Monday, January 12, 2009

The moving finger types, and, having typed, goes back and fixes it

Ever since I spilled champagne into the (white) keyboard of this now-venerable eMac, thus rendering it un-usable, I have instead been using the old (black) keyboard from my superannuated but still fully functional and therefore never-thrown-out iMac. The iMac is a strawberry one, christened Pink Patty by the Bloke, who said all computers must have names so you can talk to them and beg them to do things, so naturally when I bought the white eMac, which seemed somehow male, it was immediately christened Patrick White.

So with Pink Patty's keyboard plugged into Patrick White, and my goodness me that does sound a tad unwholesome, I find that at certain times of the day the light strikes the surfaces of the black keys in such a way that I can't see what they say. And, never having quite learned to touch-type accurately, I have spent most of this morning writing about a biography of somebody called Miles Granklin.

10 comments:

Peter said...

He sounds like someone from the same school as Ern Malley.

Kerryn Goldsworthy said...

Full name Stella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin, and of an era to (with justification) write under a male pseudonym so she'd be taken seriously. But you are closer to the truth than you may know: she wrote a whole series of historical novels under the pseudonym Brent of Bin Bin and though it was an open secret in the end she went to her grave not admitting that she was him. The only opinion of hers that I can find on the Ern Malley hoax is that she thought Max Harris deserved to be made a dill of, for being so egotistical. Given her own intermittent self-promotion and self-regard, this may be partly projection.

TimT said...

Miles Granklin, fond of eating German grankfurters. One of her favourite books: Grankenstein, or, the Modern Prometheus.

Known for her earnest and grank manner.

(Word verification: whinge)

Anonymous said...

Is that one of those keyboards where the top row of keys (among others) are half-sized?

Pains in the arse they are.

cheers
BS

Anonymous said...

I rather wondered if JR didn't end up somewhat more than vaguely disliking the Granklin. And that damn tea cup.

Kerryn Goldsworthy said...

TimT: indeed. She was also very griendly and although physically quite gragile was not grightened of anything much. And she grew up grolicking about in the grosty paddocks of the Monaro, where in winter it was gricken greezing.

BS: yes.

Kerryn Goldsworthy said...

Ah, Bernice, snap. I read your terrific review en blog and have tried very hard to not plagiarise, unconsciously or any other way, but it was a huge help in ordering my thoughts.

The cup was very beautiful but clearly just one more way to terrorise her guests. And I agree about the dislike, though I don't think she annoyed JR half as much as she was annoying me by the end.

Kerryn Goldsworthy said...

Frew up.

As it were.

Elsewhere007 said...

Pink Patty? Somehow I think Pat would love it.

I had a friend involved with that Miles Granklin volume (I imagine it's the same one). Be kind to it. A lot of sweat there.

Anonymous said...

Grometheus, Tim, please.

Pav, if you broke your keyboard by spilling champagne into it, at least you had fun doing it by the sound of it.

Now I'm going to go off topic because I really can't be arsed getting yet another login password and user ID, which I'll forget, just to comment on OLO (and that goes for Troppo, too)- re. your article Rhetorical Skill or Empty Rhetoric - do you know who the speechwriter was? Because if it was Jon Favreau, that would tune my bullshit detector to "extreme" (no reflection on Obama himself, btw, just my assessment of the cynicism or otherwise of the speechwriter.)