automaticdoor75

I purchased this last week in Wellington, Colorado. The Model D Executive has an unusual feature for a typewriter: a proportionally-spaced font.

This typewriter still needs a lot of work, I plan to have it professionally serviced soon.

I look forward to using it for writing letters.

The typewriter is HEAVY. When you hit the carriage return and the platen snaps back, it shakes the whole desk.

I read The Count of Monte Cristo some years ago, and it remains one of my favorite novels. This year, I committed to read The Three Musketeers. I chose a Librivox audiobook narrated by Mark Smith, since I had enjoyed his recording of Tarzan of the Apes.

The audiobook used a public-domain translation which apparently toned down or removed the more risque parts of the story. If you want to read or listen to an audiobook (which I recommend), I guess try to find a more modern translation, even if you have to pay for it. The Librivox recording is of high quality, with excellent narration.

I very much enjoyed the story. The true pleasure of the novel is the bond between D'Artagnan and the musketeers, and discovering their personalities. Much like Little Women, this is a novel that you remember for the characters. On top of that, you get to know the "lackeys" of the four. I had assumed the lackeys would be irrelevant to the plot, instead, they all manage to play a role in the larger story.

#Milady

The most interesting character for me was the villain Milady. My opinion of her swung wildly across the story.

(SPOILERS)

About a third of the way through the book, D'Artagnan becomes smitten with Milady. He disguises himself as Milady's lover, the Comte de Ward, to have sex with her. This is glossed over in the translation I listened to, but I was alarmed when I read about it in a separate summary. What D'Artagnan does would now be considered rape, and it's no wonder Milady flies into a rage when she discovers the truth.

In another chapter, D'Artagnan's melancholy friend and father-figure Athos confides his own dark past: years before, he was a count, and married a young girl from his village. He later discovered this girl had been branded on her shoulder as a felon. Athos cut her clothes off and had her hanged. Ashamed to his core by the scandal, he renounced his title, took on the name Athos, and joined the Musketeers. Later, it's revealed that Athos' wife survived the hanging, and became Milady.

I can accept the explanation that Athos, as a nobleman, was bound by duty to carry out the execution. Still, in the moment of reading, what he did felt pretty damn brutal. I suppose I was thinking of Jean Valjean in Les Miserables, or the people who were sent to penal colonies for breaking a plate in a burglary.

All of that's to say that I started the second half of the book feeling like maybe Milady had been wronged a little bit, and may have had some reasons for seeking revenge on D'Artagnan and friends. I was accustomed to modern storytelling convention, which has no patience for purely evil characters. If the story were written today, the branding would have been treated as a tragic misunderstanding.

I hate to say it, but when Milady is captured in England on her way to assassinate the Duke of Buckingham, part of me was hoping she'd escape and get away with it.

I was sobered up by the end, when Milady has mercilessly poisoned Madame Bonacieux, and when we hear the Executioner's story. At that point, I was disabused of my notion that Milady was some victim of circumstance. If Athos had not discovered Milady's brand, she would have ruined him, too, if not killed him.

All I can do is give my compliments to Dumas' writing talents: just like the character Felton in the later chapters, I had been thoroughly seduced by the character of Milady. Milady's latest victim...was me!

#Conclusion

I'm glad to have finally read The Three Musketeers. I am encouraged to try to find some of Dumas' less-popular stories, including The Last Cavalier at some point.

I did an internal flash of the 20240225 version of Libreboot onto my X60 tablet (Core 2 Duo L7400, 64-bit). I'm using Trisquel 11 as my operating system.

If I turn on the laptop when it's plugged in, it boots up just fine. When I turn in on and it's unplugged, I get this message:

Welcome to GRUB!

alloc magic is broken at [memory address here]

Aborted. Press any key to exit.

Pressing any key doesn't do anything for me here, I have to hold down either power button to turn the laptop off.

Some other notes:

• If I have the laptop on when it's unplugged, and then run a command like reboot, it will load fine.
• If I restart the laptop with the button on the login screen, it will load fine.
• If I hit Reboot from the Libreboot menu, it will load fine.
• If I hit Poweroff from the Libreboot menu, I get the 'alloc magic is broken' message.

I can provide the memory address if it helps.

I do like some aspects of the movie. Great theme song. The acting is good. But when Emilio Estevez's character is looking through the window with the rain pouring down, tell me it doesn't feel like a horror movie. I was laughing in disbelief the first time I watched it.

The Chaos of Heat is a crime story as unrelenting as the heat wave described in its vivid prose. It follows a man who, wracked by heroin addiction, finds himself at the front of a dangerous robbery spree. Will Vince survive long enough to get his next fix, or is he little more than shark bait, out of his depth?

An interview with Sefton Eisenhart, author of the new crime story The Chaos of Heat I asked him about what he enjoys reading, his writing setup, fanzines, and the authors who inspire him.

First off, forgive the low quality of the picture, my digital camera has trouble with photos of computer screens.

In order to install Libreboot, it helps to have GNU/Linux installed on the laptop first. This can be tricky with the MacBook 2,1. The official Libreboot docs (https://libreboot.org/docs/hardware/macbook21.html) offer two options: install from an external USB drive, which can be quite technical, or install from a DVD. The problem with the DVD option is that the optical drives on these MacBooks tend to fail (the optical drive on the one I bought today wasn't working).

Fortunately, there is a much easier way. If you have a 64-bit version of GNU/Linux already installed on an SSD from another laptop, just put it into the MacBook, and it should work. These MacBooks made it easy to upgrade the drive and RAM, by removing the battery, and then loosening three screws to remove a protective plate. When powering the laptop on, hold down the alt/option key. The drive you just put in should come up as "Windows" in the dual boot menu.

Once the laptop is powered on, if you have flashrom/flashprog and your Libreboot ROM ready, you should be able to internally flash Libreboot, simple as that.

Trisquel GNU/Linux has worked for me when doing this trick. I have had some trouble when using a 32-bit version of Trisquel, a 64-bit version does not give me any problems.

Hello,

I wanted to share one of my ongoing project. This is a directory of works by Harlan Ellison. Ellison was one of the most popular writers of science fiction in his time, but sadly most of his work is out of print. This directory includes summaries of his short stories, essays, book introductions, and teleplays.

Some of Ellison's best-known works include I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream, Repent, Harlequin! Said the Ticktockman (which influenced V for Vendetta), A Boy and His Dog, Dangerous Visions and the Star Trek episode The City on the Edge of Forever.

So, far, 21 books have been added.

I hope this directory helps keep his work alive. If you're a fan and would like to contribute some write-ups of a book that's not been added yet, let me know.

YouTube channel Orwellian Penguin has caused a bit of a stir by demonstrating a Librebooted T440P running Windows 10.

Not that anyone asked for it, but here's my opinion: it's better for someone to use free-software browser like IceCat, even if they are going to websites that use non-free JavaScript. In the same way, it's better for someone to have a Libreboot BIOS, even if they are running a non-free operating system.

This Olympia has a cursive font, which would make it well-suited for writing letters.