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ere’s a bit of very interesting typewriter lore. We use A4 sheets to type. American novelist Jack Kerouac wrote his cult classic ‘On the Road’ in 1957 on a single 120-foot-long scroll of paper. Someone bought it at an auction for over $2.4 million in 2001. On the Road is based on the travels of Kerouac and his friends across the United States. It is considered a defining work of the postwar Beat and Counterculture generations, with its protagonists living life against a backdrop of jazz, poetry, and drug use. I wonder if it has been translated into Sinhala. If not, someone should. The characters bring to my mind another 60s American classic, this time a movie – ‘Easy Rider.’ Kerouak was apparently inspired by a 10,000-word rambling letter from his friend Neal Cassady. A 10,000 word letter! I wonder if it was typewritten. Most people can’t that much today with a word processor. Isn’t it ironical that, long after writers, painters and other artists are gone after a life of struggle, their work is sold at auctions for millions? Among painters, Van Gogh comes to mind.

Part of my museum project is to find people who use obsolete technology. Here’s someone who printed his own books at home with an old letterpress machine.

This is the late Alloy Gunawardhane who wrote more than 1000 songs including hit songs of iconic singer H. R. Jothipala. Over the years, and now especially after the economic crash, I have admired him more and more, because he printed his own song books with this letterpress machine at home. I admire that tenacity and resilience. He was his own printer and publisher. I took this photo in the early years of the new millennium. By then, letterpress was on the way out, used mostly to print cinema wall posters and death notices – and small song books of popular hits. It was a crude poor man’s press, but it did the job. He had the sort of independence that most writers can only dream of. American poet Walt Whitman was a printer too, writing, printing and publishing his own newspaper single handedlyback in the 19th century, challenging big business. Alloy was doing the same. He’s a hero. Now I wish I had done the same. In today’s context, with outrageous paper and printing costs, the time has come for us to print and publish our own books. Desktop publishing (digital) is a fashionable concept, but I discovered long ago but it’s not cost effective when it comes to printing our own books. I bow my head to these forgotten heroes of the letterpress!

Of typewriters and laptops

Writers are dependent on technology as much as anyone else, whether they write by hand or use machinery (This post is repeated in Book Lover, my writer's blog).

You can see here the technology I used as a writer from 1981 till the new millennium. I bought the 1960s Imperial typewriter at the bottom as an antique 10 years ago, but the white Olympia above is my first typewriter, bought in Jordan in 1981 when I was working for the Jordan Times. I used it for a long time until buying an electric typewriter in the early 1990s. On top is my second laptop, a Bondwell 486 using diskettes bought second hand in 1998 or so. It worked for about 3 years before packing up. Typewriters age well. Laptops don’t. Tapping on a typewriter keyboard is a real life experience compared to a computer keyboard. A computer will keep you connected. You can mail your docs, photos, videos. On the other hand, with a typewriter, you have no spam, viruses, malware or ransomware. I can start using my typewriters again after so many years. All I need is a little machine oil and a new ribbon. But I can’t revive this laptop., and they are expensive. When this one crashed, I had to wait more than ten years to buy another laptop. If there’s no power, I can still type, and I don’t need breaking news when I’m doing creative writing. Finally, when I remove the top and look inside, it fascinates me. The laptop is just a plastic box with a motherboard inside.

 More updating! To avoid confusion, I decided to keep the photography, old and new, in my Retroheliographers blog. This blog will remain open to 'junk' as usual. As I'm occupied fully with my photography and writing blogs (Book Lover) there's little time for Junk Lover, but I'll do my best to keep up. Occasional photography posts will appear here. For example, this post is about Kosmo Foto, a very interesting analogue photography and camera blog I discovered yesterday. Enjoy!

Here's the link:

https://kosmofoto.com/

 Hello there, this blog is being revived again, and this time it will keep ticking. As you would have seen from my last post back in 2018, a lot has happened in my life, a lot of water has flowed under the under the bridge since then. But from now on, the blog will be active!

With a few differences, though. Junk is no longer the main theme. I don't collect any more. Covid 19 made me sell what I could. That's good, I feel saner. My interest in old technology is now academic -- enjoy without collecting!

This blog is now mainly about photography. Many of my older posts were about photography equipment. I'm going to add my photos, old as well as what I'm doing now. Junk Lover is a funny name for a photography blog, I know, but let's keep it at that for the time being.

Here's the link:

https://www.blogger.com/blog/posts/4370823715382961356

I'm selecting photographs right now for the MyIsland photography contest organised by the Atra magazine and the French embassy in Colombo. I'm not really competitive (this is the second contest I've entered in my whole life) but I'm doing it because as we get older, we tend to get forgotten. Even if I don't win a place in MyIsland, the effort of sorting out 20 to 30 photos from my selection will re-energise me!

I'll post those photos once the results are announced in mid-July (whether I score or not)!

 This blog isn't all about retro photography. I'm doing a lot of digital work now. This photo of a French photographer using this Olympus film camera was taken with my Nikon digital camera. Now I've switched to Canon, working with a 5D Mark III and 600D. More about that, soon!

Hello there I'm reviving this blog after a break of seven years! Where was I? Not up in the clouds, not in jail, but right here at home, working, working, working. So what happened to the blog?

More like, what happened to me? I'm older, maybe wiser, and still working! But no longer collecting. No more room, and at a crossroads in my life. My living room is my literally that. I sleep there, eat there, along with four dogs and two cats, and (almost) my entire collection is there. What's left in boxes in the garage is rotting at a rate. I'm philosophical about it. No longer collecting stamps. My interests have shifted. I'm trying hard to sell all but one of the five novels I've written (the first one's got to be re-written). It shocks me now that I've been an unpublished author for 25 years! Got plenty of writing ideas but no more novels till I get something published.

Then again, I thought my passion for photography was gone, but it's there. I'm into video now, filming daily life scenes with the Panasonic camcorder which my elder daughter Hiruni gave me as a present when she returned from a scholarship in Australia. I'm thinking of doing a video editing course soon.

Main interest  now is music. I started by studying violin 9 years or so ago. About two years ago, I got serious about guitar, and last year I discovered that I have a singing voice and song writing ability. Not bad for someone who's just turned sixty. I'm serious now about being a singer-song writer (You Tube based). Since I'll need to make music videos for my songs, it isn't a bad idea to learn video editing. I'll have to make my own music videos.

So all this, plus cooking for myself and all these animals, keeps me busy. Plus trying to keep tons of dust away from my crowded living room. Not much time for blogging, but I'm going to keep doing it now. Main thing will be a writing and photography blog as this Junk Lover template looks confusing with too many things in it.

If things go according to plan, there will be a music blog as well.

Bye for now.

Automobiles

This section of my virtual library and archive will display what I have collected on automobiles -- mainly catalogues, owner's manuals, magazine articles and newspaper cuttings, plus my own photographs.  For the books, please check my other blog www.book lover@blogspot.com. I' sorry but I just don't have the resources to scan entire books, so here are a few pages from this (1960s?) Austin LD van driver's handbook to begin with. These workhorses were everywhere in Sri Lanka well into the 1980s. The Postal Department used them as delivery vans in the 1970s. Privately owned examples can still be found occasionally -- there's one parked half a km from my work place at Hunupitiya Cross Roads every day, looking forlornly for short haul hires. Find below the cover and a few inside pages.