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blugu64 posted:
In 2001, I had a Visor Prism with a VisorPhone module. I used it mostly for reading books, taking short notes, and as a phone. It was pretty bitchin'. I also had an 8MB memory module, and my only real regret about using that (it's where my books were) was that I had to swap modules to use the phone.
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# ? May 7, 2014 15:37 |
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# ? Jun 5, 2024 08:04 |
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Ultimate Mango posted:As for obsolete car tech: Honestly the non-navigation side of Sync is probably the best implementation of a "smart" car stereo I've interacted with. I had two company cars (a 2010 and then 2012 Fusion) that had Sync w/o the in-dash navigation and its execution was nearly flawless for playing back digital media and interfacing with a mobile phone via bluetooth.
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# ? May 7, 2014 15:54 |
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Ultimate Mango posted:As for obsolete car tech... Even today it holds up fairly well it gives you consumption, temp and spotty average speed readouts. The downside is that the thing sort of relied on you having to constantly give it numbers to crunch. Stuff like distance and arrival timers relied on you already knowing how far you are going to travel; you couldn't store places in there. Simpler models just provided the date/time and temp along with the ability to set off an alarm clock. Keep in mind this is just the faceplate. The whole computer rested behind the steering wheel. The system slowly expanded in complexity leading up to dashboard display readouts before being replaced by the infamous iDrive setup in 2001.
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# ? May 7, 2014 16:01 |
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I have a real irrational affinity for the old BMW onboard computers like that :\ I need to tear my display out and replace a backlight bulb, I miss it.
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# ? May 7, 2014 17:22 |
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The past few pages of this thread are great for making you feel old. Most of the phones and MP3 players posted i mentally go "that thing isn't that obsolete/old" and then you realise it came out over 12 years ago and for people in their teens now it might as well be a 8 track player.
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# ? May 7, 2014 17:31 |
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Krispy Kareem posted:What really catapulted the iPod was iTunes, which was the most unrestrictive digital music store. Music stores before iTunes had all kinds of weird rules like you could burn this track, but not this track, and only X number of times. Apple managed to cut through all that and put together an usable storefront. Sure there was still DRM, but you could burn an iTunes playlist 10 times and individual tracks until the laser on your Superdrive fell off. I know this is from a few pages ago, but this bears repeating as early digital music stores could definitely be considered a failed technology. At the time, labels and stores didn't know how to hell to combat MP3 proliferation so they tried to sell digital music in their own way. The only thing is they failed to grasp that the reason MP3s were so popular was because they were so easy to use. Everything played them, they were small, and you could download one in a few minutes even on a dial up connection. Instead of taking that idea and making formats easy to use and widely compatible, they instead made their own file formats that were full of restrictions like only being able to play a song X times, needing use proprietary software/hardware, always needing to be online, etc. Hell, in some cases it was actually more expensive to buy digitally. It failed horribly because there was no advantage to buying music digitally--why bother when you could just download the album for free and not have to worry? I remember reading at one point during the development of iTunes, Steve Jobs basically looked at what had been done and realized in order to create a successful digital music store they needed to basically make it as easy or easier than downloading MP3s. Cue iTunes being released along the iPod and for the first time people could buy music easily and cheaply. Yes, there was DRM but it was only restrictive in the sense that it was tied to your computer/device/Apple account.
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# ? May 7, 2014 17:37 |
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robodex posted:Hell, in some cases it was actually more expensive to buy digitally. Not so true for music nowadays (if anybody still actually buys music in 2014), but I can't wait for digital distribution of games to catch up. Particularly console games such as on the Xbox Live Marketplace, where a game will stay selling for RRP for years and years after it comes out. Maybe it drops to £20 if the game goes triple-platinum for some poo poo. Meanwhile you can buy a used copy for a fraction of the price. Still somewhat true for films too. Buy a digital copy of a decades-old film for ~£8, that you can buy second hand for 50p.
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# ? May 7, 2014 17:52 |
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robodex posted:Hell, in some cases it was actually more expensive to buy digitally. It failed horribly because there was no advantage to buying music digitally--why bother when you could just download the album for free and not have to worry? It's because the labels were wedded to their own obsolete technology: the album. A friend of mine who's a real music writer had a blog entry on this several years ago on Livejournal (another obsolete technology!): quote:This is the root of the singles-versus-albums debate, and it's a half-century old. Classical, with its long pieces punctuated by movements, never really had this problem. Neither did jazz, with its emphasis on performance and improvisation. But ever since gramophone records became a mass medium in the early 20th century, the industry has been trying to get the content – songs that could fit on one side of a 78-RPM platter, for instance – to follow the format they found most profitable.
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# ? May 7, 2014 18:35 |
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y'all with your Palms and Handsprings. I had a Handera TRGPro; bought it at a garage sale for $5, and it served middle school me perfectly for years. It was based, hardware-wise, on a Palm IIIX. Behind that cover are a Compactflash card slot and an IRDA port. That's right, I filled this baby up with 128 megabytes of ebooks and programs. I even ended up getting a modem that clipped to the bottom so I could browse the internet!
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# ? May 7, 2014 19:20 |
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Phanatic posted:It's because the labels were wedded to their own obsolete technology: the album. A friend of mine who's a real music writer had a blog entry on this several years ago on Livejournal (another obsolete technology!): I have never dirtier than selling Lou Bega's A Little Bit of Mambo for $19 to a teenage girl at Wherehouse Music. $20 for one song. And not even a good song.
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# ? May 7, 2014 19:41 |
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Mr. Beefhead posted:Well that just makes no goddamn sense at all. There is no way that a run of cassette tapes is in any way easier or cheaper than a run of cds, and then you've also got to deal with the fact that you're offering a thing in a format that you'd be lucky if even a fifth of your potential customers have the means to play. I mean, I can see the kitsch factor, but it's a hell of a sacrifice to make for the sake of kitsch. DrBouvenstein posted:Man, did everyone have a Palm at some point?
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# ? May 7, 2014 21:02 |
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For years, I had an Optigan in my kitchen--when my ex moved out he couldn't store it, so it stayed with me. In my kitchen. Where people would ask, "Why is there a weird piano in your kitchen?" I'd fire it up and it'd usually work, though they were basically made to be toys, not musical instruments, and the turntable made so much noise it was hard to hear the optical disk. There was also a lot of "bleeding" when you used the chord buttons, they all sort of sounded the same. Disks were really pretty though, and it had a real kitschy sound, like a porno was about to break out. In the kitchen.
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# ? May 7, 2014 21:18 |
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Krispy Kareem posted:I have never dirtier than selling Lou Bega's A Little Bit of Mambo for $19 to a teenage girl at Wherehouse Music. $20 for one song. And not even a good song. Did you ever listen to that album? My teacher in grade 8 subjected it to us. Spoiler: it's literally "Mambo No 5" over and over again with slightly different lyrics. I think there's maybe 1 or 2 songs on the album that sound different but otherwise it's the same backing track with different lyrics.
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# ? May 7, 2014 21:53 |
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Does anyone know if there's a typewriter thread in A/T or somewhere? Conversely, is there a typewriter nerd in the house?
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# ? May 7, 2014 22:14 |
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I know I shouldn't be feeling this way, but I am anyway. I recently broke my Galaxy Nexus, which was running a custom rom based on Android 4.4 (KitKat). I borrowed an old phone from a friend, and it's an HTC Incredible 2, running Verizon's bloatware-infested version of Android 2.2 (Froyo) I feel like I've been sent ten years into the tech past, even though I know this phone is barely a few years old.
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# ? May 7, 2014 22:16 |
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Try using a flip phone for a few days/weeks. That'll feel like the Stone Age.
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# ? May 7, 2014 22:23 |
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Captain Trips posted:I know I shouldn't be feeling this way, but I am anyway. The usability stuff they've done with Android since v2 and v3 is really insane. My Skyrocket came with Gingerbread, and upgrading to ICS was like a new world. Of course a lot of that is also the rom you use. I currently have an S4 running Verizon's stock JB image and it's terrible in a lot of ways even CyanogenMod ICS wasn't.
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# ? May 7, 2014 22:27 |
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carry on then posted:Try using a flip phone for a few days/weeks. That'll feel like the Stone Age. This is exactly what happened to me like 2 weeks ago- I had to use a flip phone for three days- the humanity! Although I sorta like the fact that the battery seemingly did not go down at all for the three days I was using the thing. Also I just... like the flipping-the-phone-open thing. Or any kind of motion like sliding the phone apart or something. Also physical keys! If there was an Android device with the battery life of the RAZR Maxx HD and a slide-out keyboard (that was worth a drat and didn't feel like mushy bullshit) under a full screen I would probably buy it, bulkiness be damned.
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# ? May 7, 2014 22:30 |
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Tiny Brontosaurus posted:Does anyone know if there's a typewriter thread in A/T or somewhere? Conversely, is there a typewriter nerd in the house? 1) Not that I've seen 2) Yes
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# ? May 7, 2014 22:40 |
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Magnus Praeda posted:1) Not that I've seen Hi Thinking of getting a small non-electric typewriter for making index cards (part of my outlining process). 1) Is that a thing you can even reasonably do with a typewriter 2) If so what would you suggest? Price is no particular object but learning curve/technical finickyness is.
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# ? May 7, 2014 22:44 |
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sudont posted:For years, I had an Optigan in my kitchen--when my ex moved out he couldn't store it, so it stayed with me. In my kitchen. Where people would ask, "Why is there a weird piano in your kitchen?" I'd fire it up and it'd usually work, though they were basically made to be toys, not musical instruments, and the turntable made so much noise it was hard to hear the optical disk. There was also a lot of "bleeding" when you used the chord buttons, they all sort of sounded the same. Disks were really pretty though, and it had a real kitschy sound, like a porno was about to break out. In the kitchen. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQZDulUk-I8 Lovely little album as a whole, by the way.
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# ? May 7, 2014 23:15 |
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carry on then posted:Try using a flip phone for a few days/weeks. That'll feel like the Stone Age.
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# ? May 7, 2014 23:35 |
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Collateral Damage posted:We have a couple of Nokia 100 phones at work that we threaten users with, as in "If you break your phone you get to use this for a week while we order you a replacement." "We'd like to offer you the use of this indestructible battle-club." 30 SECONDS LATER "Ow ow ow I'll give you my own phone if you stop beating me with the indestructible battle-club!"
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# ? May 8, 2014 00:03 |
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DrBouvenstein posted:Man, did everyone have a Palm at some point? I had one of those! I never mastered Graffiti and preferred the on screen keyboard. Eventually I got a sweet folding one that, sadly, only worked with that model of Palm and not with any of the ones I bought later.
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# ? May 8, 2014 00:07 |
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Phy posted:"We'd like to offer you the use of this indestructible battle-club."
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# ? May 8, 2014 00:16 |
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Tiny Brontosaurus posted:Hi It's not terribly difficult to type on a standard 3x5 index card though it will curl them slightly due to the rollers. It may also not hold the card perfectly (depends on the design of your typewriter) but if you're okay with manually tweaking each card as you put it in, yeah, it's possible. Have you ever used a manual typewriter before? Or really any typewriter? I'm guessing not, so my suggestion is this: You probably don't want to use a manual typewriter for this unless you are lugging it to your local indie coffee shop for some "serious writer" cred or something. Electric typewriters are much, much easier to use. A manual typewriter will slow your typing to a crawl since imprinting each letter requires you to apply a somewhat ridiculous (for people spoiled by touch-typing on computer keyboards) amount of pressure rapidly. You're almost certainly going to be a hell of a lot slower than you would be hand writing each card. Go to your local Goodwill (or whatever thrift shop you like) and troll for an IBM Wheelwriter or Selectric. Brother makes (made?) some really fantastic typewriters, but if you don't know what you're getting, it may be difficult, if not impossible, to find a ribbon for it. Selectrics and Wheelwriters were and are the gold standard and their ribbons are easy to get (I think Staples carries them, for example). If you're just using it for index cards, you aren't likely to use any of the advanced typesetting stuff, so which version you get is pretty irrelevant. I'd recommend bringing a blank sheet of 8.5x11 paper so you can test to see if the ribbon that's in them has any life left and also to see that each key is still striking. The other nice thing about electrics is that they (almost) all have correction ribbons, making it easy to delete mistakes which it does by overtyping each letter with a lift-off film that just pulls the ink off the page. If you're dead set on getting a manual typewriter, know that although there are a couple manufacturers still making ribbon, there are so many various manufacturers and models of manual typewriters that you may be buying a really awesome paperweight. Also, almost none of the manual typewriters you find in secondhand shops will have been maintained, they may have bent hammers, they will almost certainly need cleaning, etc. all of which may conspire to make them useless or, at least, harder to use than they should be. Notably, there are still manufacturers making new typewriters to this day. You can get a Royal Epoch on Amazon for around $130, for example. Holy crap that's a lot of about typewriters.
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# ? May 8, 2014 00:31 |
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I was in the last "typing" class my high school offered back in 95 or 96. Halfway through the semester the new "keyboarding" classroom/computer lab was finished and we moved from typewriters to computers.
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# ? May 8, 2014 00:44 |
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empty baggie posted:I was in the last "typing" class my high school offered back in 95 or 96. Halfway through the semester the new "keyboarding" classroom/computer lab was finished and we moved from typewriters to computers. What was it like, transitioning from one to the other? Personally, I found the keyboarding(which was just called typing for obvious reasons) class I took a years ago to be a waste either way.
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# ? May 8, 2014 01:31 |
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Magnus Praeda posted:If you're dead set on getting a manual typewriter, know that although there are a couple manufacturers still making ribbon, there are so many various manufacturers and models of manual typewriters that you may be buying a really awesome paperweight. Still probably not worth it for the other reasons listed, but ink's not that big a deal, tiny amount of effort to keep it from being a paperweight.
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# ? May 8, 2014 01:54 |
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SLOSifl posted:I had an Alpine head unit that did this for both tape and CD access. It got stolen from my 1981 Honda Civic along with Disc 2 of a 4-disc Led Zeppelin box set. I saved up all summer for both of those. When my car was broken into all they took was my Mike Oldfield double album of Tubular Bells on tape. At least they had taste I guess?
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# ? May 8, 2014 02:09 |
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Magnus Praeda posted:It's not terribly difficult to type on a standard 3x5 index card though it will curl them slightly due to the rollers. It may also not hold the card perfectly (depends on the design of your typewriter) but if you're okay with manually tweaking each card as you put it in, yeah, it's possible. I've been beaten thoroughly by this excellent post, but yeah, when I saw the mention of a manual typewriter my thought was "brother needs a Selectric". I have two manuals. They make lovely decorations and are occasionally useful... I've filled out a few forms with them. You have to be very careful with them, because you have to press the keys so far down that there's a very good chance you'll also end up pressing another key next to it with the edge of your finger, which will either jam the hammers or cause a second, faint letter to be typed as well. If you can find a first-gen Selectric that actually works, buy it. Those things are very tough, as Magnus mentions you can still buy ribbons everywhere, and they even have interchangeable type-balls so you can change fonts and such easily. Oh, and since the type-ball moves rather than the platen, it takes up less space on your desk and isn't constantly knocking over glasses / shifting around when it slams back to the start of a line. Seriously, look at this thing, how can you not want it? And yes, it appears the owner has put some sort of script type-ball on it which is pretty cool.
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# ? May 8, 2014 02:14 |
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Tiny Brontosaurus posted:Hi I thoroughly recommend buying a manual typewriter, they're fun and cheap. Check eBay for ribbon, they're still available for most of the mainstream typewriters. Index cards will be fiddly in a typewriter - as Magnus Praeda said it'll curl them a bit. If the platen rubber has gone hard with age the card will slip in the roller which will be irritating. If you can try one before buying it just check that all the letters print well, and that all the letters are in a straight line. Alignment can be tricky to adjust properly. Typewriters should be oiled with a small amount of light oil on a brush. Don't blast them with WD-40. I'm a fan of Olympia's portables, they're well made and enjoyable to use. Whatever you get, don't spend a fortune because you really don't have to. edit: fast thread
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# ? May 8, 2014 02:18 |
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Horace posted:Typewriters should be oiled with a small amount of light oil on a brush. Don't blast them with WD-40. This is a public service announcement: WD-40 is not a lubricant! Horace knows that, but do you? This announcement brought to you by 3-in-1 oil, an actual lubricant that is cheap and versatile.
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# ? May 8, 2014 02:42 |
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Magnus Praeda posted:It's not terribly difficult to type on a standard 3x5 index card though it will curl them slightly due to the rollers. It may also not hold the card perfectly (depends on the design of your typewriter) but if you're okay with manually tweaking each card as you put it in, yeah, it's possible. I actually have used a manual typewriter many times before, and I've been a full-time professional writer for over ten years now so my "serious writer cred" is more than sufficient, thanks. I just wanted model recommendations. I was looking for non-electric because I like to do this phase of work outside, and a typewriter over handwriting because I have an injured tendon that makes handwriting very painful. Thanks for the advice mixed in with the sneering though, that part was genuinely useful. Maybe don't assume anyone asking you about your hobby is a dilettante next time though?
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# ? May 8, 2014 03:03 |
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Yep, the WD stands for water displacer. Personally I'm a fan of white lithium grease for things that slide, and just regular old Hoppes' gun oil for things that rotate.
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# ? May 8, 2014 03:03 |
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Collateral Damage posted:Ha, you think that because it says Nokia, but the 100 is just a really basic feature phone made from cheap plastic. To its credit it's small and lightweight, which does prevent phone-bludgeoning. The Nokia 100 is a good phone it's twin, the 101, is dual sim quadband. No more cost effective phone for going overseas. I like featurephones, I get very little mileage out of smartphones. The only thing I do with smartphones that I can't do on a feature phone is google maps for the bus timetables and internet banking.
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# ? May 8, 2014 03:07 |
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Tiny Brontosaurus posted:I actually have used a manual typewriter many times before, and I've been a full-time professional writer for over ten years now so my "serious writer cred" is more than sufficient, thanks. I just wanted model recommendations. I was looking for non-electric because I like to do this phase of work outside, and a typewriter over handwriting because I have an injured tendon that makes handwriting very painful. Thanks for the advice mixed in with the sneering though, that part was genuinely useful. Maybe don't assume anyone asking you about your hobby is a dilettante next time though? I'm pretty sure you're the one being an rear end in a top hat. They gave some great generic advice for someone asking "How do I get a typewriter I can use to type notecards?" I didn't detect any condescension, and you don't have red text screaming "ASK ME ABOUT BEING A PROFESSIONAL WRITER/rear end in a top hat." Yet. Also, now I want a selectric. (PS: manual typewriters will gently caress up your hands because of the pressure you have to apply to them, good luck with that)
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# ? May 8, 2014 03:13 |
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This thread made me realize that I may have accidentally purged both my Newton Message Pad 120 and Newton 2000 with keyboard case, PCMCIA modem and Ethernet cards. I had a dancing baby animation in the 2000 complete with the music.
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# ? May 8, 2014 03:22 |
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Trilineatus posted:I'm pretty sure you're the one being an rear end in a top hat. They gave some great generic advice for someone asking "How do I get a typewriter I can use to type notecards?" I didn't detect any condescension, and you don't have red text screaming "ASK ME ABOUT BEING A PROFESSIONAL WRITER/rear end in a top hat." Pretty much everything in this quote... Including the part about wanting a Selectric, they kick rear end.
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# ? May 8, 2014 05:13 |
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# ? Jun 5, 2024 08:04 |
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Magnus Praeda posted:Have you ever used a manual typewriter before? Or really any typewriter? I'm guessing not, so my suggestion is this: Yup no condescension there. Sincere thanks to the two nicer better posts I missed though. Trilineatus posted:(PS: manual typewriters will gently caress up your hands because of the pressure you have to apply to them, good luck with that) The idea is I can type left-handed better than I can write left-handed and the typewriter idea is actually a specific recommendation from my doc, but I forgot that I automatically don't know anything about my own life because I dared ask a technology question to goons. Tiny Brontosaurus has a new favorite as of 06:12 on May 8, 2014 |
# ? May 8, 2014 06:09 |