💾 Archived View for midnight.pub › posts › 2190 captured on 2024-12-17 at 18:49:53. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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so...
i found an electric typewriter
it was at goodwill
really i'd been wanting a manual
an olympia sm9 portable, look at this beauty:
https://tinyurl.com/27esx9xq
BUT
after the joy of typing on it at the test area
i said to myself if i can pop a cheap tag for it
i'll grab it
so
half off a $5.99 tag and i get a smith corona xl1500:
https://tinyurl.com/mr4rkmz4
for $3.25!
i had to lug it on the bus accross town
but it was worth it
in the back of my head i was questioning it
why get an electric typewriter when i want a manual? and already have a laptop to write on?
but, really, it's the aesthetics of a typewritten page
that
and i get why some writers only use a typwwriter or old word processor (like george r r martin)
all you can do is write
no distractions
no opening a browser
or playing a game
just write
is all you can do
i plan to use it for
poetry
fiction
and typing up my zine
and eventually
that sm9 will be mine ^Â¥^
gemini://wolfinthewoods.pollux.casa/
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I had a typewriter myself and absolutely loved it, so much so that I eventually bought a Freewrite Traveller and later Alpha, which is basically a cloud connected typewriter. Honestly I have a strange fascination with eink devices that probably all stems from getting that initial typewriter.
the Brother typewriter I had in STL was bliss to type on. I wrote 75 pages in 3 weeks, I think. Just constant with the thing. :)
A Corona is nice, so is Olympia.
And +1 on the write-only laptop. I scoured for an Acer netbook not long ago to find a device for just writing. Found some, may still pick one up.
check The Roving Typist on VIMEO. weird little doc on him (whoever it is)
A typewriter would ~ w o n d e r f u l l y ~ match your style.
I tried getting the last word to show across the page the way you do, but I don't know how you manage. The trailing whitespace was omitted in the formatting.
And I hope you find a mechanical typewriter. My mother keep the one she used when she went to university. I spent many a night writing on it. I was amazed to find out that ink ribbons are still being sold to this day! Otherwise, well, I wouldn't have been able to do anything with it.
I am also inclined to the "old word processor" attitude. I have been putting this off, but I -I mean it this time!- am planning to install plan9 on my little laptop, which I will keep as a strictly offline device, and use the acme editor to ... write, write, write! The aesthetic of acme, and the fact that there is --NO WEB BROWSER-- amounts to the best possible computing experience, for me.
Some time ago I realized, the whole range of my needs in terms of structuring information is simple: a hierarchical filesystem (even FAT is good enough), and plaintext files (best done with UTF-8 because I use many languages!).
I bought this Olympia in some shop while in college:
https://cdn2.bigcommerce.com/server2100/78913/products/859/images/2078/Olympia-SG1-1__52122.1461372115.1280.1280.jpg?c=2
I absolutely loved it.
About a decade and a half later, a son and/or his friends wrecked it by forcing the carriage back and forth by hand when I was out somewhere.
There will never be forgiveness....