Ray Bradbury's Typewriter

Ray Bradbury wrote all of his books and stories on a typewriter, he never used a computer. He famously spent $9.80 to type up Fahrenheit 451 on a rental typewriter in the basement of UCLA's Powell Library.  You can see a picture of Ray's 1947 Royal KMM and read a bit more about him at:

https://www.lamag.com/askchris/displa-case-71-ray-bradburys-typewriter/

I've loved Ray's writing since I first discovered him as a teenager. While his science fiction is what he's most famous for, he also wrote a several fun spooky weird mysteries that I especially enjoyed, DEATH IS A LONELY BUSINESS and A GRAVEYARD FOR LUNATICS.

What the heck is a Rocketbook?

A Rocketbook is a reusable note book that does a couple of really cool things. First off, it's erasable. You write on it using a Pilot Frixion pen and  you can erase by using a damp cloth. The notebook pages are not paper, they are more like thin plastic.

The thing that makes the Rocketbook super useful is that it has a phone app that snaps a picture of your pages and lets you send them to email or dropbox. It does a pretty good job of character recognition.

If you are artistic (or even if you are not!), you can draw pictures in your Rocketbook.
Rocketbooks come in several sizes. I have both the executive sized one and the pocket sized one.

The one downside to the Rocketbook is that you have to let the ink dry for about 15 seconds or so and in those 15 seconds it's easy to smudge. It's something I've gotten used to, but it is a deal breaker for some folks. I kind of think of the Rocketbook as a bunch of whiteboard pages that I can carry in my pocket.

Another neat thing about the Rocketbook is that all the notes you upload are searchable. Again, the text recognition does a really good job. It's very handy having all my notes searchable on both my phone and the computer.

The Rocketbook is a very handy mix of low and high tech. In day to day use it just feels like using a notebook but those notes can be easily used in emails, blog posts, stories or whatever. Rocketbooks are one of those things I find myself enthusiastically recommending to friends.

Me and Tom and Corona

I don't think my pal Tom will mind my sharing our latest letter exchange here. Stay safe everybody.

Launching a Rocket into the Typosphere

Olivetti Lettera 22 Repaint

Here are the "before" pictures:

Here is the work in progress:

Here us the final result:

A classy typewriter like this deserves a nice carrying case. I found this totebag on a site called Society6. They do all kinds of designs on totebags and other things and they have dozens of typewriter-themed bags.

Time Travel with Tom

A few weeks ago at the urging of my typing pal Tom I checked out the 1939 World's Fair. I sent him a note and a little packet of pictures.

Today I got this nice note in reply.

Miss Tibbett's Typewriter

This brief little book was first published in 1966 by Weekly Reader Books. I happened to find this copy on Biblio.com which is a great online compendium of independent bookstores.

The story and illustrations are wonderful, telling the story of Miss Tibbett and her not quite perfect typewriter. I am certain that I am at least five decades older than the intended audience for this book, but I found the book to be thoroughly charming.