Typewriters are about as useful as a dinosaur in modern times, so you think... But, there are some people who are not quite willing, ready or able to give up the old typewriter yet. Myself, I still like the old sound of the clacking keys, but with a modern keyboard (it's so much easier on the fingers).

Typewriters are still being made into art, they have a place in creating music and some are being broken up to become jewelry and sculpture. It's a bit sad to see an old typewriter get broken up into bits, but at least it's not just being sent to the dump in disgrace or melted up to become a new car, eventually.

Of course, there will always be people collecting things and wondering what they are worth, typewriters are not an exception.

Just Because Your Typewriter is Old Doesn't Mean It's Dead!

A typewriter isn't so antiquated that it can't still have some practical use, as a typewriter - a typing machine.

Black Spruce Hound suggests:

• typing invitations and thank-you notes (great for people with less than great handwriting)
• holiday cards and recipes (things you can't easily print from the computer)
• poems and quotes (give them an older and decorative look)
• ransom notes and hate mail.

Beautiful Old Typewriters on Planet Oddity

Typewriter Sculpture

• Artistically Repurposed Typewriters | Wired.com

• Jeremy Mayer- Typewriter Assemblage Sculpture

Typewriters Used for Music

• The 1953 Keaton Music Typewriter

• Typewriter Music

Other Typewriter Uses

• Ready, Type, Grow! | Poetic Home

• Bookends for Those Who Haven't Totally Converted to the Kindle, Nook or iPad

• Repurposed Typewriter | Poetic Home

• Repurposed Typewriter Lamp

• Keyboard Waffle Iron | GeekAlerts

• TypewriterTrinket Box - Jewelry Box Avenue

• Repurposed Typewriter - JunkMarket Style

• Besserina: How to make a Vintage Typewriter Planter

• Sophia's: How to Make Typewriter Key Jewelry ~ A Tutorial

Typewriter Conversion

• Chromatic Typewriter, A Modified Typewriter That Prints Colors

• Steampunk Keyboard Mod | The Steampunk Workshop

• USB Typewriter by usbtypewriter on Etsy

• Etsy Find of the Day: The iPad Typewriter | Wired Design | Wired.com

• USBTypewriter Conversion Kit

USB TypeWriter conversion !

Typewriter Collecting

• Antique Typewriter Collector's Web Site

• The Portable Typewriter Web Site

• Typewriter Collecting and Values - About.com

• Morton Typewriter Museum

• Classic Typewriter Page: My Typewriter Collection

• Collecting & Preserving The Typewriter | Inherited Values

• The Virtual Antique Typewriter Museum

• Vintage and Antique Typewriters | Collectors Weekly

• Typewriter Ribbon Tins | Inherited Values

I was happy to become the "Oh Canada" Contributor on the Squidoo network site. I like writing about Canadian culture, history and so on. But, the more I write and post over there the more disappointed I am feeling. Almost none of my Canadian posts are keeping afloat enough (in traffic and reposts) for them to stop sinking to the bottom of the tank (tanking them, literally).

Within a month of being posted half of them are in the red. It is discouraging. I don't like losing the time I put into them but more than that, I feel sad that not enough people care about any of it. I've written about Canadian things like movies and TV shows. Those are popular posts for the US TV and movies. But, not the Canadian content.

Anyway, I am going to begin moving them here. Someone (other than myself) may some day find them and be glad to have found out more about our Canadian content, people and so on and so forth.

My adventure started with the plan to make myself a vision board for my home office.

A vision board is something you can decorate with your ideas, hopes, dreams and most of all, your goals. It's like creating a scrapbook of your future and displaying it where you can see it. This way you are never far from your goals, should you need fresh inspiration or encouragement. A vision board is a practical solution to self-support but it can also be creative and fun.

My vision board was going to be a magnetic white board I could write on and stick things onto (with magnets). This way it could double as a calendar for events I didn't want to forget. Seemed like a good combination for my mini home office.

I bought one of those magnetic whiteboards. I found one which was priced for my budget, seemed sturdy enough, came with accessories (like dragonfly magnets) and looked the right size for what I wanted. I would have liked bigger but space was an issue. (My home office is one half of my bedroom).

I unpackaged my whiteboard. It came with stickers to attach it to the wall. The claim was the stickers would mount the board without leaving a sticky mess if you wanted to move the board later. Well... they were right about one part of that. The board did not leave a sticky mess any of the four times it fell off the wall. The first time I had to look around to figure out what had made the noise. I found the board on the floor, one dragonfly magnet missing, and not yet found.

Nothing bonked into the board on the wall. I don't have pets or children. The whiteboard just falls off the wall, all on it's own. I would stick it up again, adding extra pressure to the sticking points and yet... down it would fall a couple of days later.

This was not what I wanted. You can't see your vision board if it keeps falling off the wall and losing parts.

Eventually, the board was left down then moved around from one bookshelf to the dresser to somewhere else when it got in the way. The great whiteboard vision board quest seemed like a bust. Well, not every adventure goes as planned. I pretty much forgot the whiteboard for awhile. One day I moved the dresser and only noticed the whiteboard when it fell in behind the dresser. It has been there since, giving the dust bunnies visions of whatever dust bunnies dream up. Dust bunny world domination?

Then I got the idea... another idea for the vision board plan.

Why not mount it on a standing display? Like an artist easel, a drafting or craft table, something like that! I found very nice easels... some which were cheaper and seemed to be too cheap (flimsy) and others looked great but were far over my vision board budget. I found my dream vision board on eBay! It was so perfect and yet so very, very impractical. It could double as a room divider and would take me until next year to pay off on the credit card. So the easel idea was not seeming to work out so well. I did try a few other searches and found a few other options which I ruled out due to budget, flimsiness or made for children and looked it!

You may be looking up at the top of this post and see the magazine rack up there. THAT was my solution! Not only sturdy enough to hold something the weight of a few magazines, but open ended so my whiteboard would fit right in there. True it won't be freestanding on the floor or nailed to the wall and out of the way. But, it won't be lost behind the dresser, part of the dust bunny world domination plot either.

So I am ordering the magazine rack which this post shows at the top. I found you could get a lot of magazine racks which were not open at the ends. This would be fine if you measured your whiteboard and knew it could fit inside. I'm not even going to try that. I like the open ends because it will be easy to slip the board out and add new dreams, goals and visions to it. The magazine rack will keep it standing upright without requiring hardware or hammering nails into my walls. I can set it on my desk or give it space on a bookshelf or the top of my dresser.

So, the adventure will all work out. You could also use a letter holder. I do have one of those but it is already stuffed with stuff-to-do.

Can you get rich blogging?

I won’t make any promises. Whatever you hear or read or have been told, blogging isn’t just point and click.

I would not ordinarily buy a book which makes such a promise. The get rich quick schemes come and go and seem to be a scam or, they only work for one out of every thousand or so people (until the rules change and they stop working at all). But, today I bought this book, Get Rich Blogging by Zoe Griffin.

One reason I decided to buy the book was the glamorous style of site which celebrity gossip bloggers (like Zoe Griffin) run. Who doesn’t find all that appealing, even if you don’t love pink on a regular basis? The sites have street appeal and they seem to make money, they say they make money and they look like they make money.

Get Rich Blogging, is good for bloggers who prefer to hire someone to get their hands dirty rather than learning how to DIY (do it yourself).

One thing I noticed as I read this book is the idea of looking professional while not really putting yourself out there to learn how to do it yourself. This book promotes hiring professionals quite often. How can you know who is a professional if you don’t know enough about blogging to judge the work? So that was one problem I have with Get Rich Blogging.

The book is good for beginners. More time should have been spent on the early chapter about deciding what to blog about. Spend time on coming up with your niche, your genre and your theme for the site you are going to put so much time, energy and passion into. If you don’t have all three of these things (time, energy and passion) it isn’t going to work, no matter how many professionals you can afford to hire.

Zoe Griffin writes about branding your site and attracting advertisers in a good way

I will use some of the information in this book,. Although I’ve read lots of people writing about branding, marketing and using social media I have not devoted myself to these aspects of my sites. I’m not a social butterfly and marketing schemes make me feel cheap. I also have an issue with following the pack when it comes to writing to please Google. I don’t like blindly following authority.

I do want my sites to be doing more and I need to find my old passion to put time, energy and passion into them again. I know it would help if they were making money, I’d be happy to see them support themselves again. I used to post daily and then my sites were pulling in income from selling text ads by the year. That worked until I began to feel burnt out. Between trying to do what other people said I should be doing and trying to put in endless hours on my sites I lost the love for web publishing.

This book won’t teach you how to love web publishing. However, one thing I have learned from reading Zoe’s book is to think bigger.

One thing bloggers can learn from Get Rich Blogging is to think bigger, reach higher, and add glamour and polish to your site.

See also, Get Rich Vlogging by Zoe Griffin.

This is an old poll I created when I used to write for a network called BackWash. Still a good question to think about.

If you had to give up or lose one of your senses, including common sense and the possibility of a sixth sense or the other standard: hearing, smell, taste, sight or touch, which would you pick?

I think the idea of losing our senses haunts us all our lives. We see someone who can't see or hear and we think about how it must be to live without that.

Then we get older and another fear is losing our mind, our ability to think and do things for ourselves.

Animals don't have a sense of self, scientists say. It's a test they try on animals - putting them in front of a mirror to see if they can understand they are looking at a reflection of themselves. I've seen cats go crazy, hissing and pouncing, trying to threaten (or feeling threatened) by what they see as a strange cat who hisses right back at them. Pretty scary if you don't understand the concept of a reflection. But, they can do the same with the image of a cat on a box too.

I don't know if not having the knowledge of reflections and photography or graphic arts should leave us to assume these animals don't have that sense of self.

How could you prove an animal does have a sense of self? How do you know you have a sense of your own self? Do you even understand the idea of what having a sense of self is? Maybe that is the sense (not on my original list) which you might give up. How different would you be without it?