Keyboard error, here and gone

Typing on a device isn’t easy for a lot of us digital immigrants: Unlike those who grew up with smart devices (phones and tablets), some of us have a bit of trouble or awkwardness using the virtual keyboards on those devices. Sometimes, the device manufacturer can make matters worse. That happened to me, until one day it was gone.

I’ve used the “New Zealand English” keyboard on my iPhone and iPad for many years now, chiefly so I can get the macrons used in most versions of written Māori (for example, in the word "Māori" the “a” has a macron). I pretty obviously like to try to type Māori words correctly, and those keyboards made that possible.

As a bonus, those same keyboards allowed all sorts of other character modifiers used in various European languages, such as, umlauts in German (like in the word “grün”, which means green in English). I have the same sort of commitment to try to to type vowels correctly in all the non-English European languages I use from time to time (in non-English European languages, it’s most likely to be for a proper name).

After some upgrade or other, I noticed that the “New Zealand English” keyboard on my iPad no longer had anything but regular letters and macrons—there were no other character modifiers. I noticed this because I was leaving a Facebook comment and needed an umlaut (for a name), only to discover they were gone.

After some fruitless research, I ended up adding a German keyboard to my iPad, which gave me umlauts again. Unfortunately, that added new problems and frustrations.

In the screenshot avive, the NZ English keyboard is at top, and the German version is below. I toggled between the keyboards by tapping the globe symbol in the bottom row (second key from the left edge). However, that was also how I accessed emojis, something I use a lot in Facebook comments, private messages, texts, etc. It turns out that it was easy to accidentally switch to German and then be faced with a different keyboard layout (apparently called QWERTZ instead of the English QWERTY, and for the same reason). Sometimes I wasn’t even aware I’d accidentally bumped the globe key, so intent was I on what I was writing. Sometimes I also got into a weird loop trying to get an emoji or back to English. I was exasperated enough that I decided to (eventually) delete the German keyboard.

Then, everything changed.

Apple released another update to the operating system for my iPad, and I—eventually—noticed that the New Zealand English keyboard once again had all the special characters that had been missing. I then deleted the German keyboard, and my switching between letters and emojis was once again a peaceful endeavour.

The not noticing thing is a repeating reality, so I don’t know if my iPhone keyboard was similarly afflicted, though I presume it was. I generally only use that keyboard for texting because it’s so small and my fingers aren’t. I also never installed the German keyboard in my phone because I rarely, if ever, needed anything beyond macrons.

The story is even more complicated on my desktop Mac, and another reason I didn’t notice the difference on the iPad.

On my Mac, I use "Australian English" as my “input source” (which is mainly about keyboard configuration, though it apparently helps with spelling/autocorrect; there is no NZ English keyboard). That keyboard has all the European characters—but no macrons. For that, I have a second keyboard—called “Māori”—that has macrons, but no European special characters. Most of the time I have the keyboard set to Māori, which is usually all I need. When I need an umlaut or whatever, I use my mouse and toggle to the Australian keyboard, then back to Māori (there's probably a keyboard shortcut to toggle between the two keyboards, but I've never looked into it; it's highly improbable I'd remember it). When I noticed the change on the iPad keyboard, I just assumed Apple was standardising keyboards between mobile devices and Macs.

At any rate, I'm glad it's once again simple to type whatever non-English character I need, and to only have to use one keyboard to do it. It'd be nice if Apple did something similar with the Mac, but toggling keyboards on my Mac isn't even nearly as annoying as it was on the iPad.

Sometimes it's the smallest things that can make the biggest difference. I just never would've expected a virtual keyboard on a tablet would prove the point.

Perseverance is key

Some time ago (I don’t remember how long), I decided to post less to my personal Facebook—just because, no particular reason, really. However, that meant Facebook friends didn’t know what I’ve been doing unless they read this blog—and probably not even then, since there are many things I haven’t talked about here, either. So, yesterday I shared a bit of what I haven’t shared there over the past week alone. I thought I’d share it here, too, with relevant links:

• I mowed my lawns on Saturday and discovered the second battery is dead (it may have a fault in its electronics). The battery came with my mower, so it’s more than three years old—and the warranty was for three years, of course. Might be covered under the Consumer Guarantees Act, though I doubt it, and I’d have to find the receipt for something I bought two months after I moved into this house (not likely after everything I’ve done to it since then and everything else that’s happened). There’s apparently one thing I can try to see if it’s really dead or just sleeping (seriously). Rather than buy an expensive new battery, I’ll probably mow my lawns over two days in wet weather (and BTW, our next summer ought to be a dry one —🤞)

• Yesterday [Tuesday], I took Leo for his annual jabs. He was SUCH a good boy—probably the best-behaved of any of our furbabies, actually. Mind you, the vet freely bribed him with treats, so that probably helped. She also told me he was 400 grams heavier than last year (LOL—she said that after lots of treats, and then gave him more). He also needs his teeth cleaned to avoid gum problems/heart disease. So, basically, he takes after me (though I carry a wee bit more than 400 grams more than last year…). There were two appointments available this week, at 9am and 9:15am yesterday. I took the latter in the hope most of the morning traffic would’ve cleared, and I was right: It was okay, but the fog was thick as sea poop. This morning at the same time the fog was even worse, but Leo and I didn’t have to go anywhere.

• The entire country is again about to be hit by yet another storm system bringing heavy rain and strong winds. It’ll start hitting Northland tomorrow (Thursday) evening, then attack (some? most? all?) the North Island on Friday, and continue south, possibly bringing snow to the South Island. I was just saying how tiresome the hour or so of sunshine we get in a day is becoming, and several days of heavy rain and strong wind is just the thing we need! (Sarcasm is just one of the services I provide).

There are some good things I’m working on, too (and no, not just chicken soup), but that’s for another time. Although, as OMC sang, “Wanna know the rest? Hey, buy the rights! How bizarre.” [WATCH/LISTEN]. 😉

What struck me about that was how easy it was: Short and to the point, unlike many blog posts that I may (or may not…) publish. Part of the reason I don’t post more often is actually that I either don’t have the time to write the sort of posts I want to, or I can’t focus long enough. Either way, there have been a lot of posts that never quite get over the line—or begun at all.

I’m going to try something. Since I often begin posts using my iPad, maybe I’ll do similar short updates, and post that as a blog post, like once a week. Those won’t refer back to posts I’ve already published like in the text above (I’m sharing that as an example of what I’m talking about). This seems like a way to talk about something I want to talk about, but in a brief format that I can actually get finished. Group three of them together, and I’ll have a real blog post. That’s the idea, anyway.

If this works for me, I’ll assign the posts a tag/label, but right now I don’t even know if I’ll do any. And if it doesn’t work, well, I guess this one shows how I almost always use humour on Facebook, even if I don’t have the energy to do the same thing on blog posts.

Mainly, though, I’m just glad to be writing anything. These days, that’s often a struggle. Perseverance is key.

Did our pact endure?

I have a lot of very odd anniversaries, each its own marker of the progress of my life. Most are days when something happened—most, but not all. Twenty-three years ago day, Nigel and I made a pact with a friend of ours, one that none of us completed by the “due date”. I’m now the only one left who might still fulfill the pact we made, however late it may be. That one fact outweighs everything else about the pact.

On Friday, April 14, 2000—twenty-three years ago to the very day—Nigel and I were carpooling home with a friend of ours, Sandra, and we decided to stop and pick up some Indian takeaways. There was a wait, so we just chatted while the food was cooked (we may have stopped for a drink at a nearby pub, something I know we did at least once). Somehow or other we got on the topic of goals, and we all talked about wanting to write a book.

That evening, all three of us agreed that by April 14, 2010 we had to have a book written and ready to publish. I added the anniversary to my calendar, noting that the book “doesn't have to actually be published, it just has to be ready.” None of us achieved that.

Nigel originally met Sandra because they worked together, and we all became friends for a lot of reasons, especially our mutual love of Star Trek and science fiction generally. For a time, Nigel used to rent the latest episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and also Star Trek: Voyager—on video cassette (!), no less. There was a video store in the Ponsonby area of Auckland that imported the cassettes from the USA, and they arrived not long after they aired in the USA, but long before they aired in New Zealand.

However, those cassettes weren’t officially released in New Zealand, and the rights-holder (Paramount) maintained an iron grip on release schedules. They demanded that the NZ government outlaw the importation for sale or rental of movies or TV programmes until after they’d been officially released in New Zealand. The government acquiesced (not for the last time), and our “Star Trek Nights” ended.

Sandra bought a house in the same area where we lived at the time, and we carpooled to and from the Auckland CBD together for quite some time (her cat and our cat became best friends, and often napped together on our roof). In 2003, Nigel and I moved to Paeroa, and we returned to Auckland in 2006. Over time, we all had job and life changes, and had less to do with each other. Still, we went to Sandra’s wedding, and she and her husband came to our 2009 Civil Union ceremony (we got married in 2013, only four family members present).

Sandra was diagnosed with motor neurone disease, and it claimed her the year before Nigel died from cancer. I don’t know whether Sandra ever started her book, but I know that Nigel at least started making some notes, though I don’t know what he did with them—I haven’t found anything yet. All I know for certain is that I started several books over those years, and finished none of them.

Every year at this time I’m reminded of the pact because the calendar alert pops up on my devices. I’m pretty sure that I’m the only one of us who remembered (because of all those life changes). For many years those reminders weren’t that big a deal, but after Sandra died, the calendar alert made me sad, and that was ramped up to a whole new level after Nigel died. This year, though, with another year’s time and distance, I looked at the actual calendar item and was reminded that the pact was made on a Friday—and I’ve made pretty clear that I like symmetry and alignment of anniversaries. That would be reason enough for me to talk about the pact for the first time.

So, it’s now Friday, April 14, 2023, twenty-three years to the very day after three friends made a somewhat light-hearted pact to write a book, and I’m the only one of us left who might, theoretically, still manage it. That reality weighs heavily on me. To be bluntly honest, right now the possibility I might actually fulfill our mutual promise seems more distant than ever.

I have a lot of very odd anniversaries, each its own marker of the progress of my life. Twenty-three years ago day, Nigel and I made what was a mostly light-hearted pact with a dear friend of ours, and I’m now the only one left who might still honour the promise. That one fact outweighs everything else about the pact. That part’s not odd at all.

Saturday breezes

It’s Saturday afternoon, and I’m sitting in my chair, the stacker doors wide open, strong breezes blowing through them, making the curtains billow and fly. I could restrain them—I bought the holdbacks to do that, but I can never seem to finish that project. I could even use the ribbons I salvaged from a blanket I bought—long, black, fabric ribbons with velcro at the ends. They’ll do the trick until I can finish the project.

I’m not watching TV from my chair, and I’m not perusing the world from my iPad. Instead, I’m reading a book I added to my Kindle months ago, one I can just never seem to finish. I have a lot of books just like that one—never finished, or, sometimes, never begun.

I put my book down and listen as the breeze surrounds me and makes the curtain fly into the back of my chair. There’s the “click, click, slide, click” of the curtains dancing on their tracks, the closest sound to me, but I don’t even notice it at first.

Instead, I hear some indistinct music playing somewhere in the distance, and while I can’t be sure, I know it’s some sort of pop music. It’s the rhythm track I hear most, and it betrays the nature of the whole.

Closer to me, I can hear neighbours calling to each other as they do Saturday projects around their house, and I wonder if they’ll finish them. Somewhere, maybe there, too, some children laugh and play and talk with each other in that far too loud voice children use when they’re excited. They sound happy.

Birds are singing everywhere, near me and farther away. When the breeze blows just right, I hear a truck or motorcycle, or the soft whispery whoosh of tyres on asphalt on the busy road that’s not usually close enough to hear, not unless the wind or the night closes the distance between us.

I close my eyes. I think about having a nap, and I listen. The inventory I’m making in my head, I realise, is something I should share. Because even though my life is still suspended, there are moments just like this, free of pain, of grief, or even the heavy obligation to deal with all the “toys” Nigel left behind. He’d be disappointed with himself that he wasn’t able to deal to those for me, and sad that I have to. It was just something he never finished—because he never got the chance.

I get up from my chair, go to my computer and turn it on. I sit down to write. I think about how I told Nigel it was the only thing I’d ever wanted to do, and yet, I don’t do it. Not really. There’s so much to finish.

I finish my cup of coffee.

And then, I begin.

Internet Wading for May 2019

I may not have as many things to share this month, but they were still interesting. Well, to me, anyway.

In last month’s Internet Wading post, I shared a story about a “trash shopping mall”, and a New Zealand version of sorts. This month, I have a similar two-for: “The zero-waste revolution: how a new wave of shops could end excess packaging” talks about shops in the UK where things can be bought in bulk, like in grocery shops of maybe a century ago. Here in New Zealand, there’s a chain of locally-owned shops, Bin-Inn, that sell a portion of their offerings in bulk—but not everything. They do allow customers to bring in their own containers, though, as the UK shops do. Another chain called Commonsense Organics also sells some products in bulk. Recently, mainstream NZ-owned supermarket cooperative company Foodstuffs NZ has announced that it will allow customers to bring their own containers areas to staff-run counters (like the deli), mainly for food safety reasons, as well as to make sure people aren’t charged for the weight of the container. One of the few shops similar to the UK ones that I could find in New Zealand is called GoodFor Wholefoods Refillery, with three locations in upmarket Auckland suburbs (“neighbourhoods” in Americanese). Of course, I already use my own bags.

Speaking of buying things, Vox published “How brands get their names, explained by a professional namer”. Some names are definitely dumb, though (“Dunkin”? Seriously?!).

Time for some art: The oldest painting of New Zealand in Te Papa’s collection is going on display at the museum in Wellington. Painted in 1776, it depicts a landing Captain James Cook made at Dusky Sound in 1773 during his second Pacific voyage. A piece called “Unbelievable 3D Sculptures Show How Historical Figures Actually Looked!” is partly interesting—partly because some of the “unbelievable!” images are actually extrapolations based on things like busts. The ones based on skulls, though, are fascinating.

There’s always time for pop music: “100 Obscure and Remarkable CD Covers". I have (or had) several of them.

“10 Emoji Meanings That Don't Mean What You Think”. Unless, of course, they do. For the most part, I thought the meanings were obvious, or else I’ve never seen them used.

An article in The Atlantic, “The J. R. R. Tolkien Story That Makes the Case for Fantasy Fiction”, makes the case that Tolkien’s “tale about a painter that elegantly argues for the value of escapism in literature”. Given the increasing success of fantasy literature, TV shows, and films, maybe he was on to something.

Merriam-Webster: “We Added New Words to the Dictionary in April 2019”.

An article, “Taking Sides: When left- or right-handedness is a matter of life and death” isn’t about politics—it’s about science.

That's it for this short wade; it's autumn and a bit chilly.

Ask Arthur 2018, Part 6: About blogging stuff

This year’s “Ask Arthur” series is nearly over, with a post each on the next two days scheduled, with the possibility of one more post if I get any last-minute questions. Today’s questions are from Roger Green, and they're the simplest yet, though, naturally, there’s a bit more needed to answer fully. Roger first asked:

Are there any posts, besides Arthur's Law, that you tend to cite in your subsequent posts? For me, at least this year, it's the Green Book post, in large part because of the movie.

The “Arthur’s Law” post Roger referred to is my 2013 post about pithy a rule I came up with about pop culture. I called it “Arthur’s Law” because “it’s frankly catchier than what I used to call it: ‘My Pop Culture Mantra’.” It’s very simple:

Everything you love, someone else hates; everything you hate, someone else loves. So, relax and like what you like and forget about everyone else.

I’ve frequently linked to that post over the years, rather than quoting the Law itself, because those who already now it don’t need to read it over and over, and because the original post explains why I came up with it in the first place, and context is often crucial for understanding something.

As it happens, it’s probably the post I share the most often in comments on Facebook posts (mine or others’), too. It’s been helpful.

However, I can’t point to any other particular posts that I frequently cite, and for several reasons. The first is that my memory isn’t good enough, of course, but also because Blogger doesn’t have a way to track links to other blog posts, let alone show me the cumulative numbers of links to posts.

But the bigger reason is because I link to previous posts all the time—probably a majority of posts in any given month have at least one link to a previous post. There are some bloggers who would do that just to get more page views because they potentially get more money from that, but since I get no money from blogging or page views, I don’t have that incentive. Instead, I just do it because it’s easier for me and helps me not repeat myself as much.

Each time I first blog about a topic, I include links to outside sources, so when I talk about the topic again (or a related one), linking to my earlier post provides an easy way to link to all the sources for the information I’m talking about or referring to, meaning I don’t have to do that again.

So, while there are a lot of older posts that I link to, there aren’t necessarily any that are the most frequent (as far as I remember…). However, there are certain topics that I’ll refer to again, like about US or NZ politics or history, for example.

There are also posts I link to a lot simply because they’re part of an annual series (like my birthday, or some anniversary or other), and I include the links every year. Over time, the oldest post gets a lot of links. But those aren’t ones I refer to for any other reason.

Having said all that, two posts that I know I’ve referred to a lot are both about religion: “The road from Damascus” and “Religion isn’t the enemy”, both of which I linked to in Part 3 of this series.

Roger next asked:

What words do you have the most difficulty spelling?

Okay, technically this isn’t about blogging as such, however, most people see the words I misspell on this blog, so it’s related. To me, anyway.

The word I misspell the most often is “from”; I type “form” instead nearly every time. Yes, that’s a typo, but it happens so often that it’s a bit more than a garden-variety typo.

The words I have difficulty with are the ones that I rarely use, which is why I can’t remember them. It’s not common for me to forget how to spell words I know and use fairly often, but it does sometimes happen.

Spellcheck catches most misspelled words, either as I type or when I paste the text into Blogger—or both, because each catches words the other one misses. In most cases, they’re just typos, but sometimes it catches words I’ve messed up—words with unusual consonant or vowel combinations, for example. Proper names often stop me, too, like Shakespeare, for example. Fortunately, I can easily look up anything I’m not sure of, and I do.

In my years in New Zealand, I’ve found (and still find) that Kiwis often misspell words because they spell it sort of phonetically. I talked a bit about that in a post last year.

I have had the outstanding luck to have been born with the Spelling Gene: I learn the correct spelling of words and then don’t forget them. And this is, apparently, the main reason I don’t have many words I have trouble spelling—yet!

Thanks to Roger for these questions!

Time’s running out to ask a question—this is your last chance! Simply leave a comment on this post (anonymous comments are allowed). Or, you can also email me your question (and you can even tell me to keep your name secret, although, why not pick a nom du question?). You can also ask questions on the AmeriNZ Facebook page, though some people may want to keep in mind that all Facebook Pages are public, just like this blog. If you’re on Facebook, you can send me a private message through the AmeriNZ Page.

All posts in this series are tagged “AAA-18”. All previous posts from every “Ask Arthur” series are tagged, appropriately enough, "Ask Arthur”.

Previously:

Let the 2018 asking begin – The first post in this year’s series.
Ask Arthur 2018, Part 1: Perfect place
Ask Arthur 2018, Part 2: Living where?
Ask Arthur 2018, Part 3: About religious stuff
Ask Arthur 2018, Part 4: About what I like
Ask Arthur 2018, Part 5: About conversion therapy

Internet Wading: Numbers, words, food, and art

Another month has passed, and the links to random, interesting, and randomly interesting things have piled up. The list is varied, as always, with numbers, words, food, and art. And history, of course. Gotta have some of that.

I’ve often said that these posts are the catch-all for things I see on the Internet over a month that will never make it into their own post, but I realised recently that making a list of such things may imply something about me, and it does: I’m as random in what I find interesting as this list is.

But sometimes I find things interesting that I don’t even fully understand, like the video above, or the article, “Numberphile Explains the World's Most Evil Number Named After One of Hell's Princes”. What I don’t understand is anyone thinking numbers are creepy, or the whole devil thing. Maybe one has to believe in hell and satan and all that to see creepiness in the numbers.

Well, maybe some numbers we can all hate: Time. “A brief history of (New Zealand Standard) time” tells the story of how New Zealand was the first to adopt a universal time for the entire country. New Zealand has always been ahead of time. You’re welcome.

Well, maybe some art: “The Myth of Whiteness in Classical Sculpture” talks about what it sounds like, and I’d heard all this before, the pictures were helpful.

Talking about the real colour of Greek sculpture is moving into science, so may as well talk about real science, what archaeologists have been up to. For instance, “Archeologist Discovered Evidence Of Ancient Chemical Warfare”. People being cruel in warfare is nothing new, apparently. And speaking of warfare, “Archaeologists Discovered vast medieval Buildings buried under prehistoric fortress at Old Sarum, England”. It may have been built by Henry I.

Food—or, food history: “Great Depression Grub – 5 Makeshift Meals People Made when Food was Scarce”. My mother made the first one all the time. It was okay. She also made green bean casserole: “Dorcas Reilly, 92, New Jersey woman who invented green bean casserole, is dead”.

More specifically contemporary history also came my way this past month. For example, “They were a gay, interracial couple in an age of relentless bigotry. The two Harolds didn’t flinch.”. This was a nice story of a sort not told often enough.

Contemporary life also features a lot in posts that I find. For example, “How to write the perfect sentence”, which looks at what famous writers thought about sentences. Probably interesting mostly to the writer hidden inside me somewhere or other. The blogger in me found this list interesting when I was double-checking a quote: “The Top 10: Misattributed Quotations”.

Recently, anthropologist David Graeber spoke to Radio New Zealand on “Why bullshit jobs are booming”. There’s audio at the link, but the article is pretty thorough.

Finally, a problem we don’t have in New Zealand: “Discarding Halloween pumpkins adds to greenhouse effect, so take advantage of drop-off site or a Pumpkin Smash”. I applaud the effort—and it’s certainly not something anyone worried about when I was a kid, though clearly we should have. New Zealand doesn’t have the orange pumpkins, and what they apply that name to are what Americans call squash. The remains are are usually put in home compost, and the stereotype is the plants growing out of some gardener’s compost heap. I should add, I don’t now how common that really is. We’ve certainly never had that happen, but, we’ve always had bins, not heaps.

Well, that’s it, so it’s time to pumpkin catapult this month’s Internet Wading post.

Internet Wading for February 21

Statue of Julian of Norwich

There are a lot of things I see on the Internet that interest me, but that I don’t write about on this blog, for whatever reason. Once a month, I gather together some of those things that I thought were interesting, but that never became blog posts. So, let’s get started with this month’s typically varied collection—some history, some graphic arts and creativity, pop culture—but no politics, oddly enough.

First up this month, for no particular reason, Atlas Obscura told the story of “The Rebel Virgins And Desert Mothers Who Have Been Written Out Of Christianity's Early History”. It’s a long piece about early Christian women who were both as odd as some of the early Christian men, but also oddly fascinating. For me, it’s always fun learning about forgotten history.

In December, they also published a story about a medieval “anchorite”, a female Christian mystic, who was known as Julian of Norwich (pictured), though her real name has been lost. Walled up in a church, as was a fad at the time, this 14th century mystic wrote what is believed to be the first book in English attributed to a female author, Revelations of Divine Love, about her visions.

Speaking of writing, Charles O’Meara published “I’m old but I can write” on Medium, and takes younger writers—and their readers—to task for, well, a lot of things, actually. But, points to Medium for publishing a piece critical of itself.

Also on writing, something relevant to anyone writing online, including bloggers: “No one cares if I write,” Jennifer Garam begins in a piece on her personal site. In the piece, “How To Keep Writing When No One Gives A Shit”, she lays out the struggles a lot of writers face in an online world dominated by all sorts of information gathering about readers and their habits. She concludes with a sentiment I share:

When you write something, you never know who it is going to affect, or how it could help someone who’s struggling and feeling alone, or how in a low moment in their life, desperately searching on Google for answers, they will come upon your words when they need them most. And despite what our culture will have us believe—that metrics and stats matter above all else, that the number of clicks tells the whole story—somehow, in some calculation, impacting one human being has got to be worth more than all the unique page views and Shares and Likes in the world.

And speaking of social media metrics, MIT Technology Review published “The Social-Network Illusion That Tricks Your Mind”, in which, as they put it, “Network scientists have discovered how social networks can create the illusion that something is common when it is actually rare.” It explains a lot about why it sometimes SEEMS like everyone feels a certain way about something when it’s not actually true. This is something political activists in particular should heed (our nephew shared this one online—one of the few things I’m including this month where I know how I found it).

And a merger of social media and graphics things was in something I rediscovered recently: “Idiotic Hipsters Complain About The Font Of ‘I Can’t Breathe’ Protest Shirts”. Because, Comic Sans. Look, I know it’s not a pretty font, but I simply can’t understand why some designers seem to hate it with unbridled passion. Seems like a monumental waste of energy and passion to me (and entirely beside the point of the shirts, of course, and that’s as close to political as I get in this post).

More humorously I ran across, “Logo Design Gone Wrong: 10 Offbeat Examples” and (even though both have some of the same images) “15 Images That Show Why Letter-Spacing Is Important”. Both show things far funnier than the temerity of those using Comic Sans.

Roger Green (from whom I stole borrowed the idea for these amalgamation posts) has been writing about “The Black Comic Book” (part one is here, and part two is here). The comics are parodies of well-known comics using black people in place of the familiar white characters. It’s not just parody and satire, though—it’s also social commentary, and Roger’s comments clarify them and their place in history from today’s perspective.

“What if Tim Burton directed all Disney classic movies?” That’s the premise of a project by Russian-born, Los Angeles-based artist and animator, Andrew Tarusov, who imagines Disney movies as if they were directed by Tim Burton.

And in music: “ELO's Jeff Lynne: My Life in 15 Songs” in which Electric Light Orchestra's frontman talks about the songs he wrote for ELO and others, including George Harrison and Roy Orbison, and a bit about the studio work behind them.

‪That’s enough for this month. I’ve been wading so long my skin’s getting pruney.

The photo above, “Statue of Julian of Norwich, Norwich Cathedral, by David Holgate FSDC” is by rocketjohn [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Arthur Answers, Part 4: How I blog

The final question in this “Ask Arthur” series is a lighter topic than the others. In a sense, it lifts the curtain for a look at what’s behind this blog.

So, Roger Green asked:

“Something more prosaic: when and where do you blog? What conditions do you need to write? (Quiet? Music? No people around? A bottle of rum?)?
”

There are many people who, like me, are curious about the spaces where creative people work—a sculptor’s studio, for example, a novelist’s office. I’m also interested in how they do what they do: Is it a full working day, or only a few hours? And, as in Roger’s question, the conditions they need to create.

However, I’d never thought about any of that as it applies to myself, probably because I don’t think of myself in the same way as those other people. So, this question actually took a bit of thought.

I can, technically, write a blog post anywhere, anytime. There have been times I was away working somewhere, had a dead spot with absolutely nothing to do, and worked on a blog post. At least it made me look busy.

However, almost all of my posts have been written on whatever computer I had at the time, though I wrote a couple quick posts on smart devices. The first-ever non-computer post was one I wrote on my old iPod Touch back in 2009. As far as I can remember, the only other post I wrote like that was in July of last year. I know it was written on my iPhone, but no one else would: As is my usual practice, if I’m away from home, I never mention that fact and refer to it only once we’re back. To me, this is more prudence rather than paranoia.

There are two reasons I write posts on a computer. First, I like to edit extensively (though it may not seem like it…), and I usually include links to other things, and that’s something that’s a lot harder to do, I think, on mobile devices. A third reason would be that I keep text copies of all my posts, and that’s more easily done on my computer, but I can always add those later.

A few times, especially before I had smart devices or access to a computer while away, I wrote posts by hand (!) and then typed them up when I got back to the computer. If I searched through the archives, I’d probably be able to work out which old posts those were, but it’s not necessarily easy: I usually re-wrote them, at least in part.

I don’t necessarily need quiet, but I can’t listen to any spoken-word things—podcasts, TV, etc.—and sometimes I even find songs annoying. For many (most?) posts I get into a sort of zone in which the rest of the world disappears. If I hear speaking or singing, it can jolt me back to the everyday world, and that annoys me because it brings me out of that zone. Actually, it happens when the dogs bark, too. However, if there are other people in the house watching TV, I do often play music to help me drown out the dialogue on the TV.

Which bings me to people: When I record a podcast, I don’t want anyone else in the house, but I can write a blog post with a whole household of people—with one major exception, of course, and that’s the next point.

The only absolutely non-negotiable thing is that no one can be behind me, watching, as I write. This is true for pretty much anything I’m doing, like working on a page layout or other graphic design, for example, but it’s strongest when I’m creating something of my own—writing (anything), recording a podcast, or editing a YouTube video. It’s also something that has always been true, even before I had a computer.

The reason for this is mainly that when I’m working on something, including blog posts, it’s never done until it’s done, and until that time I may try things—phrases, arguments, whatever—that I ultimately abandon. I don’t like anyone else to intrude into that experimental space because I need to feel free to utterly fail (as I often do—which probably explains why my “drafts” folder of unused blog posts is so full at the end of every year). I feel vulnerable in those early stages of creating, but not at all once I publish, because at that moment I’m done with it, emotionally disengaged, and ready to move on.

Having said all that, a typical blog post is made by me, sitting alone at my desk, often a dog is sleeping under it or nearby, and I tap away on my Mac’s keyboard, with no music playing, a cup of coffee (or other non-rum drink) nearby.

Now, if I could just do something about making sure all that happens on a regular schedule so I don’t have a mad dash to catch-up in December…

That concludes this year’s series of Ask Arthur posts. Thanks to Roger Green for providing the questions. While this particular series is over, I’m always willing to answer questions. In fact, over the years several blog posts have been based on questions people have asked me.

Word resurrection

Today I read an article about some academics trying to highlight “some of the English language's most expressive — yet regrettably neglected — words” so that they might be used more often. As is so often the case, more than a few people don’t quite get it.

The list of Wayne State University’s “Word Warriors' 2015 top 10” includes a few obscure words (such as, concinnity, opsimath, and others), along with a few that are in general use, like caterwaul, melange, and knavery. And that’s where the misunderstanding arose.

The Wayne State list is of words that “deserve to be used more often in conversation and prose,” not just ones that are “dead”. In the article, British author Mark Forsyth, a fan of reviving useful “dead” English words, pointed out, as I did, that some of the words are still in use, and then asked, “Are they really forgotten?”

Obviously not. Maybe he didn’t get a chance to read what the Wayne State academics actually said about the list, so he was instead reacting out of, let’s say, incomplete information, because at no point did the academics claim the words were “lost”.

Pop culture can revive words that are seldom used. For example, I’ve heard Monty Burns on The Simpsons use old words like flapdoodle (one of my personal favourites, by the way) and rapscallion, both of which are on the list. Repeated enough, such words can take off all over again.

But Forsyth is right about one thing: The “lost” words most worthy of revival are ones that have no modern equivalent. English is an incredibly expressive language, thanks to its mergers and acquisitions over the millennia. But having a few more precise words—neologisms or “lost” words—enter common use has got to be a good thing.

But who’s championing the case of the words we should lose?

The photo at top of this post is my own.

Patrick Roche: ‘21’

The video above was all over my social media today, and I can see why. It’s a relatively simple story, but those who don’t gasp at around 50 seconds may not actually have a soul.

I love spoken word performances, as I’ve said many times before, and this one reminded me in a round about way of one I posted last year. As I said back then, telling stories is “what we do, and it’s who we are” as humans.

This video is a performance by Patrick Roche, who describes himself as a “spoken word poet from Princeton University”. He’s also a member of their Ellipses Slam Team. He graduates this year.

What struck me about this particular piece is the simplicity of the construction, using a reverse timeline to tell a (young) life story. His performance of his poem changed as the voice became younger, and that for me only reinforced the message.

As I suggested in the opening, it was around 50 seconds, when he talks about being 15, that Patrick grabbed and squeezed my heart: I can imagine any number of my friends and acquaintances in that very position. And I hurt on their behalf.

Art, at its best, makes us feel something. In my opinion, if we do feel something, then that artistic endeavour has succeeded. Patrick Roche made me feel, and that alone is enough. But holy crap, what a great job he did!

The unsent letter

There are distinct advantages in the “unsent letter” technique, chiefly, keeping one from saying regrettable things, online especially. I’ve used it a lot lately.

Earlier this week, Kelly Sedinger (aka Jaquandor) shared an article on his blog, Byzantium’s Shores. The article he linked to, “The Lost Art of the Unsent Angry Letter” by Maria Konnikova, talks about both the brake and catharsis provided by writing an unsent letter (or unposted online comment). Kelly summed up the article well when he wrote:

“…an interesting hypothesis as to why the Internet is so often a cesspool of spittle-flecked rage. It's not just that it's easy to post angry missives online, it's that the very ease of doing so negates the intended catharsis of writing them in the first place.”

Of course, I’ve talked about this sort of restraint here on this blog. Last year, I talked about out-of-control mockery, and a month earlier, I wrote:

“It’s not that I don’t have things I want to say, it’s that I have things I don’t want to publish. Very different things.”

That hasn’t changed since—actually, it has: The number of posts I start and then abandon—even after having spent hours on them—has continued to rise. I often decide that wherever the angry or negative post has ended up is not a place I want to be, and not a thing I want on this blog.

Three years ago, I talked about my “Two-day Rule” for blogging:

“If I see something I want to comment on, especially something that pisses me off or otherwise riles me up, I try to wait until the second day (or longer) before I write a post.”

This is basically the “unsent letter” trick by another name, but whatever it’s called, it works. It turns out, there’s a lot of stuff that interests me besides the stuff that make me angry. It’s much easier to write about pop culture, history, whatever, if my time isn’t spent firing off angry rants.

On the other hand, the fact that sometimes I spend hours on an angry post that never gets out of my drafts folder means that I often have little energy for writing some other post for that day. I think that’s an acceptable compromise. I’m doing my part to make the Internet a tiny bit more civil, but I still get to vent about whatever’s made me angry—even though no one but me will ever see it.

I wish more people would at least try to restrain themselves before dashing off an angry retort.

Tip o’ the Hat to Roger Green who emailed me the link to the Byzantium’s Shores post; these days I don’t have time to read as many blogs as I’d like and I often miss out on posts like that.

Seventh Blogoversary

Today is the seventh anniversary of when I began this blog. On Wednesday, September 13, 2006, I published my first post, “I live in a land downunder. No, the other one…” Seven years! Wow.

Last year, I said:

“I would never pretend that all those nearly 2300 posts so far are ‘good’ in any objective sense, but quite a few, in my biased opinion, certainly are. Some are duds, of course; it’s in the nature of these things.”

I still think that. However, to be totally honest (and a little less modest), I’d say that among the now 2,655 previously published posts are some of the best things I’ve ever written. The fact that some (many?) posts fall far short of that mark doesn’t make the good ones any less good.

I’d like to think that over the past seven years I’ve become a better writer or, at the very least, better at recognising what makes a good blog post. Whether or not the first part is true, the second clearly isn’t, because it turns out that readers don’t always agree with my opinion on what’s “good”. Posts that I think are really good may remain relatively unread, while others I think are “meh” have large numbers of page views. That probably proves that no one should write to what they think readers want.

My Blogaversary posts from previous years collectively provide the story of this blog, and each year I try to add something different to that story. This year, it’s actually something that someone else said about his blog.

Roger Green recently commented on something another blogger had written, about being magpie bloggers, attracted to Shiny Things. He wrote:

“The problem with that is that I often move onto the Next Thing, less out of boredom, but the need to find something mentally Shiny, I suppose. Intellectually, at least, the phrase ‘Jack of all trades, master of none’ is pretty true of me. I know very few things in depth, but I know a little about a lot of things.”

Yes, that’s it exactly. Putting aside the question of whether I have any particular expertise or not, I certainly often abandon topics, only to return to them when they’re shiny again.

Roger continued:

“Sometimes, people have suggested that I ought to focus this blog on one or two topics. There’s only one reason why I don’t: I don’t wanna. But it is interesting that people look to me for whatever expertise I might have.”

Personally, I’m glad that Roger doesn’t focus on only one or two topics, because the magpie-ian diversity is what I like so much about his blog. No one has ever told me to focus, but there are times I thought I “should”. I once even created a separate “spin-off” blog for my posts about politics, mostly US politics. The idea was that I could then focus this blog on New Zealand stuff. I wrote about that at the time, and it’s what led me to create the topic badges on the left side of the page.

The real reason I didn’t spin-off politics into a new blog, in addition to what I said at the time, is that I’m like Roger: I’m a magpie blogger, and, quite frankly, I like it that way just fine, thank you.

I still enjoy blogging, far more than I ever thought I would—and sometimes a bit more than I probably should. Basically, it’s a helluva lot of fun. The best part of it for me, as I’ve said many times before, is the interaction I have with others, and finding new friends like Roger.

So here we are seven years on. That cuppa from my first post may be a bit cold by now, so best you pour yourself another. And leave a comment while you’re at it: We have things to discuss, and—oh, look! Shiny!

Thanks for joining me on this seven year journey.

Previous posts on my blogoversaries:

Anniversay Time (2007)
Blogoversary 2 (2008)
Anniversaries Three and Fourteen (2009)
Fourth blogoversary (2010)
Fifth blogoversary (2011)
Sixth blogoversary (2012)

James Baldwin

Today (August 2 in the USA) would have been James Baldwin’s 89th birthday. Baldwin was a writer who straddled many of the divisions in society, ones that are still evident today: Race, sexual orientation, class. He was one of the first gay writers I ever heard about—but not until my 20s, after I was already out.

The fact that Baldwin was uncompromising in discussing race made much of white society feel uneasy about him, and his inclusion of gay themes in his work—more than a decade before the Stonewall Riots—created more distance. Growing up in the mostly white, Republican suburbs, I never heard of Baldwin until I went to university in the late 1970s, and even then, only because I had well-read gay friends who knew about him.

The video above is of Baldwin appearing on the Dick Cavett Show, apparently in 1968 (no date was given in the video, and this is the source of the date; There’s also an audio interview with him by Studs Terkel from 1961 that’s worth a listen). I think it’s a good example of Baldwin’s eloquent and passionate critique that so many white people found hard to hear. Nowadays, some white people would call him a “professional black”, that is, someone who, as Roger Green put it in a recent post, a black person for whom “their profession is BEING a black person.”

But, of course, all of this stuff I learned kind of late in the game, at a time in my life when I was discovering all the famous gay people I’d never known about. Maybe this fact made me more receptive to the rest of his message than I would otherwise have been, given my background. However, it was already a time in which I had enormous intellectual curiosity, anyway, so I don’t know.

What I do know is that I was diminished by not being taught about the breadth of American literature, particularly because, in Baldwin’s case, several of his novels have been included in various lists of the best American novels. But it’s also true that I was cheated by not knowing about gay people. I’d like to think that things are better now, at least in most places, but I know that in far too many, nothing’s really changed.

So I look at artists like James Baldwin, and think about how many others there must have been that I never had the chance to hear about. I think about the courage he had in tackling prejudice on many fronts, and the artistic integrity he displayed by writing about what he wanted to write about, even if it wasn’t socially acceptable at the time. And, of course, he was a fellow expatriate, and that’s another thing about him with which I can personally identify.

James Baldwin died in late 1987 of oesophageal cancer, aged 63. Below is a video of Baldwin speaking the National Press Club on December 10, 1986, less than a year before he died. His influence, however, continues.

Before the song ends

Last night, I posted something to Facebook/Google+ that I wanted to share here:

I'm listening to music as I proofread an essay. A song comes on. I remember listening to it in my parents' house, and then I think of how much I miss them and wish they were still alive. And I resolve, yet again, to never miss an opportunity to tell the people I love how much they mean to me. One day, the chances to speak up will run out and those folks must never think for a second that my love for them has. And then, the song ends.

All of that is true and written in the moment, stream of consciousness style, as it happened. My point, of course, was about the importance of connection to the people we love.

I ended the piece that way on purpose: The song ends, the moment ends, does the resolve? Do things return to the “we’ll all live forever” normal? It’s up to each of us to decide for ourselves.

The essay I mentioned was, not surprisingly, a blog post—what are they if not essays? As I edited, I stopped when I heard the song, and was lost in my own thoughts of nostalgia and longing. And then I put pen to paper, metaphorically speaking, to capture in words what I was thinking and feeling. As I do. But I seldom publish such things on this blog (or anywhere else). Someday I should talk about why that is.

Still, a personal blog ought to be about what is in our hearts or, at least, what passes through them. The whole point is to bear witness to life as we see it and feel it, even when it’s a bittersweet remembrance as we do something else.

The song always ends. Our connection to those who share our lives with us doesn’t have to.