Friends,
I had an idea, which is dangerous on its surface, but it turns out that this idea has been kind of expensive. The idea revolves around the idea of distraction-free writing. Which is in itself a misnomer. Who isn’t distracted by things? Dogs, coyotes breaking into the backyard trying to eat dogs, Nine Inch Nails suddenly popping up in the playlist, a smell, the garbage trucks playing catch-up from the holiday weekend speeding down the street. You get the idea. Life is hectic.
I thought that if I were to spend more time posting to this here endeavor, I could dig through the rubble of history to find a nice technological solution to get away from the social media and email notifications constantly ding-ding-dinging just in my periphery.
I thought that I might take advantage of one of the best compact keyboards from the mid-90s. None other than the Newton External Keyboard with a USB adapter.
It works great, but there’s that distraction again with the iPad happy to share notifications about EVERYTHING. Geez Karen, cool it.
Then I thought that I’d spend a little time resurrecting the trusty Palm Pilot. I already had the folding keyboard, so how hard could it be?
Hard enough. Palm desktop won’t install on Intel Macs. Palm Pilots of a certain vintage don’t have drivers for the keyboard built in, and Memo stinks as a writing tool. Also, getting files out is just as challenging as it is with the Apple Newton eMate. In either scenario, there needs to be an old computer sitting around as an intermediary. It doesn’t help that the more recent versions of macOS don’t play nice with Appletalk and the Apple Filing Protocol. Because, you know, progress.
Also, did the Palm Pilot screen get smaller? Just me? okay.
The answer for distraction-free writing, staring down all of us tech nerds, is the manual typewriter. Slamming slugs against an ink-drenched ribbon to leave some meaning behind. You’ve heard of it.
I got very silly and bought a couple machines through eBay. Machines that looked cool, but machines that I don’t like very much.
The key effort is too high for me and my now-noodly copywriter arms. Also, I wasn’t ready for the stadium layout of the keys. It turns out that I just don’t want to reach that high for the number row, since I’ve spent all this time on flat keyboards. I stopped by the Idyllwild Help Center today and found the machine everyone has been telling me I’d love—a mid-60s Olivetti Lettera 32. The key layout is nearly flat and the effort is so light that I could type on this thing all day.
It’s an absolute joy to type on, and once I put in a new ribbon, it should be a nice addition to the typing horde.
The plan is pretty simple(-ish). I have a sheet-feed scanner that I can connect to a computer that’s on most of the time. I’ll type a page, plop it into the scanner, and through some scripting I can recognize the text and save the image of the page, so everything just posts to the blog.
Like magic.
I guess we’ll see if that works when I post my first typed blog post.
The 20-something marketing experts offering advice on how to build audiences suggest not making promises in your blog that you can’t deliver. I can’t let them down, can I?
Actually, I don’t mind letting them down, but not you, dear reader. Let’s make this happen!
Your pal,
– bob