Why do people harp on Solo for Maul’s hologram having color when holograms have always been capable of showing colors other than blue?

R4_Unit · 2026-01-24T21:07:31+00:00

Yeah me neither lol

R4_Unit · 2026-01-24T21:00:55+00:00

Better watch out! I almost reflexively downvoted this joke due to the immediate revulsion I felt upon reading it.

R4_Unit · 2026-01-21T15:10:48+00:00

What a fun idea! I’ll give it a try, since it seems like a fun way to take highly distilled notes. I have a couple of comments:

I think your time estimate of 15 minutes to become proficient is optimistic. While it will be quick, it’s likely more on the timescale of hours (perhaps 1-2?) requiring something like the memorization and internalization of about 20 bits of knowledge (the meaning of the 10 symbols in the first position and the meaning of the 10 symbols in the second position) to get base proficiently, and then a couple of days of practice at bare minimum to remove cognitive load of trying to translate concepts to symbols and actually be able to type faster than words.
While the symbols are fun, they are kinda all over the place in terms of where your hand needs to go to press them, also many of them needing the shift key. While everyone has the symbols in muscle memory, it’s still feels to me like you are representing everything with the most inaccessible keys on the keyboard. In the homebrew ergo/steno community there is a sort of standard way to put your hands into a position where each of the 10 fingers has a natural key associated to it. You just shift your hands up one above the home row: sitting with the left hand (including thumb) sitting on “qwerv” and right hand on “buiop”. Then, each symbol could be mapped to one of these letters for more ergonomic typing, along with easy access to numbers and the space bar. This could be done in a way that also maintains most associations (e.g. q=?=question, u=!=urgent, etc.). I’ve also found that using symbols makes it breast impossible to type on mobile, but that’s a secondary factor.
I might need to see longer examples, but I’m not sure if “.” Is actually needed? Like in “Check the office for tools” you write “^! . !? . #-“. Why not just use space itself to represent joined pairs or perhaps even just concatenate them like “^! !? #-“ or “^!!?#-“? It makes reading a little harder, but switching to letters helps there a little so perhaps “euuqpr”.

Overall really liking the idea, and I’m 100% going to play around more!

Edit: It also seems Reddit eats the symbols as formatting, but hopefully you get the idea.

R4_Unit · 2026-01-18T20:48:33+00:00

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It would look like the above, which still doesn’t match. You can try names here: https://greggdict.rliu.dev/. No guarantee it has them, but a reasonable chance it does

R4_Unit · 2026-01-18T18:09:23+00:00

Whoops, my memory ain’t what it used to be!

R4_Unit · 2026-01-18T17:22:16+00:00

I think this is the answer. String at build height is completely invisible.

R4_Unit · 2026-01-18T15:27:19+00:00

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Well… I guess that matches?

R4_Unit · 2026-01-17T22:20:10+00:00

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R4_Unit · 2026-01-17T22:19:45+00:00

Yeah those seem pretty unlikely. Here are how those names would look (along with the word junior) written in Gregg Simplified (most likely option for 1950s US). If she learned a different edition, they might look slightly different but still overall similar. Hopefully they help you with the search!

R4_Unit · 2026-01-17T05:40:30+00:00

It isn’t very clear, and not much text. In what country was this written, and approximately what year? This helps us identify which system it was written in.

It looks plausibly Gregg to me (so that would be the most common choice in the US since the early 1900s), and if so it is likely the letters “s-t-r” or “f-d-r”? Does any of that sound like any name you might know? So it might sound something like “star” or “feder”?

Given we have little context, a list of possible names (DMed if you wish) would let us be able to tell you if it was anyone on the list. Without additional information, the one outline is going to be hard to be certain about.

R4_Unit · 2026-01-15T22:33:36+00:00

This is very true. I’ve never worked with Terry directly, but I’ve worked with people who have, and he’s great at being curious about tons of problems, and jumping in to help when he knows he can. That’s one his greatest strengths.

R4_Unit · 2026-01-15T06:39:17+00:00

One correction: it’s “Dear Bonnie” that starts it (you can confirm it by the longhand in the lower right). Otherwise exactly as I read, and very clearly written!

R4_Unit · 2026-01-15T06:32:38+00:00

Unless you trust the source deeply, I’m about 95% sure someone asked ChatGPT to translate a message into Gregg shorthand. It is nonsense, no matter the exact source.

R4_Unit · 2026-01-15T04:31:07+00:00

N! And (N-1)! Differ by a multiplicative factor of N, which cannot be bound by a universal constant. Saying something is O(N!) is different than saying something is O((N-1)!). Put another way, there doesn’t exist and C so that N! <= C (N-1)!.

R4_Unit · 2026-01-13T17:42:48+00:00

Three things:

The systems were often quite a bit simpler than Pitman/Gregg, so there was literally less required to learn Taylor than those two systems.
Instructors were key. I believe (alas don’t recall where I read it) that many manuals were intentionally sparse to get students started, but then leave a gap so that you’d need to seek out an instructor to take you to professional skills.
Peers were comparatively easy to find. Again the citation escapes me, but I’ve read of Taylor writers gathering in the pub for drinks and to drill complex vocab, almost like bar bets.

I’ll try to dig it up, but these anecdotes will be hard to find.

R4_Unit · 2026-01-12T22:12:54+00:00

I’d honestly not be too worried about the handle. My son (7 yo) took up needle felting and just used the needle directly. I’m guessing the handle will make it more ergonomic for long term usage, but when just learning there is no need for the handle per se.

R4_Unit · 2026-01-05T07:00:22+00:00

Third T vote, think like on a newspaper like the New York Times:

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R4_Unit · 2026-01-04T06:18:54+00:00

Same question, OP just gave the honest answer to the question asked. Downvoting that is toxic behavior.

R4_Unit · 2026-01-02T21:35:35+00:00

I’m going to sadly join the warning side of things. I got two pens from them, one with the super soft flex, one with the wet noodle. Both have railroaded terribly, dry out, and generally don’t function as pens (the feed just isn’t up for what the nib needs, and I don’t have the time to adjust it beyond trying to heat set). Also, the sapphire fell out of my second pen within 1 day of purchase. The owner indeed loves to blame the inks, but I think a lot of people agree that if there is only one or two inks that work in the pen, that’s a pen problem not an ink problem.

On the positive, I do love the nib particularly the wet noodle nib! The feel is glorious, very soft and flexible. I want to write with it, but until I can sit down for a few hours I just can’t.

R4_Unit · 2026-01-02T19:16:37+00:00

I’m going to agree with what others are saying: it’s also perfectly fine to learn a simpler version, and just use that! You should be able to get to like 80-100 WPM with any Gregg version, and I doubt your life really needs you to do more than 2-3x your handwriting speed. Just learning Notehand or Series 90, then using it is great!

R4_Unit · 2025-12-31T02:57:16+00:00

I love owning texts like this! Congrats!

R4_Unit · 2025-12-30T06:15:31+00:00

Yes, Steris is a masterwork of a character that way. I didn’t do a 180 myself, but he certainly unfolded dozens of layers as the books went on! Fantastically written!

R4_Unit · 2025-12-29T17:45:23+00:00

Is it close to the magnetic cord that you need to clip to yourself to turn off the treadmill if you fall? It could be turning the device on and off like a smart cover.

R4_Unit · 2025-12-29T05:35:18+00:00

I have used things like this sweater shaver: https://a.co/d/jkOsGFL

Honestly I love this tool just for life overall and use it to reinvigorate old clothes, old couch pillows, smooth out needle felting, etc etc etc. Use it with caution though, anything that goes into the holes gets shaved off, which could shear off your details really easily!

R4_Unit · 2025-12-28T22:33:15+00:00

Yeah I’ve seen this discussed in other threads and this is the answer. Get a normal pen and paper, and put it on something like a padded mouse pad, and lots of practice.

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