Okay, it’s finally happened. The Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) is featuring an exhibition on the typewriter. Now I admit, I never really used one of these — I was probably the first one in my school to turn in an essay using my C64 and a dot-matrix printer (Quick Brown Fox, was the word processor called?). But I do remember messing up the keys on one when I was small, and my parents taking it down to the typewriter repair shop. I think it was right next door to the penny farthing bike shop…
But I do have a nifty piece of software that I love running in the background. It’s called “Sound Pilot” and it makes typewriter sounds as you type, including the good ol’ return bell when you hit the “Enter” key.
I’m not sure how I can be nostalgic for something I never used, but I just love the clackety-clack of the keys as I type. It’s reassuring — it makes you sound like your busy. I mean even at your busiest, the quiet blips of the keyboard don’t really turn up the excitement level.
Try it out for yourself, if you’re so inclined. And let me know what bits of software you have to make the writing day more fun!
~Graham
Tags: office, software, typewriter
This entry was posted
on Friday, April 25th, 2008 at 2:43 pm and is filed under Life, Writing.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Devon Ellington Says:
Ooh, ooh, I want ‘Sound Pilot”.
I miss the sound of typewriter keys.
I miss the IBM Selectric.
I still have my parents’ old Royal typewriter from the 1950s. Yes, it still works, but using the keyboard is like having my fingers climb a mountain.
Devon Ellington’s last blog post..Thursday, May 1, 2008
Graham Strong Says:
I used to have an Underwood, but it got lost in one of my many moves over the years. I never used it though, it was just one big, heavy paperweight.
~Graham
Tom Chandler/Copywriter Underground Says:
I’m one of the fossils who actually began his career on a typewriter (though just barely). I don’t miss them at all (or the damned little bottles of white-out), but I discovered — when I tested the very cool Q10 “black screen” word processor — that I really missed the noise.
It’s silly, but I feel so damned productive when I hear the noise. I’ll give sound pilot a look.
Tom Chandler/Copywriter Underground’s last blog post..Getting Ready For the Client Pitch: How to Turn Prospects Into Clients
Graham Strong Says:
It’s funny — I had it switched off last night for some reason, and all evening as I typed I felt uneasy, though I didn’t know why.
I switched it back on this morning, and all is right with the world again…!
I find it actually helps productivity too — you hear the noise and just feeling more productive is like a self-fulling prophesy (the good kind, not the Greek tragedy kind). Things literally just keep clicking along.
~Graham
Leave a Reply