Tiny Tea Dispatch #013

Published:

Feb 29, 2020, 01:00:00

The pen is mightier than the sword, and considerably easier to write with
– Marty Feldman –

Garden

None of the sun flowers survived past the first 2 weeks and a lot of the pepper plants just stopped growing around that time as well. But now we’re seeing some new leaves coming in here and there. I think we’ve got 19 of the 30+ plants that are left at this point. Very few of them are jalapeño, and they are still very small compared to the other varieties I have here, so I’m not entirely sure if they will make it. We’ll see.
The one in the photo is called ‘Chocolate Beauty’ and should produce sweet, dark brown peppers. It’s the only variety I’m growing that has no heat.

A lot of thanks goes to a former co-worker who gave me a bunch of different peppers last year, to test and try out.

Ink Well

The watches have had to concede some room for pens, this year. I fell down the rabbit hole of (vintage) fountain pens after watching a video from Peter Draws and I decided I wanted something nice to write and draw with. Next thing I know, I’m researching flex nibs and pens that are 90+ years old.

Most of the current collection are in the photo: a Waterman 52 1/2, Pelican 140, conway Stewart 475, Faber-Castell Loom and a Platinum Preppy. There are a couple more eBay purchases on the way + one I hacked together.

The oldest one in the collection right now, is the woodgrain one. That’s the Waterman and this particular one was made between 1923 and 1926. These old ones had a self-filling mechanism with a lever to create a vacuum and suck up ink from a bottle. It’s pretty neat.

The strangest one, is one I modified following some tutorials (pictured above). I got a cheap fountain pen where I replaced the nib with one that is used by comic artists to draw (Zebra G-nib) + added a convertor (instead of using cartridges). There is some tweaking to the nib and the ink feed involved because the drawing-nib is not meant to fit. You’re meant to mount this nib on a holder to just dip in ink (very old school, I know). In the end, I don’t think it was worth the effort though. Maybe I’ll switch the nib out again with a vintage one if I find a good one on eBay.

Since I now have these various different pens, with various types of nibs, I’m branching out from my note taking/list making. On the one hand, I’m trying to teach myself a form of shorthand: writing in a system that has less strokes so you write faster, and it’s less readable at a glance (so you can pretend you’re writing in code :D).
And I’ve also been thinking about learning some kind of fancy-looking script to take advantage of the way the fountain pens write (like Spencerian or Copperplate). But that looks kinda hard 😛

If anyone wants a hand-written card in the mail, send me your address! I’ll try to keep it readable.

The Watch Tower

Not much to tell here. No new watches coming in. I’m still waiting on parts to finish my bronze watch (new dial and hands) + a replacement dial for one of my older watches. After that, I’m selling off 1 or 2. It’ll compensate for the money I spent on the pens.

The Batcave

Here is a picture of the rest of the Batman-themed lego I have. There’s 3 Batmen in there: 1 in the car, 1 in the chopper in the back and 1white Batman just behind the car.
Next time, I’ll see if I can find some 90’s Batman toys to show you.

Seen

Bad Boys For Life

Action movies of the 90’s were a lot of things but they were not subtle. Michael Bay’s ‘Bad Boys’ flicks were the high point. Two very talented and hard-working Belgian directors (Adil El Arbi & Bilal Benyaich) have now made a follow-up to Bad Boys I and II. It’s a very weird story with a lot of characters don’t have any chemistry and are not really sure why they are there at all. But luckily, the dynamics between the 2 protagonists still work and plenty of laughs. There’s also some Belgian references, which was amusing to see.
The things Adil and Bilal made in Belgium so far, with very low budgets, have been critically acclaimed so I would love to see them make a property of their own with a Hollywood budget.
Here’s hoping this is the big break they needed to get a foot in the door.

A mudlark by the Thames

A youTube channel of someone walking the banks of the Thames on low tide, looking for (archeologically) interesting items. The audio isn’t great but the things she finds give an interesting look into common life in London. Features a lot of clay pipes.
This is from the channel description:

The River Thames is one of the largest archaeological sites in the world when the tide is out! It has also been used as a rubbish receptacle since London began, by the many civilisations that have lived along its banks. Mudlarking is a term which has been around since the 16th century, and was originally the word used to describe the poorest of the poor, often young children and old women, who searched the Thames mud for any little bits and pieces that they could sell to make a bob or two. Richer people often used to throw coins down into the Thames mud from the bridges and watch with glee whilst the poor mudlarks scrabbled around for coins. I have been mudlarking in London for almost 15 years now and have a Port of London authority permit.

Brains

I love reading about brains and finding out that our knowledge and assumptions about them are rubbish. I read a post a few years back (I can’t find it right now), about someone who found out that, actually, not everybody can visualize concepts in their minds. Eg. the term ‘seeing’ something in your mind (eg ‘imagine’ a chair or a face === literally seeing it) is not something everybody can do. They asked around on Facebook and actually found a fair amount of people who were totally baffled that this is a literal thing people can do. Turns out, it can go a lot further than that. This poor sap only just realised that not everyone can ‘hear’ an internal monologue and it’s probably not even that black & white. I wonder how this fits in with other neurological differences like face blindness and synestesia.

This reminds me about a whole range of ‘facts’ we (used to) teach about biology where we tried to fit everything in neat rule sets and examples of the contrary were put in the ‘exceptions’ pile (like gender or left/right brain types). I guess it’s time to start sifting through the pile and make some adjustments to preconceived notions.

Transmissions

As you know by now, I share some Transmissions from Space during the week. Here are the latest ones:

Out

I don’t know about you but I’m about ready to leave winter behind. There wasn’t even any snow around here this year, apart from some melting flakes last Friday. A new month, the longer and longer days, some (letter) writing, …

That is it from me for this month. I hope you had a good week!

Tiny Tea Dispatch #013

Publishing info

Published:

~~ Garden ~~

~~ Ink Well ~~

~~ The Watch Tower ~~

~~ The Batcave ~~

~~ Seen ~~

~~ Brains ~~

~~ Transmissions ~~

~~ Out ~~

~~ Links ~~

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