[The typewriter] bears an anti-apartheid sticker on one side of the object and is boldly signed across the front casing by Adams in his unmistakeable hand. It comes housed in its cardboard box which Adams used to transport it, namely packaging from Simon and Schuster, originally containing copies of Adams and Terry Jones’ collaboration ‘Starship Titanic’. An address label to Adams’ office at the Digital Village, London, remains stuck on the box too. ---- All rights reserved. nd.com Read on...

The most interesting part of the description is this:

The keys of his typewriter all still bear the marks of Adams’ tortured labour. Significantly, the ‘x’ key is particularly discoloured.

The only thought I have is that he skipped past words or passages to return to them later. I have heard a number of writers who on coming across a potential block, simply enter a long string of X’s to visibly mark the place to which they need to return. It helps to avoid stalling the workflow altogether on just a minor point, coming back to it once there has been time to give it more thought.

I’m not the collector type, but this would be a remarkable item to own. Now all I need is to find just under $27k – keep using my GoDaddy codes, people!

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Britcaster uses phpBB as our forum software of choice. This, as do other forum applications, has the ability to filter out any word or phrase and replace it with something else – anything else. Many forum admins simply set the expletive filter to either kill the word(s) entirely or put up some message suggesting that a bad word was used. But at Britcaster we decided to change the expletives to silly, quirky or just plain silly alternatives.
Here’s an example of the power of silliness: if phrase: “You are a f***ing w****r” (obviously with the masked words in full) gets transformed into “You are a cottage cheese fluffy bunny”, the author generally edits to remove the offending text and either gives up or finds a more acceptable means to communicate their feelings.

By transforming the expletives into real, albeit silly, words – rather than drawing attention to them by blanking or marking them out – it seems to immediately diffuse the emotion behind the comment. Of course it doesn’t stop anyone posting an unpleasant or derogatory post, but usually cuts out direct abuse.

[tags]britcaster, word filters, forum admin[/tags]

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There are very few people in the world who a take an instinctive dislike to – I’m talking on a deep level here, not superficial. In the process of exploring the psychology behind one such instinctive reaction – people are fascinating, good or bad – I discovered a great deal about myself.

A few years ago I realised a growing, instinctive and wholly irrational dislike to a new member of my then extended family. There was simply no logical reason for it, but I felt uncomfortable being in the same room as them and avoided engaging them in conversation wherever possible. This was a worrying reaction as it was clear they were going to stick around and there would have to be fairly regular contact.

This got me looking into the reasons why there can sometimes be a subconscious and apparently irrational dislike formed for another person. An answer eluded me until I came across a book which talked in some depth about inter-personal relationships and the emotional dynamic between them. Oddly enough, although I cannot remember exactly which book it was, this wasn’t a book on psychology; it was. if memory serves me, a book on writing character dialogue and inter-personal relationships for TV and film!

Essentially, we can dislike someone because they seem to mirror aspects of ourselves about which we feel negatively – our bad points. But these aren’t just our normal, everyday, irritating little quirks; these are the deepest, darkest, most repressed aspects we find difficult to even admit to ourselves.

My immediate reaction was: “Claptrap! The reason I don’t like them is because they are the complete opposite of me. There’s no way I have anything in common with that person!”

Further thought started to reveal subtle aspects of similarity, however. Certain core motivations, although sometimes outwardly expressed very differently, were similarly aligned. And they were the kind of uncomfortable motivations I used to struggle with in my own acceptance of who I was. Through the understanding of my reaction to someone else, I learned to understand myself; step one to accepting oneself.

So the next time you take an instinctive dislike of anyone you have dealings with, particularly if that dislike grows the more you learn of that other person, look very carefully at yourself – someone you dislike can be a very revealing mirror.

[tags]people, psychology[/tags]

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