course, but also trying to get back into the creative mode, and shake off the stresses and self-made obligations that take away from that.

Life is a short ride on a fast machine... and like last year at this time, John Adams' compositions seem to be particularly apt to my frame of mind. This one is perhaps more joyful than the other work, and feels more like a conclusion that a collision. Enjoy, and I look forward to returning soon.

Pocket Pen Showdown: Space versus Sport

I've taken to carrying a few index cards and a small pen around all the time, to jot down the million or so to-do items, shopping lists, and "remember to talk to ..." reminders that flit across my brain at this time of year, at the confluence of youth sport and big-projects-at-work seasons. I am still deftly refusing to go the smart phone route, opting for the dumb-slab approach to keeping on track. Here's my dumb-slab:



An inexpensive "index card briefcase" that someone gave to me a few years ago, and a pair of pens: the blue one is a bullet-style Fisher Space Pen that I've had long enough that, by eBay convention, now gets to be called "vintage," and a gift-to-myself Kaweco Sport fountain pen. A few thoughts on each, with each. The scanner did a hash of the Space Pen with its boring black ink. It's actually far clearer in real life than this would indicate:



With the sports team, I've been doing a lot of check-writing and invoice-signing and general scribbling around, and for that, the Space Pen is unequaled. It's tiny, so I can stow it in my shirt pocket, and because of the pressurized ink cartridge and the magic ink, it's always ready. As a regular fountain pen user, I forget about the obligatory get-the-ink-flowing scribble that one must do with cheap stick ball pens (and not-so-cheap ones, too.) The Space Pen is always ready. I don't need to write upside down, or under water, or in space, but I do need to write things quickly, and in limited space, and on-the-go. Try filling out track meet paperwork with a fussy pen while escorting a line of 8-year-olds. NOT A GOOD IDEA.



The Kaweco was more of an indulgence buy, using a holiday gift card given to me for the always-dangerous enablers at Jet Pens. It was more of a "rounding-out-the-order" buy than filling a specific need, but it's proven itself a fine contender when I have a little more control over my writing environment. I'm still a pen snob, proudly so, and I have no issues fussing with nibs and inks and the whole post-versus-non-post agony. For the record: I'm on #TeamNonPost. Like the Space Pen, the sport is small enough to live in the bottom of a pocket, with no clip to snag. It's not so precious that you feel bad letting it knock around with your keys and wallet, and it's got little touches that make it a fine choice. Swappable nibs, for example, a twist-off cap cap with faceted sides to prevent it from rolling around. I'm a sucker for demonstrator pens, too. ("Look at the ink!")

No pen is perfect, though. The Space Pen -- or correctly, the knock-off refill I am using -- is prone to "ink boogers" around the ball after a period of disuse. I suspect this could be related to the heat of riding in a pants pocket, too. The Space Pen is always easily lost, given its slippery-fish finish. My own example went missing literally in two seconds -- I had it, and then suddenly I didn't. (My wife found it at last, as all excellent wives do for their klutzy husbands.) So upset was I that I finally bought another. Evidently Fisher has started putting a little grip section on the pen, and... I don't like it. Try looking at product shots on Jet Pens. I don't think of myself as sensitive to that sort of thing, but after growing used to the smooth grip of "my" pen, I found it hard to adjust. The new one is my daughter's now, and we'll she what she says.

The Sport I've found to be something of a dry-starter. It writes fine and fast once the ink gets moving, but there's a little refill-squeezing to get the ink down into the feed and the nib. I'm not sure what's going on here, as I'm using the refill that came with the pen. Luckily, ink mysteries are one of the things that fountain pen users secretly love to fuss over, so I'm not too bothered by it, not really. The cap doesn't have any air holes in it, so it's not drying out that I can notice. Kept on its side, it starts right away, but I can't guarantee that sort of storage, bouncing in a pocket or rubber-banded to a journal in a bag.

Finally, nether pen is a very graceful poster -- that is, sticking the cap on the non-writing end. The Space Pen is really so very tiny that you almost need to post the cap, unless you're gripping it in your fingertips, like starting a fire with a match. Which, incidentally, is pretty much how I write with it, keeping the cap in one hand and scribbling with my claw-fingers perched on the barrel. Apologies to all past teachers who tried to show me the One True Light of penmanship: it didn't take. On my Space pen, and on the new variant now in my daughter's care, the posted cap want to work itself off the end a bit, unless you really jam it on. And it's a polished surface trying to grip a polished brass (?) inner ring... so no dice. It tends to work loose no matter what I try. The Space Pen has a small rubber O-ring sealing off the halves of the main pen and helping the cap stay on a bit with friction. Something like that is needed when writing, in my opinion, though I don't know how it would be engineered.

The Sport has the advantage in the posting-the-cap department, I think. The facets bring the overall posted diameter up to something like a "real" pen, and I would imagine that the aluminum models (the "AL Sport") also get a bit of weight balance with the cap hanging out there. I personally think it looks like the skinny barrel is being swallowed whole by some large green worm, and just keep the cap gripped in my non-writing hand as well. Pro tip: keeping the cap is is a good way to get your pen back when it's borrowed briefly. I would not say "no" to a donated AL Sport just to make the comparison complete. Are you listening, Kaweco/Jet Pens? I can be bought, so very, very cheaply.

So, which pen is the winner? Currently, I'm giving the edge to the Space Pen. I was very distraught to lose it, in part because it was a gift, and in part because it's becoming my always-got-it pen, ready for any mundane job. The Sport is seeing less activity right now, but it's got a place in my writing arsenal, and certainly has a greater range of ink choices... and no boogers.