Answer Not in Progress

 So last spring I did an interview with the website Answer in Progress, which makes explainer videos on various interesting topics, because they said they were doing a video on stenography. Exciting! I thought the interview went really well. But the video never came out. Today I finally got curious about why, and found a podcast episode on their Patreon about all the videos they wound up canceling in 2025. Stenography is one of them. It starts at 19:00, but the short answer is that the video producer bought a non-ergonomic steno keyboard and wound up getting a repetitive stress injury from trying to learn steno. NOOOO! Let this be a lesson to all steno newbies! Ergonomics are incredibly important. Try to use a tentable machine whenever possible. Use a tripod if you can. Put the machine low enough to keep your shoulders down and your forearms parallel to the ground. And use springs that as light and shallow as you can find. That should help prevent RSIs! I'm really sad to hear about the injury, and secondarily sad that the video won't come out. Ah, well. 

Five Steno Machines in a Backpack

It was so good to see everyone at PyCon and to get to talk steno with a few of you! I thought it might be fun to show you the five steno machines I brought to the conference (Infinity Ergonomic, TinyMod, Jarne, Jarne Blade, and Asterisk) and what my backpack looked like with those machines plus three computers and all my other steno gear in it. The gray backpack was pretty much all clothes and the black backpack was pretty much all steno stuff. Strapped together, they made a pretty efficient travel bundle, and they were both able to go on the plane as carryons, which was convenient.

Find me at PyCon!

I'll be captioning PyCon for White Coat Captioning this weekend. If you're a member of the Open Steno community (or even if you're just curious about steno), please feel free to come find me! I'd be happy to talk steno and let you try out my various steno machines! :D

Asterisk Back in Stock!

The most affordable steno board of all time is back in stock! I strongly suggest using electric foam with it, since I found that it turned the board from very tricky to use into a real pleasure.