Zines and Shirts

Hey guys. Sorry this month’s tables have been so late. I’m close to finishing them though. The main table pack is going to be “Japanese Monsters,” and the Secret Bonus Table will be “Swedish Furniture,” I guess because I went to Ikea the other day.

I had a random case of fatigue, where I was just super-tired all the time for no apparent reason (and my doctor literally had me get a dozen tests done without turning up any clear cause), it went away by itself. Then I got myself a little electric scooter—the kind that’s basically a motorized Razor scooter—because I figured I could use it to go on short errands and to ride for fun, and I managed to mess up my ankle, so I missed three days of work and was wearing an ankle brace for two weeks. So that was a thing. I think I’m finally without any glaring medical issues now at least.

Shirts!

A random Twitter conversation inspired me to start making goofy T-shirt designs and putting them up on Threadless. Some are basically merch for my games, some are attempts at humor, and a few are just cynically lamenting how the world is on fire. If there’s anything of mine that you’d especially like to see on a shirt (or anything I’ve already made into a shirt design that you’d like to see on something else that Threadless offers) let me know!

Zines!

SF Zine Fest is a nifty little zine event at the County Fair Building in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco on September 1st, and this year I’m actually going to have a table there to sell my zines and whatnot, so if you happen to be going (admission is free!) by all means stop by and have a possibly awkward conversation with yours truly. I’m currently in the process of getting together stands and whatnot for displaying my stuff and putting together a few new zines.

• Things I’ve Seen Contracting at Tech Companies: No shocking revelations or anything, but a collection of weird events and imagery I’ve witnessed while working contract jobs at Silicon Valley tech companies.
• aromantic: I don’t usually talk about it a lot, but I’m aromantic (meaning I don’t experience romantic attraction), and I decided to write a short zine about what that means to me.
• Kagegami High Student Handbook: An excerpt from Kagegami High that you can use to introduce people to the setting or just read for the fun of it I guess.
• My Grandpa’s Poems: My grandfather, Robert W. Cluney, was an appliance repairman, and in retirement he did a lot of painting and a fair amount of writing. I put together a small collection of some of my favorite poems of his.

I’ll be putting the zines up for sale online later, after SF Zine Fest.

Steno!

I randomly decided to look for ways to type more efficiently. After a lot of research and some kind of frustrating dead ends, I discovered the Open Steno Project. “Stenography” is a general term for rapid/abbreviated writing techniques. One that’s still important today is the use of stenograph machines, which are common for court reporters, but also used for things like real-time captioning. A standard stenograph has a set of 22 keys, and stenographers learn various chords and techniques to produce words at lightning speed. To pass the certification exam to be a court reporter you have to be able to go at 225 words per minute, where even a really skilled typist on a QWERTY keyboard will top out at around 100wpm.

Stenographs have modernized, but they’re niche enough that between low manufacturing quantities and the industry having a captive audience they can price-gouge, a professional stenograph machine can cost around $5,000, and even more for the accompanying software. The Open Steno Project aims to open steno up to more people, with a free multi-platform program called Plover and guides to creating a functional steno keyboard fairly cheaply. You can take a suitable mechanical keyboard (which you can get for $50 or less) and add some custom key caps to create a Plover-compatible keyboard to get started, and hobbyists are making and selling dedicated steno keyboards for around $100-200. Steno is better ergonomically, and it can be used for real-time captioning, making it helpful as an accessibility tool.

The big hump is that it takes a lot of practice to learn, apparently about 2-3 months to break 100 wpm and 2-6 years to get up to a professional level. Given how much of my life I spend in front of a keyboard, it seems entirely worthwhile to me to give it a go, so I bought a mechanical keyboard and I’m bugging my roommate to 3D print a set of steno key caps to put on it. I’ll have to see how it goes, but I’m generally excited about the whole thing!