Statuses

Acquired File Tab 3 Inch Punch (McGill Incorporated)
A punch for making file tabs of 2 1/4" x 3/4"
P/N 68500
I had been considering getting a custom punch made several times, but never looked to see if one already existed commercially. Today, while doing a 5 minute peruse of the thrift store, there it was!

When you use as many tabbed index card dividers as I do, this can be incredibly useful. It’s just the right size for doing 1/3 cut tabs on 4″ x 6″ index cards.

Acquired at Acts Thrift Store on October 7, 2025 for $2.50.

Oblique angle on a black plastic punch body and a white button on top.

Acquired Pen and Pad Holder in blue lacquerware with ship and nautical design (Otagiri (Japan))
Design by Gibson Greeting Cards, Inc.
I’ve been wanting a vintage desktop index card holder and pen set for a bit. This excellent version has a nautical theme featuring a ship with subtle blue lines on the sails and red rope lines that call to mind the red and blue lines on standard lined index cards. The fact that the blue color pairs well with my executive tanker desk doesn’t hurt.

$3.99 at Acts Thrift Store, Pasadena, CA. Acquired on 2025-10-07.

Thinking about the current storage capacity of my card index collection, I made a back-of-the-index-card calculation:  

172,000 index cards * 150 words / card [average maximum, using front only] * 1,200 bytes / 150 words [rough average with Unicode encoding] * 1 kb / 1024 bytes * 1MB/1024 kb = approximately 200 MB of text storage

Having it well organized and indexed… Priceless.

A bright room with a green steel table on top of which sits a 1950 gray Royal KMG typewriter, a two drawer Shaw-Walker oak card index and some papers and mathematics textbooks. Behind the table is a barrister's bookcase full of books, and two card index filing cabinets.

Acquired Vintage c. 1940s Fluorescent Desk Lamp (Radionic Trans. Co.)
Material: Steel
Design: art deco, two pedestals with an adjustable lamp head
Color: Brown crinkle paint
I love the fact that there are small grooves in the base that seem to be designed to hold a pen or pencil. 

Office set up showing a gray executive tanker desk with blue drawers and writing drawers. In the front is a brown Royal HH standard typewriter with a visually similar vintage brown metal desk lamp with art deco styling behind it. Off to the side is a box for and bottle of Isle of Sky 18 year old whisky with a double old fashioned glass nearby.

Angle down onto a brown desk lamp featuring a metallic art deco decoration. In the base of the lamp is a shallow trough with a fountain pen sitting in it. The bottom of the base has a simple black pushbutton on/off switch.

Close up of a LEGO version of Wednesday Addams dorm room at Nevermore featuring a tiny black LEGO brick typewriter

For fans of the Juwel 3 typewriter that appears in the Netflix series Wednesday, there’s a tiny little simulacra in LEGO set 76781 Wednesday & Enid’s Dorm Room. 

Back of a LEGO box for Wednesday and Enid's dorm room showing the interior contents.

With the recent drop of the second season and Halloween around the corner, I was surprised to see the set on clearance at Target for about $30. 

Acquired Introduction to Hilbert Space by Sterling K. Berberian (Oxford University Press, 1961)
This textbook has evolved from a set of lecture notes which I prepared for a semester course in Hilbert space. I have in mind first- or second-year graduate students in Mathematics and related fields such as Physics.
My textbook for Dr. Miller’s class Introduction to Hilbert Spaces: An Adventure In Infinite Dimensions has arrived.
Replied to So You Want A Typewriter? by Axxuy (https://axxuy.xyz/)
To wrap up typewriter week, I thought I’d share some resources for anyone who is also interested in typewriters.
I’m glad to see that I’m not the only IndieWeb person with webmentions on their site who’s writing about typewriters and typecasting. 
Dr. Miller has tipped me off that the suggested text for his upcoming course An Introduction to Hilbert Spaces will be: 

Berberian, Sterling Khazag. Introduction To Hilbert Space. Oxford University Press, 1961. Reprint Literary Licensing, 2012.

He’s not happy that it ignores measure theory as a means to introduce the Lebesque integral, so he’ll be supplementing that with additional notes. I’ve ordered a used copy of the 1st edition, but there are also versions from AMS as well as a more recent reprint from 2012.

He also suggested that Debnath & Mikusinski was pretty good, albeit more expensive than he would like in addition to not being a fan some of their approaches to topics.

Debnath, Lokenath, and Piotr Mikusinski. Introduction to Hilbert Spaces with Applications. 3rd ed., Academic Press, 2005.