prodigal son

[Dildo Argentino]

i am, as i said, in the middle of moving a rather large family to bristol

this involves a fair bit of moving objects around, as you may imagine

so i am not going to be wasting my precious time here as often as i would under other circumstances

but i just wanted to say: being on this forum, reading any of the threads i've opened so far, feels like home

sorry about being squishy-sentimental - but the convivial tone that seems to rule this place, while surely a thing that goes without saying and also a bare necessity for you, is a complete novelty and a tonic to my faith in mankind

thanks, folks

and sorry about the adolescent rebel typography

i haven't figured out, really, why i derive so much enjoyment from it, but i do

given shlain's ideas about the effects of linear, sound-based writing on the operation of the human mind, the answer could be a little distance away from trivial

??

[Telarus]

Written symbols activate patterns in our muscle cortex. These "hijacked sub-vocalizations"* allow us to use the muscle cortex and related functions to process them as imagined bodily actions, or imagined manipulations of the environment.

You might want to meditate on what bodily feelings* or images the use of "normal" punctuation brings up vs/ the use of free-form text.

*(Verbal-based thoughts are the same muscle activations patterns in the muscle cortex as speech, but 'at a lower volume.')

**(Feelings 'are' sensations you feel with your body. Which is much more complex and nuanced than our mental "self" image... learning anatomy, physical practices like sports/martial arts or breath-control exercises can assist you with pinning language on how the body feels.)

[Telarus]

Given the above, and the fact that written communication is meant to activate the same or similar patterns in the intended recipient, consider your audience for a moment.

Now they have to parse your signal, then re-parse it and insert normal punctuation in order to parse the individual thoughts..

(granted, not so bad, as you seem to have individual delineated thoughts, and are able to express them in a personal convention)

... you've made people work in order to understand you, parsing your singal twice, at least. Gods, it gets stupidly, annoyingly recursive to attempt to get to the meaning from those who don't have individualized thoughts.

Just riffing on the subject...

[Dildo Argentino]

i see how you mean

i think i also figured it out

i have been a frontal lobe prostitute for about 17 years, exploiting my ability to speak two languages but, fundamentally, typing for money

kind of a 'seemed like a good idea at the time' thing, but it took me down a long and interesting pathway not devoid of suffering

and, while always taking care to acknowledge its many advantages, i've been hating my work steadily for at least ten years now

now i type pretty fast, but, being the lazy, thrill-seeking sod that i am, i never actually invested the few hours per day for a couple of week or so to get into ten-finger touchtyping, and my patterns are far from ergonomically optimal, in particular i show a strong preference for the left shift key (like all polar bears, i am left handed)

as a result, typing capitals and other characters requiring the shift key puts particular strain on my left hand, and the bodily sensation of this momentary stain has become associated over a long time with the unpleasant feeling of being bored while doing something tedious for hours in order to get cash

so when i am writing for pleasure, as i am here and other forums, i prefer to limit the use of the shift key

this accounts for the lack of capitalisation

the line-breaks are a different matter, i do that for discipline

i used to write a great deal on forums in the conventional mode and often got into constructing very long and complex sentences, which made sense but were hard to understand

this way, i find it easier to limit the size of interconnected chunks

to sum up: writing like this allows me to relax more while i write

could i get away with calling it a sort of functional disability and claim a free parking ticket?

[East Coast Hustle]

Explained like that it makes perfect sense to me, and IMO your explanation trumps whatever momentary mental setback people may have when they come across your lack of capitalization and some punctuation.

Frankly, capitals and periods are the most disposable of written signifiers anyway and it seems as though you've managed to construct your posts in a manner that doesn't leave one stuck wondering where this sentence starts and that one ends so I don't see why it's a big deal, or any sort of deal at all.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

The fact that your posts are themselves quite readable IMO trumps the lack of correct punctuation. Normally I could be all over someone's shit (or just ignore them) if they were illegible or otherwise difficult to read, but that isn't the case here.

Plus, you seem like a nice guy.

[Triple Zero]

i have been a frontal lobe prostitute for about 17 years, exploiting my ability to speak two languages but, fundamentally, typing for money
<snip>
now i type pretty fast, but, being the lazy, thrill-seeking sod that i am, i never actually invested the few hours per day for a couple of week or so to get into ten-finger touchtyping, and my patterns are far from ergonomically optimal, in particular i show a strong preference for the left shift key (like all polar bears, i am left handed)

I don't mind how you write, btw. If you'll look at my earliest post history, you'll see that I wrote pretty much the same way. I never got any shit for it either, quite possibly because most of the people who complain about it the loudest weren't here yet

Except this one time, when the not using capitals and periods actually led me to simply not bothering to finish a sentence, I think because I realized I had argued myself into a corner, and somebody called me on it

That event, plus being a paranoid fart about having a distinctive writing style and deciding that the pieces that fit, mix up in the crowd hides being from the home of the pieces that are out of place.

ANYWAY

This is not a very good reason not to learn ten-fingered touch-typing. Especially if typing is your job--Hungarian-English translator, I'm assuming?¹

What OS do you usually use? There's various types of open-source/free educational software available that guide you step-by-step through learning to touch-type. And I bet it'd take 20 minutes per day, not hours Hey and if that's boring to do in your own time, maybe you can ask your work if they can give you 30 minutes per workday for a few weeks to work on that in the office? You can easily argue that the time will soon pay itself back in typing speed and most importantly reducing strain on your hands so you won't get RSI (which would cost them loads of sickness benefit etc).

Though frankly, I attribute my own not-getting-RSI more to the fact that I move around a lot when I'm behind the computer, that I don't tense my neck/shoulders when I'm stressed and that I always take care to keep my back and shoulders straight, not slumped forward. The latter two are benefits from no more than the first 12 weekly 1h low-intensity meditative yoga classes I took--that is, I learned keeping-my-back-straight and not-tensing-unnecessary-muscle-groups after the first season, I continued taking the classes for several years because face it, it's a lot more enjoyable than touch typing lessons

¹ oh you already mentioned that in another thread (which I had not read yet)

[Dildo Argentino]

This is not a very good reason not to learn ten-fingered touch-typing. Especially if typing is your job--Hungarian-English translator, I'm assuming?

i beg to differ

it is a very good reason in an important respect: it is, as far as i can see, the reason why i have not learned to touchtype

What OS do you usually use? There's various types of open-source/free educational software available that guide you step-by-step through learning to touch-type. And I bet it'd take 20 minutes per day, not hours

actually i figure a great deal more than an absolute newcome to the world of QWERTY

because i have about 20 ears of history typing increasingly fast in my own idiosyncratic manner and long habits break hard

windows, usually, i'm passionately against mac and have been lazy and to an extent also forced by my work not to switch to linux

have tried and liked ubuntu

Hey and if that's boring to do in your own time, maybe you can ask your work if they can give you 30 minutes per workday for a few weeks to work on that in the office?

thing is though, no 'office', no 'work', no 'workday' - i am and have always been self-employed

getting paid some small amount for learning to type would make no difference

i realise that styling myself as a sort of urban scum ronin is ridiculous, but it has meant that in between a small number of rather ridiculous bouts of self-exploitation i was actually almost always in fuck-you money territory on fairly little cash

You can easily argue that the time will soon pay itself back in typing speed and most importantly reducing strain on your hands so you won't get RSI (which would cost them loads of sickness benefit etc).

no sickness benefit either, i am sad to disappoint

i don't get RSI thanks to a combination of yoga and the Alexander technique and gym-ball chairs

Though frankly, I attribute my own not-getting-RSI more to the fact that I move around a lot when I'm behind the computer, that I don't tense my neck/shoulders when I'm stressed and that I always take care to keep my back and shoulders straight, not slumped forward. The latter two are benefits from no more than the first 12 weekly 1h low-intensity meditative yoga classes I took--that is, I learned keeping-my-back-straight and not-tensing-unnecessary-muscle-groups after the first season, I continued taking the classes for several years because face it, it's a lot more enjoyable than touch typing lessons

i know what you mean

thing is, i'm so desperately picky and hard-to-please when it comes to picking yoga instructors... i would just love to go to yoga classes that meet my expectations about once or twice a week... but none such exists

this is sure to change in bristol but i am already opting for kendo and kick-boxing as the first two things i want to try as i return to the metropolis

so thanks for trying to help but i actually think i'm pretty okay in that department, just a habitual bitcher about how boring it is, sorry

[Triple Zero]

I suppose I'm lucky the very first yoga instructor was this woman. No, actually the second but that guy got ill after the first lesson. Must have been an omen or something