A Jaunty Little Blog – Explore our premium posts, featuring pH-balanced formulas that gently remove grime.

February 15, 2026February 18, 2026

The Internet Is An Unreliable Friend

Friends,

I bought a Fisher Space Pen. Why did I do this? I’ve fallen into a fun journaling habit with Field Notes notebooks. What should I do? Are there solutions? Should I work on them now, or research them later?

This has been nice way for me to stay on track without using Apple’s Reminders app, which I think has a different purpose. I’m using Reminders for things that need to be really annoying. Things in the notebook require reflection and a little bit of time.

The bullet Space Pen is lovely. It’s a nice shape and you can carry it in your pocket all day, every day. The only problem is the insert. The writing experience is terrible. It’s dry, scratchy, and it’s loathe to give up its ink. I hate it, so I looked to the internet to find something better. Who’s refilling the iconic pen with something that works much better?

Redditors made a suggestion that seemed perfectly reasonable, so I found the recommended, rare as hens’ teeth, available only through weird circumstances refills. I’m familiar with the brand, so I did the work and received the refills.

They don’t fit. Not at all. Even with extensive modifications.

I don’t blame the pen nerds. I blame myself.

Right? Is that the right way to handle this?

Your pal,

– bob

REALLY LOVELY UPDATE: Not a day after I posted this, Fisher sent me an email asking me to review my purchase. While being very polite, I kinda let them have it. Here’s my two-star review:

“I don’t know what took me so long to finally buy a Bullet Space Pen. I guess I thought it was out of my financial reach, but this was remarkably affordable, considering the precision engineering that clearly goes in. That said, the writing experience is not great. In fact, despite the fact that I carry the Space Pen everywhere, I look for another pen first if I’m going to write anything of any length. The ink delivery is as reluctant as a self-conscious teenager at the junior high prom. The point is scratchy, and to get it to produce any sort of line, I have to use too much force on the paper, damaging the surface.
I’m trying new refills, but I gotta tell you, it’s been a disappointing introduction.”

The very next morning, Michelle from Consumer Service (their new name for customer service is growing on me) wrote sent this, asking for details:

“Thank you for contacting Fisher Space Pen!

I am sorry to hear you have experienced an issue with the refill I am happy to replace your refill for you…”

And a new pen is on its way. Absolutely top shelf interaction. No blaming, no intrusive questions, just an apology and an offer to make it right from a real person writing a real email. If you want to reinforce the strength of your brand, this is how you do it.

January 21, 2026January 22, 2026

Tippy, Tappy, Typey

Overcast afternoon photo of nearby foothills topped by cell towers with a very tall palm tree in the foreground.

Friends,

It’s an overcast afternoon in America’s Overlooked City, and I’ve decided to spend a little time outside, away from the distractions.

Most of those distractions live in my office, of course, including the mountain of half-finished projects. Thank you cards from Christmas, two very broken typewriters, a Zenith SupersPort (yes, the in-cap is correct, strangely. Accent on the “port”) that needs its guts transferred into a DOA Bull laptop, and so much more. I have plenty of time on my hands to do all of these things, I just have a hard time getting from the planning stage to the doing part. It’s not even that any of these projects are difficult. They just need attention and that’s something I don’t seem to be able to muster.

Part of the reason, I think, is simple–I’m having a difficult time focusing on much anything beyond the willful destruction of the American Democratic Experiment at the hands of oligarchs and right-wing white nationalists, all led by a dementia patient who is hell-bent on protecting his pedophile friends.

That’s it.

You’d think I could just get over it and break out the watercolor paint pots, but here we are. People old enough to remember the last right-wing dementia patient in the White House, you know, Margaret Thatcher’s pal, projected their hopes forward for this reality television actor and said, “He’s so mockable come out of this. he’s a clown. So much amazing art is going to come out of this.” While that’s true and creatives have stepped up to fight back visually and through their words, the amount of suffering wrought by the administration of the 47th President of The United States has been logarithmically worse than his predecessors.

So what can be done?

That’s two questions. The first answer is that I’m going to make a solid effort to get this and the next one and the one after that online in a timely manner. I’m also not going to spend too much time mincing words even though the secret police are monitoring communications to determine who should live in a concrete cell in an undisclosed location without due process. (Hyperbole? Ask the reporter from The Atlantic who had her home raided and her devices confiscated for writing an unflattering article.) The next thing that can be done is to try and convince somebody to either file articles of impeachment or invoke Article 4 of the 25th Amendment and remove these people from office. Let’s just hope we won’t have to wait for the midterms in November for that to happen.

While we’re on the subject of distraction-free writing, I really must expand o n the joys of these little battery-operated thermal printers from the 1980s. For the price of four D-cell batteries and a pack of letter-size thermal paper, I can just write and write and write. Letter-size sheets too hard to find? No problem. Eight and a half-inch rolls of thermal fax paper are cheap and plentiful. Type as much as you want and tear off the sheet when you’re done.

I’m scanning these pages and with quick OCR pass, they’re ready to post here. It’s not quick or easy, but it sure is satisfying to actually have a sheet of paper in my hand. This point is also being made online about photography, urging people to pick up cheap photo printers and create more had copies of your art so it isn’t trapped in a computer or on a phone forever.

The argument also holds that when you have a tangible thing in your hand, your art not only has more meaning, but you see if the composition and output is what you had in mind when you took the shot. Pretty handy to help you improve your craft. This doesn’t matter so much if you’re shooting to remember where you parked your car, but that lovely sunset deserves to be on your wall.

Probably.

The satisfaction of holding a piece of paper that contains your work recommends against one of the other “distraction-free” typing
solutions, like the Freewrite or the Alphasmart, which are functionally keyboard buffers with battery back-up. That said, I ordered an Alphasmart Neo to give it a try. People rave about them, so I thought I’d (belatedly) see what all the hubbub is about. They were ubiquitous in school districts as typing tutors, so they’re still pretty cheap on the used market despite going out of business almost two decades ago. The one I ordered has some issues, so I was able to pick it up for a reasonable price. I can fix it, try it out, then sell it again if it doesn’t work out. Who knows. I may end up loving the thing. Maybe it has a better keyboard than the Brother EP-44’s chiclet keys I’m typing on now. Maybe it suffers from the same squishy rubber domes that the Palm Portable Keyboards use. Maybe (please no) it has the same cramped, mushy mess that’s on the Apple Newton eMate 300. All attempts on my part to reach distraction-free writing nirvana. All coming up short.

You know, I have a mechanical keyboard that’s going into retirement that might want to donate its Cherry Brown switches to the project. Hmmmm. ( i remember somebody crying about having too many unfinished projects only a couple of paragraphs ago. -edOkay, that’s fair.)

Well, this has been fun. I’ll need to revisit this setup tomorrow.

Until then, there’s a half-clean pile of dishes to deal with. More later!

Your pal,

bob

December 16, 2025

I’ll See Your Font and Raise You a Typeface

Friends,

Speaking of fonts (don’t you mean typeface? – ed I would, but this is an old machine and they still call them fonts, so I’m sticking with it.) Are we still talking about serif versus sans serif fonts? I was taught that serif fonts were the most legible and people like them. Then Calibri was adopted for legibility and accessibility by the community, then by the government, which prompted me to download Atkinson Hyperlegible from the Braille Institute. It contains some neat features that make it extremely legible for people with reading disabilities and low vision, and wouldn’t you know that it just so happens to be a sans serif font. I thought, “Yup, I’m all in. Sans Serif is now my thing.”

Then fucking Marco Rubio passed a brain stone and decided that sans serif fonts are too “woke.” Too woke means, of course, that the people with poor eyesight might be able to read things on that the U.S. State Department produces, so the more legible typefaces must be replaced. This is more about clamping down on people who don’t fit their weird ideal. It’s punching down. It’s making life in the United States just a little harder for the most vulnerable.

I hate these people so much.

(hammered out really quickly on 11 December by) your pal,

– bob

December 16, 2025

A Focused Point of Extreme Heat

Friends,

Since I’ve started using thermal printers, I find that it’s much easier to just pick one up, throw some batteries in, and get going. So easy. The only problem with the process has been getting the printed pages in the scanner, proofed, and on the blog. The typing is happening, the scanning and saving with OCR is happening, it’s just the proofing and publishing part that’s lacking. I need a process and this ain’t it.

What’s the answer? It’s what it always has been-—devote a dedicated amount of time to writing and stick to it. Now that I’m able to just type whenever and wherever I like, maybe the dedicated “writing” time becomes dedicated “proofing” time instead. Sounds like a 9:00am thing at the moment. (ahem. more like a 3:00pm thing. -ed) Also, and I’m not thrilled about this, on the Brother EP44 (no hyphen, thank you very much) there’s no alternative typeface available. Even though the EP44 has a greater resolution than the EP-22, they still didn’t see fit to offer a new typeface beyond, “near letter quality.” It’s tough on the eyeballs after a while, but good enough for OCR.

(crafted on 10 December 2025 by) your pal,

– bob

December 5, 2025December 5, 2025

Two Sentences From A Book – Puzzlement Edition

The Little Jaunty Players
– Proudly Present –
– From the Sweeping Mountain Vistas –
– To the Waves Crashing Along the Coast –

It’s Two Sentences From A Book!

“This tree is considered by many authorities to be a species separate from the preceding, and is called by them P. jeffrei. Certainly the two types merge into on another in a very confusing manner.”

It’s a real head-scratcher.

October 25, 2025December 5, 2025

A Clean Bill of Health

“Gonna crack my knuckles and jump for joy. I got a clean bill of health from Doctor McCoy!” – Space Hippies

Friends,

It’s a sign of aging that you talk about your health. Here’s mine: I’m not doomed. I’ve changed doctors and health plans and even healthcare systems, and they’ve taken the opportunity to check out my things, and it turns out that those things are fine. Feeling fine? I’m not entirely sure, but better!

Typestar 3 Update: Don’t hit Code+Paper Feed when you have a roll of paper in the machine. It lets the machine think that you’ve fed a sheet without putting in a new one. You’re spoiling a few inches of the roll and if you haven’t loaded a “new sheet” then you have no business continuing to type, so cool it.
Oh hey! Ooops. I seem to have set the line spacing to 1½ instead of 1. You know, like a dope. I really need to pay attention to the Code and Mode keys, don’t I?
As far as using thermal paper on a roll goes, this is really great. I’m enjoying this. Seems like I should figure out some sort of a roll holder that isn’t just a bent coat hanger. By the way, I’ve decided to keep this typewriter for my own use.

Functionally, that means that I’ve peeled off the retail sticker from the top of the machine. Most people do that anyway, but if I was going to sell the thing, I’d have left it attached. The dumb part is that I forgot to take photo before I removed the sticker. I guess I’m really keeping the machine.

What, you might ask, will be the fate of the Brother EP-22? I’m glad you asked! Surely some computers around here need a friendly serial printer, and the Brother is just the thing. Besides, it’s smaller than the Typestar, so it may be an easier machine to carry around, while I leave this one here, despite its power stinginess.

As you know, I had a Brother EP-22 in the 80s. More accurately, I begged and pleaded for one to connect to my old Commodore 64. It worked great then, and there are lonely 8088 and 286 machines here that need to print. The sad old computers that need to express themselves.

It’s a serial printer that doesn’t implement the entire ASCII character set. Things get weird when that happens, and Windows really doesn’t play nice with the thing. Macs? Forget about it. They can’t figure out any of this, and why should they?
Meanwhile, the Typestar has a more complete typeface, so when I hope to scan these pages for the blog, my hope is that the character recognition will be more accurate. That’ll happen tomorrow. Today, we write!

Your pal,

– bob

August 22, 2025

The worst

Friends,

I’m headed up to Los Angeles and environs to check in with lovely people and take in this year’s edition of the San Marino Motor Classic. It’s sure to be well over 100º later on Sunday, so we’re going early.. Very early. Dear god, so early.

I’m bringing all of the shitty cameras as well, which I think will be a lot of fun. Mavica, PowerShot, EyeModule—they’ll all be there. Better stock up on floppies!

Your best pal,

– bob

August 19, 2025August 19, 2025

Thermal

Friends,

I’m typing this on a 40-year old Brother EP-22 electronic typewriter. It has some neat party tricks, like running from a power adapter (6vdc *negative tip*, like a weirdo), or heavy D-cell batteries. It also can print with carbon transfer film ribbons or without a ribbon at all on thermal paper. I typed this using D-size battery spacers with rechargeable AA cells and I’m pretty pleased with how they’re working at the moment. The real test though, will be how they hold up when typing an entire page. Notably, how long will they last, and can they keep up with actual D-cell batteries. There are two big benefits here that I’m excited about. The first is the weight which is less than half of the D-cells. That’s a big deal when you’re lugging around four of them. The other is that they’re rechargeable. If I can keep batteries out of a landfill, especially those big monsters, I’m happy. (There’s a side benefit to that as well. Handing a heavy box of e-waste to the guy at the transfer station garners at least a dubious glare, if not outright refusal. Lighter boxes seem to be less of a concern.）

I wonder how often this machine was used by the prior owner. It’s in wonderful shape and works perfectly. I may have destroyed the power input for the 6vdc adapter (Did I mention that negative center is a bastard, BTW) but I’m currently running this on batteries. It’s cheating, but the spacer gambit should provide enough power to get this thing running just fine. Right? Everybody’s cool with that. right?

Oh shoot! I’m missing some type at the top of the previous paragraph and I’m a little worried that there’s on electrical issue. I’m typing on thermal paper though, so it may be a platen pressure/scuffing/heat issue with the paper itself. It hasn’t been repeated. so maybe it’s just o one-off. Hard to know.

“I wonder how often this machine was used by the prior owner.” Capturing the missing top line before I forget. It’s still weird. but I think it might be missing due to my picking to the paper roll to remove the tape holding it together. The next bit is to throw this into a scanner on the way to the blog. Will it work? Will the curl of the paper foul the scanner? (it didn’t, but ocr was kind of a mess. -ed) Will the scanner struggle with the dots? (yes, absolutely. ask me about vowels. -ed) Tune in tomorrow when the next installment of “will this thing work?”

I tried to connect a 2000 G3 Powerbook to this thing’s serial port and as expected, it didn’t work as a printer. The “new” EP-22 that I won in a Goodwill auction (which doesn’t work at all) came with three print ribbons, all of the documentation that this machine should have had, a power adapter, and a nicer cover. Was it a win? Absolutely, especially with the fresh cartridges. NOS cartridges, if you find them, are going for $50 a piece. I won that auction with a bid of $17.20. I’ll take that!

Of course, the fancy fix would be to find carbon transfer film cassettes thot are the right height and respooling old cartridges. I’m not above respooling the old cartridges and maybe somebody might be interested in something like that. Now that I’m without full time employment… wait. you haven’t heard about that? It’s a fun story of a small business finding themselves in way over their head and trying to figure out a competitive landscape that is rushing towards a technological future where they’re no longer needed.

What’s your plan?
“We’ll fire everybody.”
And after that?
“Dunno. We’ll just wing it, I guess.”
Sure. Solid plan.

*sigh*

Your pal,

– bob

July 31, 2025

The terribleness

Friends,

I’m working on a new post (or at least a new system to keep this thing up to date) on process, but lately I’ve simply been horrified by the crimes that the regime is committing with impunity. This has kept me, I’m sure you’ll understand, from getting behind a keyboard after working hours. While I’ve been concentrating on fun beige plastic-era tech projects, there’s still a terrible cloud hanging over all of this.

What is it? It’s fire abatement. I spent last weekend cutting down and raking up tall weeds. Is that what I wanted to do? Clearly not, but being fined by the Fire Department is a motivator.

I hate it. I hate that they’re slaves to the insurance companies who continue to threaten withdrawal unless “you people do something.”

So we’re sweeping the forest, as required by the anti-science derpwagon running the country.

Back to the subject, this platform seems to be working okay except for uploading pictures. Maybe somebody else has a good blogging client.

Then this whining will go away. Until then…

Your pal,

bob

April 24, 2025

Things that matter

Friends,

I lied to a nun.

I was asked to lie and I went along with the lie. My pal Bruce, the schnoodle entrusted to my care by those caring for a beloved centenarian, was killed on my watch but I couldn’t bring myself to share that news. I danced around the issue at the Idyllwild Indivisible rally where we spoke. Protest rallies are a thing now that the country is descending into authoritarian rule. We meet and we chat and we wonder how to best use our voices to help those who can’t defend themselves. We hugged and she asked me how he was doing. Why was one dog here but not our little boy.

“We had to leave him at home.”

The nuns are lovely and I just can’t break their hearts. They know loss, but do they need more loss? More grief?

We’ve got work to do. We’ve got marching to do, and letter writing to do, and we’re not going to stop the kneecapping of our institutions by crying. We’ve got work to do.

And for that, I lied to a nun. I spent hours working on her computer for free later that day to try and atone, but it still feels wrong. I spared her feelings, but she deserved to know.

Your pal,

– bob

January 7, 2025January 7, 2025

Settle Down 2025, It’s Only Tuesday

Friends,

These are the things that are making my teeth ache today, on this seventh day of the new year. It’s by no means an exhaustive list, but it’s full of things that if taken individually, would make you at least want to close the drapes and stay in bed.

With that fun lead-in, let’s get to it…

Jimmy Carter’s body has arrived in the District of Columbia today to lie in state. I happened to turn on the teevee when a half dozen burly men transferred his casket from the hearse to the caisson in front of the U.S. Navy Memorial. I didn’t anticipate how hard it would hit that the funeral procession for such a decent man would begin the countdown to the inauguration of such a corrupt man as the incoming 47th president.
The incoming administration keeps making noises about buying or in some way taking, maybe by force, Greenland and the Panama Canal. The news outlets assume that these plans will be carried out in some way, so I’m not sure who’s more unhinged here.
Meta, the company that owns Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and WhatsApp has decided to run without fact checkers. This is more pre-obedience to the upcoming regime that’s going to get all of us in a lot of trouble by amplifying the dumb (see above) and burying the truth (see below).
The former and future president’s favorite judge, Aileen Cannon of Florida, has ruled against the release of Special Council Jack Smith’s report on the crimes he was investigating. She managed to get the order in 45 minutes before the report was to be turned over to the most ineffective U.S. Attorney General in the modern era, Merrick Garland. The release of the report relies on a ruling by the 11th Circuit and then a Supreme Court appeal. I’m sure we’re all on pins and needles wondering how that’ll go.
Intense winds are blowing through Southern California over the next few days, and Tommy’s Real Good Electric Utility (aka, Southern California Edison) has already warned us that they may have to shut off power to prevent wildfires. Too late to keep Pacific Palisades safe from fire this afternoon, but maybe that’ll be the extent of the destruction.
I just learned that the Apple Newton OS has a Y2026 bug. I’d let my Newton eMate 300 know, but it’s enjoying a spa day of deep battery cycles and a light vacuuming between the keys.
Justin Trudeau’s resignation as Canada’s Prime Minister is remarkably bad news, I think. He seemed to have a chance to deescalate the incoming administration’s tariff nonsense, but if he’s replaced with some hard line nationalist goon, who knows. A tit-for-tat trade war with Canada could be very bad for all of us.
Speaking of trade wars, can somebody rein in the once and future president’s pet billionaire? Elon Musk appears to be picking fights with European democracies and nobody can be sure if he’s acting alone or if he has the blessing of Time’s kleptocrat of the year.

Did I miss anything that’s keeping you up at night? Drop it in the comments and we’ll add it to the list of horrors!

Your best pal,

– bob

January 1, 2025January 1, 2025

There’s Never A Better Time Than Now

Friends,

I was excited. I’ll freely admit that I found the prospect of a female president exhilarating. Dudes have had their shot, so it seemed that a fresh perspective would electrify an electorate in deep malaise and a large minority of the country agreed with me.

But it was still a minority.

That means that it’s time for a psychological reset. It’s also time to acknowledge that a majority of the electorate has a short memory and couldn’t be bothered to read or think or look out for their fellows. That’s the product of a half-century long Republican project working as planned, but also the subject of a later post.

My plan for this first post of the new year is to think about how to proceed and what I can do to contribute (you’re probably going to share something about taking better care of yourself, too. – ed Don’t be silly. I’m a paragon of good health and virtuous living.). Here’s a first draft of a list of thoughts that I’m considering to firm up at some point to create something of a plan…

Things to do to make 2025 better

Stop giving artificial intelligence your thoughts for free

The suits consider me a “content creator”, which is as far as I can tell, anybody who fills blank spots on empty pages with words or pictures. Those words or pictures don’t have to be pretty or insightful or memorable or meaningful. They just have to fill the space.

What we need to do first, is stop being “content creators” and return to being writers and authors and artists and photographers and philosophers and scientists. And yes, pundits and cranks and rabble-rousers too. It’s not “content,” it’s perspective and we need more of it. That said, there are better places to do that than social media sites. They have more traffic, but I’m not comfortable with Meta and Bluesky and Google owning what I share on the Internet. That’s why there’ll be more here and that’s why it’s behind a robots.txt file that seeks to block their crawlers.

Also, I thought it’d be fun, even though I don’t know how long it’ll be fun, to just post photos taken on a Handspring Visor with a first generation eyemodule. They’re really awful and it’s a pain to get them from the device to here, but I love how they’re turning out. Lo-Fi pixel slurry that’s sort of a cross between Super 8 and a Fisher-Price PXL2000.

Stop obeying in advance

Yes, the good guys lost the election, but that doesn’t mean we need to kneel in front of a deranged kakistocracy even before it has been installed. They can’t tell you what to do or how to act or how to spend your money or when and how to enforce your laws. Even when their clown car has disgorged its passengers in the District of Columbia, there is every indication that there will be a wide gulf between the evils they want to do and the evils they’ll actually be able to implement.

You can’t build concentration camps and run a mass deportation regime if Congress can’t agree on how to fund it.

Of course, they probably can’t fund the government either, so that’s a different hardship. One thing at a time.

Make somebody’s life easier

Here’s my plan. I know a few things about a lot of things. In the past, I didn’t think too much about this. Everybody has the capacity to learn about stuff and figure things out. Intellectual curiosity is baked in, isn’t it?

Nope!

As the election taught me, sometimes people need more help. That’s a good reason to share more of what I’ve been working on and maybe drop some tips that may have been missing for somebody else. The people who contribute to archive.org are famous for this, scanning old documentation for obscure things or uploading drivers for ancient tech. Speaking of that…

Cut down on buying new stuff

The oligarchs have plenty of dough and don’t need any more of mine. I’m trying to be mindful of where my dollars go since the California insurance market is crushing my finances. I’m patronizing local businesses first, then far-flung small business. Only when neither of them carry what I’m looking for will I resort to Amazon or, well, Amazon.

By the way, now that Fry’s Electronics is gone, where are you sourcing your electronic parts?

Back up your stuff

This sounds paranoid, but I’m seeing a lot of people I trust online recommend full, offline, or air-gapped backups. The US Treasury just got hacked by China, so my Javelin pictures may seem like small potatoes, but they’re my potatoes and I’d like to keep them safe.

Does that mean journaling on a typewriter to keep my memories of this time safe? No, but that seems like fun. I might have to get back to that.

So there it is. The first day of 2025 in the books. I think we’re going to okay, but we’ll need to look out for each other. It’s going to be a rocky few years.

Your pal,

– bob

August 14, 2024

Softening the Readership

Friends,

I really haven’t seen people in the country and in my circle change their mood so dramatically from dour resignation to cheerful optimism, as when Joe Biden (may the goddess pour blessings upon him) stepped down from the presidential race and endorsed Kamala Harris. It turns out that the enthusiasm is not confined to we liberal elites on the coasts. People love her across the country.

There are 83 days until election day (can we talk about always having 100 day elections?) and if we keep this up, we could potentially have a landslide election and win enough down-ballot races to keep the Senate and take the House. Think about that for a moment.

I have.

Your pal,

– bob