April 9, 2007 by kirkjobsluder.

Handwriting until recently has been a problem for me.  My fourth grade teacher saw my previous grades on the subject and gave me time to work on a typewriter.  I struggled in high school German because a teacher insisted on handwritten assignments.

About three years ago, I discovered a great book on italic writing and havn’t looked back.  Also reading caligraphy books that focus on fundamental strokes rather than letter shapes has also done a great deal to improve my writing style.  Just my thoughts on how to improve handwriting.
First, get a pen with good flow. Whenever I use a cheap pasty ball-point bic, I feel like I have to fight the pen just to get a good line. Fountain pens are great, if you want to put out $30-100 dollars and can trust yourself with them. Othewise, gel-pens, roller ball, or even fine-tipped art markers are good.

Second, do most of your writing on a good comfortable writing surface. I hate using many lecture-hall flip-out desks because they are too small, the wrong position, and the wrong angle. If you can grab a table, do it.

Spend some time every day practicing zig-zags, loops, and arches. Don’t try to conform to the template suggested by anyone else. Focus on consistency of angle, shape and spacing. If you are bored during a class, scribble out a few lines of zig-zags and loops. Your goal is to develop good muscle memory for the fundamental strokes used to build the letters. IME practicing strokes offers better gain for time invested. You can spend a half-hour working on the lowercase “r,” or you can spend a half-hour working on the short-down-stroke used in ‘agijpqru.’ Counter-clockwise loops are used to build ‘acdegoq.’

Finally, a thing that really helped me improve my handwriting was to not worry about ligatures (light strokes that connect letters). Some advise no ligatures, some styles demand lifting the pen only between words. Personally, I let ligatures appear where they are natural. And use a pen lift where it feels natural.

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April 7, 2007 by kirkjobsluder.

I’m officially a volunteer for WFHB. Mostly I’m going to be working the desk. But it’s going to be heck on my music budget. The DJ right now is playing Billy’s Band, which does a mean Tom Waits cover.

““Billy’s Band - Clap Hands” Live at the 6th Russian Rock Festival in New York” on Google Video
Billy’s Band Clap Hands Live at the 6th Russian Rock Festival in Brooklyn, New York http://billysband.ru http://billysband.com Provided by http://www.to4ka.com

And just for Easter, the cool-man himself.

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April 5, 2007 by kirkjobsluder.

Things have been a bit quick here, one reason I’ve not been doing much writing.

I did whip together a python script for phrase searching using Spotlight. The basic logic behind this is that Spotlight does not do phrase searches for document content. But you can use Spotlight to get a list of a small number of files you want to search, then extract the text content from those files. It’s one of those examples of productive procrastination I do. Download it to a place in your path, run it, and give it a search phrase.

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