Some good news
I finally have some good news to share. We† found the right paper and the printer that knows what to do with it, and have all the verbal agreements we need....
The soul of an old solenoid
There are some exciting new developments on the printer/paper front. If things go well, I’ll have something to announce next time! Please keep your fingers...
The trip to Spain: The good parts
All of the linked photos are compressed, but they come in the original 42-megapixel resolution from my current camera. Yes, megapixel wars were and are...
The modifiers vs. the keepers
Throughout the history of keyboards, a battle has been fought by two opposing camps. On one side, there were keyboards with the modifier keys – the Shifts,...
“Something magical happened to me today.”
What’s going on with the book There’s no easy way to put this. The book is ready to go. The writing, proofreading, typesetting are completely done, and...
Moiré no more
I learned a thing long time ago, and it was: Once you print something, you can’t get it back. On the surface, this statement doesn’t make any sense. Scanners...
The worst keyboard ever made
I’m writing this newsletter under duress. The last issue, one I sent just a week ago, arrived in spam folders for most people owing to a glitch in Revue –...
How I learned to hate InDesign
Quick updates first: I am aiming to release the book in 2022. There are still many unknowns, but people who know the printing process better than I am tell...
In the land of the lounge lizards
I open the door, exit the bar, and walk outside onto the sidewalk in a surprisingly straight line. It’s a nice, warm night. I hear muffled music coming from...
The last interview
Every Saturday at 8am, a certain ritual takes place. All my snoozed book-related emails resurface that time, my inbox lighting up with dozens of reminders. I...
A tale of three skeuomorphs
The 1983 Apple Lisa wastebasket – the first trashcan in GUI history You’ve always been a bit suspicious of the trashcan on your computer’s imaginary desk...
Dear Cynthia
Sometime in 2019, I fell in love with a photo in a way I’ve never known before: What grasped me here? Many things. The grittiness. The composition. The...
Greatest hits 2016–2019
It’s hard for me to explain how I feel about Twitter. On one hand, there is the abuse, the Nazis, and Jack Dorsey’s almost legendary indolence. When it...
As close as possible to real surfing
It makes perfect sense that the awkward term WYSIWYG – “what you see is what you get” – came into prominence only during the era of computers. For...
To save a keyboard, pt. 3
I don’t know how this works in other museums, but at the Computer History Museum in California, a decade ago, the front-of-house volunteer ladder had three...
When keyboards were desks
I felt a little bad for the few weeks of delay in sending the previous newsletter, so here’s an extra edition. Just like with the jokes issue, there’s no...
To save a keyboard, pt. 2
What am I typing this on This is that rare story where a Twitter disagreement led to something amazing. In May last year, someone tweeted a photo of a rare,...
To save a keyboard, pt. 1
What am I typing this on I’m writing this on a TA Adler-Royal Satellite 40. It’s among the last typewriters ever made, the final breath of a dying species,...
The Italian senate survival manual
“The major, fundamental drawback of the keyboard still consists in its irregular and illogical layout,” wrote one critic a few decades ago. If we could start...
The worst keyboard ever made
During my research I encountered many keyboards that felt awful, looked bad, or were conceptually bankrupt. But it was only a few months ago that I found the...
