Nightmare Fuel, Day the Third

A quick nightmare sketch, using the image somewhat literally.

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Another corridor, just like the last. Vinyl tiles, painted cinderblock walls, cheap fluorescent lights fastened to the naked concrete deck above. He had to face the fact; he was lost. Not just a little lost, hopelessly lost beyond recovery. It had started off irritating, but fine. Despite his years of experience, he was the new guy here, and the new guy gets to run all the errands. Get coffee. Get toner the printer. Run down to the sub-basement for patch-cords.

He was the new guy. "Room SB-101" sounded easy enough. Just take the elevator to the sub-basement, look around for the room number. Down to where the floors are vinyl tiles and the lightfixtures bare, the soft carpeting and faux-natural lighting something from another world, the world above.

Down to where the doors aren't labelled, where "Room 101" is just nonsense speak. Just babble.

Down to where he's walked for what feels like hours and has turned himself around and can't find the storage room and can't even find the elevator anymore and there's nobody down here there's no doors here just empty corridor after empty corridor.

Did he collapse against a wall and cry? Did he  stop walking and start running until the pounding of his heart drowned out the pounding of his feet, determined to go the wrong way faster if he couldn't go the right way? Did he scream for someone, anyone to tell him the way? That this wasn't funny? Did he check his phone again and again and again, finding again no signal, not even wifi, stone-cold nothing?

Did he silently pray this was a nightmare, and that he'd wake up in a cold sweat?

We'll never know.

Eventually, after hours or days or years, he found the doors. Brown painted metal double-doors with round portal-windows. The cheap kind of shatterproof glass with the wires between it. Through the windows... another pair of identical doors, painted white on this side. Between, two gurneys.

Atop the gurneys were white blankets, beneath which could only be a body.

That was crazy. This wasn't a place for bodies. IT was a respectful office, in a respectful glass tower in respectful downtown.. His face flushed, now with anger. This.was.wrong.

He grabbed the blanket from one gurney, yanked it off and it was a body it was him, his face with a grimace of horror his hand at his chest, clutching a handful of patchcords.

Image presented without
attribution

He (alive) grabbed them, from him (dead), jerking them free  from a tightclosed fist and ran.

On the other side of the far door was, of course, the elevator. Did a discrete plaque above the double doors say "Room 101"? He never knew. The elevator arrived almost instantly and he dashed in, never again to return to the sub-basement.

He came back to the office the next day like a condemned man to the gallows, resignation letter in his pocket. In his pocket it stayed; just past nine he was introduced to the new guy. He knew that the next time something needed fetching from the sub-basement, he'd have someone else to send.

Nightmare Fuel Day the Second

Day Two of the Nightmare Fuel project. And yes, I lag by a day. I always do. Some quick notes on the story afterward. I'll just start by saying that I love both magic shops and inexplicable magical items. I'm not so much a fan of the everfull-coinpurse or magic sword, but of quirky strange things which act in impossible but thematically interesting ways. For one example of such a curio, read on!

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In the end, it doesn't matter where I got it, does it? Just know that it wasn't the usual way to buy a meat-grinder. A tiny shop between two buildings which were neighbors the day before and the day after, found in a trunk beneath the stair at the estate of a deceased eccentric uncle, bartered with an old gypsy woman for a night's sleep out of the rain (they keep telling me that "gypsy" isn't politically correct, that she's an old Roma woman if she's not just a random drifter. That doesn't matter either).

Photo by Andrea Trask

It doesn't matter that it's cleaner, shinier, more beautiful than it should be. The metal free of rust or scratches, the screws on its clamps shiny lightly with oil, the crank turning freely at the lightest touch to the smooth-worn wooden handle. If you know how to look at it, it feels special.

Oh, I started the obvious way. A pound of sirloin. Rough cut into cubes, not too small, and into the hopper.

I wiped my hands before turning the crank. Again, it's beautiful, is it not? It would be a pity to stain it, even a little. It turned freely at first, then with a bit of resistance as the meat ground. As I turned I felt

                                                                                                                        in the shade of a cork tree, cool grass under my body, my legs folded beneath me. Far off in the distance thumpcrashing of my brothers playfighting, but here I felt at peace, just smelling the flowers
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          something else. Something peaceful, something pleasant. There was surprisingly little meat, but the feeling of peace stayed with me.

Next was some pork shoulder. I'd planned on a meatloaf, you see, and like more than one kind of meat in it. I suppose that isn't important either. I was eager to see what came next, if grinding the pig would be as exquisite a pleasure as grinding a cow (although where DID the meat go?), but remember, the thing is special. A man has to take care of his tools, wouldn't you agree? To do otherwise would be barbaric.

Pork cubes in the hopper, the handle meeting just enough resistance to know its working, first just a grind  and then 
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   late afternoon, lying in a bed of straw in a high wooden building. The space smelled of clean hay and a hint of damp earth. High overhead in the rafters a beam of sunlight illuminated the complicated patterns of a spiderweb. The sight of it gave me a deep feeling of peace
                                                                                                                                                                                                                        and, of course, the image faded.

Again, not enough meat comes out. So yes, it's magic.  The meat is ground into some kind of magical essence and then is gone. I never read all that many magic stories, but I can't imagine that they're all like this, with a magic trinket that, as lovely as it is, doesn't accomplish much more than the waste of what could have been a perfectly good meal. Even Jack's magic beans got him a trip to the clouds and a magic golden-egg laying goose. Where's my magic goose?

Maybe the problem is that I was wasting food. Perhaps this particular grinder is not meant for food. I did clean it again, but took a chance on the inner workings being tough than they seemed by throwing in a half-pencil, first breaking off the eraser end. I wouldn't want that little metal collar to dull the blades any more than the wood. The crank turned with surprising difficulty and
                                                                                                                                                                                            tall, impossibly tall, stretching limbs skyward. I drank the sunlight, grew full. In the blink the an eye or seventy years I felt my body diminished, dismembered, but with each loss I felt a sense of peace and gratitude until nothing remained save a joyous marker where a giant once stood.

I stood back for a long time after that, contemplating the machine and what it might be.

I lied when I said I hadn't read many magic-shop stories. I have, from Jacobs' Monkey Paw through Link's Fairy Handbag. I know that there's promise, but I know that there's more likely disaster.

I know better to carve the stray neighborhood cat or the old woman living alone into the grinder.

I know I've taken from it, but given nothing.

So I cleaned it carefully, thoroughly, gently. Clamped it tightly to the table.

The inside of the hopper feels smooth against my left fingers, the burrs still sharp.

There's nothing more to do but turn
                                                                          the
                                                                                        crank.

I hope it doesn't hurt.

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I was initially planning on going a slightly different rout, with the protagonist speaking to a captive whom he was going to feed into the grinder. That didn't feel right to me, and clashed with the children's book imagery throughout. I trust you DID recognize the children's book imagery, didn't you?

More, perhaps, tomorrow. 

So You Want to Live Forever

Happy October! Each year around this time we have a ritual on the Google+ social network (and twitter, and likely tumblr). Bliss Morgan invites us all to write horrible things with her as we try to sequester our nightmares on the printed page. Each day there is an image prompt to which anyone, if the spirit moves them, is free to write something. A story. A poem. A fragment of a novel. We'll have one of these each day over the month; I'll perhaps write all of them, perhaps just a few.

In any event, here's the opening. Enjoy.

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You're smart and you're clever. You pay attention to things - important things that other people miss. Little things like the dangers of GMOs and vaccines, big things about how the mind works. It's all there, sometimes out in public. Everyone sees it, some even pass it around, but not everyone is smart, not everyone is clever. So few of them think about what it all means.

You do. Of course you do. You're smart and you're clever. And you're careful.

You can live forever.

You started easy, saying hello to raw milk, goodbye to carbs. Goodbye gluten (but didn't that come with carbs anyway?) So what if your coworkers shied away from you in the break room, so what if you keeping hearing mutters about breath and body odor? Some of your diet choices are ... unusual. So what if they are, so what if they change how you smell?

It's a small price for immortality.

Not just immortality, but happiness. You're smart and you're clever. You pay attention, you know where to look, you don't miss much. For the past year you've performed compassionate meditation eight minutes a day before your glass-and-a-half of red wine. In your mind's eye the face from a never-forgotten (to tend your memory is important) face from a Save The Children television ad from decades ago, pouring eight minutes of love through his too-big eyes into his too-big head.

You're smart and you're clever. You make connections, you make the next leap. Lots of people read that speaking affirmations makes people feel worse - that telling the face in the mirror that it is smart and clever actually makes people feel dumb and slow. You took the next step.  Twelve minutes before the mirror every day, speaking reverse affirmations.

"I'm stupid. 
I'm dim. 
I'm a failure. 
I'm nothing."

Image offered with no attribution

Staring into your own stupid, dim, nothing of a failure eyes until the room fades behind you until there is nothing but you but a stupid white beacon in the dimness,  the walls are gone, the room, you are alone
(failure)
focus on your eyes until the room spins. Keep focusing (nothing).

You're clever and you're smart. Also focused, also determined.

You found the secret in the mirror, behind your anti-affirmations. You were brave enough to stare until your face was gone, your nose and lips fading to white nothingness, just the eyes and what was left of the mouth. The eyes wide with laughter. Your mouth open in a grin, lips pulling back from the teeth. 

You're clever and you're smart. You know that beneath each living face lives a deathless skull.

As your body fades, you know that what's left will live forever, here in the mirror. Your eyes.

So what if the part of you that returns to the office tomorrow and sits alone in the breakroom in its miasma of halitosis is but an empty shell? You'll live forever, here in the mirror.

The next person to look into it will see your clever mad eyes.

Dishwashers, Refrigerators, Kitchen Tables, and the Evolving Role of the AV Consultant

As some of you know, I've recently moved (which is why I'm not here quite as much) and am trying to take my kitchen to the modern era. When told about the kitchen project, people are invariably off all manner of advice and requests. I've been asked often if I'll be putting a microwave above the stove (I won't) or if I want a table near the one blank wall (I don't). The interesting question for today's discussion is about the new appliances - would I be getting a single-manufacturer suite, or buy each on its own.

Old appliances. No interconnectivity.

The answer to the appliance question was, for the kitchen, an easy one; there's no synergy at all between a refrigerator, a stove, and a dishwasher. A single-source would perhaps give a slightly more consistent look, but that's it. Instead I'd look at each item on its own and choose the best fit for our use profile and budget.

"Single source" versus "best in breed" is a question which frequently arises around technology, and one which not many years ago I'd have approached the same way I approach appliances today. I especially remember analog systems which might use video switchers, video conference appliances, and control systems all from different manufacturers. In a large build gear might not even be consistent from room to room; I've seen, for example, one manufacturer's touchscreens in specialty spaces and another's keypad controller in a simpler rooms. With purely standalone systems, it made sense to choose best in breed rather than a single source. As a consultant, I'd need (amongst other knowledge) broad familiarity with the product offerings of many vendors and and understanding of their strengths and weaknesses.

Is this still the case? I find it telling that when I told one of my colleagues at SMW that single-source didn't make sense for my kitchen because the appliances don't talk to eachother he corrected me: they don't talk to eachother YET, but they almost certainly will. It's easy to imagine a home full of smart appliances coordinating, for example, energy and water usage so as not to overload the infrastructure at peak times. It's quite likely that my next set of kitchen appliances (a long time from now, I'm hoping) will be a single-manufacturer ecosystem. 

Newer appliances. Shinier, but still not interconnected.
And yes, my countertop is a half-sheet of OSB.

In the AV world, of course, we're already most of the way there. For a very simple example, nearly every manufacturer who manufactures control systems also has some kind of remote asset-management software to provide remote monitoring and control. Suddenly mixing in less costly keypad controllers from an alternate vendor no longer makes sense; you might still be able to save a few dollars and get a slightly nicer device, but at the cost of cutting one space out of the larger ecosystem you're building. "Ecosystem" is a word (and a concept) which I find myself using with increasing frequency these days. That, after all, is what many vendors are selling. I spoke about AV transport over standard IP networks a few times, focusing mainly on functionality. Another interesting development is that many vendors of such systems aren't selling standalone products but broad suites including options such as recording appliances, windowing processors, control, and monitoring. It's an approach which saves the AV contractor headaches in getting disparate systems to work together, saves finger-pointing between manufacturers when two products won't work together, and somewhat simplifies the design process by taking advantage of the R&D manufacturers have put into creating an ecosystem of interoperable products.

Does this mean that the AV designers role is fading? After all, if one is going to deploy a single-source solution it's quite easy to get a master quote from one or more vendors listing all of the pieces and parts it would take to make the solution work. I'd say that this can't be farther from the truth, and the consultant is every bit as important. First,  we still need to do the same work in evaluating client needs, in project programming, and in coordinating all of the moving parts it takes to get  from the idea of needing AV solutions to the actuality of having working solutions. That part can't be sources to a vendor if one wants independent, unbiased analysis.

Another thing to remember is the value of form as well as function and communicating with clients about how people work and how they want things to look. This goes to the kitchen table which at least three people have suggested to me. We generally don't eat in the kitchen, but do quite a bit of cooking. As you can see, it isn't all that large a space. While adding a table would increase workspace, it would do so at the expense of cluttering the area and cutting travel between, say, the microwave and the sink. It's a bad tradeoff for the same reason a gooseneck mic on a conference table is often a bad tradeoff. In both cases, there might be a narrow functional improvement which, to the user, is not worth as much as the tradeoff in aesthetics or workflow that will come with it.

As a designer, it's great to start with a blank canvas.
Even if you need a sledgehammer to get there.

Finally there is, in addition to the obvious need to evaluate entire ecosystems as opposed to single products, a requirement for much more attention to connectivity with other infrastructures. Data networks. Scheduling systems. Security systems. Building management systems. As important as it can be for some types of spaces, audiovisual almost never occupies a central place in the design process; nobody is going to design their entire network infrastructure around the AV system needs. Working with choices made by those in unrelated disciplines remains one of the big tasks and challenges of the AV design consultant.

The work we save by using single vendors - if  we save anything - is what I'd argue is the least important in terms of design. It's the detailed bits and pieces which make the vision work after it's been conceived. While this is absolutely vital, it doesn't speak to our core purpose in the design realm. In my years in the industry, I've seen clients having various levels of satisfaction with the end results of AV projects.  THose who were less than fully satisfied almost never had functionality complaints; AV contractors are very good at delivering systems which, at the end of the day, work. The user hits the button, the projector lights up, an image appears on the screen. The bigger problems are almost always ones of expectations; the projects which fail have often failed when someone didn't ask the right question, months or even years before anyone has chosen the  nuts and bolts needed to execute what would eventually be a flawed vision.

The role of the AV consultant (and designers as a whole) might be evolving even farther from a focus on "nuts and bolts", but the core of what we do - helping clients find a vision and marrying that vision to available technology - hasn't changed.

Learning to Think: Android Updates and AV System Topology

As a lover of both words and technology, I take particular notice of word choices in the technical realm. One recent change I noted was when the OS on my phone upgraded itself to Android 4.4.2. In addition to the various cosmetic changes, there was a shift in label of one particular icon from the familiar "GPS" to the new "Location Services". This appears, at first glance, to be a purely cosmetic change. Enabling "location" turns on the GPS radio in the phone, disenabling it turns it off. That said, I find myself thinking about the device a bit differently and seeing this change as a gateway towards thinking about both personal devices and the larger world of commercial AV in different ways.

How is the Phone Different than it was a month ago?
The short answer is that it isn't. IT still does the same things it once did. What changed for me is the feeling of intent. Enable GPS has the appearance of being a device-oriented command; Users feel that they are toggling a little subdevice on or off. The thinking is "I want my phone to know where it is. I'll turn on the GPS". Location Service  has a somewhat different emphasis. In this case, focus is on the result as an available feature for other applications. One enables "location services" and whatever subsequent applications or even webpages with one chooses to engage will have access to that particular service.

This is a label which merely acknowledged the overall use pattern we already had. It's similar with other options; if I connect my phone to a bluetooth speaker, for example, that becomes just another tool for whichever media playback, telephony, or game programs the phone is running.

It's become the same for network-enabled computer hardware. If I am to print something from my desk, I can select the network printer as if it's just another peripheral. "Printing to the copy room" is another service enabled on my office PC. For that matter, if I print something from my phone, I don't rout the phone to a printer or anything like that. I select a file from, say, the Google Print application and let the phone access the printer the way it would another shared resource. In fact, my home printer is a network resource for both my phone and my desktop machine.

"Location services" may sound the same as "GPS", but it changes how I think of it from enabling a hardware feature of my device to enabling a suite of services which happen to use that feature. It's a change in how we think.

Current AV system topology, with a
switcher in the middle.

What about AV Systems?
How is the world of AV different? In the world of AV too many of us still think concretely and too much of that concrete thinking is anchored on the bedrock of yesteryear, when the central element of most large systems would be a matrix switcher. Not too long ago, this was a reasonable idea. One would want to send the DVD player to the screen. Send a laptop to the videoconference codec, then send the output from THAT to a screen. Etc. Operation of the system becomes, at its core, an exercise in routing  sources to destinations. Thinking about the system as a matrix router informs choices from initial system design all the way through implementation, especially when it comes to designing a GUI. In fact, GUI is, in some was, at the heart of the problem and the problem lies mainly in the touchpanel. 

What if we were to remove the touchpanel and most of the traditional AV system? The simplest idea is to put all of ones applications -- videoconferencing, recording, even laptop inputs, into a PC. No more laptop inputs. No more hardware Codecs.

The model is no longer switching, either real or imagined. The model of an AV system can now be the way we interact with any other technology.

Where did the system go? It vanished into the
clouds!

Does this make a difference?

I'd say that it certainly does. As AV and IT continue to converge, we in the AV industry need to change not only the way we work, but the way in which we think. This has been a near-constant topic of conversation amongst the team here at Shen Milsom and Wilke, impacting everything from programming to infrastructure design all the way through system design and implementation. 

One of the most rewarding, exciting, and terrifying moments comes when you wake up to realize that the world has changed in a fundamental way, and that everything you thought you knew is now wrong. I feel that we're all at that point now, discovering (and creating!) the new rules for new ways in which people can work.

The Return of Friday Flash - Not a True Story

Next week we'll be back to AV; this week I'll give a scrap of prose-poetry inspired by a a daily-prompt exercise from my friend +Bliss Morgan . If you'd like to play along, you can find her on Google Plus and, if you ask nicely, she'll let you play along.


Today's prompt was the sentence "It was only because of him that I survived". The image is very loosely related.

I may or not make one of these a day, and will post the best on Fridays to share.

"This is Not a True Story"

We called him Big House,
not knowing what the words meant.
It was 1977.
We were six.

OK, they called him Big House. I didn't call him much of anything. Ricky or Rick, under my breath. Richard in my head. Even then I knew he deserved that much.

It was on the field we met
on the pitch we met - what would be the pitch when we learned the words.
It was underneath the noonday sun, barely touched by latesummer's chill.

No nets, no painted lines.
Just patches
of smooth dusty earth where the grass had been worn away by countless feet,
empty goalposts
letting a well-struck ball  pass out of the game, back towards reality.

They called him Big House
They called me by my name.
It was 1977, or 1978.
Who knows?  

On the field-not-a-pitch I was swift.

I was a space-knight defending the base, 

a warrior defending his keep.

Big House was just a kid with a soccerball. 

I stopped him each time, cleared the ball hard

past this sector,

returned to the battle.

Afterwards I'd see him drill against the wall. 

Run, pivot kick.

Run kick pivot.

Some days I'd slip.

Some days the keep would be damaged, the shields on the battlestations weakened.

Still, I was swift.

Still, they called him Big House. 

And me, nothing.

Like some Danish prince 

from a story long ago, I pondered

if I'm called nothing, am I nothing?

Should I become nothing, embrace nothing?

Then I'd see Big House drilling against he wall.

Run, pivot kick.

Run kick pivot

and know that without me, he'd win.

I wouldn't let him.

Because of him

I survived.

The Pixel and Ink-Stained Wretch is Alive and Well - On Writing Process and a shoutout to an old friend.

Have you missed me? I know I've been rather quiet in these parts for some weeks now. Fear not, as the title says, I am alive and well and still writing. Some of you may know that my family and I were looking for a new home; I'm happy to report that the gap between blog posts is a result of having found one and doing all of the hard work of preparing and executing the big move out of the city and to the suburbs. We completely filled a 24 foot moving truck and then some, are still living out of boxes, and have a kitchen to remodel. For my AV friends there might be an adventure or two in home automation once things settle down. And for the rest of you? Well, my commute did just get a bit longer, so there just might be some more writing time.

Someone made little comedy/tragedy
masks out of the O's in the railroad
station sign. This amuses me.

Writing time is the theme that brings me back to  these pages - specifically, an invitation from an old friend to participate in the "My Writing Process Blog Tour" (I'll bet you guessed that from the title). This is a chance for those of us who write to talk about what we're writing, why we're writing it and, of course, how we write. I'd be remiss without starting with  link-back to the friend who invited me, Mary Ellen Sanger. We met years ago in one of the first critique groups I'd ever joined. It was the group in which both Sanger's collection Blackbirds in the Pomegranate Tree and Talia Carner's novel Jerusalem Maiden were workshopped. Both are highly recommended, and not just because of my connection with their authors.

Q1: What are you working on now?

Good question. What, aside from the blog, have I been up to as of late? There are a few longer pieces with which I've been tinkering, but as of late my heart is really in flash fiction and poetry.  There is not, at present, a big project. If there is, the big project is continuing to unpack. That said, there are some directions I've been thinking about as of late. One is flash-fiction. I'm a big fan of very short stories which use language mindfully to focus on a single, pivotal scene. The moment when things change, the moment when you see things differently, or just something that makes you stop and think.

Quick snapshot which I
used for a poetry sketch

Another direction I've been looking at is poetry. I've been reading a bit more of it as of late and have had some fun playing with a quick sketch or two. One neat source of inspiration I found was the How Writers Write Poetry MOOC from the creative writing program at the University of Iowa. Following is one of my exercises from an early week in this course:

First, a two-line sketch:

Stylus on phone, what does she write?
Private thoughts in the quiet car.

Then the same, with added detail and metaphor:

On silvergrey patched blue vinyl seat
she lights, glowing rectangle flat on
her lap, redpainted nails dance as fingers
clutching the stylus make tiny gyrations, as if
self-ministering and old-time cure for madness.
Write and erase, write
and erase, write
and erase
write and
a tiny tremor of joy ripples
through her whole body.
I look away from the upturned
corner of her lips, leaving her
alone
in the afterglow.

Q2: How does your work differ from others of its genre?

This is an interesting question for me; Most of my writing and reading has a fantasy element, but I don't think I neatly pigeonhole quite anywhere. I'm certainly not inventing new forms, but nor am I really copying anyone else's formula. With more writers blurring the lines between genres I'm not sure how interesting a question this is. I'll say that my work is unique for the same reason anyone else's is unique: because it's mine, informed by my experiences, my philosophies, and my personal style.

Q3: Why do you write what you do?

On this blog there are two paths, which I've labelled "pixels" and "ink". On the professional side, I write about technology because I enjoy it, because I feel that the industry gains from broad conversations with many voices, and because it helps me to be part of the conversation and connect with my peers. And, sometimes, I can let a hint of my feminism in and get people thinking about important issues in how we see and treat eachother.

On the literary side, I write because I love words and I love stories. I do it for the pleasure of doing it, and for the hope that someone will read it and find some of the same pleasure in the reading that I've found in the writing. The common thread is that both are driven by a measure of passion and love for the subject matter. This is how I share that passion.

Q4: What is your writing process?

This is the big question, and a hard one for me to answer. Nuts-and-bolts wise I pretty much exclusively type these days during my daily commute on an old Android tablet with a slide-out keyboard.  I used to write first drafts longhand with a fountain pen, but it's hard to write clearly and neatly on a moving railroad car. For fiction, I'll start with an idea, a character or a scene but little idea of where I'm going with it. Writers are sometimes described as "pantsters" - those writing by the seats of their pants - and "plotters" - those with elaborate outlines, plans, and structures. I definitely write by the seat of my pants, typing the first draft as the words and ideas come to me. Then I'll go back, either smooth rough edges or rewrite entirely. When I do longhand drafts, I'll often completely change, reorder, rewrite, or leave parts out as I transcribe them to digital format.

I like to keep a running list of ideas, prompts, and images that might inspire stories. If a snippet of overheard conversation seems interesting I'll jot it into an Evernote notebook which I keep for the purpose and to which I can turn when I feel the need to write something. I currently have more prompts and ideas than actual works in progress, but look for that to change.

"Pixel" posts about AV are a bit more pre-planned, but not by  much. I start with either a piece of technology, an event, or an idea. I'll take some time thinking about it, outlining the most important points in my head. Then I'll write beginning to end in usually one take, circling back afterwards to add photos.

And... that's it. No secrets, no mysteries. Writing this makes me realize that I miss the sensual feel of a nice pen in my hands; perhaps the next project will be a return to long-hand. If so, I'll be sure to share it here with you.