Miscellany № 101: back to our scheduled programming

And you’re back in the room!

I recently submitted the manuscript for my next book, Face with Tears of Joy: a Natural History of Emoji to my editor, Brendan Curry, at W. W. Norton. This one was a bit of a whirlwind: Empire of the Sum was published less than a year ago, so writing time has been short. Add in a recent relocation from Birmingham, England to Linlithgow, Scotland (the birthplace of Mary Queen of Scots, no less), along with all of the attendant upheaval with jobs and schools and houses, and it has not been a restful few months 😅

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Shady Characters on Alan Alda’s Clear and Vivid podcast

I’m still pinching myself, but recently I had the distinct pleasure on appearing on Clear and Vivid podcast, hosted by the great Alan Alda. I knew of Alan’s work as an actor and writer from the likes of M*A*S*H , of course, but I hadn’t known that in recent years he has moved into the world of science communication, not least with the foundation of the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science at Stony Brook University, New York.

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Shady Characters at MacGuffin magazine: interrobang!

The following was published in issue 13 of MacGuffin Magazine. It recapitulates some of the contents of my interrobang series and adds some new details to boot. Enjoy!

The Speckters lived in a postwar apartment near Gramercy Park in Manhattan. Their collection of printing presses lived in a rented apartment across the hall, a three-thousand-pound Columbian press balanced carefully across the beams under the floor. The couple were steeped in the world of printing: their kitchen hosted what they called the “Four Penny Press”, and their apartment(s) were visited by a parade of typographic celebrities such as Hermann Zapf and Steven Saxe.

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Shady Characters advent calendar 2023: the HP-35

Welcome to day eleven of the first ever Shady Characters advent calendar! I’m counting down to Christmas by way of a collection of beautiful, clever, important, and/or outright odd calculators and calculating devices. Some come from the pages of Empire of the Sum, some are part of my Calculator of the Day series, and some will be new to the blog. I won’t manage twenty-four posts, but I do plan to hit at least one every other day. I hope you enjoy the series!

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