Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • Say what? 😯

    As I walk toward the entrance to my office, two people, a man and a woman in their 20s, are walking in the opposite direction. The woman says something I can't hear, and the man says in a strong Spanish accent:

    What kind if cigars do you like?

  • the weight of a man

    you suggest a weighted blanket
    and I don't dare say
    I'd much rather be squished 
    by the weight of a man
    

  • Holiday Inn

    I pose this question. How is it that it bothers me most on that a Holiday Inn was used, not a Marriott or a Hilton. Just a common Holiday Inn, with roaches and booted cars in the parking lot.

    My suspicions started two weeks ago. I would find absolutely nothing in her car; Cleaned quite more often than the normal bi-monthly task. Nothing to be found. No crumbs, wrinkled receipts, or any of my things. Why would the car need to be vaccumed and removed of any evidence so often?

• Technology and Free Software

  • SMITH CORONA PWP3 word processor

    A month ago I discovered typewriter-mode for Emacs and found it is helpful for my creativity and productivity. For some kinds of writing, at least, it is paradoxically useful not to be able to easily delete, edit, or relocate text. I realized that, with Emacs' profuse and rapid editing capabilities, I was spending a lot of time, in my first draft, delete things I just wrote, agonizing over specific word choices, correcting spelling mistakes, and such like, so that writing even a few paragraphs felt like a stifling and laborious process. In typewriter-mode, I am freed up to just focus on my current thought, sentence, and paragraph. Then, after I am done dumping out all my thoughts, I will turn off typewriter mode and do a revision & editing pass, and then maybe one more quick pass to catch any spelling mistakes I missed the first time. This is the process that was drilled into me back in elementary school: be creative in the first draft, revise in the second draft, and then produce a polished final draft.

    This experience, and also watching some 1970s television, made me curious what it would be like writing on an actual typewriter. I have a pen pal and so I write letters with pencil fairly often, but to be honest I don't really like writing long documents in pencil, as I write much slower than my mind can think, and my hand gets cramped. A typewriter sounds like a nice step up, being faster and easier, but still more fun than using an actual word processor. I didn't want a fully mechanical typewriter, however, due to ergonomic concerns, so an electromechanical typewriter sounded appealing.

  • Expose only share links of a private service with caddy