In October 2023, the UK government passed into law the Online Safety Act, a set of regulations intended to make online services more responsible for the content they carry. It is a laudable aim, but unfortunately the distinctions the Act draws between large sites such as Facebook and Google and smaller sites such as this one are insufficiently well defined. The upshot is that complying with the Act places a much larger burden on the owners of sites such as Shady Characters than it does on the owners of those larger sites.
Compounding the problem is that the guidance provided by Ofcom, the UK telecoms regulator, is not entirely clear on exactly which sites must comply with the Act. The good news, inasmuch as I understand the Act and its consequences, is that Shady Characters is already very close to being a site which does not need to comply. Commenters cannot upload images, which removes one vector for potentially offensive or graphic content. Problematic textual comments are generally caught by moderation filters, and the volume of comments is low enough so that I can read and respond to each one individually — and remove or edit them if necessary.
The one feature that does fall foul of the act is the ability for commenters to reply to one another. From the OSA’s perspective, this makes Shady Characters into a “user-to-user” service, which would bring it under the purview of the Act. As such, I will be removing the ability to reply to other users’ comments from today onwards. (Existing comments and replies will be retained.) I’m sorry that this has to be done, but I don’t think I have a great deal of choice.
I’ll be keeping abreast of news about the OSA and how smaller sites must comply with it, and it may be that I can reenable replies at some point in the future. For now, though, thank you for reading (and commenting!), and I hope that this doesn’t affect your enjoyment of the site too greatly.
I’ve had nuclear energy on the mind recently — a product of watching Oppenheimer, perhaps, and also the UK government’s newfound interest in nuclear power in the interest of combatting climate change. Apropos of all that, then, I was happy to appear on a recent episode of AMSEcast, the podcast of the American Museum of Science and Energy in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The episode was hosted by the museum’s director, the genial Alan Lowe, who was kind enough to let me rabbit on at length on the subjects of counting, calculators, and computers. I really enjoyed talking to Alan, and I hope you enjoy listening too!
There is something interesting happening with blogging. For a long time, blogs like this one were the way to opine, to share, to bloviate. Then social media came along and stole blogging’s thunder, with the average blogger gravitating towards long threads on Twitter (RIP; † ⚰; 💀; etc., etc.) or photo-heavy Instagram posts. Next came newsletters — blogs delivered by email, essentially — which finally broke the social media hegemony.
And yet, neither social media nor newsletters have ever had quite the same vibe as blogging. If you rely on social media, your posts live or die by how well they attract outrage or sympathy. If you rely on newsletters, you may be inadvertently rubbing shoulders with Nazis. In either case, the continued existence of your “platform” — your social media posts, your newsletters — depends on the whims of a company with its interests at heart, not yours.
All this is to say that I am very happy to see that blogging is having a bit of a moment, as exemplified by the so-called Blog Questions Challenge. This is a kind of internet chain letter, started by Scott Boms* on his own blog, “Documenting”, and to which I am rudely attaching myself without having been invited. The idea is that bloggers answer a few questions about where their blogs came from, how they work, and where they’re going. As such, I present to you the Shady Characters edition of the Blog Questions Challenge.
Why did you start blogging in the first place?
I wanted to write. I’m not entirely sure why, but I read a lot as a kid and books seemed to be important in some slightly mysterious way.
I eventually had an idea that there might be something interesting about the more unusual typographical marks I sometimes came across — ¶ @, *, † § and others — which led me to write what I hoped might become the constituent chapters of a book on the subject.
Having written those “chapters”, though, I didn’t really know what to do with them. Email a literary agent? A publisher? That seemed very forward, so I started Shady Characters instead and have been writing here ever since. (The agent and the publisher came along later, so it all turned out alright in the end.)
What platform are you using to manage your blog and why did you choose it?
I’ve used WordPress all this time — almost exactly thirteen years now. It seemed like the best option at the time, with endless scope for customisation and a robust network of supporters from whom to get help and inspiration.
WordPress comes in open source and commercial flavours. The first, where you have to install and administer WordPress yourself, is what I use. The second, where a commercial company such as WordPress.com or WPEngine handles all of that for you, always seemed like a very expensive way to go about things.
Now, though, WordPress’s open source and commercial faces are coming into conflict. Matt Mullenweg, who co-founded WordPress in 2003 and has maintained the air of a benevolent dictator since then, seems to be suffering from early-onset tech leader derangement. (Perhaps it’s catching.) Mullenweg has argued that for-profit companies (his own aside, of course) which benefit from WordPress’s freely available source code should be contributing more to that same source code, despite there being no legal compulsion to do so. The resulting ructions in the WordPress world have not been reassuring.
Have you blogged on other platforms before?
I used Google’s Blogspot for a personal diary a long, long time ago.
When do you feel most inspired to write?
I am not, it is fair to say, a natural writer. I have to treat it more like a job: set up a schedule and stick to is as closely as I can, family and other obligations notwithstanding. To fuel my miscellany posts, I keep a list of interesting websites, news stories and other articles as inspiration. Occasionally, though, something will pop up that I need to write about. A recent post on generative AI was one instance of that; an exploration on statistical frequency of punctuation marks was another.
Do you publish immediately after writing, or do you let it simmer a bit as a draft?
Occasionally, I’ll still be trying to figure out what a post is actually about as I’m in the middle of writing it. In those cases, there will be an extended period of writing and rewriting. Most other posts I publish as soon as I’ve finished them.
What are you generally interested in writing about?
I thought about this recently. For a long time, the header on the Shady Characters home page told readers to expect “unusual marks of punctuation, books and book history, and everything in between”. Now, though, with the publication of Empire of the Sum behind me and Face with Tears of Joy coming up this summer, things aren’t so clear-cut. For the moment, I’ve settled on this: “unorthodox information technologies”. I’m not sure it conveys exactly what I want it to, but it’s close enough.
Who are you writing for?
Hmm. Hmm. I would like to say that I’m writing for posterity — to help collate and collect stories, facts and other bits of information that deserve to be shown to a wider audience. But if I’m honest with myself, I’m writing for me — I’m writing because I enjoy the craft and the habit of it, and because each word written by a human being is another blow struck against the entropy of the universe. (I’m a lapsed physicist, in case it isn’t obvious.)
What’s your favorite post on your blog?
I honestly don’t know! Have a look at the Contents page and let me know what your favourite post is in the comments.
Any future plans for your blog? Maybe a redesign, a move to another platform, or adding a new feature?
In writing terms, I’d like to get back to a more regular cadence, which will be easier once the kids are a little older.
In design terms, I’ll be sticking with this design for a while longer. You can see the original one on archive.org; it lasted for around six years, and the current design is now pushing eight. Even so, I’m quite proud of it and I have no plans to change it any time soon.
The one thing I would like to change is the WordPress software that underpins the blog. It’s written in a programming language called PHP that I don’t especially enjoy using, and the shenanigans at the top of the WordPress community do not inspire confidence in WordPress itself. Grupetto.cc, my (very) occasional cycling blog, uses a system called Eleventy. It’s simpler and more flexible than WordPress, and I’ve been plotting a move to it for Shady Characters for a while. Time will tell when that happens.
Hello, and welcome to 2025. Is it that time already?
The possessive apostrophe (or rather, the abuse of the possessive apostrophe) is a recurrentguest star here at Shady Characters, but usually in the English language. Recently, though, the Guardian reported that unneeded apostrophes are infecting German, too. The so-called Deppenapostroph, or “idiot’s apostrophe”, appears when a German-language expression uses it to indicate a possessive — despite the fact that it is more correct to add an “s” on its own rather than “’s”.
Compare and contrast with the summer kerfuffle chronicled at Language Log, in which Mark Libermann summarises a spat over how to add the possessive to the surnames of those on the Democratic party’s erstwhile presidential ticket. Is it “Harris’” or “Harris’s”? “Walz’” or “Walz’s”? All happy languages are alike, one might say; each unhappy language is unhappy in its own way.
Head to Language Log to get Libermann’s professional (and sensible) take on the matter.
In Face With Tears of Joy, (available now to preorder at Amazon and Bookshop.org!), I write a little about the mysterious, blank-faced Unicode characters (□, � and others) that sometimes pop up when a computer or smartphone doesn’t support the latest emoji. I was happy to see an in-depth treatment of those same characters pop up at the website of Thomas Phinney, a typographer and font expert.
Although it didn’t start life as an emoji, the fact that the peace sign (☮️) has been inducted into Unicode’s hallowed emoji halls is an indication of how potent a symbol it is. Or perhaps, how potent a symbol it was. At the New York Times, Michael Rock isn’t sure that ☮️ carries the same weight it once did. What’s your take? Are we in danger of losing this once-contentious, once-ubiquitous symbol?
That’s all for this week! Happy new year, and may your 2025 be filled with information technologies of the most unorthodox sort.
You: a discerning reader of books about unconventional information technologies (unusual marks of punctuation, say, or pocket calculators). Your friends and family: the same, naturally. But what gifts to give them this holiday season?
I am here to help. And because I am still very much on a calculator jag, we will be concentrating on some of the best pocket calculators out there — the cleverest, the longest-lived, and even just the hands-down–shucks–goshdarnit best looking models available to buy.
Dieter Rams, Braun’s totemic lead designer from 1962 until 1995, created many of the German company’s most recognisable products, from hi-fi gear to cigarette lighters and alarm clocks. But Rams also ventured into the world of the pocket calculator. From 1977 to 1987, and in partnership with a designer named Dietrich Lubs, Rams created a line of pocket calculators that embodied his motto of “less, but better”.1
The ET66 of 1987 was perhaps the apogee of the company’s calculators. To glance at one in passing is to be less than impressed — the ET66 does a very good impression of being a very average pocket calculator — but there is a consistency of shape and colour in its different elements that, on a closer look, elevates it from being merely a pocket calculator to something closer to the pocket calculator.2
In fact, so clean and logical is the ET66’s design that Apple Computer once sold them as part of the “Apple Collection”, a mail-order catalogue of third-party products that were deemed worthy to be associated with the famously exacting computer company. (Apple’s ET66 came with an Apple logo emblazoned on its top-right corner.)3 More recently, Jony Ive, Apple’s erstwhile chief designer, has cited Rams as one of his main influences — and, not coincidentally, the calculator application that ships with Apple’s iPhone is a very clear homage to Rams’s calculators.4
I’ve talked a lot about Hewlett-Packard’s seminal HP-35, both here on the blog and in Empire of the Sum, and with good reason. It was the world’s first pocketable scientific calculator, wrapped in a sensible and usable package — perhaps not quite as polished as Rams’s efforts, but distinctive and pleasing nonetheless — and there is a strong argument for it being the first “must have” electronic calculator. Perhaps even the first “must have” consumer electronic device.5
Today, though, we set aside the HP-35 for another of HP’s most celebrated pocket calculators: the HP-12c of 1981 and beyond. The 12c forsook the 35’s scientific bent for the business world, helping its user to make interest rate, bond, and other financial calculations. And rather than the 35’s portrait form factor, the 12c distinguished itself with a none-more-’80s landscape layout, echoing the tiny credit-card calculators that were all the rage in the decade of its birth.6
If the 12c doesn’t have quite the same mythical reputation of its more famous sibling, it has nevertheless outlived it by a significant margin. Forty-three years after its release, the 12c is still on sale. For $49.99, you can buy a modern-day HP-12c whose colour scheme, dimensions, button layout and features are identical to its earliest incarnations.7 And I heartily encourage you to do so. The accountant, Rotary club treasurer or merchant banker in your life will thank you for it — if they don’t already own one.
3. Literally any slide rule
Slide rule owned by Sally Ride, the first American woman in space. (CC0 image courtesy of the National Air and Space Museum.)
To be clear, I am not suggesting that you break into the Smithsonian and steal Sally Ride’s slide rule in particular. But slide rules in general are irresistible to any mathematically-inclined human being. Compact, clever, tactile and collectible, they are also, most helpfully, almost completely unknown to anyone under the age of fifty. Once, science fiction writers wrote admiringly of the slide rule as the key to mathematical enlightenment (Robert A. Heinlein’s Have Space Suit — Will Travel8 being the mostly widely-cited example); now, they litter antique stores and desk drawers, their magic intact but unappreciated.
Where to start when buying a slide rule? eBay is awash with slide rules large and small, ranging from common-or-garden educational varieties to more esoteric examples such as nuclear fallout calculators and agricultural fertiliser slide rules. They start at a few dollars or pounds each and go as high as you like. I’m partial to a simple bamboo slide rule, as were made by the truckload by Hemmi Slide Rule Co., Ltd, of Japan, and rebranded by many sellers around the world. Below is a very, very bad photograph of my “Post” branded Hemmi, bought for me by my father in law for just $3.
A “Post”-branded slide rule made by Hemmi of Japan. (Picture by the author.)
Believe me when I tell you that a slide rule will be the best, most unexpected gift that someone receives this year.
4. Casio S100X calculator
There have always been high-end calculators. The Busicom Handy-LE of 1971, for instance, considered to be the first true pocket calculator, was available in a sybaritic gold-plated variant.9The slim, potentially explosive Sinclair Executive was aimed at a similarly rarefied clientele. That said, pocket calculators more generally were subject to a relentless race to the bottom. Chips got smaller and cheaper; calculator manufacturers vertically integrated or died; and prices tumbled year on year until only the most ruthlessly efficient companies remained.
Casio, in the calculator business since the very beginning, is one of those survivors. And despite the average Casio being a plasticky denizen of the maths classroom, Casio’s line of calculators is topped by a far more refined model. Enter the S100X: a desktop calculator machined from solid aluminium, with diamond cut edges, a brushed finish, and an engraved serial number that ensures that your £359.99 copy is one of a kind. (For that kind of money, a unique serial number would be the least of my demands.)
Now, the S100X is not especially advanced in terms of its ability to actually calculate things. This is a four-function calculator with percentages, square roots and tax rates bolted on, then wrapped in a shiny aluminium case. Yet I think it says something about the calculator’s enduring status as a kind of mathematical avatar that Casio went to the trouble to dress up such a mundane device in such an overwrought package. If money were no object, the S100X would make an excellent gift.
5. Empire of the Sum
The cover of Empire of the Sum.
Okay, okay, I am cheating. Empire of the Sum is a book, not a calculator. Even so, I hope you will consider giving it this year as a gift. Book sales are essential to keep all of this going — the blog, the books — and every copy sold helps. And if this post hasn’t convinced you that the pocket calculator is a subject worthy of your time, other books are available! Whichever one you buy, or you give, I hope its reader enjoys it.
1.
“Dieter Rams”. Design Museum. Accessed December 14, 2024.
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