Thread by @mwichary

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. :·)

Buy my book (eventually) to understand this cryptic conversation!

https://twitter.com/jeffkisseloff/status/1118570953410269184

How is your evening going?

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.)

My book is now leading me to some heavy interlibrary drama and intrigue!

That feeling when you persevere, and finally find the photo you want – and then realize it was hard to find because of a *typo*.

Interlibrary chase continues!

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_O

Just another day in keyboard research land!

(Art direction and photo by @neobarnabas.)

My friend @GlennF pointed out August Dvorak’s grave (in Seattle) kind of looks like a split keyboard. 0_O

Slowly, but surely: working on the visual side of the book.

I forgot how much I love emulators.

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.

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.

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.

And now five years of Royal Standard – 50,000+ words – are on Internet Archive for anyone to read: archive.org/search.php?que…

(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.)

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”: archive.org/details/the-ro…

(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!)

In the meantime, please enjoy this photo of an awesome Typewriter Car.

Preparing for (tomorrow’s?) newsletter!

A portrait of a person slowly losing their mind in the infinite number of typesetting details.

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.

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!)

getrevue.co/profile/shift-…

Yes!!!

🤷‍♂️

Should I change my name y/n

It’s been hard to read other books for a while now. As I read, my mind keeps going to either “ah, this is nice, will people be so engrossed in my book?” or “this is so much better than what I’ve done.”

Then, I keep pausing to write down new ideas, or places to rewrite, or turns of phrases to steal.

And even without any of the above, I keep noticing typographical or typesetting details, and wondering about those, too.

(For example, I am trying to read “A burglar’s guide to the city” and just spent 5 minutes wondering whether these decorative paragraph breaks were cute or not, as my eyes blindly followed sentences without my brain registering anything.)

Always happy when I can take what seem like an unsalvageable photo, and through the magic of Lightroom and Photoshop turn it into an okay one.

Spent most of today photographing keyboards from @keyboardio’s collection. (For the book.)

After I was done, I realized I photographed 56 (!) keyboards.

@keyboardio Also, sometimes the best part of the keyboard is its connector.

@keyboardio Fun fact: Each keyboard received, on average, 670 megapixels.

#caturday with a sweet cat in my lap

I woke up early to visit a faraway library before work, and scan one particular photo for the book. I grabbed the volume, and it opened at the exact very page that had the photo I wanted. 😮

2007-2019

(The original iPhone courtesy @jfire.)

@jfire As much as I love words and writing, taking a nice photo of an important artifact brings me as much joy.

This is today’s book-bound photo of quite possibly the best keyboard ever made.

@jfire Had fun at the keyboard meetup in San Jose today!

@jfire I keep coming back to this photo: four generations of people in awe of the Space Cadet keyboard (I’m assuming for very different reasons).

Knowing what seem like more impressive keyboards, I don’t fully understand the enduring appeal of Space Cadet… but it’s undeniable.

@jfire Huh. This turned out kind of nice.

@jfire In following another thread, I found an excellent photo of an overlay on top of a keyboard – among the best I’ve ever seen. I got really excited and immediately wanted to contact the photographer.

Then I realized *I* took this photo, thirteen years ago:
flickr.com/photos/mwichar…

@jfire Can you afford to miss this week’s newsletter and learn what on the earth is this supposed to be?

That’s right, I didn’t think so.

Sign up here if you haven’t already! getrevue.co/profile/shift-…

@jfire Today my worlds collided – historical research for the book was helpful in figuring out a weird bug at work: pressing Shift+numpad 2 wasn’t working on Windows.

@jfire (Hilariously, the person I was referring to complained that this secret feature was already poorly understood and documented by mid-1980s. And here were are in very, very late 2010s, and it’s still rearing its ugly head.)

The glamour of book writing: endless days on your couch cleaning up images in Photoshop while rewatching TV + cleaning a gross typewriter to prepare for a photo… in your bed, because you ran out of floor space.

Also, somehow there is also a vintage BlackBerry in my bed! I have no recollection of this.

Compiling a list of acknowledgements for my book and getting… unexpectedly emotional? So many great people who’ve generously helped me, and on so many levels, too. Thank you.

(I know I haven’t updated this thread in a while, but I’ve been spending last many months working on the visual side of the book. It’s hard to talk about it and not show anything – but showing things would be spoiling things!

Still, I have So Many Great Photos for the book. I’m really excited for you to see them. And this part of the work should be finally done within weeks… and then the next newsletter comes!)

After some encouragement – here are four spreads.

There are hundreds more. :·)

The sticky wall is back! Now tracking finalizing the visuals for each chapter. (Green sticky instead of pink in the first column.) Each chapter is ~90% done, so it’ll happen pretty quickly. Two so far!