Art & Inspiration Do you read the JalopyJournal Blog?

My favorites do fall under the inspiration of this. @Ryan , you have several along this vein

https://www.jalopyjournal.com/?p=24842

 

But... to be 100% honest, I write on jalopyjournal.com for me... not for the audience... It's literally my journal.[/QUOTE]

I get to quote you today,,,,
I hope you see how lucky you are, after years of hard work, you have a place to: entertain us, thumb your nose at us, teach us, make us happy, make us cry, and make us see how lucky we are to have hot rods!!
Keep it up!

 

Some of you may find this funny. For probably the first three years I came to the Jalopy Journal I read ONLY the blog. One of the original way-back-when HAMBers, "speedfreak" is an old buddy from my hometown, he told me to check out the HAMB, I was too damn stupid to figure out "FORUM" and while I of course enjoyed the blog, couldn't understand out what the hell he was talking about when he mentioned threads.

And yes, I still read the blog.

 

Don’t feel bad.
This is the first “online thingy” I ever joined.
I used my name because I had no idea what a user name was.
Probably didn’t post anything for the first year cause I didn’t know how or even how to log on. Cussed it to no end.
I guess this was good primer for becoming a teacher. Now I use these fancy emailing machines all the time.

 

I think I read more of the blogs now than I did for several years. my old laptop took me straight to the main Hamb page and bypassed the Jalopy Journal page. Somehow this box over here beside me decided that I needed to see the main Jalopy Journal page first and so be it but I am reading more blogs.

That one on the tether cars reminded me that in 1998 when I was at Pleasanton after being at Bonneville for four days I spent more time than I should have watching the tether cars and honestly could have spent most of a day there if I had had the time.

Funny thing at Pleasanton was the first guy I saw was the old dude who would go around the pits and spectator area at Bonneville scavenging aluminum cans including who knows how many guys tossed in the back of my 48 when they were walking by. Saved me from a littering ticket I expect.

 

Yay Ryan is sticking around for decades! I feared Hawaii would change his motivation.

 

Read them all.

 

Anthony Myrick, passion is a great motivator! You found something that interested you on a medium, and through effort and determination, was able to learn how to navigate it and get what you wanted.
Teaching is all about igniting that drive to achieve a desired result. Whether that is knowledge, skills or tangible assets, you gotta want it!

 

Don't feel bad. When I found this place in December of 99 I had no clue what a message board was either. I was busy reading the few stories, following links to Primer! and The Big Blue Car etc. It was not until I got home for New Years I set up my new computer and realized there was a whole community like me!

 

I read 'em, and enjoy them. Thankyou. I doubt I read every one of them but I'd like to think I read most.

Chris

 

Hello,

For all of the years, not many, that I have been here, I always read the Jalopy Journal Blog or posts. They are very informative and reminds me of old hot rod stories from way back. Now, if the authors could separate the paragraphs and use punctuation/grammar like we all learned in high school, that would be the topper to those cool stories.

I have been criticized for not having capitals or paragraphs when I first started back whenever. I got used to writing notes and comments on our own journal history without capitals. It was faster typing everything while it was hot. I told myself that I would go back and correct my own family journal entries with correct grammar and punctuation.

The faster ideas come to me, I immediately jotted them down and I could not waste time capitalizing each one that needed it or separate the paragraphs. The information was hot and as old as we are/were, I did not want to lose any train of thought. I had some facts from our family history, but in doing some research, I would lose some of it when I found some new stuff. The time it took to write it down, that first bit of information I was going to write just drifted away.

In the back of my mind, I knew there was something, but it was gone. So, these days, I spend time writing my information that I find and then before I leave any page, go back over and use correct grammar as well as punctuation/spelling, And, finally save it to my computer.
One memory at a time is good, another pops up when a story or facts sparks something and a paragraph just happens on my Word Document screen.

Jnaki

I am not advocating how anyone should write, but with my grades in high school English bordering on poor to very poor, I got my act together for the next several years of college. But, when I started writing and doing some photojournalism, I was thrown back. Our background in old hot rods and drag racing gave me a lot of ideas and style of writing.

My first stories submitted to Tex Smith were given back to me with more red marks than I had ever seen in my high school English classes, ever. Wow, I was thrown back. My college English professors would also have been shocked. I was learning and the application was close to good story writing and short essays as i have ever completed. My upper level English Classes were always "B" grade or higher.

He had his own way to write and my writing did not jibe with his. So, he gave me “red mark pointers.” He wanted me to write like he wrote and imagine how the reader would like to see his hot rod or custom motorcycle presented to the whole USA or world. He was not alone. Over the years I met several other editors and publishers and they all had similar ideas. After all, they were the editors and/or it was their magazine being presented to the general public.

From that point on, and the early finds on my own writing, it only takes a few minutes of checking for grammar errors, punctuation marks, separate topics divided in somewhat of a orderly fashion and re-reading anything before publishing online or saved to the laptop. Each submission was different for the different publications. yes, grammar is grammar, but the style of writing from those different publications was evident.

Last idea, if separate paragraphs is a "no" for most people, get your hands on a computer program like Dragon Naturally Speaking, Grammarly, or even Google Docs. They all have things to make writing easier and at least a resemblance of a good writer. A friend said he used Dragon Naturally Speaking #13 and it was as easy as talking into the microphone or at the screen. The writing came out as if he were the best writer in a college class. You talk, the computer writes on the screen. Simple and effective. YRMV

 

Turns out this is a great question Trent. Hell I thought everyone knew that the HAMB is just the dumb forum for the JJ, that the JJ comes first. Have checked into the JJ daily forever.

 

I guess it’s because the forum comes up on my phone. Even the laptop.
I see the JJ posts on the forum. Only went there by accident a time or two.
When you see it this way only, you think it’s the opposite.

 

I am glad the app is dead, viewing the board in desktop mode is so much better.

 

I never used the app.
Or never got one anyway.
This shows up on my phone.

The I-phone gods sent it.

 

Jnaki,
When I worked as a technical editor with a group numbering about 30, we all had to 'speak with one voice', so that anyone reading the articles wasn't jarred with 30 different styles. We had a Style Sheet and when issues came up, we had meetings to solidify the terms, structure and tone. This was later changed to simply mirror the OE terminology.
Example: Driveshafts, half shafts, drive axles, swing axles, axles, axle shafts, axle housings. Try to cover every possible layout and neatly fit each into those categories. One or two were removed as redundant.
Since it was a technical publication, the mantra was Clear, Concise and Correct.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Style_guide
In a periodical, you can have a standard style in addition to correct language and punctuation, or have unique 'voices'. The late, great Gray Baskerville comes to mind as a stellar example, along with Tony Defeo. Motor Trend has a different focus and target audience (since the 70's) and is IMHO more technical than something like Tex Smith's publications, which did have a unique style that reads as more a story or 'first person'.

 

Hey R,

Yes, you are correct. most instructional manuals are written well. But, to me, those instructional manuals were "drone city" and went on and on with stuff that just did not go with our liking. (not that it wasn't important stuff.) My brother did read everything he could get his hands on as far as hot rodding and automotive stuff was concerned.

I, on the other hand, did not like reading technical articles as they just kept going and to me was not interesting. I was more of a hands on type of person that would learn by watching and listening. I am sure the only tech article I remember and read was the one on the supercharged 1957 Studebaker for the drags and salt flats.
11 pages long

For some reason, that one hit home and I went over and over that same article. It may have been that I suggested to my brother that we should put on a McCulloch Centrifugal Supercharger on our current cars. A 1951 Oldsmobile 2 door sedan and then a 58 Impala with a 348 motor. They would have been "firsts..."

Jnaki

I had my own way to describe the articles I wrote and did the photo work. By talking to the owner/builder, I took great notes. My wife usually talked to the girlfriend or wife of the builder to get a different side to the build. When we were finished, we sat around and came up with a story based on the notes we took. Tex Smith liked the idea of the "down home" stories, but it was his publication to develop and with that in mind, the red marks flew like Halloween Candy.

To this day, those recent computer programs seem to work. A friend used one and was delighted with the results. He just talked into the microphone and the computer did all of the correct grammatical checks and writing. He said it was the best thing for him to get his job, back then in the 80s-90s.

The image of a bunch of HAMB people sitting in front of their computer screens talking to it, would be a classic photo or film. Ha! But, at least, the short stories and comments would look good and be easy to read. Plus, the thread titles would not have massive spelling errors.

Thanks, your comments are on point, too.

 

J, the focus of my work there was to inform the reader of procedures, NOT entertain. Believe me, proofing hundreds of pages a week toward the end certainly confirmed the 'drone city' aspect! I didn't need glasses until that job!
I enjoy a good book or a well written article probably more than the average reader, because I've been behind the curtain, so to speak.

The periodical industry may have been done in by this electronic medium, but the directors were shifting to a standardized corporate commodity rather than well crafted engagement. It sounds like Tex was trying very hard to avoid that, and you took great pride in your work. Red pages and rejection are a big part of entertainment, along with tough visionary leadership. Getting to where your work was considered, assessed and critiqued is showing that there was value in you and your creation. The ego wants complete and unconditional acceptance, but the consumer often requires a high value with divergent qualities. We want a useful plastic spoon for free with our take out, but also judge it's aesthetic qualities, which are varied and subjective. Just look at the variation in the creations on these pages, all under the banner of Traditional Hot Rods & Customs!

 

I read it almost every day, but only comment on the thread if I have something of value to contribute.

 

dream/nightmare.....