Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0017603, Wed, 21 Jan 2009 12:21:52 -0500

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Doc Datamancer via Humbert Humbird ...
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http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2009/01/doc-datamancers.html




Doc Datamancer's Scrabble Keyboard Gets Triple Word Score
By Charlie Sorrel January 19, 2009 | 1:47:58 AMCategories: DIY






This amazing Scrabble keyboard comes to us by way of BoingBoing Gadgets' John Brownlee who, in the course of describing Doc Datamancer's steampunk hack, makes some startling admissions.

Those of you familiar with his work might expect a smattering of references to wet bodily functions, or at least some show-off allusions to the works of Vladimir Nabokov. You would, just this once, be disappointed. Instead, Mr. Brownlee gives us a revealing insight into his writing process, something which turns out to be far more complex than just letting dolphins push balls printed with random words to the top of their tank and copying the result -- our previous assumption:

[W]riting is not about randomly shaking up a tray of letters in one's head and plucking words from the alphabetical mnemonic slurry... if it was, my posts would make more sense. [emphasis added]

As somebody who has spent time with Brownlee in his Berlin bachelor pad, this is thick with irony. He actually owns a Scrabble set which he keeps at his desk. And while he doesn't shake the letters "in his head", he invites his neglected parakeet to peck at the tiles, thus outlining post after post. It's a testament to the bird's uncanny language skills that we understand the man at all.

Product page [Doc Datamancer via Humbert Humbird]






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