Category: jotter

Dead Ink Books demonstrating why multiple revenue streams in small press publishing are a good idea:

I mean, seriously.

It is apparently the “Greubel Forsey Quadruple Tourbillon GMT” and if you have to ask what it costs then you can’t afford it.

I am fascinated by the fully baroque high end of watchmaking: that point where they threaten to entirely fall off the map and vanish into the Here Be Monsters of “yes but what’s the fucking time”

(“I’m Sorry But What The Fuck Is This Thing” may turn into another series)

This is extremely useful, from Venkatesh Rao at ribbonfarm:

A traditional blog series is a waterfall-planned longer work that’s something like an ersatz book for lazy vanity publishers. A blogchain on the other hand:

1. is improvised rather than planned

2. is responsive to salient events in the environment

3. evolves at a certain tempo

4. acts like a themed, bite-sized commitment ratchet; gradatim ferociter

5. …but without the oppressive intention-debt of a traditional series

6. is designed for sustainability, more sitcom than movie

7. is suitable for multi-author collaboration like my Worlding Raga

8. is structurally a way to build over time (“construction”)

9. is capable of supporting an inter-process messaging protocol with adjacent blogchains

10. has no necessary or scripted “ending” but more of a crash-only/infinite game character

I’d been looking at forms of serial writing here, but was getting tripped by intention-debt. Yes. Useful thinking.

I just found the following in a folder. In a docx file entitled “IMPORTANT.” It seems I wrote it in 2014. I have no idea what it is or why I thought it was “IMPORTANT.”

* * *

“It’s not right, you know.  A man should be free to fly in the world without having to worry about burning death clouds.”

“Do what?” said a voice from under the table.

“The volcano in Iceland.  Funny word.  Began with a B.”  He hunched a little and looked down, seeking the word.  He gave the impression of peering down into the algae-smeared pool of his own memory, hunting something on the dark shallow bottom, among the rusted coins and fish shit.  Finding the word, he pulled it out with a creak of his back and strangled it in the air, not leaving a single scale of Icelandic inflection in its production.  “Bardabunga.  That was the bugger.”

He sat at the table, in a mindful way, treating his spine like it was a string of unexploded bombs.

“Why are we even here?” said the voice from under the table.

* * *

Answers on a postcard to my doctor probably

could the last person in Brexit Britain with access to electricity please turn out the lights, just as, you know, a symbolic thing, while the rest of us huddle under The Hanging Tree trying to chew open a can of chickpeas that expired in 1983

I always wore a watch, until I didn’t.

I remember spending birthday money as a nine-year-old buying one of the first digital watches, Star Wars-branded, where you pressed a button to bring up the red-LED time. I wasn’t allowed to wear it to school because it was too expensive and precious. I think most of my young life was counted on a basic Timex with luminous dial.

I started going without a watch when featurephones and smartphones became small-size with an always-on or one-touch clock front. It’s the “smart pocket watch” thing – really, all we were missing were fob chains for our phones. I personally am prepared to hold out for fob chains, pinstriped waistcoat with a long phone pocket, and Google Monocle.

And then — I think for an article? – I got myself a Pebble Steel smartwatch. And not only did my phone’s battery life literally double because I wasn’t always taking the damn thing out to read notifications, but I got used to having that weight on my wrist again.

When Pebble threw in the towel, I caved and got an Apple Watch. Which is both far more functional – in terms of the number of things it can do — and far more poorly designed. Having to learn that weird arm-lift hitch-and-twist to get the watch to accept that you want to look at it and see the damn time. The “digital crown” that basically does whatever it fucking wants. But it does mostly succeed in keeping me off my phone and pushing the notifications and actions I need to my wrist when I’m in deep with the work.

A while later, I fell into an article about micro-brand watches. This one crew, Trifoglio, were selling a watch based on a Fiat 500’s speedometer, the Veloce. It was going on Kickstarter for something like a hundred and fifty American. The article was clear that something like that would usually go for 750, and in fact Trifoglio now sell it for $435. So I bought it. Just for the hell of it, really — if nothing else, it’d be a nice curio for a shelf, with its strange disc movement.

It sits on my wrist really nicely. It gives me pleasure to look at it. It’s unusual, the modernist styling amuses me, and Lush’s “500 (Shake Baby Shake)” goes through my head.

The watch pictured above arrived today. For a similar amount to the Veloce, I bought the Dan Henry 1939, which came with a leather-and-canvas watch roll for three devices. It’s inspired by pre-WW2 air and navy chronographs. I’m not A Watch Guy. I’m really not. I own three now, including the Apple Watch. And, don’t get me wrong, I love the powers of the 21st Century that the thing can afford me. But you know what? I’m at the point where I’m okay with putting the phone in my pocket and having a solid piece of art on my wrist that just tells me the time. I may finally have reached the point, here in my dotage, where just putting on a nice watch is a statement of escape from work.

(Also, inescapably, a statement of privilege, I know, I know,: just as owning the Apple Watch is a statement of successful capitalist embedding, muting the phone and putting on an analogue watch is a statement about not having to be always-on, fuck it, look at the nice watch some people made just because they think everything should be beautiful.)

(This is definitely more of a jotting-down. Never knowingly not not-fully-baked, here,)

I found a gif on the wonderful TV NEON tumblr that captures two seconds from 1989 which may in fact have predicted the whole of the mainstream cultural present and I am weirdly fascinated by it.

Last night I laid in bed and listened to the foghorns sounding over the estuary. I haven’t heard them that loud and clear in years. The sound reminded me of the brief period I lived in America. There, I would lay and listen to the trains lowing as they came into the yard down by the river. American train horns are sad, haunted sounds. Especially compared to the triumphant fanfares of British trains. The Thames Delta’s foghorn is an old beast rearing up and letting you know it’s still there and still watching, ancient and tired as it may be. It’s here, it sees you, and it’s reaching its arms out to guide you.

The fog is rolling back in, laying a white veil over the treetops. I look forward to going to sleep to the note of the river tonight.

#jotter