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So you want to be a typewriter mechanic?
As some typewriter collectors have realized there is a typewriter revolution going on out there. This means that there’s a growing need for people who can clean, maintain, repair, and restore typewriters. If this sounds like something you’re interested in doing, there are a huge number of resources out there that you can tap into to figure out how to do all of this work on your own.
Here’s a comprehensive, thorough and over all impressive guide to the arts and crafts of typewriter maintenance. A rabbit hole I hope I never go through, ‘cause it can be the last hobby of mine that my wife needs to start walking and never look back.
I was explaining Micro.blog to a friend and he was digging it quite well. There was one thing he couldn’t understand: not knowing the follower count. It’s a feature actually, believe me! I tried to tell him. No way, he could not grasp what’s social about not knowing who follows you or not.
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Faith makes no fucking sense.
The first thing I’ve read about faith in 50 years that actually makes sense.
I’m faithless. As faithless as one can be. I get up and work every day for a sense of duty and love for my family. I have no faith whatsoever in an ethereal being, power or energy and don’t miss it at all. I have dreams and no faith at all about them coming to reality by happenstance. Who knows anyway.
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this blog is now ActivityPub enabled.
That’s right — you can now follow this fine and noble digital content emporium in the Fediverse.
Just follow the address below on your fediverse platform of choice and, all being well, you’ll get updates right in your stream.
I love the federated Internet. I just love it. It’s full of free people with nothing more and nothing less than an altruistic will to speak, share and connect. I love it.
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Typora is a super elegant writing tool. Markdown without Markdown. Win a free license this week!
It is a phenomenal tool, really. It’s my everyday markdown note taking app and it’s aesthetically minimal while packed with features. Don’t miss Brett’s offering and, whatever your chances, go take a look at the app.
Which reminded me of this:
For if once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination. Once begin upon this downward path, you never know where you are to stop.
From On Murder Considered as one of the Fine Arts, by Thomas de Quincy.
I have noticed recently that when I message my family and friends, I often forget to end the last sentence with a period. This is how the decline begins. This is how people turn into liars and thieves and how civilizations come to an end.
I just tweaked a Keyboard Maestro macro that I use every day to open a new case and create and hook together the related project in OmniFocus, note in NotePlan, folder in Finder and synced folder in DEVONthink, and I’m humbled by all the hard work that developers do to make my life much easier.
Thank you Peter N Lewis at Keyboard Maestro, the Omni Group, Eduard Metzger at NotePlan, DEVONtechnologies, Luc Beaudoin at Hookmark and so many more.
🔗 Age Groups - Demographics - Research Guides at University of Southern California
There may be some slight variations in the definitions of a specific "generation", but the following list generally reflects the standard years ascribed to each:
- The Greatest Generation – born 1901-1924.
- The Silent Generation – born 1925-1945.
- The Baby Boomer Generation – born 1946-1964.
- Generation X – born 1965-1979.
- Millennials – born 1980-1994.
- Generation Z – born 1995-2012.
- Gen Alpha – born 2013 – 2025.
Turns out I’m not a Boomer, not by a long shot. I’m late Generation X.
Rebar and reinforced concrete by @drdrang
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A recent episode of the 99% Invisible podcast, “Brilliantly Boring,” covers a topic near and dear to my heart: reinforced concrete—more specifically, the rebar that does the reinforcing. The show does an excellent job in a short period. I just want to fill in some details.
“The 99% invisible podcast Brilliantly Boring” must be the best name I’ve ever seen for a podcast. For any kind of show.
Anyhow, Dr. Drang’s post is very interesting and not at all boring. As a lawyer I work with many construction experts, architects and engineers, and I always enjoy listening to their technical explanations.
BTW, regarding this comment about the concrete from Ancient Rome:
It took me a while to write this post, mainly because I kept veering off on tangents about Frank Lloyd Wright’s home and office in Oak Park, strain compatibility, the weird belief among some people that Roman concrete was better than today’s, compression-only structures, rebar size nomenclature, and the tendency for concrete to use the waste products of other industries (like flyash and, perhaps, discarded cable car rope). I hope you appreciate how I managed to edit it down.
I guess they made tons of constructions with concrete and only the Pantheon survives. But the Pantheon is so impressive. I’d like to read a follow-up post by Dr. Drang explaining how was Roman concrete made and what the differences where with todays concrete (apart from the rebar, I guess).
As ever, Lou @amerpie brings us a very interesting tool that I’m going to try right away.
UPDATE after trying it for a while: The UI can be changed to Chinese (traditional and simplified), English, French and Italian. Translation is also available only in those languages. I mainly work with texts in Spanish, and ClickKnow is able to understand them, but it can only give me the output in the above mentioned languages. Hope Spanish is in the works.
Also, the trial period says 30/30. I thought it’d be 30 days, but it’s 30 operations with the app. I’m down to 27 right now. I think it’s fair.
ClickKnow Features
- Translates selected text into the language of your choice (select language in settings)
- Summarize big blocks of selected text, very useful when researching
- Spell check (can be turned on/off in settings)
- Tracks flight numbers
- Pops up a calendar when a time string is selected, allowing you to add it to Google or Apple Calendars
- Calculates the result of a math formula
- Explain selected programming code in plain language
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Thanks to @pratik I found out Write.as is offering free accounts again.
Write.as has thrown its hat back in the ring by re-offering free accounts. I’ve always been curious about it and briefly used it for my LinkingPark blog. It’s federated too.
So I had to run and get myself one, just in case, just for FOMO, just for fun. Here it is, I guess I’ll put it to good use some day:
The Analog Tool meeting was so much fun, @cygnoir @melsoutdoorlife @pratik @jessekelber @takeo see you again soon!
I mean.
I like Micro.blog because I was about to make a cynical remark but I thought that a nice place with nice people doesn’t deserve any toxic content.
I’m a long time Overcast user and, while deciding whether to subscribe to its Pro features or not, and trying other apps like Castro, I am giving a go to the Apple Podcasts app. I’m confused. It has every feature I need and then some. Am I wrong? Is it actually good enough? I think it is.
This is a universal truth. It feels so good to throw some ass. I did forget my age two weeks ago in Malaga, and does it feel good to dance and dance and dance.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the great, the astonishing, the pure joy of Sofi Tukker.
Good night.
🔗 Bill Clinton on my podcast feed
I’m listening to Dave Winer’s podcast0 feed. I don’t really know why I’m listening to a 60 minutes program on Bill Clinton, from 2004, no less. But I feel like I’m in a time machine. So cool.
It’s raining cats and dogs in Bilbao right now. And I swear to you we’re not eating them, JD.
For some weird reason, the Shortcut that works perfectly in iOS, grabs the text from TOT and publishes it without a hitch, does not work in the Mac. It just freezes. Both TOT and the Shortcut are identical in both systems. And the Shortcut itself works in the Mac, I’m using it right now. Who knows.