14 thoughts on “Tuesday, May 10, 2022”

  3. Troy in Halifax, NS:

    Welcome to OTP! I am sorry I was not able to improve the darkness and contrast of your page.

    Don’t worry, keep writing and sending as much as you like. It might help to use a brand new nylon ribbon in that old Underwood and a couple backup sheets of paper to alleviate the effect of a hardened platen.

    Daniel B. in Ottawa

    1. Daniel — Re: darkness and contrast, I don’t know what image programs you have installed, but if you have GIMP, you can improve the clarity of Troy’s submission using Colors ===> Shadows-Highlights, and reducing Highlights to -75 or so. Other programs like Photoshop have auto-contrast settings that will clean things up too. Cheers!

      1. Hi Brendan and thanks. I don’t have any good image editing software installed. Will look into that.

        I use gimp thread for making nicer button holes on jackets and coats. It’s a little trick from bespoke tailers 🙂

        Daniel B.

  4. Welcome, Troy! You are correct about the connection between fountain pens (or ink & pencil in general) and typewriters. They anchor writing output to a tangible act of creation that supersedes mere keyboarding.

    Daniel M.: Enjoy your journey with your son!

    Daniel B.: Thanks for subbing.

    1. Actually it is an elite typeface. I am typing with an Olympia SM3 and the typeface is “Professional Elite” In real life it is pretty tiny.

    2. Tom,

      It’s a matter of setting margins for a 45 space line and taking a close-up photo, then cropping the two sides.

      Daniel B.

  6. OTPers, if, like me, you are taking pictures of your page with your phone, here are a few tips. I’ve got an Android phone, but the process is probably similar for an iPhone.

    1) Shoot your page in the brightest ambient light you can get.

    2) Hold the phone as steady as you can.

    3) Shoot the picture with a decent amount of space around the page.

    4) Using the photo edit function, crop your photo so all the space you left around the page is gone (unless you’re consciously including something interesting, like the typewriter or a Blackwing pencil, or some cool doodad on your desk).

    5) This is the big one: Use the edit feature to punch up the contrast on your picture. Android has a function called “POP” which has a little slider. I usually crank the POP slider up to about 85 on my submissions. It can make faint, grayish type look nice & black.

    That’s it. I hope these tips help somebody.

    And huge thanks to the Daniels who manage to keep this whole show running.

  7. With apologies to Robert Christgau, Xicano wins the “Oh Come Now Award” for the most ridiculous statement of the day: that Ukraine’s President Zelensky “sold his soul to the devils.” Coming in a close second is the same writer’s contention that we in the West are “afflicted with groupthink” because of what the major television news outlets are reporting about the war.

  8. Tom,

    It’s a matter of setting margins for a 45 space line and taking a close-up photo, then cropping the two sides.

    Daniel B.

  9. Xicano, I see, panem et circenses is Latin for “bread and circuses” : sustenance and entertainment provided by government to appease public discontent. Also, Matthew 19:24 “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of God!” So you kind of mixed the metaphor — but I get the vibe you are typing.

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