Thursday, April 8, 2010

John Gruber on typing and the iPad

John Gruber has written a lengthy and overwhelmingly favorable review of the iPad. His observations about typing though make me think not for me:

You absolutely do not need a hardware keyboard for it. But if you’re hoping to do any amount of serious writing with it (and, for obvious vocational reasons, I plan to), you’re going to want one.
Then why not just use a MacBook?

Five sentences about clothes

Another Google search: write five sentences about clothes you like to wear. Okay:

I really like my Levi’s 550 jeans.

I really like my Levi’s 550 jeans.

I really like my Levi’s 550 jeans.

I really like my Levi’s 550 jeans.

I really like my Levi’s 550 jeans.

I really like my Carhartt B18 jeans.

I really like my Carhartt B18 jeans.

I really like my Carhartt B18 jeans.
Update, November 2, 2010: That’s one sentence for each pair of Levi’s I own, and one new sentence for a new pair of Carhartt jeans. Recent production Levi’s, I’m discovering, are alarmingly prone to fray at the back-pocket corners.

Update, November 18, 2010: Two more pairs of Carhartts.

Doers of homework: instead of searching for five sentences, just write five sentences, about clothes you like to wear.

Related posts
5 sentences about life on the moon
Five sentences for smoking
Five sentences from Bleak House
Five sentences on the ship

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Domestic comedy

“Are you having your fancy-pants cereal?”

[I.e., Cascadian Farm Cinnamon Raisin Granola. And it’s our fancy-pants cereal.]

Related reading
All “domestic comedy” posts

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

The rules of the game

The rules of the game, as spray-painted on a piece of plywood: U HONK WE DRINK. Ah, colledge. And it’s only Tuesday.

[Colledge: my word for “the vast simulacrum of education that amounts to little more than buying a degree on the installment plan.” Colledge cheapens the experience of students who are in college. Colledge students and college students are often found on the very same campus.]

Related reading
All colledge posts

On this day in 1327

On this day, the poet Francesco Petrarca (1304-1374) first saw (or claimed to have seen) the woman he called Laura. From sonnet 211:

In 1327, at exactly
the first hour of the sixth of April,
I entered the labyrinth, and I see no way out.
Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac noted the day’s Petrarchan importance and made me remember that I once translated these lines. Three of the strangest lines in all poetry, I’d say.

Brookline Booksmith

From a June 2009 post:

Brookline Booksmith is a great bookstore, even better now that a nearby Barnes and Noble is gone. It is exciting to walk into a bookstore on a Tuesday night and find it crowded with paying customers. The moral of the story: if you have a great (or good) bookstore, don’t use it as a library or as a source of information for Amazon purchases. Buy books.
The Boston Globe reports that Booksmith’s future is “up in the air” — not because of poor sales but because seventy-eight-year-old owner Marshall Smith is planning to step away from the book business. Read more:

What’s the story with independent bookstores? (Boston Globe)

Jay Bennett (1912–2009)

I recently learned that the writer Jay Bennett died last year at the age of ninety-six. He was the author of the novel Deathman, Do Not Follow Me (1968), a book that I read and reread endlessly when I was twelve or thirteen.

In 2003 I happened to think of the novel, found a copy in a library, and found that many details and bits of dialogue — a description of a girl putting on her glasses to read in class, a conversation about Bob Dylan — were still lodged in my memory. I soon bought my own copy of Deathman, an ex-library copy. (An ex-library copy is to my mind the best way to read a book from one’s youth.) I wrote Mr. Bennett a letter and received, via his son, a reply. I felt as though I had paid a longstanding debt.

Wikipedia has a detailed article about Jay Bennett.

A related post
Out of the past (On going back to the books of one’s youth)

Monday, April 5, 2010

“Sort of gimmicky”

“I apologize, but it seems sort of gimmicky”: Robert Paterson, CIO of Molloy College, on collegiate iPad giveaways. Read more:

Should colleges start giving Apple’s iPad to students? (USA Today)

A related post
The iPad and college students

“REUSE THIS CARTON!”

To your left, a P.S.A. from the cardboard envelope that held two orange “Cuspid Cleaners” from the Draplin Design Co. This P.S.A. is but one element that makes shopping with Draplin a value-added experience. Also in the envelope: two stickers and two signed, numbered copies of a “Guide to Fang Hygiene,” brown type on turquoise card stock, uglily beautiful, like the word uglily itself.

Draplin Design Co. and Field Notes Brand seem to hit some deep ancestral idea of guy stuff — Ace combs, key rings, nail clippers, pencils, pocket notebooks, that kind of stuff. “Mixing memory and desire,” as the poet says, for sure.

Further browsing
Draplin Design Co.
Field Notes Brand

Friday, April 2, 2010

“Why I won’t buy an iPad”

Cory Doctorow: “The real issue isn’t the capabilities of the piece of plastic you unwrap today, but the technical and social infrastructure that accompanies it.”

Why I won’t buy an iPad (Boing Boing)