FeedCity: Chris Aldrich

Chris Aldrich
05 Nov 22:06 • Chris Aldrich

Almost desk level view of a Dazor desk work lamp from the right side showing the subtle but blocky curves and the art deco-style lines. The lamp is pushed up slightly so we can see the two 18" long LED fluorescent-style bulbs. It sits on an oak card index box next to a brass raven desk decoration.

I had the ballast replaced to work with modern LED replacement bulbs and the switch upgraded to be able to control each of the two bulbs independently. I also cleaned of decades of grime and polished it up a bit. Thrift purchase for $24.98 from Goodwill on 2025-10-02.

Chris Aldrich
05 Nov 22:06 • Chris Aldrich

An interview set up with Susan Orlean in a chair on the left and David Perell facing her on the right. The background is a dark academia-esque set of bookshelves with old, vintage books and a handful of decorative book supports. Principle among these is a vintage Underwood standard typewriter which instead of standing by itself is being used to prop up a section of books which butts right up against it.

You know a typewriter is being used as flimsy filler decoration when it’s sitting on a shelf and simultaneously serving as a book support. A real writer’s typewriter is free and clear so that the carriage can move its full length.

Chris Aldrich
03 Nov 04:00 • Chris Aldrich

Typewritten score card for Game 7 of the World Series 2025

Last baseball game of the year.

Chris Aldrich
02 Nov 00:05 • Chris Aldrich

A black wooden "altar" with a black and cream colored Remington 666 typewriter sits next to a cocktail glass of blood red liquid. In the corner stands a kindergartener's black bat Halloween craft/decoration.

Samhain or All Hallows Eve when the boundary between the living and the dead has been blurred seems the best time to pull out the Remington 666 with the blood red ribbon and brew up a similarly colored Boulevardier cocktail to write about our wishes for the coming new year. Sláinte! How are you celebrating?

Chris Aldrich
31 Oct 10:24 • Chris Aldrich

An old fashioned glass with a large square ice cube and an eerie , blood red cocktail chills in front of a large gray Royal KMG typewriter. In the background a work lamp illuminates a group of books on a book case.

The blood red of the boulevardier works well on the night before Samhain. I’m pairing it with the 1950 Royal KMG (pica) to write about the ghosts of the year past.

Chris Aldrich
30 Oct 00:03 • Chris Aldrich

Typewritten index card which reads: Dear Trader Joe's: I suspect that if you move your sweet and dry vermouths out of the wine section and into the hard liquor section near the bourbon, gin, and vodka, you'll sell not only a lot more of the vermouth, but you’ll sell far more of the base liquors with them.

Chris Aldrich
30 Oct 00:03 • Chris Aldrich

Royal KMG typewriter on a desk with two piles of Greetings from Altadena postcards heaped in front of it. One of them is in the carriage ready to be typed on.

It’s been a rough year for a number of reasons, but I’ve bought a hundred postcards to try to catch up with people. Kindly send me your address if you haven’t heard from me in a bit and need proof of life.

Chris Aldrich
28 Oct 21:18 • Chris Aldrich

How do you use your typewriter? [Wrong Answers Only Edition]

It’s really an over-asked question: What do you use your typewriter for?. (tl;dr: writing). To make things more interesting and entertaining in the middle of the week, let’s turn it on its ear and ask only for the wrong answers today. Whether it’s use in food preparation: Throw a slab of steak into the segment … Continue reading How do you use your typewriter? [Wrong Answers Only Edition]

Chris Aldrich
28 Oct 00:39 • Chris Aldrich

Frontal view of a 1946 Royal KMM typewriter sitting on a steel table.

I purchased this 1946 Royal KMM standard typewriter on October 4th via Goodwill for $22.00. It’s equipped with an extra-wide 18 inch platen and carriage with “support wings” and a 10 key decimal tabulator which means in its day it would have been used for some heavy-duty accounting. The logos could be in better shape, … Continue reading

Chris Aldrich
24 Oct 17:44 • Chris Aldrich

A close up of Wednesday Addams side of her dorm room constructed in LEGO featuring a small LEGO brick with a sticker that stands in as her typewriter. At the back of the typewriter is a piece holding a white LEGO representing paper.

I finished the Wednesday Addams and Enid Sinclair dorm room LEGO set in time for Halloween. The typewriter is a tiny custom LEGO with a pre-affixed sticker and a small white LEGO attached as a simulacrum of paper.

Chris Aldrich
23 Oct 16:07 • Chris Aldrich

An oak library card catalog with 20 drawers festooned with felt garland made of ghosts and cats. On top of it are a yellow Royal FP typewriter next to a large orchid with half a dozen blooms in a pot with yellow tuille decoration around the bottom. Behind it all on the wall is a framed abstract artwork with a matching yellow tone to the rest of the scene

Chris Aldrich
14 Oct 00:03 • Chris Aldrich

Text message with a Public Safety Message to prepare for potential emergency evacuation

We’re spending an hour to batten down the hatches and do some preparation (yet again) for another potential emergency evacuation in Altadena, CA. This one due to potential mud slides and debris flows expected in the Eaton Fire burn scar areas with impending heavy rains this afternoon. I suspect we’re probably reasonably safe due to … Continue reading

Chris Aldrich
13 Oct 00:48 • Chris Aldrich

A beige colored copy holder made out of a bent piece of sheet metal stands next to a gray Royal KMG typewriter on a desk. The holder has a flat metal bottom that bends in a small loop at the bottom before shooting back up at an angle to hold papers for easy viewing while typing up one's notes. On this one there is a black binder clip holding an index card to the top of the holder.

I picked this copy holder up at a thrift store in early 2025 for about $2. Along with a binder clip or some small magnets, it’s great for transcribing notes using one of my typewriters.

Chris Aldrich
10 Oct 15:02 • Chris Aldrich

A gray Royal KMG typewriter on a felt mat sits on a table next to some index cards on one side and a purple bottle of nail polish remover (acetone), a brass bristle brush, and a toothbrush sitting on a blue-ink-stained paper towel on the other. A careful observer might see a black pin with a white moustache stuck to the front of the typewriter underneath the Royal badge.

Public Service Announcement: Here’s your gentle maintenance reminder to clean the slugs on your typewriter to keep your type fresh and crisp.

Chris Aldrich
09 Oct 11:39 • Chris Aldrich

A blue lacquerware index card holder full of index cards and a pen in the accompanying pen slot sits on a desk with several books and an oak card index.

I’ve been wanting a vintage desktop index card holder and pen set for a bit. This excellent version has a nautical theme featuring a ship with subtle blue lines on the sails and red rope lines that call to mind the red and blue lines on standard lined index cards. The fact that the blue … Continue reading

Chris Aldrich
09 Oct 11:39 • Chris Aldrich

A square black plastic punch with a white circular button sits on a wooden table next to an index card with a tab shaped hole punched out of it.

I had been considering getting a custom punch made several times, but never looked to see if one already existed commercially. Today, while doing a 5 minute peruse of the thrift store, there it was! When you use as many tabbed index card dividers as I do, this can be incredibly useful. It’s just the … Continue reading

Chris Aldrich
08 Oct 00:01 • Chris Aldrich

Sorry Ron, but that is more likely a late 40s Underwood SS than an Underwood 5. But I too want to type up every word I know.

Chris Aldrich
07 Oct 04:33 • Chris Aldrich

Desk set up with a gray Royal KMG standard typewriter and a brown Royal HH. Next to the KMG is a cocktail glass with a yellowish whisky sour in it. In the background are two card index cabinets and a barrister bookshelf full of books. In the background we see three other typewriters.

Made up a new batch of homemade sugar syrup for the bar and realized I’d never typed up a recipe for the card index. Sorted…

Chris Aldrich
03 Oct 00:24 • Chris Aldrich

Index card with typewritten text: Hot take on artificial intelligence: Artificial intelligence is like someone "pouring out their zettelkasten" to answer a potential question. They might cover the surface level information, but there's rarely any considerable depth, engrossing insight, and never any honest humanity.

Chris Aldrich
01 Oct 00:18 • Chris Aldrich

Thinking about the current storage capacity of my card index collection, I made a back-of-the-index-card calculation: 172,000 index cards * 150 words / card [average maximum, using front only] * 1,200 bytes / 150 words [rough average with Unicode encoding] * 1 kb / 1024 bytes * 1MB/1024 kb = approximately 200 MB of text … Continue reading

Chris Aldrich
29 Sep 00:03 • Chris Aldrich

Two pillar brown crinkle painted fluorescent desk lamp with art deco design touches sits on an executive tanker desk next to an oak card index tray and a Big Ben clock.

On September 21st, I picked up this vintage lamp for my desk. It was a steal at $14.99 from the local thrift shop which doesn’t often have lamps at all. The brown crinkle paint is a near perfect match for my 1955 Royal HH standard typewriter. While a bit dusty and covered in decades of … Continue reading

Chris Aldrich
28 Sep 02:50 • Chris Aldrich

A bright room with a green steel table on top of which sits a 1950 gray Royal KMG typewriter, a two drawer Shaw-Walker oak card index and some papers and mathematics textbooks. Behind the table is a barrister's bookcase full of books, and two card index filing cabinets.

Today’s reading and writing space.

Chris Aldrich
23 Sep 05:11 • Chris Aldrich

Office set up showing a gray executive tanker desk with blue drawers and writing drawers. In the front is a brown Royal HH standard typewriter with a visually similar vintage brown metal desk lamp with art deco styling behind it. Off to the side is a box for and bottle of Isle of Sky 18 year old whisky with a double old fashioned glass nearby.

Tonight it’s a double pairing: first it’s the 1955 Royal HHE typewriter and an Isle of Skye 18 year old Scotch whisky and an almost perfect pairing of the Royal HH with my new (to me) brown vintage (1940s?) desk lamp with art deco styling.

Chris Aldrich
19 Sep 06:00 • Chris Aldrich

Close up of a LEGO version of Wednesday Addams dorm room at Nevermore featuring a tiny black LEGO brick typewriter

For fans of the Juwel 3 typewriter that appears in the Netflix series Wednesday, there’s a tiny little simulacra in LEGO set 76781 Wednesday & Enid’s Dorm Room. With the recent drop of the second season and Halloween around the corner, I was surprised to see the set on clearance at Target for about $30.

Chris Aldrich
16 Sep 05:15 • Chris Aldrich

Fletch and his Royal HH Standard Typewriters

Fletch rolls a sheet of paper into the platen of a Royal HH standard typewriter at his office desk.

I noticed that just like Dustin Hoffman as Carl Bernstein in All the President’s Men, Chevy Chase portraying the titular Fletch (Universal Pictures, 1985) has a Royal HH typewriter not only at his Santa Monica apartment, but he also has a matching one at his office at the Los Angeles Globe. Fletch’s Apartment Office Fletch’s … Continue reading Fletch and his Royal HH Standard Typewriters

Chris Aldrich
16 Sep 00:03 • Chris Aldrich

A blue textbook with three crowns on the cover and a faded spine that reads Introduction to Hilbert Spaces sits on an oak library card catalog between a Royal KMG typewriter and a blue vase.

My textbook for Dr. Miller’s class Introduction to Hilbert Spaces: An Adventure In Infinite Dimensions has arrived.

Chris Aldrich
14 Sep 05:38 • Chris Aldrich

Typewritten index card which reads: Axxuy, Replying to your "post via email", while tempting, seemed absurdist given your topic at hand. So here I am typing up a response on my 1950 Royal KMG which I'll typecast via webmention on wy own website. Perhaps a bit of the old mixed in with the new? I've been enjoying your #blaugust series, particularly your #typewriter specific posts. Looks like you've got a nice little collection going over there. Keep up the good work! Best, Chris Aldrich / www.boffosocko.com

Chris Aldrich
14 Sep 05:15 • Chris Aldrich

I’m glad to see that I’m not the only IndieWeb person with webmentions on their site who’s writing about typewriters and typecasting.

Chris Aldrich
09 Sep 00:24 • Chris Aldrich

I feel like I can call myself a real typewriter afficionado now. My new pen typewrwiter-pal Tom Hanks has written me a letter on some fascinating letterhead.

Chris Aldrich
08 Sep 00:06 • Chris Aldrich

Typewriter Walking and Singing: Improving Typewriter Performance with Mats, Pads, Rubber Feet, Felt, Recovered Platens, and More

A gray felted wool mat underneath a gray friezed bodied Royal KMG typewriter all sitting on a library card catalog.

The Walking Typewriter It’s a very common complaint/worry/issue when people new to the typewriter world get their first machine and realize that as they’re typing, their typewriter slowly moves or “walks” across the work surface upon which they’re typing. It’s often easy enough to just move it back to center and continue on, but when … Continue reading Typewriter Walking and Singing: Improving Typewriter Performance with Mats, Pads, Rubber Feet, Felt, Recovered Platens, and More