14 ms·
Museu de la Tècnica
- rmathew 10y agoWonderful. However, a blog-post on their web-site or, say, a post on Medium would have been so much more readable than a tweet-storm you have to keep doing "Show More..." on.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- bradleyjg 10y agoTwitter is a terrible medium for whatever message might have been hidden in there. I'm sure it must be good for something, but whatever that might be, a story like that is not it.
- no_protocol 10y agoThis link seems to provide a more readable version of the story: https://twitter.com/i/moments/792044988842598400 https://twitter.com/i/moments/792044988842598400 It doesn't require readers to click 'more' or wade through other users' comments. I don't know much about Twitter, can someone explain why there are two views like this?
- chrisfosterelli 10y agoNot sure why there are two views, but the 'moments' view is missing a ton of tweets with photos that are included after the last tweet on the moment page. Worth checking out the tweet-stream version.
- awesomerobot 10y agotwitter is bad at doing things
- barkingcat 10y agoThis version also misses a lot of the really cool other pictures he has inlined. The branded space bar for example
- Retr0spectrum 10y agoI think the short answer is "Twitter has bad UX".
- chrismcb 10y agoIf you read this one, you really should read what is on Twitter. This one is missing the majority of the tweets.
- WildUtah 10y agoHoly cow is Twitter ever garbage at showing you anything even slightly more complicated than a single 140 char comment. Threads, stories, conversations, and any other kinds of actual information is a maze of _see_others_ and _see_more_ and broken context. That's partly by design, of course. But it should surprise no one that you can't monetize that very well.
- webmaven 10y agoMoments are basically curated collections. The tweets in them don't have to be from the same thread, or even the same user. Here is a Moment with all of the guy's tweets and photos from the thread: https://twitter.com/i/moments/791746773643464704 https://twitter.com/i/moments/791746773643464704
- brohee 10y agoThat should be the linkin the OP, thanks.
- logicallee 10y agoI urge even people who had read through our link to click the above: it includes pictures that aren't in our current link. Dang, or Scott, I encourage you to please change the link from the submitted OP link to the above one! While the submission is exciting to click through one by one (an enchanting story), in fact the missing photos (such as of the actual rooms in question) are too much. I enjoyed both reading experience, but the above one should have been our link.
- sctb 10y agoThank you! We've updated the link from https://twitter.com/mwichary/status/791709895083102209 https://twitter.com/mwichary/status/791709895083102209.
- angry-hacker 10y agoThank you. But I'm not sure why did he decide to put it on Twitter in the first place? Clearly, it's a wrong medium to tell an interesting story.
- michaelvoz 10y agoAll this story did to me was remind why I don't read twitter. Short messages, interspersed with some random people's comments... I'm sure whatever did happen was downright magical, but the medium destroyed it for me. Can someone pastebin the story?
- hueving 10y ago>Marcin Wichary, the lead typographer and designer at Medium, Yet we had to read what should have been a blog post in a series of tweets. :)
- schoen 10y agoFor people who didn't want to click "Show more" a lot, it's a super-enthusiastic story, in tweet form, about accidentally stumbling upon the world's largest typewriter museum in a small town in Spain -- by someone who loves typewriters. If you like typewriters or enthusiasm, you might like reading the story.
- IgorPartola 10y agoYou are my hero.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- hota_mazi 10y agoYeah seriously. Happy for OP but telling stories on Twitter? Come on. Post on a snippet web site and link to it from Twitter or something.
- Siemer 10y agoI don't use Twitter, but I though it gave the story a stronger 'live' feeling, making it more engaging. It made it easier to share the feeling of joyful discovery the author experienced.
- wott 10y ago> It made it easier to share the feeling of joyful discovery the author experienced. I gave up when the author's tweets, which were already a bit painful to follow, gave way to random comments by others or the author himself and disappeared. So, I just learned that this is a guy who, when in front of a traffic sign, stops to take a picture of it, and needs to waste time with Google Map to find his path because OMG-I-don't-have-Internet-on-my-phone-what-am-I-gonna-do-I-feel-like-an-adventurer-now, instead of just following the sign, which is why the sign is made for. I can't wait for Twitter to collapse, honestly. It is a nightmare of usability, of usefulness, of readability and a dozen more *-abilities. That someone purposefully chooses to write on this medium is beyond me.
- downandout 10y agoSomeone really needs to figure out how to make this kind of content readable on Twitter, since I know Twitter won't.
- presty 10y agopersonally, Dali's theater museum is my favorite museum in the whole world and definitely something to check if you are in barcelona/figueres
- binarycrusader 10y agoFor those who want to learn a little more about the museum, there's an English language page here: http://www.mte.cat/content/blogcategory/64/178/lang,ca/ http://www.mte.cat/content/blogcategory/64/178/lang,ca/
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- timehastoldme 10y agoThis is so freaking cool! A mini-history told by someone passionate about it.
- chrismcb 10y agoHe never found the dali museum because it was in the opposite direction
- impossiblegame 10y agoThis is the most inspiring story I have read all week. Not a typewriter geek but this story makes a good case. I wish for everyone to stumble like this on a treasure related to what they love.
- idlewords 10y agoI was just at a conference with Marcin in Barcelona, where we ate giant hotel breakfasts together for three days and tried to speak with one another in Polish about technical topics. A lot of those conversations were about fonts and keyboards, his passion for them, and the history of mechanical writing. And then he drives off to sightsee and finds this place the next day. It could not have happened to a nicer guy.
- constable83 10y agoThis is a more readable version (like Storify) and, contrary to the other Twitter Moment shared here, has all the original tweets intact: https://twitter.com/i/moments/791746773643464704 https://twitter.com/i/moments/791746773643464704
- elihu 10y agoSheet music typewriter (from the linked story, if you click "show more" enough times): https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CvzBRKIXgAA-cp_.jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CvzBRKIXgAA-cp_.jpg It makes sense that such a thing would exist, but I've never really thought about what such a machine would look like or how it would work.
- jay-anderson 10y agoI'd like to know more about them honestly. I'm not sure music typewriters would be as practical as transfers (buy a sheet of symbols and rub them onto the page) or stencils. From what I understand the highest quality music typesettings engraved the music in plates. (More info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_engraving https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_engraving)
- maxerickson 10y agoI bet it has push buttons for advancing the paper up and down the staff, greatly simplifying keeping notes aligned compared to a stencil. It also looks like overstriking the lines on notes above and below the staff would be easier than adding them over a stencil. I guess it would serve different purposes than engraved music.
- ameen 10y agoOne of the key takeaways for me from this story is that we've lost serendipity thanks to the information overload. Almost all vacations, tours, travels, etc are mapped out and pre-scheduled (even prepaid if possible) before we start on a vacation. The key exploration aspect is lost upon our generation. Only populist establishments enjoy decent patronage, this affects us culturally as well. We're only exposed to a well curated section of various cultures instead of experiencing them unadulterated.
- kleiba 10y agoWould "speak for yourself" be too rude a reply?
- dwaltrip 10y agoDo you disagree with the main thesis of the post you replied to? If your point is that it is still possible to be serendipitous despite broad societal trends, some words explaining ways you've found to do so, or perhaps how it was received by others, would be far more useful than a low-signal, defensive comment such as "speak for yourself". I do agree that writing useful comments is time consuming. I sometimes wonder whether there is a worthwhile result. However, I think higher quality comments are more appreciated on HN compared to many other discussion boards.
- lagadu 10y agoWhat they're saying is that this is probably not a societal trend, as you put it. In my anecdotal experience people are doing less and less pre-programmed tours and a lot more of exploration and going off-trail because of all the information we have at our disposal.
- colomon 10y agoIt's like the people complaining about all the fancy Lego sets today are removing creativity from Lego, no? One kid might build the set and leave it together forever. But my kid builds the set, leaves it together a few weeks, then uses all the cool new pieces to fuel his crazy creativity. Likewise, this summer I made a spontaneous trip to Milwaukee for their Irish festival on less than two hours' notice that a band I love was going to be there. Maybe it's just me, but I would never have made a six hour trip to a city I've never been to with no advance planning without the assurance that my smartphone was there to help me navigate my way around.
- meshko 10y agoOh man, I don't care (as much) about typewriters but yeah, what a happy story. It's like visiting a town for a day and learning by accident that the band you've loved for years but never seen live is playing there this very night.
- sushirain 10y agoWhy not use Medium instead of twitter? "Marcin Wichary, the lead typographer and designer at Medium, is obsessed with all things typeface, including typewriters. So when he chanced upon Museu de la Tècnica in a small Spanish town, nothing could have prepared him for what he found." https://twitter.com/i/moments/792044988842598400 https://twitter.com/i/moments/792044988842598400
- js8 10y agoWhile I agree that Twitter is terrible for this kind of thing (I actually struggled to get back to reread the beginning..), to play a devil's advocate: Maybe he wouldn't write a blog post about it. Maybe in the beginning, he just thought, I will post this little story that surely will fit in 140 characters. And then, as he uttered first couple tweets, he just started to, kinda naturally, add interesting things he found in the museum. And voila, a blog post. On the other hand, if he thought, let me write a blog post about it, he could also think, ah scratch it, that's gonna take an afternoon. So I think twitter simply needs an interface to convert a series of tweets into a blog post. (Or maybe Medium needs a "Smallium" which would work like Twitter except it could convert a series of nanoposts into a Medium post.)
- visarga 10y agoI think this is a parody to Twitter storytelling. The title is the end of it. Even after opening the log, it's difficult to follow and parts of it remain hidden under "show more" buttons.
- glandium 10y agoThis museum would make Tom Hanks ecstatic https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12208662 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12208662
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- cooper12 10y agoWow, this story makes me thing that we treat "hipster" pretty badly for trying to bring back retro stuff. Museums don't last forever and what better way to keep the past alive than to keep using it in the present. People need to keep shooting in film, using typewriters, restoring old cars, maintaining old technical documentation, just so we can keep having moments like this and ensure that culture lives on.
- webmaven 10y agoThis is a great set of photos if you are into retro- or paleo-tech anything. Really cool. Also, it is special when it feels like the universe has lined everything up to give you a unique experience. I'm glad this guy shared his.
- alblue 10y agoMods: would make sense to retitle this as "I found a typewriter museum in Spain and I was excited" as the title as it currently stands has limited value.
- Leynos 10y agoI think the title is a good metaphor for the events described in the linked tweet storm. I might have clicked on the link as titled, but had it not been a Sunday morning, I might not have done. As it stands, I did. Following a lengthy tweet storm, not really knowing where it was taking me; Almost gave up at one point until I noticed the "Show More" button; And found myself enjoying a stranger's wonderment at something dear to their heart that took them completely by surprise.
- andai 10y agoI believe it has exceptional value, in the form of not spoiling the whole thing before you even click on it.
- ForFreedom 10y agoThat is amazing
- besselheim 10y agoThis reminds me of the similar joy of stumbling across a pianola museum in Amsterdam. Always a pleasure to find such a well curated niche set of exhibits.
- gpvos 10y agoIt is the Museu de la Tècnica de l'Empordà in Figueres, website http://www.mte.cat/ http://www.mte.cat/ . According to the website, only open by appointment, so he got lucky indeed that he could just randomly walk into it. The tweets make it seem like the museum is far outside the town, but it's actually just 200m outside the city centre. Figueres is easy to reach by road and both classic and high-speed rail.
- colordrops 10y agoThe irony of using 140 character tweets to talk about old typewriters.
- mezod 10y agoI hope he let the guy downstairs know about his feelings somehow!
- devnonymous 10y agoFor all those warning about clicking the 'Show more' ...come on, there aren't that many times you'd have to do it !! ...and the story is worth it ! I mean, yeah, I agree with all the criticism of twitter UX etc if I were to randomly select a convenient medium that lets me put up series of photos and some text as an ongoing narrative, I'd probably go with twitter as well ...broken as it is from the reader's perspective. All that said, I find that story fascinating ! Not that I know anything about typewriters but I can relate to the enthusiasm and sheer joy of such a serendipitous discovery. I give my thanks to all the obsessive collectors and connoisseurs of everyday things !
- oliv__ 10y agoWhy exactly is this on the top page of HN?
- c0nducktr 10y agoBecause people find it interesting?
- koytch 10y agoWhere are the '1' and '0' on the Bar-Lock? Or did hackers of that time do direct I/O?
- raphman 10y agoThe same is true of other old typewriters, e.g. the one patented by Sholes [1]. Typists used l/O instead. This slightly reduced mechanical complexity. [1] https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/pages/US207559-1.png https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/pages/US207559-1...
- koytch 10y agoThis is so wrong… Did they use old-style figures, too? That's the only way I can imagine it might have looked OK.
- taejo 10y agoIn old-style figures, 1 only goes up the x-height, so that wouldn't work. But even in "typewriter" typefaces on computers, 1 and l (el, not eye) look pretty close. And the difference between O and 0 is mostly the width, which is fixed on a typewriter anyway.
- schoen 10y agoI've still encountered text on the Internet that substitutes I for 1 and O for 0, presumably written by people who learned in an earlier era and haven't shaken that habit. But it's slightly hard to search for because a lot of the search results are OCR errors. Still, I'm sure not all of them are because I've seen this in newly-published news articles (maybe written by journalists or edited by editors who've been in the news business for some decades?).
- ClayFerguson 10y agoUnreadable due to the moronic 140 character muzzle the ignoramuses at twitter devised. Such cutting edge technology must have gone into limiting that text field. God I hate that company and that website. Twitter is the worst idea of this decade and future mankind will laugh at it the same way we now laugh at the "pet rock" toy of the 1970s. Twitter could have EASILY made it a "click to see full text" thing and then it would show only 140ch still (to keep everyone enamored with it) and yet allow full discussions to happen in over 140ch for all who chose to use it in that "more advanced" way. It's such an obvious evolution of the technology to allow more text, but they just don't have the courage to change something that's so popular. They are simply stuck and unable to innovate. No wonder no one wanted to buy them. I hope they go under soon. A better commodity technology like my own meta64.com will eventually provide this kind of 'service' for mankind.
- exodust 10y agoHis choice of platform for such a story is to blame more than Twitter. But wait! Twitter can present things in a blog-post manner they call 'moments'. I believe this feature is quite new? It's about time. I might actually visit the Twitter.com domain now to browse. The main appeal is the nice photos. No clicking, just easy scrolling down without the noise of people replying their bullshit remarks: https://twitter.com/i/moments/791746773643464704 https://twitter.com/i/moments/791746773643464704
- zeroer 10y agoThis is a terrible way to tell a story.
- elicash 10y agoI enjoyed it. Something about reading it tweet by tweet made it feel even more like I was on the ride with him as he's discovering something new.
- exodust 10y agoIt's not a great UX for reading the story. Which is why the 'moments' version is better: https://twitter.com/i/moments/791746773643464704 https://twitter.com/i/moments/791746773643464704
- drivingmenuts 10y agoStill pretty intolerable, having to read it sentence-by-painful sentence (I read in blocks), scrolling down half a page and realizing I haven't even read a full paragraph yet. I finally found something worse than listening to a technical procedure on YouTube.
- exodust 10y agoSure okay. I see your point. For reading it's no good. Perhaps Twitter should allow normal paragraphs in moments. The tweet could be just the title of the document, but from then on it's anything goes. That would be great, but they probably won't do that.
- Merad 10y agoTo be frank, I totally lost interest in whatever the magical moment was after clicking the link and realizing I would have to piece it together from a dozen or more twitter posts. If your story involves more than three sentences or so, you can invest a few minutes to post it in a coherent format if you want people to invest the time to read it.
- exodust 10y agoYes Twitter is painful when read this way. I made it to the end but wasn't happy about the experience. Then I came back here and discovered the "moments" version of his story here: https://twitter.com/i/moments/791746773643464704 https://twitter.com/i/moments/791746773643464704 And FWIW I wouldn't be missing the Dali museum. I appreciate old typewriters, but Dali was the master. There are few artists that come close.
- wybiral 10y agoAfter reading it and having to click "Show More" only about 5-6 times, I'm not sure what all the fuss is about in the comments here.
- lucideer 10y agoPossibly OT, but given his offline Google Maps failed him for info/directions, worth noting this place is findable on OSM: http://www.openstreetmap.org/node/3809950661 http://www.openstreetmap.org/node/3809950661
- corny 10y agoThis reminds me of a similar museum my wife and I stumbled on in Girona this September: Museu del Cinema. Four stories of movie-making history with a very heavy focus on pre-motion picture equipment and devices like magic lanterns, zoetropes, 3D viewers and shadow puppets. We were the only patrons there in this otherwise touristy part of town. Highly recommended! http://www.museudelcinema.cat/eng/colleccio.php http://www.museudelcinema.cat/eng/colleccio.php
- err4nt 10y agoWow, I was surprised at how much the 'Moon Alphabet' diagram reminded me of the Graffiti handwriting recognition alphabet from PalmOS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graffiti_(Palm_OS) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graffiti_(Palm_OS) I wonder if this is convergent design, or if Palm's Graffiti was more directly influenced by the Moon Alphabet.