I wanted a cheap fountain pen to carry everyday because pens I carry have a habit of getting lost. This pen generally sells for under $10 and you can even buy 4 pens for under $20 if you shop around. Even though each pen comes with a converter for bottled ink, I also ordered some Jinhao black International Standard sized ink cartridges. International Standard sized cartridges are available from other manufacturers and they should work too, so you are not locked into a proprietary ink cartridge. I like that.

The X750 has a medium nib which is a bit more fine than my Pilot. The X750 uses a common #6 nib so you can upgrade it.

Got pen, installed cartridge. The cartridge is very rigid so you can’t squeeze it to start the ink flowing so you have to do some jabs to start off. Once I got the ink going there was some dripping but I just test wrote through it and the flow seemed to settle down to a normal flow in a short time.

Then I wrote a journal length test page, and the Jinhao X750 wrote very well. Some small skipping every so often but nothing to put me off. It writes more like a $20 pen and does not feel cheap. This could be a good starter pen if you are on a budget.

My Pilot Metropolitan glides a little bit better with a slightly broader line, but my first impression is I could write all day with the X750.

Jinhao Ink

The ink cartridges themselves seem sturdy. One complaint about Pilot cartridges is leakage during shipment. The Jinhao cartridges look and feel like they might take more abuse in a padded mailer envelope. They are reasonably priced.

The ink flows well and gets the job done. In my limited test I have no complaints. My observation is the black is more translucent than black Pilot ink, but it writes just fine.

Here is a professional review of the Jinhao X750 by Goulet Pens.

You can find Jinhao pens from various online pen retailers like Goulet (above) and also on Amazon and eBay.

Keep in mind, I have not started to carry this pen everyday so I can’t speak to things like leakage yet. I don’t even know if I will like carrying a fountain pen. I’ll update when I know.

I’ve stated before that I have set aside smart watches and gone back to an analog timepiece. One problem I had with the analog quartz watch I was using was it had thin silver hands and markings on a white background. Not a lot of contrast which makes it hard to read at a glance or in low light. I have other watches but most of them are dress watches and I rarely dress up in a suit anymore.

I decided to get a watch that was easier to see. I also wanted something mechanical, if I could find it. Briefly, there are two kinds of mechanical watches: 1. manual winding, where you have to wind it up every day, 2. automatic (self winding) watches which capture your motion as you move about to wind up the mainspring.

Automatic watches have always fascinated me so I went hunting for something suitable and found the Orient Scout Watch.

What I like about this watch:

• Casual style
• Big dark numbers on a light background.
• Dark hands that glow in the dark. Sweep second hand. Easier to glance at the time during a meeting on the sly, so I don’t send the wrong signal to others.
• Simple design: no day/date or other complications that need to be adjusted all the time. All I have to worry about is moving around enough to keep it running.
• I think it looks good.
• Made by Orient a company still specializing in mechanical watches with all movements still made in Japan.
• I like the fact that it is mechanical, somehow even more analog.
• Little window that shows a bit of the gear work and fly wheels moving - just because it’s fun.
• No battery, so there is some small environmental benefit in that.

Watches: Analog vs. Smart

I’ve had an Apple Watch and an Android Watch. The Apple watch is, by far, the better of the two. I used both for notifications from social networks, SMS and email. Well I don’t do Facebook anymore, Twitter can wait and my phone does fine notifying me about emails. In short, since I’ve backed off from social networking I don’t need a smart watch.

I grew up when everyone wore an analog wrist watch. Even with a smartphone, I never gave up the habit and I probably never will. I constantly check the time on my watch.

I like quartz watches. They are so accurate and now, so common they are inexpensive to boot.

I like automatics for mechanical watches - I don’t miss having to wind my watch every morning as with a manual. Been there.

With the automatic watches, it is fun to have a “skeleton” style watch where you can see all the inner workings move, it gives off a steampunk vibe. However, I find the the background of all that gear work can make them hard to read at a glance.

Fair warning: watches can be like fountain pens, typewriters, notebooks: collectible.

A few years ago I got into fountain pens and experimented with them for awhile, then cleaned them up and stored them away. I don’t even remember what I have and which ones I liked. I should have kept notes.

Flashback

I think when I was in my tweens, fountain pens became popular in school. At the time you could buy a cheap Scheaffer cartridge fountain pen anywhere they sold school supplies. I used one quite a lot. I found it was better than a ballpoint for compositions because I could not write as fast with a fountain pen. This allowed me to think more about what I wanted to write.

In High School I reverted back to ballpoints, and somewhere over the years the cheap Scheaffer fountain pens disappeared from the school supply shelves at the local drug stores and super markets.

Now-ish:

Of course the Internet changed everything and niche products like fountain pens got a new, wider, life. They were available again.

I Buy a New Fountain Pen

I decided to rethink this fountain pen thing and try to define what worked for me the last time and what didn’t work. Why had I set them aside? I think I got caught up in experimenting and trying different pens and bottled ink too much. Generally for daily things that I use, the KISS model works the best.

So on this reboot: pick one pen and really use it, cartridge pen, medium nib, reasonable quality, forgiving for beginners. I bought a simple Pilot Metropolitan medium. Still made in Japan. Preliminary tests: it writes well, very smooth - it glides, even on cheap paper. The black ink is very black, dries quickly and does not bleed through too much. It writes well on index cards.

Cartridge ink is more expensive, but a lot less fuss and mess - which is probably a better choice for me. KISS.

Now I have to retrain myself how to write with a fountain pen. Again.

I’m going to use this Pilot as my exclusive fountain pen and if I stick with it, I’ll see what other cartridge fountain pens I already have that I can use, because it would be handy to have a second.

Moving back, full time to Micro.blog hosted blog from self hosted Wordpress, went far smoother than expected. For the most part the experience has been interesting.

It’s interesting to try and replicate some of the features of Wordpress on MB without having the crutch of a massive library of Wordpress plugins available, which means that for some things, like Related Posts and outside Comments one must find a third party provider and do some theme editing on MB.

Tools effect behavior and I’ve noticed some effects on me with the differences between WP and MB. Some of these are good, bad or neutral, but all are something I notice.

1. I post less on MB. I’m not sure if this is good or bad. On WP I had bookmarklets and browser extensions that made sharing URL’s and snippets of interesting articles to Wordpress very easy. MB has none of that so there is more friction to sharing. I find myself using the Pinboard bookmarklet much more and saving as a bookmark to Pinboard instead of sharing. That’s kinda not good.
2. Markdown - I had harbored thoughts of making long posts on MB in HTML. But, having learned a bit of Markdown, I use Markdown. Not good or bad, just different.
3. Draft Posts - I really miss being able to save half finished posts as drafts to work on later. I’m using Simplenote as my work around. I compose most everything on Simplenote and then paste to MB.
4. No spell check in the Web UI on MB. It’s a real pain in the rump. It is also a part of posting less in point #1 above. (If they have it, please don’t tell me that the Mac and iOS apps have spell check. That was never irritating to me until I became totally dependent on MB. Now it grates. Deeply.)
5. Comments from the Indieweb - one of the things I truly loved on WP and miss deeply on MB was receiving Comments and mentions from both other Indieweb equipped blogs and Twitter and the Micro.blog timeline and having them all displayed on the proper post page (after moderation.) Hopefully MB will grow into that. Soon.
6. No more Scud Hunts - the bad thing about WP was - WP is such a mess. Things would constantly break, which would lead to my wasting a lot of time trying to find the source of the WP breakage in a Scud Hunt. On MB all that stuff is managed and support is excellent and that is no small thing. I spend a lot less time fixing things and worrying about things on MB.
7. I’m still getting used to Themes Without Sidebars (one column themes).
8. I added a third party comment host to MB. To my surprise, it’s been used much more than I ever thought it would by three groups: a. Micro.bloggers that want to comment but don’t want the comment to appear on the MB timeline, b. Indieweb people who realize they can no longer contact me from their own blogs, c. total strangers. I added commenting, because I was leaving Facebook and some very dear friends behind and I wanted to give them a chance to comment on the off chance that they might be reading my blog blatherings. I never expected this much use, so I’m doubly glad I added comments.
9. Syndication: On WP I was using JetPack to syndicate to Twitter and it worked. But I think MB does a better formatting job on syndication to Twitter.
10. Built-in Social network: Never underestimate the value of having a really good social network intertwined with your blog. This is where Micro.blog blows away the competition. A lot of old time bloggers, back in the 00’s quit blogging not because of Twitter and Facebook, but because they got tired of having no feedback other than spam. We blog, publicly, partly for interaction and when you don’t get that occasionally it’s hard to keep talking to yourself.
11. Micro.blog is great for posting photographs and is easier than WP. I say this not that I think I’ve found the cure for my sideways photo syndrome. For awhile there I wasn’t sure if it was me, Android or an Essential phone problem. I think I fixed this.
12. Even though I’m getting used to single column themes on MB, I have to say the stock theme selection on MB is, IMHO, quite good. Limited, but quite good.
13. The third party “Related Posts” service I used isn’t very good at figuring out which posts are “related” to the current posts. I renamed it to “Recommended Posts” in the interest of truthiness. But, when positioned directly beneath the content, they do get used. So a few people are exploring deeper into the blog because of this.
14. I still have not added a third party email contact form to my MB blog because I don’t have a compelling need for it other than my conviction that it should be a standard option. But I can see that people using a Micro.blog hosted blog for business or authors, freelancers, journalists etc. blogging on MB would really want a contact form. I did put a email address up, but its encrypted so that most spambots cannot read it. Not as good as having a form though.
15. Markdown does not appear to have nofollow or open in new tab or window type links.
16. I really like the Indiepaper, read later service bookmarklet and it’s integration with Micro.blog.
17. I also like using Indiebookclub which Micro.blog gives me access too.

Kewl. I was getting bored so I just switched my Micro.blog hosted theme from Marfa to Typewriter, which somehow seemed appropriate. Both my Related Posts and Intense Debate comments moved to the new theme. Yay. I added a DuckDuckGo site search to the Footer. That’s enough High Level Coding excitement for me today.

Eventually, I want to add a site search form somewhere in the header space but I need to figure out where and then try to find the template it should go in and where on that template it should go, so it needs some study.

I’m going all in and trying the Pile of Index Cards system as part of my Commonplace book. By doing this I’m dividing things into:

• Public - which is my blog here at Ramblinggit.com
• Private - notes about thoughts or ideas that are not quite complete enough for a blog post. Private ideas, schemes such as fragments of stories I want to write. Notes about anything that I don’t want splattered all over the Internet. Etc.

I’m not sure the the PoIC system is the best system for me as opposed to a bound journal, but I won’t really know until I give it a fair try. I feel more confident in taking blank index cards with me if I travel and file them when I get home, rather than bringing a whole journal. If I should loose the journal I loose everything, whereas with cards I loose just a few cards.

IF, the PoIC system does not work out I will sit down and examine what is wrong, is it the card size, or my own squirrelly brain or habits or what. If I can’t make adjustments to the card system the my backup plan is to go to a bound paper journal.

My Modifications:

Some modifications from the system outlined at the link above.

1. Colored index cards: I’m going to use different colored cards to denote the 4 different card types rather than guide marks at the top edge of the card.

2. 4 x 6 note cards instead of 3 x 5. More room, easier to use in typewriter.

3. 3 x 5 index cards (grid) for notes and a shirt pocket briefcase, when out and about, instead of a Field Notes notebook. If need be I can tape a 3 x 5 card to a colored 4 x 6 card for archiving.

4. Instead of wooden “docks” I’m using a Cropper Hopper Photo Case, Blue for my 4 x 6 cards.

Predictions:

• While I intend to type most of these cards, a fair number will end up being hand written, probably more than I think now. Must keep writing legible.
• I have quite a few fountain pens. I really don’t intend to break them out, but I might. Will probably stick with typewriter.
• If I abandon this card method and move to a bound journal, I will most likely break the fountain pens out.

Just a re-reminder for Micro.blog users: you can get the customizable code for the DuckDuckGo site search here. I thought I would repeat this in light of our new ability to customize our hosted blog templates on Micro.blog and where more people might want to add site search to their hosted blogs.

“Marfa” theme already has a site search box built in near the bottom. It got me thinking that if I ever wanted to change themes I’d definitely want to add DDG site search boxes to the theme: probably one search box near the top right above the content and another near the bottom. This saves a lot of scrolling on long posts.

I like the DDG search box because you can get rid of all branding and just have a plain box.

The inspiration for this post comes from Smokey: On the World Our Lives and Personhood

But instead of inventing more “efficient” ways to cram things into our modern lives and cut out human interactions, instead of changing our lives to match the tempo and ethos of the modern world, what if we changed the world to fit our lives?

Some of these points below may seem silly, but they are about re-taking control. If you are using an app, you are at the mercy of the developer, if you do the same thing on paper, even if it is a small thing, you are retaking control. Also, it’s important to make tasks fun if we can and to bring an element of play into our efforts.

This is not about giving up on digital, just reigning it in.

Some of the points below are inward looking and some are outward looking. Both are needed: the inward looking things are important too, you can’t change your world unless you, yourself are grounded.

R. E. M. has a lot to say about this in their song lyrics for, “Stand”

Stand in the place where you live

Now face North

Think about direction, wonder why you haven’t before …

I encourage you to read all the lyrics at the link above and think about them in the context of grounding yourself.

15 Points of Analog and Reshaping Our World

1. Subscribe to a local print, dead tree, printed, newspaper. Make that your news source. Make it as local to you as you can.
2. Try writing letters, notes, postcards to friends and family in the mail.
3. Buy a fountain pen and practice your cursive handwriting. See also #2 above.
4. Buy a working vintage manual typewriter. See #2 above.
5. Start a paper journal or commonplace book or PoIC.
6. Quit Facebook.
7. Unfollow anything or anybody you find toxic on Twitter.
8. Read more books, especially those by independent authors. Increase pleasure reading.
9. Make it a point to get out and congregate with other people regularly: worship services, town picnics, join a lodge or service organization, volunteer at the library or with Boy or Girl Scouts, meet with friends regularly for coffee and chat.
10. Start attending your town government meetings: inform yourself about what is going on right where you live.
11. You are not obliged to have “a cause”. You can if you want to but you are not obliged. Likewise, you do not have to have an opinion or position on everything.
12. Draw something - anything. Make your own comic strip.
13. Take a daily walk. Observe your neighborhood. Smell the flowers. Talk to neighbors.
14. Start a garden or plant trees.
15. Be still.

Wisdom comes with the ability to be still. Just look and listen. No more is needed. – Eckhart Tolle

Added: The list is just suggestions. Pick and chose whatever seems right for you. You don’t have to do them all.

This was also posted to /en/general.

This blog was intended to be a Commonplace book for me online. Recently I learned about Pile of Index Cards system which is sort of a Commonplace book broken up into index cards.

Combining PoIC system and Commonplace book on a Blog

And I sort of want to fuse the two together online with a blog so I have access to it from anywhere.

What I particularly like about PoIC are the card categories listed below.

Types of cards:

1. Record Card: note, diary, weather, appointments, followup, things that happened.
2. Discover Card: things from your brain. Ideas. Thoughts. Brain dump.
3. GTD Card: get things done, to do.
4. Cite card: ideas and information from outside. Important to cite the source.

On a blog you could use categories to sort those different types of cards.

So I’m trying to fuse these together somehow, but adapting a blog isn’t always easy. I’m also wondering if I should try to keep a paper based system along with an online version.

Problems and Brainstorming:

1. Categories for card types - I need to be able to select the category of the post before posting. Micro.blog only lets me do that with long form posts.
2. Record Cards or journal or both?
3. It would be nice to have the option of keeping a category private for record cards.
4. It would be nice to be able to make a blog private by varying degrees (discourage search engines via robots.txt or ban all outside readers.)
5. Cite Cards: In Indieweb terms of Kinds of Posts, Like and Bookmark posts come to mind as being Cite Cards.
6. Site search: is kind of important.
7. I know I could do this with B2evolution CMS script, which allows you to not just have multiple categories but multiple blogs and each blog can have different rules of access as to who can read it.
   
8. If I decide to have some paper index cards plus online how would that work? Would it work?
9. If I just go with a notebook type commonplace book (no cards) do I go with one book or split up books as some people do?

Credits:

Chris Aldrich for the concept of personal blog as commonplace book. @Marty for the tip on the Pile of Index Cards system.

Looking for a use for your vintage typewriter or fountain pen?

Use it to send snail mail tweets.

Ingredients:

1. Post cards
2. Typewriter - a luggable typewriter works best because regulation post cards are thick.
3. Stamps

Yup. Just type a tweet on the back of a postcard, address it, place stamp and send. You have a totally analog tweet.

What is the difference between this an a regular post card? Well, not much except intent and content: instead of telling the recipient about the great time you had at Wisconsin Dells, Wall Drug or The Reptile Gardens you are sending a thought an analog simulation of a tweet.

With a letter, you are faced with the task of filling up a whole page, and you might not have that much on your mind. With a postal tweet the pressure to fill all that blank space is eliminated and you can just send - one thought - just a sentence or two.

Photos below.

This Adler Tippa S Ultra Portable typewriter came in over the weekend. The plastic bodied “S” model was not my first choice, but Richard Polt says they are well built and the “S” model is segment shifted instead of carriage shifted so that is a plus. Also on eBay, the S models were slightly cheaper than the older model Tippa’s. This one made in Western Germany.

I tested this last night and one key is a bit sticky, but I think it could use a little lube. Heck all my non refurbished typewriters need a little lube.

The Tippa is very thin and compact and light in weight. It was marketed as “an office in a briefcase” and I can see why this typewriter would be favored by traveling businessmen for filling out forms and reports.

This is a nice ultra portable and a good addition to any collection.

I think it was about 9 months ago, I set aside my Android watch and had a new battery put in my old analog wrist watch. I don’t miss the Android watch at all.

For awhile, the Android watch lay on it’s charger on my nightstand serving as a bedside clock. But disconnected from the internet it’s sense of time got all befuddled so I needed a replacement.

I looked for alarm clocks on Amazon. Plenty of digital clocks available, most with battery backup so you don’t have to reset the time after every micro power outage. Can’t this just be simple? I looked at analog alarm clocks. I found a cheap electric one from Westclock with a backlit dial so I could read it in the dark. No digital, no quartz, no battery, just a clock with proper hands and a dial. Simple and it gets the job done.

I also noticed I have not reset the clock or date in my car since I changed my car battery that went bad last summer. It requires getting out a manual, thicker than a Microsoft Word for MS-DOS manual from the 1980’s just to set a car clock. Pffft. I can’t be bothered, plus I have this watch on my wrist which keeps good time.

I have not synced my latest phone with my car either. That requires another manual. I don’t miss that either: the fancy car dash won’t read me SMS texts until the car stops moving and I don’t like talking on the phone while driving. Everybody calls while I’m driving, mostly robo call spam. They can all just leave a message if it’s important.

So now, I’m collecting manual typewriters. More analog. I really don’t have a use for them but there is something reassuring about a device that can still function completely without electric power and without connecting to the Internet. You put in paper, hit keys and it just works. And it does not track you, spy on you, report back to the mothership or show you advertisements.

I really don’t have a use for typewriters, but I’ll try to find some or at least one. There must be a use.

And so it goes. Maybe I’m tired of adapting my life to technology. Technology should adapt to the way I want to do things. It’s supposed to make life easier, not harder. It shouldn’t require a manual to set a clock. I shouldn’t have to memorize 6 levels of car dashboard menus written by a moron or figure which cruise control levers plus the turn signal stalk I have to click so as to navigate said moronic menus. Because I have better things to do with my fecking time.

I’m not going completely analog. I’m not going off the grid. After all, I have to go online and order new ink ribbons for these typewriters.

Here is how I define the Independent Web:

1. You are an individual, small group of individuals, maybe an ORG.
2. You have a website you built, mostly non commercial.
3. You have your own domain. (Not a 100% requirement but something to strive for.)

The Independent Web is the big tent. It tries not to be too commercial. It has a low particle count of Corporate Suits. Those old GeoCities sites were part of the Independent Web, so far back it was just called “The Web”. A personal blog on Wordpress.com is part of it too. The Independent Web is about individuals Creating and individual acts of Creation. It can be useful, silly, humorous, thoughtful and alarming all at the same time. It is the Street Fair of the Web. It stands in contrast to the cold, dead, grey hollowness of the Corporate Web.

Independent Web can be shortened to “Indie Web” or “Indieweb.”

Here is how I define the Indieweb:

Indieweb.org has their own definitions, they start at the above but then refine and narrow. Here’s my spin: Indieweb is a subset of the Independent Web. It’s trying to add standards and tools to expand and enhance the Indie Web and extend communication and interaction between independent websites with a lot of Good Stuff that has jargonish names and Code which I can’t keep straight. It’s all cool.

Websites that are part of the Independent Web (above) are part of the Indieweb too. They are just at the beginning of the journey if they ever choose to make that journey.

Indieweb can be shortened to “Indieweb”.

And it’s confusing and hard to explain in a soundbite, so just make a website, use your own domain and then scout out the rest.

This is a followup of Micro.blog: Adding Hosted Related Posts and you should read that first for context, because I’m lazy and don’t want to have to type half of that again. :-)

Putting the Related Hosts so they would appear at the very bottom of the page just was not working. On my pages, I doubt anyone scrolls down past the comments form so nobody was seeing them. I swapped out the JS code for the “Inline” type display. This requires two separate JS code snippets: 1. A general call code snippet, which I placed in the footer, 2. A second snippet which I placed in the Post template as described in the link above, you place this where you want the Related Posts to appear, which is right below the content where a visitor has the chance to see them.

My observation so far is that if AddThis has a relevency algo it’s pretty weak. I think these are more random posts from this blog. Not real good, but not all bad if it gets people to explore other posts on the blog. So now I need to watch my stats and see what paths visitors, particularly those from search engines, take, and also monitor how related the posts becomes over time as AddThis learns about more blog posts.

I’m rebuilding my Following page (aka Blogroll). After dithering between trying to do it on Micro.blog as either a static page or as a category, I opted for creating a Following category because I think it will be easier to maintain.

1. Created Following category.
2. Added one short post per followed URL.
3. Click Posts and Edit each Following post to check Following category. On the Web the category options only appear after 270 characters so getting short posts into a category requires this extra step.

Navigation: I wanted to put Following on my Navigation Menu, so I created a Page named “Following” and pasted the URL to the Following Category in the page content. On Micro.blog, if you only paste a URL into the Page content it creates a redirect.

So now it looks like there is a Page named “Following” in my navigation but it really sends you to the “Following” Category. See it here.

I’m adding only 2 - 3 blogs a day so I don’t spam up the MB Timeline too much so this will take awhile.

The Hermes Rocket is a very compact and light weight Swiss made, ultra portable typewriter. All the Hermes typewriters are known for their high quality. Sideways photo here.

I picked this one up on eBay. Everything works, but several keys stick a bit. I need to test it again because it was still cold from shipping. The keys issue is minor and expected. I’ll try and clean the action and then lubricate it myself. If that does not work I’ll take it in for repair.

Besides the keys this little typewriter is in good shape,especially for an item older than I am. Right now it’s the crown jewel in my collection. It has a small footprint, is light and and very thin. This was intended for people that travel a lot. Keep in mind, the 1950’s only had prop and turbo prop airliners, both with major restrictions on luggage weight and I can’t help but think this was designed with that sort of travel in mind. It’s just so stinking cute.

This impressed me as being a very high quality machine.

If you like ultra portable typewriters, the Hermes Rocket is one to seriously consider. Hermes made a similar model called the “Baby” which is also highly sought after. Either are worth collecting.

I wanted an Olympia. I wanted an ultra portable. I saw this Olympia SF on eBay for a good price and took a chance. This one came with a leather, zip case. Official sideways photo here.

Older Olympia’s are known for their quality. This one is stamped steel and feels - solid. It’s pretty thin and a little bit heavy for an ultra but it is fairly compact. Everything about it sort of screams quality, dependability and good fit and finish.

This one, only needs a new ribbon! There are a few scratches from normal use but none of the keys stick so it’s ready to type once I change the ribbon.

I like it. I’m not in love with the style, but this is a good machine. I will use this.

These are high on my list.

1. Olivetti Lettera 22 - serviced or refurbished.
2. Hermes 3000 - 1950’s preferred or 1960’s. Refurbished. Costly.
3. Remington Streamliner - 30’s or 40’s. Refurbished or rebuilt. Costly.

Others if the opportunity presents:

• Smith Corona Skyriter - 1950’s, refurbished USA
• Olympia SM 3 or 4 - 1950’s refurbished W. German
• GROMA KOLIBRI - 1950’s in good working order. (East German, favored by Stasi secret police field agents.)
• Gossen Tippa-B Typewriter or even an A model. 1950’s Refurbished. Costly “Office in a briefcase.” W. German

At the bulky end of the ultra portable typewriter spectrum (as near as I can tell, since I don’t have a lot of ultra portables to compare it to) is this made in Mexico 1970’s Olivetti Lettera 35i I bought on eBay. You can see a sideways photo here.

This was something not quite an impulse buy, more of an opportunity buy. This typewriter was listed as “New” by the seller. It was still in it’s original box, yes it had been sold and the box opened, but the typewriter was still wrapped in the original clear film and inner packing. Somebody had bought it over 40 years ago, inspected it, and then tucked it away in a closet for decades unused.

And there is no sign of it having ever been used. The roller has no marks on it and the thing is as pristine as the day it came off the assembly line. Only the ribbon did not survive. No case, just an original Olivetti vinyl tote bag and instructions.

The body is cast aluminum, not plastic and everything just works. It might need a little lube and it definitely needs a new ribbon. What the heck, I pounced on it. The seller was not fibbing, it really is in New condition. I’m glad I took the chance and bought it.

The nice bit is it’s not so valuable that I would be afraid to take it somewhere and type, like in a park.

So this is #3 in the collection.

I was not a big fan of President Obama’s time as President. He did too little to undo the gross overreach of Federal power from the Bush the Second years and he did use Executive Orders a bit too much for my comfort even if they were mostly well intentioned.

What frosts me, is the Republicans bitterly decried President Obama’s use of Executive Orders, but many are now supporting Trump’s State of Emergency declaration - not all but far too many. That just strikes me as two-faced.

State of Emergency Declarations are intended for REAL FECKING EMERGENCIES not as a cheesy loophole to get around Congress.

The only emergency is the loose cannon in the White House.

Anyone familiar with Wordpress knows about the Related Posts feature as part of JetPack. This places 3 links to other posts you have written with similar content just below each post on WP and it does a pretty good job of it. I think Blogger has a similar function.

It took many months, but what I noticed, over time on WP is that visitors, often helicoptering in from search engines, would actually use the Related Posts to explore deeper and read more posts on my blog, which is what I wanted.

I knew I would be giving that up when I moved to Micro.blog which does not have a Related Posts option. (For good reason, to do Related Posts right and make them relevant takes quite a bit of programming and overhead and it’s not vital to the MB service in the way editing templates or categories are.) But I started wondering if there was a third party hosted service that would do it and discovered two that are not just Wordpress plugins, but usable on most websites.

• AddThis - they have a number of tools and a Related Posts JS is one.
  
• Shareaholic

Disclaimer: At this moment, I don’t know if either of these “free” services insert ads or whatever

The Experiment: Add This

I have signed up for Add This and installed the JS code on my Micro.blog hosted blog. Three types of code were available for an HTML site:

1. Slider - I hate sliders so I skipped that.
2. Inline - This puts the Related Posts in among your content, not my favorite but I might try it if it will put the related posts immediately below the content and above the Comments. Must experiment.
3. Footer - The related posts show up in the bottom of the page no matter what. Don’t let the name fool you the code goes in the Post template not the Footer on MB.

Installation

You install the unique JS code just like I installed the Comment Code in the template.

How it Works

Once you install the custom code on your template you need to manually bring up individual blog posts. As near as I can tell this calls in AddThis which scrapes the page and adds that page to it’s list of your pages. Per AddThis: it takes about 24 - 48 hours for related posts to show up.

Does it Work?

As I write this, I’m less than 24 hours into it so it’s too early to know anything.

Some observations:

1. When I installed this my blog title was kinda long. Add This wants to put the full title before the post title so all related posts look like they have the same Title. You have to mouse over to see the rest of the post title. I have shortened the blog title but I may have to manually call fro a re-scrape.
2. I’m not sure about relevance. The long blog title might be messing things up. Right now it looks like it’s just suggesting random posts, but that might still be better than nothing. I’m not sure how relevant this will be even under optimal conditions. We will see.
3. I focused on having it scrape long form blog posts.
4. The Footer style code always appears at the bottom of the page. This is not all bad since it does not interfere with the rest of the page content if it loads a little slow.
5. It will slow page loads slightly. Not a problem with the Footer style code.
6. It is easy to install.
7. You can get rid of the AddThis branding. Fortunately the branding is small.
8. I like that the code does not tack on Sharing buttons or other stuff I don’t want.
9. It does adapt to mobile.

On page example, here.

Will it Increase Page Views?

That is going to take a few weeks of testing. I don’t think it will hurt. Since it appears in the footer it is quite far down on the page. I will let you know as I experiment.

If anyone else decides to experiment with either of these services please let me know! Thanks.

• Webmentions received from non-MB member blogs and Twitter and published on MB hosted blogs (comments, facepiles etc.)
• * Ability to reply via webmention.
• Replies from Micro.blog timeline should appear on MB hosted blogs.
• Comment form with antispam protection on MB hosted blogs.
  
• Trackbacks and pings received should appear on MB hosted blogs. (Needs antispam.)
• Ability to send Trackbacks and Pings.

Narrative: as @Manton mentioned in the latest Core Intuition the part of Micro.blog that sustains the service (pays the bills) is the blog hosting half. So, to me, that service needs to be compelling as a free-standing blog host to attract and retain paying customers. By now most blog services have the same old list of standard features those do need to be looked at and included on MB, but IMHO, the thing that no other blog system has is turn-key, out of the box true Indieweb discussion support. Micro.blog is much further along than anybody else in this regard but what it’s missing is in that bullet list above and that list is in rough order of importance. Having those would differentiate the MB service from Blogger, Wordpress.com and all the rest. Own the niche. Indieweb type discussion is the only really new thing out there in the blogosphere, and it’s doable.

Why? I think when potential customers see how much interaction there is on MB hosted blogs they will find that a compelling reason. The comments and mentions appearing right on the hosted blog’s post pages would be visible proof of activity - and people respond to activity. (These things should have an off/on switch so the blog owner can enable/disable as they choose.) I also think this is viral - interest will spread by word of mouth.

I do suspect that most of these are in the pipeline but feedback is good and making MB hosted blogs more like stand alone blogs is good too because people will be less likely to look to WP, Blot or other scripts for their blogs.

My 1940’s refurbished Royal Quiet Deluxe came in today. It’s a wonderful machine and it looks almost brand new. You can see my exclusive Yet Another Sideways Photo here Sigh

This was a model that I really wanted to have. Back when I was in grade school, reading Hardy Boys detective books and watching the 1960’s revival of “Dragnet” on TV I would start banging out my own detective reports on a kids typewriter which soon rattled apart. My mother, bless her heart, dug out two old late 40’s Royal portable Quiet Deluxe typewriters from the basement. These had been my Mom and Dad’s typewriters at university. Both needed service with keys sticking. We got got the better of the two repaired by trading in the other machine to the repair shop in return for service. So soon I was back to typing up imaginary police reports on rainy days.

I think my mother saw some value in this play typing. I started using a dictionary for one thing, that alone was a major breakthrough, and I was writing sentences even paragraphs because I wanted to not just because I had to for school.

I don’t know what ever happened to that old Royal, but if I was going to start collecting typewriters I wanted to replace it.

I bought this typewriter online from Kentucky Typer a typewriter refurbisher and repair store. The whole transaction went so smooth and the machine was just as described. Bookmark them. I recommend them highly.

Adding Hosted Comments to a PAGE on Micro.blog

Sometimes we create PAGES on a blog that contain content that we would like visitors to be able to comment about. I’ve been trying to figure out how to add hosted comments just to a page on MB, full stop. I had examined all the templates and found no good place to insert the commenting JS code. And even if I had found a place the added problem would be: I only want comments on certain pages not all pages. What to do?

Adding comments from Disqus, IntenseDebate or others to a page on Micro.blog is different than adding it to posts and far easier. **You don’t have to mess with templates!”

Goto: Account > Edit Design > Pages > select a page to edit.

The content box (the form you post content in when making a page) accepts Markdown, HTML and JavaScript. So it finally perked up to my brain-pan that I could probably just add the custom JS code below the normal content of a page right in the content form.

It’s that simple. You have to repeat this for each page you want comments on. It will not appear on all pages automatically.

You can see an example on my World War II Movies List page.

I’ve only done this with IntenseDebate code but it should work with others.

Enjoy.

Today I found a used typewriter stand at a local office furniture store, $25. Made in 1961, almost as old as me - vintage, and built strong as a tank and still solid as - a typewriter stand built like a tank.

Also stopped by the local charity resale shop: they had 3 portable manual typewriters marked $10, 30 and 40. I didn’t test them. All were well used and needed extensive cleaning at the least. If I were a refurbisher and mechanically handy, I would have bought the lot but passed because that’s not a gig I want to get into. That and none where a model that “spoke” to me.

Backing up to 13 February 2019

Most people are collecting portable typewriters which means the full desktop manuals are not getting a lot of love and therefore the prices are much lower. Below is an avacado green Royal desktop which I did not buy priced at an antique mall for $45 and you can probably get it for less. Assuming it works that is a good price for a machine for maybe a 10 year old that is keen on having their own typewriter or somebody on a tight budget but wants a manual.