Be Patient. Look Everywhere.

Summer

I have been busy this summer working on my novel and going places and doing stuff, but here are a few typewriter photos I took for blog postings I never finished or chose not to post.

Went on a hike near Pearisburg, VA, did some writing on my junk Adler Tippa by a small waterfall.  The machine got pretty wet taking this picture but seems to be totally fine.  It's expendable. 

My friend Alex got a few really good pictures of me typing on a junk Brother during our beach trip this summer.  Another expendable typewriter which survived and shall be going on more risky adventures. 

A picture taken after going outside to make a phone call, you can just see my bright blue Royal QDL in the window of my favorite coffee shop, the White Hart in Lynchburg, VA. 

We did some clean-up and reorganizing and now I have my own desk in the lab at work.  There were "better" work stations but only one bad-ass Steelcase desk no one wanted, their loss!

Writing Effective and Realistic Dialog

Horrible cell phone photo of the writing of this blog post 

Picture of my desk, where you should choose to instead believe I wrote this blog post 

Coffee Shop Typewriter

The Royal is in the background. 

I love how open and to the point some people are. 

Idego Coffee website (just click these words)

Dear Typosphere: Your Uniform

This was not inspired by some incident or fear anyone was going to ruin it for us, just a simple idea I decided I'd share with you all. 

Bad, bad cellphone picture.  When I got home it occurred to me I actually had a nice camera IN THAT backpack.  *facepalm*

Typewriter Lifestyle

Let something sit on my desk for a month and then find it later?  What!  No, never.

Things Are Not Made As They Were (Backpack Sized Stapler Review)

Through the end of high school and all through college and up until recently this little Swingline stapler has lived in my backpack.  It has been pretty useful to me in many instances, stapling academic deliverables last minute or tacking things onto bulletin boards and other tasks.

There is a little storage underneath which is good, because the magazine latch came loose pretty quickly after I got the stapler, and I would often find the stapler open and staples scattered in my bag.  Eventually I figured out that I could store the staples here, and move them to the magazine before stapling and then return them under here.  Minor inconvenience.   (I just filled a fountain pen, excuse the inky fingers!)

Here is the magazine, you can see the small nubbin and catch that hold the stapler closed (at least for a few short seconds). 

I found a little stapler for $7 at a store where I have some store credit.  It is a Swingline Tot 50 Deluxe, and when I looked it up on google I was very surprised to learn that my little blue Swingline is also a Tot, but the modern version. 

The old Tot has the older style sliding magazine, but it never springs open on accident while in my backpack! 

The one thing which makes the new superior to the old is that you can just buy normal staples for it.  The older Tot has much harder to find mini staples. 

The older Tot came with a box with some staples still, and I found a box for $1 at an antique store just a few days later.  I don't staple a lot so I think I am set for quite some time now. 

These staplers offer similar performance, this is a sheet of note paper folded so it is eight layers thick. 

A significant flaw of the newer blue one is that it only opens perhaps 150 degrees or so, which has made tacking more difficult on several occasions.  The older model opens in excess of 180 degrees, and is all around just much better.  I will be giving the blue one away to the next person I meet who needs to borrow a stapler. 

I collect typewriters, and I suppose I dabble in staplers.  In back is a big heavy duty Swingline extended reach stapler.  It can easily punch through an entire legal pad, cardboard backing and all.  It is overkill for a few pages, and the staple comes up through the front if there are too few.  In the middle row are two Arrows I keep on my desk: one for permanent stapling and one for temporary (why bother with the anvil when you can justify two staplers?!?)  In the front is my "new" backpack stapler and the old one which is inferior.