The beginning was really rough and made me worried, but things picked up after that. (The ending felt amazing and made me really happy. They were both written on the same day. Go figure.)
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Unexpected part of writing the book: testing different microphones for recording my voice and also the sound of keystrokes.pic.twitter.com/nidYz6knHG
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Rewrote the opening chapter today, and then played a bit with Blender to see if I can render a nice key. Still a lot of improvements to be made, but could be an interesting visual option.pic.twitter.com/BxcqF32ua5
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Okay, something amazing just happened. I peeked into one chapter to check something – the one about teletypes and terminals – started reading it and… couldn’t put it down. I couldn’t put down my own book!
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(This is… not a familiar feeling, or something I really know how to even wrap my head around.)
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Finished the second draft! Rewrote the opening and the ending, rearranged the most confusing things, cleaned up tons of small challenging bits. This is the first version of the book I’d be happy to show to people in its entirety.
pic.twitter.com/tdRh9WO4Pp
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Unexpected benefit of writing a book – creating an RTF to HTML converter. (I’m not sarcastic. I’ve always been curious. What a weird format it’s been so far.)pic.twitter.com/XUR6CUdS2w
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This might seem like the most ridiculous manual approach, but this way I will know exactly which special characters are in the book – and be ready to make sure they’re eventually typeset properly. Also, fun to see a good ol’ manicule right next to the only emoji in my book.pic.twitter.com/1FIWagg5AM
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I was recently on
@mathowie’s awesome podcast Hobby Horse, talking about Pac-Man, the Phelan Building, Medium, and – chiefly – the sequence of events that led to the keyboard book, and where am I with it today. https://twitter.com/mathowie/status/1005621336738152449?s=21 …This Tweet is unavailable.Show this thread -
The project’s become difficult again – so it goes – and America is breaking my heart, so this milestone feels hollow, and yet: For the first time, I sent the book in its entirety for someone to read and give me feedback. Egads!
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Also, I made this modern web reading environment for it, and it was exciting to see the book in a different livery for the first time. I’ve so far only known it in Scrivener, typeset in Tisa Pro… but here it is in the beloved Mercury Text (and some Maison Neue strewn around).pic.twitter.com/Zma1RSFTRb
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(I also set up my first virtual server and wrote my first Node server app in the process, which was a classic “use something you have to do as an excuse to learn something new” scenario.)
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Also, this numero is so, so gorgeous. I like that its presence tells a story: there in all the early chapters, talking about typewriters like Remington №2 and Underwood №5; gone later, since we stopped using it. But tell me that “iPhone №10” doesn’t have a nice ring to it.pic.twitter.com/eJ3CAD9QkC
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Discouraging to send an editor specific documents saying why there is no book like this one, and comparing it to all the existing books about typewriters… only to hear her say “I took a look at Amazon, there are a million books that try to do the same thing.” *A million books.*
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BTW hilariously that numero above is not from the font I chose for text… but from Times. Times! It’s awesome to know even an old, worn down typeface still can hold a few surprises.
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Preparing example spreads for a potential publisher, imagining this book as a full-colour 8"×10" volume. This is starting to feel rather real!pic.twitter.com/fjctlNSvPT
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Update on the book piles! One is really trying to make a run for it.pic.twitter.com/L2qbgAfEUM
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Not going to lie: making mock-ups like these where I know the text is real, and photos will be, is SUPER fun.pic.twitter.com/Ra4nrwyWBS
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First (printed) prototype of my book, with a temporary cover, and no photos – but every single word of the text all there. Already with tons of sticky notes for all the things I noticed that need fixing.pic.twitter.com/UJ0ZF8bBgh
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You know what was surprisingly emotional? Seeing a table of contents with page numbers, and then being able to go to that page and just… start reading.
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A friend of mine was leafing through it on Friday and said “every time I go to another random page I see something interesting.” ^_^pic.twitter.com/L29jqtPov4 – at Museum of Art and Digital Entertainment
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In the meantime, adding a new keyboard recorder to my 20-plus-year-old awful Pascal code just in time for tomorrow’s newsletter: https://www.getrevue.co/profile/shift-happens/ … (I’ve never before written Pascal while having internet a keystroke away to answer any questions I could had.)pic.twitter.com/HBn1Pf25l9
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In an old catalogue, yet another illustration that seems to perfectly summarize my life. (Previous one: https://twitter.com/mwichary/status/939584916756369408 …)pic.twitter.com/KyzMwDFGIi
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An amazing benefit of being loud about the book writing process is that people volunteer little anecdotes and stories like this delightful one:https://medium.com/@capek/a-propos-of-nothing-i-offer-the-following-which-seems-somehow-relevant-34724ae51b58 …
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I am often amazed and often overwhelmed by the range and scope of tasks necessary to write this book, particularly since I’m also aiming to typeset and design it.
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This is an example of just one to-do branch I had to traverse today. There are so many more – and I’d lie if I said I fully understand the shape of the entire giant tree.pic.twitter.com/hVOcgSheKv
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Going back and forth between “the writing part” (strategy) and some, incredibly tactical nuance can be a real challenge.
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Small tasks provide respite and a sense of accomplishment, but there come in infinite amounts and for a detail-oriented person can easily completely take over. Dealing with larger questions is necessary, but it often feels vague and comes without a progress bar.
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Today, in the process of getting someone to help me figure out big strategic editing questions, I had to build a Python typesetter *inside a font creating program* to help me create a key font. Otherwise, making 517 necessary glyphs would take an infinite amount of time.pic.twitter.com/IfQaUgAQDd
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It’s a very complicated and large to-do tree, and I keep jumping from one faraway branch to another. I’m not saying it’s bad or even that I know how to do it any other way – but sometimes it’s hard to even wrap my head around what’s going on.
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