Chris Nicholson's Writing Weblog
June 19, 2009 • Friday
Today I read about a great piece of software: A typewriter program.
No, it's not a word processor. It doesn't allow you to delete, to copy, to paste. It doesn't allow you to do anything a classic typewriter couldn't do.
You can type. You can print. (The one modern feature is that you can save.) Your computer basically becomes a $1,000 typewriter.
The idea is that the restrictions typewriters impose force you to write more carefully, to think more linearly and logically while crafting text. Neat idea.
To read more about this freeware, see Typewriter: Minimal Text Editor.
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June 18, 2009 • Thursday
I've just posted a clip of a magazine feature I wrote last year. The article is approximately nine months old, but I just received the clip a couple weeks ago.
The piece, "Open Season," is a tournament profile of tennis' US Open. It appeared in the Fall 2008 issue of Country Club Quarterly magazine.
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June 17, 2009 • Wednesday
The Wall Street Journal recently ran an excellent editorial about how the centuries-old concept of copyright is as important as ever in the digital age, despite new threats to its enforcement.
The idea of art-author ownership is counter to the new strategies of much of the corporate world, and the Internet has made the theft of intellectual property historically easy. Though many citizens may be unaware, these problems may tear open the very fabric of what makes our society strong.
Even the Wall Street Journal — the money world’s news source — recognizes that copyright protections need to be protected.
See “Copyright Critics Rationalize Theft.”
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June 16, 2009 • Tuesday
A photographer friend of mine, Mary Schilpp, indirectly alerted me to the website of the National Arts Education Public Awareness Campaign.
Created in 2002 by Americans for the Arts and the Ad Council, the campaign aims to educate parents about how exposure to the arts aids a child's development and to identify ways parents can work to secure more arts education in public schools.
For more information about this worthy cause, see the National Arts Education Public Awareness Campaign website.
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June 13, 2009 • Saturday
A Texas-based Internet company that tracks word usage throughout the media and the World Wide Web claimed this week that the English language was due to garner its 1 millionth word.
The group's criterion for a new word is that they must find it used 25,000 times. Suspected "winners" were "defriend," "noob" and "chiconomics."
Instead, our millionth word turned out to be "Web 2.0."
(Sounds a little gimmicky to me; I find it hard to believe that that term didn't find 25,000 usages before this week.)
See the Telegrath's article, "Millionth word in the English language - Web 2.0."
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June 12, 2009 • Friday
According to an article in the Los Angeles Times, Anne Frank's famous diaries will be returned to the Amsterdam home she wrote them in during World War II, where they will remain on permanent display.
The Holocaust victim's writings have long been held in archives by the Netherlands government.
The pages' homecoming was announced to mark what would have been Frank's 80th birthday. She died at 15 years old in a concentration camp.
See "For 80th anniversary of Anne Frank's birth, museum will display her actual diaries."
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