New typecaster: Travelling Type

It sounds like Monda of Fresh Ribbon has inspired Travelling Type, an intriguing new entrant in the typosphere. I really like what I've read so far (and bonus points for visuals).

Typecast: Hands-on

Typecasters: I need help

Look, I never claimed to be a technical giant... the way I post typecasts is by sizing the original images to the dimensions I want, uploading the images as-is to my hosted web site, and then linking to that image.

For some reason my FTP settings blew out today and I need to figure out how to reset all my root folders and that kind of nonsense. In the mean time, is there a service I can use to upload images to that preserves them at actual size? As you all may know, Blogger automatically resizes them.

Signed,

Arrg

Typeless in Seattle: in search of elusive Seattle typewriter resales

Compared to Portland OR, Mecca of typewriter sales, repair, and general fan-dom, (They've got not one but two typewriter repair places, a typewriter-friendly thrift stores, typewriter sales, typewriter fans, I'm telling you people, it's the promised land), Seattle makes a dismal showing when it comes to having places for your garden variety typeophile to kill time and spend dough.

Richard's Business Machines went belly up in 2006, ending the era of typewriter repair in the city (to be fair, at least one adjacent city remains home to Hartman Business Machines). Local thrift-emporiums will not choke up a typewriter no matter how many times you haunt their mouldering aisles of bric a brac and battered stereo system components. I've looked far and wide for type-friendly establishments to recommend Strikethru readers to this otherwise charming city, and can say that only two have thus far impressed me as being worth your time:

Deluxe Junk, Fremont neighborhood
I bought a lovely '41 Royal Quiet De Luxe here in excellent condition for a very fair price. Each time I've visited, there are at least three or four typewriters on display right near the cash registers, lined up in a neat row (rather than weaved in to all the other junk). Clearly the owners know about typewriters; the models on display are always in good condition and clean, and often classic models like the Hermes 3000 or Olympia SM-9.

20 Twenty, Ballard neighborhood
I just stopped in here today; it's a tiny little thrift boutique somewhere down the rambling brick street of Ballard Avenue, amidst the nightclubs and ale houses. It contained your usual assortment of retro screen print t's and other ironic youth-wear, I'm not too sure exactly what they had in the apparel department because I was too busy being impressed by the four typewriters they had on display. Being a tiny shop, the typewriters, a Remington Quiet Riter, two Royals, and an Olivetti 20-something, took up a good deal of the floorspace, such as it was. But this was not all: the shop had four or five Polaroid cameras for sale, and get this-- they also sell Polaroid film. "They still make it in Europe," the shop clerk explained. Nice. I might have to go back and make the purchase.

What about your town?

The first rule of typewriter club

Ever since reading about The Typing Explosion and several other typing performance artists like the Boston Typewriter Orchestra and Sheryl Oring, I've wondered in the back of my essentially antisocial and introverted mind what I could do, in my own hermit-like way, to further the social life of the typewriter.

Duffy Moon's Typewriter Brigade is a fine example of using public space to bring together aficionados of arcane technology for a common purpose. A recent Fresh Ribbon post talks about using typewriters to mass-mail fine literature- an interesting use of the typewriter as Trojan Horse (mysterious mail, written on defunct writing machine, bearing stealth literary learnings). Interesting. I keep coming back to the writing of letters, a dead art. Surely there is someone out there who needs some typewritten mail (maybe on beautiful old fashioned stationery, I need an excuse to buy some). There is of course the Modern Letter Project, but it is currently on hiatus. If The Regional Assembly of Text were closer, you know I'd attend the Letter Writing Club.

Clearly I need to think this over a little more. But on to you: I'm curious to know other people's ideas for the creative application of typewritten documents, be it social, personal, or political. Letter writing clubs? Mass typewriter mailings? Performance art? Public type-ins? I can't help but think based on my recent experience that younger people in particular would be interested in a chance to use these machines to make writing a more rewarding experience.

Writers and procrastination

I found myself sadly relating to the many writerly maladies discussed in this Slate article about Ralph Ellison and Truman Capote. All comparisons between myself and these fine gentlemen end with a tendency to procrastinate, but I at least now know this, and not writer's block, is my true affliction:

Neurologist Alice Flaherty attempts a working distinction between procrastination and block—the fearsome Orthrus of the creative process—in her 2004 book The Midnight Disease: The Drive To Write, Writer's Block, and the Creative Brain: "A blocked writer has the discipline to stay at the desk but cannot write. A procrastinator, on the other hand, cannot bring himself to sit down at the desk; yet if something forces him to sit down he may write quite fluently."

Typecast: Furby 2.0

OK, this post clearly falls under the rubric of "other curiosities," but one thing it demonstrates beautifully is my weak command of verb tense, which I usually manage to sanitize in computer-written drafts. Typewriter, the truth will out!

"The only time wasted is thinking of what to say next"

According to this article, not only are typewriters a trend, but they are a useful rehab tool for the young interweb addict. I'm seeing a rehab facility for Millennial social networking junkies who can no longer focus their attention. Inside there is nothing but white walls, old copies of Moby Dick, and some Underwood 5's.

I'm about to give up on Twitter, unless...

Sometimes I like to imagine that there is a whole sea of retrotech nerds out there blogging or typecasting or papercasting or analog-photoblogging away, all just a click from discovery. Eventually we'll all stumble across one another's content, realize the true scope of the trend, and fire up a huge convention at (insert totally interesting and walkable city) to compare Remingtons and brownie cameras and fountain pens, and hold retro writing workshops. When this occurs, Mommy bloggers, nattering Web 2.0 tech-trendoids, and other giants of the blogging world will need to scoot over oh so slightly to let us have a ray of interweb glory.

Ok, so maybe this isn't likely. However, is there at least ONE person in the universe into retrotech who uses Twitter? I signed up for the damn thing, and have no one to follow (there was even a brief window when Twitter updates appeared on my site... until I realized that Twitter updates crash your site).

My own Twitter posts are pathetic and few, since I was hoping to follow some other people for awhile before wading into the fray. Please tell me that *you* use Twitter and your clever posts are mine for the following.

Typecast: A random, grammatically unsound airport ramble

Royal Mercury and the Bravery of the Squirrel

Part I: Royal Mercury

Part II: The Bravery of the Squirrel

That night, the family was all sitting around talking and I asked my cousin's daughter (I think she is 11?) if she'd ever seen a typewriter. At first I brought my Hermes over for her to play with, and then I knew: she needed to have the Mercury.

Straightaway, she festooned it in stickers, and began to write poems, letters, and a screenplay about a horse. She immediately figured out all of the typewriter's levers, keys and whatsits, and even how to troubleshoot the ribbon with little help from me. I am told that even after I left, she continued to tote it around.

Here is one of her poems about a squirrel we observed who, suicidally, leaped in the air between two trees, over a sea of seven barking dogs.

In which another member of the typecasting cult goes to Acme Business Machines

I'm sure glad there are several other typecasters out there posting interesting things these days (see my Typecasting links in the left nav). As for me, I've been distracted by some difficult family health issues and find myself currently reporting from a guest bedroom in the South.

There is one bright spot: remembering the recent Fresh Ribbon post, I hassled a relative of mine to drive around in the wilds of North Little Rock today to locate a little old typewriter repair shop called Acme Business Machines, where owner Ed Cordon showed me several machines, including a Smith Corona #2 folding typewriter with yellow keys and a Blickensderfer #7, both in gorgeous condition, in addition to several other more modern models for sale. I walked out with a little green Hermes Rocket (I have a strange weakness for Hermes Rockets) for an entirely reasonable price, plus 90 day warranty, but not before my aforementioned relative shot the breeze for a few minutes about his past career repairing teletype machines with Acme's owner.

The power of the interwebs. Thanks Monda, for providing some good moments in a rough week. (I'm told I wasn't the first customer referred by your review. Way to bring business back to the waning art of typewriter sales and repairs!)