Felt very accomplished with rewriting today. Combined two chapters into one chapter with half the words; it feels leaner *and* I embedded it more into the chronology *and* I centered it all around a cool new person.
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Had it on the docket today to rewrite a chapter a certain way, only to discover *I have already done that at some point.* 0_O Started a five-day effort this morning to finish the third draft. Wish me luck!
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One of the many fun moments in this process: chatting with Hartmut Esslinger about why computers became beige/grey, how many shades of beige/grey are there (more than I expected), and what role did keyboards play in all this.
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Just a romantic photo of a sun setting on new research. (It’s one of my favourite parts: finding and reading through the most obscure books on the subject.)pic.twitter.com/M9gHpdVOof
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First I discover a keyboard on a cable car, and today my spying resulted in discovering a keyboard in the cable car *barn* as well. (A CNC machine, I think?)pic.twitter.com/1FuUDBwAm2
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So close! Just one more tricky chapter to rewrite, plus a handful of to-do items and TKs to cover.pic.twitter.com/dcSTqYmk4C
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FINISHED THE THIRD DRAFT!!!!!!!!! Didn’t cut as much as I wanted, plus there are probably at least two more drafts to do… but I don’t want to think about this now. The book is getting better and better, and for some time at least I can focus on visuals, instead of writing. :·)
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Buy my book (eventually) to understand this cryptic conversation!https://twitter.com/jeffkisseloff/status/1118570953410269184 …
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A shot of a key being photographed from something close to the perspective of a key is a bit frightening! (The box on the left is propping up an old iPhone serving as a light source.)pic.twitter.com/SS0F0aDpAd
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My book is now leading me to some heavy interlibrary drama and intrigue!pic.twitter.com/daMeGMwfGg
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That feeling when you persevere, and finally find the photo you want – and then realize it was hard to find because of a *typo*.pic.twitter.com/Moly3yDmA1
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Number of tabs opened in Chrome right now: 688. Most are related to the book and the visual research. I should probably start processing/closing some down? 0_Opic.twitter.com/p9u1DzVGYT
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Just another day in keyboard research land! (Art direction and photo by
@neobarnabas.)pic.twitter.com/WOwspoQuWQ
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My friend
@GlennF pointed out August Dvorak’s grave (in Seattle) kind of looks like a split keyboard. 0_Opic.twitter.com/B28gjtStci – at Mount Pleasant Cemetery
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Slowly, but surely: working on the visual side of the book.pic.twitter.com/cw20XlhEDh
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I was scanning a few photos today from a 1920s sales newsletter for Royal Typewriter Company for my book, and – since it took some effort to actually get it – I thought it would be nice to preserve *all* of it.pic.twitter.com/5TLY3OUHPV
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Scanning the oversized volumes on the library’s small scanners seemed like days of work. Instead, I set up a tripod with my iPhone in the library, grabbed my little Bluetooth remote.pic.twitter.com/in9KmXeNoZ
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Only a little over an hour later, I had all 376 pages photographed. I even took photos of white pieces of paper to see where the shadows were, and used it as a mask to fix uneven lights in the library.pic.twitter.com/MJ1LDTwCWl
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And now five years of Royal Standard – 50,000+ words – are on Internet Archive for anyone to read: https://archive.org/search.php?query=creator%3A%22Royal+Typewriter+Company%2C+Inc.%22 … (Sure, this is not the best quality possible, but much better than nothing – particularly since I also OCR’ed all the text, making it searchable.)
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I love feeling like a good historian/preservationist! And there are so many tiny things there that mean a lot, for example this “Royal progress in Poland”: https://archive.org/details/the-royal-standard-1924-9/page/n3 …
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(I know I haven’t sent many book updates recently, but I’ve been working hard on the typesetting and particularly visuals. Over 200 photos are already in the book, and I’m proud of many of them that I found, and some that I took. My goal is to send a newsletter within days!)
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In the meantime, please enjoy this photo of an awesome Typewriter Car.pic.twitter.com/qqoPOCVegv
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A portrait of a person slowly losing their mind in the infinite number of typesetting details.pic.twitter.com/4jAJM91Svc
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Four years ago, I wrote a Medium post about the Turkish typewriter. I wonder if without that post – and the positive reception to it – I would’ve ever embarked on my book project. I’m taking photos of that typewriter for the book today, and it feels like meeting a patron saint.pic.twitter.com/TsNRoBRYX1
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My newsletter is at 992 subscribers now – so close to 1,000!!! (Please sign up for fun keyboard stories, updates on book production, previews, and be the first to know when the book is ready!)https://www.getrevue.co/profile/shift-happens/ …
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