Squirrel Corner

Hittin’ the keyboard like

Friends comin’ online like

DID YOu SEE tHE THINGg MY GOD

My kids are in 5th and 6th grade. They’ve never even seen a fingering chart. The 6th grader is expected to do nearly all of his schoolwork on a computer, and he doesn’t even know the term “home row”. I don’t know how they expect them to excel without giving them the skills they need to use the tools they have to use.

Typing classes were only availble to those taking the secretarial class, which was not open to boys.

It should be noted that there is a distinction between typing as it used to mean and word processing. Typewriters were unforgiving machines, not only could you not cut, paste or delete (for obvious reasons) so your spelling had to be very, VERY good, but the legibiity of each letter produced depended on how hard you hit the key (unless you went to a fancy school which had electric typewriters, which were not the norm).

Those of us who were subversive enough to learn keybaord skills through computing had a MUCH easier time of it. Though it was often offset by the shitty keyboards some computers had, and YES, I’m calling you out ZX81!

If you can’t see any depth to those keys, you are correct, they have none because the ZX81 keyboard was a damned membrane!

But believe me, if you could learn to typeat a decent speed on of these, then NOTHING could stop you, expcet for the fact that the odds were good you were typing faster than it could process input.

It’s successor, the ZX Spectrum had spongey keys, which whilst not great, were better than nothing.

From ancient to abstract, this one sure got around.

ARTISTS AND WRITERS WANTED for HAZARDOUS JOURNEY on JOINT CREATIVE VENTURE

Never Mind the Blizzard is an upcoming zine dedicated to the Heroic Age of Antarctic exploration, and we now invite all artists and writers interested in this colourful period of polar history to submit work to us!

So, grab your sledging pencil or polar paint kit—we’re looking for:

Anything under the umbrella of visual arts, including paintings, illustrations, comics, collage, diagrams, printmaking, and more.

Creative writing: short pieces of fiction, vignettes, creative nonfiction, poetry, etc.

Any combination of these.

In other words: if it (1) relates to an Antarctic expedition taking place between 1897 and 1922 and (2) can be put to (digital) paper, send it our way! Playfulness and formal experimentation is encouraged, and everyone is invited to contribute regardless of skill level. Please see the submission guidelines on our website for a few more details.

Introducing...

Never Mind the Blizzard, an upcoming zine by and for fans of the Heroic Age of Antarctic exploration!

The zine aims to be an informal, low-pressure publication for creative work of any kind (art, comics, fiction, creative non-fiction, poetry, anything else you can think of) as long as it concerns Antarctic life circa 1897-1922. Contributions do not have to be very “serious” or polished; true to polar periodical form, the main goal is just for us to entertain ourselves and each other throughout this long Antarctic winter.

The result will be a digital zine that can be downloaded for free or on a pay-what-you-want basis. Proceeds will go to the Antarctic Wildlife Research Fund (AWR).

Interested? Follow us here or on X / Gumroad to stay updated - and keep an eye out for a call for submissions very shortly! 

Let’s play the biggest game of kick the can on the internet.