Saturday, September 03, 2011

Virtual Type-In!

Eek...I go away a couple of days, and blogger has completely changed the interface on me?

Anyhow...today, we made typosphere history: at noon PDT, Adwoa, Richard Polt, notagain, and I met up for a completely virtual type-in via a "hangout" (video chat) on Google+. It wasn't flawless--in particular I had some trouble hearing Adwoa some of the time, and anytime we all typed or talked at once, it was hard to hear everyone. Still...I'm pretty impressed at how well it worked! Here are my messy, messy notes from the event. Aside from the typos, I also managed to drip water on them. Yay for the brutal honesty of typecasting!

Virtual type-in Virtual type-in_0001 Virtual type-in_0002

There were quite a few other typewriters in attendance, besides those mentioned in my typecast. I sort of gave up trying to keep track of them all. Peter (notagain) has an interesting Noiseless (love the sound that thing makes!), and Adwoa, of course, had all sorts of cute and colorful typewriters. Fun seeing them all! There were also quite a number of feline attendants.

I believe others planned to stop by but missed out--we were there an hour, but then some needed to get going. I think some folks were going to meet up again at midnight PDT, for anyone who'd like to stop by!

11 comments:

Adwoa said...

You got a lot of pages done, that is impressive! And your typecast looks perfectly fine; very neat in spite of all the switches. I think I got a good look at all the typewriters except the Galaxie; I didn't quite notice when that came in.

And I did see your cat, Tam!!! I felt left out as the only attendee without a feline family member! I love cats, but I don't have one at the moment, unfortunately. Closest thing is my bearded husband (but he wouldn't take kindly to being held up in front of the camera) and a cactus (more prickly than fuzzy, really, but perhaps would cooperate better at being shown off!).

It was lovely to have some companionship while typing and I look forward to doing it again soon!

Matt said...

I wish I could've attended, but I wasn't able to! Also, I believe the machine that you were referring to hat Adwoa used is a Groma Kolibri. Great typewriters!

Richard P said...

Thanks for posting your notes! I'll put mine up later today.

Cameron said...

I greatly appreciated the invitation to join this chat, but at that moment had to put in some serious horn-practice time, getting ready to play Principal on a heavy Pops concert next week. Lots of high notes, gotta keep those chops in shape!

I am going to expose my extreme ignorance here by asking: What *IS* the proper way of pronouncing "Hermes"?

Elizabeth H. said...

Adwoa--I sort of sneaked the Galaxie in there, I think! I really like typing on it, but it's not much to look at, particularly compared to typewriters others were flashing around! Just another 60s SCM...though with a blue platen.

Thanks, Matt! I should know that...but I couldn't remember!

Cameron--I think most of us Americans just say "HUR meez," but the Swiss pronunciation is...um...Adwoa, if you see this, could you explain? I know the first syllable is more like "air," but now I'm blanking out on whether you pronounce the s at the end or not... Either way, it strikes me as prettier than our way.

Me and my pronunciation fixation...

Adwoa said...

As a rule, the French drop all h's at the start of a word, as in "quel horreur", "l'histoire", etc. (And they also find it hard - or 'ard - to get out of that habit - or 'abit - when speaking English.)

Anyway, as Yverdon is a French-speaking town like Geneva, I believe the proper pronunciation of Hermes is Air-mez... Indeed, the "s" at the end should be pronounced. Mr. Perrier of the typewriter museum was a Paillard distributor once upon a time, and that's how he says it, so it must be right :-)

Cameron said...

THANKS, LFP & Adwoa, for enlightening me on how to pronounce "Hermes" in both 'American' and 'French' ways!

I've always been curious about that.

rn said...

Well where do I find out about these type-ins. I do follow writing ball and geneva typewriters pretty regularly, and I didn't know a thing about it. In group and out group?

To be fair, I'm guessing I would find it disconcerting, discombobulating, not to mention disembodying, in a bobble-headed kind of way, to write and talk at the same time.

Rob

rn said...

Oh, and, to Cameron the horn player: what do you think of using valve oil to lubricate a typewriter. I haven't oiled my French Horns in some time, but I've got a bunch of valve oil and more typewriters than I have horns, so I was just thinking about sharing the wealth.

Elizabeth H. said...

To Rob: we try to mention any up-coming typewriter related events on http://typosphere.blogspot.com/. This one is listed, but it was fairly spur of the moment, and I'm not sure how many caught wind of it.

No worries, though--now that we've tested the waters, I'm sure there will be others!

notagain said...

You really pounded out a lot of words. We should stage a type-off between you and Matt for the next one. With all the practice under our belts we can have virtual write-ins during NaNoWriMo. Just a thought.