Previous post: I just finished my first VN in japanese and I want to talk about my experience up to this point
In my first post about JP learning I talked about how I started from scratch and, after 3 months and 3 anime series, I saw myself ready to tackle my first VN in JP. It went surprisingly smoothly, and I was confident to continue my journey.
Fast forward to today, I now have been learning JP for 1 year and 5 months, have just finished my 10th VN in JP, and feel like sharing the whole process here.
I hope I can convince even a single person that this is a journey worth taking, since that is what I wholeheartedly believe.

THE 10 VISUAL NOVELS

First I'm gonna go through the VNs I've read and leave the rambling and other points for later

1. Yami no Koe: Like I mentioned in the previous post, this was pretty easy. All characters are voiced (this helps a lot), simple and short sentences for the most part, and nothing wild in terms of vocabulary. I would consider it a perfect starting VN if you don't mind it being a nukige. I found it unique and with some interesting ideas. Too short to build anything especially memorable, but a worth read nonetheless.
2. Yami no Koe II: Difficulty is the same as the previous one, but I didn't like it at all. It felt to me like the ''free yourself from society's chains'' message from the first game was lost halfway, and I got tired of the dozens of h-scenes (I'm an idiot for thinking it was a good idea to read 2 nukige back to back). So I was discouraged from reading the rest of the series and moved on to something different.
3. Nursery☆Rhyme: Looking back, I'm pretty sure this was THE turning point for me in the process of learning the language.

I really thought 3 anime series and 2 short and simple VNs were enough to get into a fully-fledged VN and come out unscathed.... and this one fucked me up.
The first week was the worst. I was clearly lacking grammar and vocabulary (started the VN with less than 1.5k learnt words in Anki). I had to look up most words, and sentences felt too long to retain the meaning of the words and then rebuild the meaning in my head, so I had to spend a lot of time per sentence.
During that first week, I hit my lowest point of self-confidence. I was starting to think I was not good enough, that I was not gonna make it.
After that hellish week, however, I slowly started to be able to recognise words that were being used constantly, and sentences started clicking a bit faster. My grasp and enjoyment of the language only increased since then.
In the end, I spent 2 months reading 5 hours a day, very slowly making my way to the end. During the last 2 weeks of the process I suddenly started to notice i could comprehend almost every sentence without any problem (not counting word lookups) no matter the length, and carry in my mind the meaning of the first part of a sentence during the second part in a natural way even if I considered it long/intricate.
Later I realised (and I'm still convinced of it right now) that this VN was the only thing that could have stopped me. I pushed through it, made it to the other side, and from then on I'll never again be even close to give up learning the language.
The VN itself is completely uneventful, I'm still surprised about how little happens throughout the story. Literally nothing memorable (except that I was having a blast reading Japanese).

1. Same to Ikiru Nanokakan: Right from the start I noticed I had a much better understanding compared to the previous VN. I only needed to get used to some specific vocabulary at first, but grammar itself was clicking instantly for the most part.

My main problem with this VN was that there's a lot of repetition between routes. Out of the 7 routes, the first one was pretty good, 2º 3º and 4º were very tedious and made me stop reading for a while. The last 3 routes were great tho, with some memorable moments, and the VN left me with a good aftertaste, so i don't regret having read it all things considered.
After having finished it, I basically gaslit myself into thinking the routes I hated were not that bad, and I was so slow reading that it was my fault they felt repetitive.

1. Ihanashi no Majo: Reading this VN has been one of the best experiences of my life. It connected with me in a way very few things have done, and made me feel an array of deep emotions that I'll never forget.

Starts pretty light with mainly SoL, and it slowly becomes bleaker and bleaker. It's a pretty ''quiet'' tragedy, like a light slowly going out, that really ended making me believe there was no hope. And that's the most effective kind of tragedy for me. Accompanied by absolutely beautiful music, it made me experience an infinite sadness that felt like too much to bear at times (literally my kind of shit).
It's also special to me the outlook it gives on life during certain points of the story, I think it's a very feel-good and optimistic VN at its core even if it ripped me apart in the most hideous way imaginable.
About the difficulty, it was pretty easy to read except for a few religious and historical bits of Okinawan culture (since the VN takes place there).

1. Rance 01: I was so hyped to start the Rance series I even made a post about it, and made it to JP News for some reason lol.

I was a bit worried about my reading speed before starting it because the series is completely unvoiced, but I flew through it pretty fast. Very easy and simple grammar (too simple maybe, more on that later), and the ending was absolutely stellar. Made me very eager for the rest of the series knowing this was only the first installment.
I was surprised with the difficulty of both combat (you die SO easily it's insane) and progressing through the game (I have no patience at all when feeling lost so I had to resort to using a guide for the second half of it).

1. Marco to Ginga Ryuu: Insane production value and overflowing with personality. The pacing was a problem for me tho. During the first half of the VN I liked it because its just very fast and adds to the quirkiness of it all, but through the second half it gets a bit tiring and the emotive scenes have no emotional depth whatsoever because the characters have no time to get any development.

Having said that, the CGs and music are so good that they basically carry the ending, and it left me with a good aftertaste after all.
A very easy read too.

1. MOON: I want to read all Key VNs, but before that I wanted to read the 2 VNs Maeda Jun wrote before the formation of Key (MOON and ONE).

I was not expecting this kind of VN from Maeda Jun at all 💀. I mean, I know he focuses a lot on tragedy, and I only have a superficial knowledge of what goes on in most of his other VNs, but I'm pretty sure this one is very unique compared to the others.
Not bad at all, but hard to read at times. Very cruel stuff that even such an optimistic ending couldn't completely heal my heart from.
Also an easy read.

1. Tokyo Babel: I actually started this VN after Ihanashi no Majo, so it would be my 6º one, but I took breaks between routes so I finished it as the 9º.

This has been my first ''hard'' VN. A biblical chuuni. Honestly, it wasn't that hard. Felt pretty scary at first because sentences are long as hell, the vocabulary is complex and to top it off it uses a lot of alternate kanji writings so I couldn't even recognise some words I had already learnt.
The thing is, my grammar was already at a pretty decent level, so sentence length wasn't that much of an issue, and I was doing a lot of Anki so I quickly caught up with most of this VN's specific vocabulary.
Since I started learning JP I've wanted to leave hard and well-written VNs for when I reach an extensive level of comprehension, in order to appreciate what separates them from the rest (from a grammar standpoint). This VN may have given me a taste of that. I don't think it is immensely complex or well written, but it certainly has a certain ''flavour'' to it that differentiates it from the rest of VNs I read before.
This was particularly noticeable when I started Rance and the appeal of the grammar was completely lacking. But I understand that Rance offers a lot of different things so i quickly got over it.
Tokyo Babel has probably the best start out of all VNs I've read. I also appreciate the way it touches on some themes like identity and purpose. It's hard for me to describe, but there's a general feeling of ''longing'' that made me very nostalgic for something I hadn't even experienced up till that point. Amazing read.

1. Rance 02: I went with low expectations because of how people tend to talk about this one, since its more of a visual remaster than a remake like 01 and 03, and ended up enjoying it quite a lot. Combat is not as interesting as in Rance 01, but it's so easy in comparison that I could just sit back and enjoy Rance's mischiefs. I'm a certified Rance enjoyer now ✅.

Also, I think this is the easiest time I've had with the language. Had to look up very few words, and mainly only to mine them since at this point I can guess the meaning of a lot of unknown words just from the kanji.
Next is a list of everything I've immersed in (VNs in green, anime in blue), in order:
https://preview.redd.it/9dhhpjo7se5d1.png?width=956&format=png&auto=webp&s=6fac508a916a61ef0b72735df200983544b2111d

ANIME

Some points I think are worth mentioning about the difficulty of the anime series I've watched:

• Juuni Kokuki was hard as fuck. Isekai + Chinese politics absolutely destroyed my ass. Too many names of people and places I couldn't look up easily too.
• Shingeki no Kyojin was surprisingly hard because of the military vocabulary, but nothing I couldn't get used to after a while
• Monogatari series is the hardest thing I've immersed in, more than the VNs too. Luckily, my understanding was already pretty high at that point so I was able to make sense of pretty much all of it without having a stroke.
• Summertime Render takes place on an island where almost every character speaks in some kind of Kansai dialect that reminded me of Kagenui Yozuru, and for me she's the hardest character to understand in Monogatari series.

I think that kind of dialect is hard for me not only because of the change in words and expressions, but also because of the change in intonation. I've noticed I rely a lot on the usual JP intonation and pauses when characters are talking, but with this dialect sentences sound so strange that I lose grasp of the meaning.

ANKI

Effective JP learning is, for me, half reading and half Anki. I know a few people who stopped doing Anki after a while with good results, but I don't think that'd be optimal for me even with how much I immerse, because there are tons of rare words I wouldn't be able to memorise even after years.
I want to build an entire language of vocab in a single deck. I'm even excited to do it. And in the future I want to be able to instantly recognise and be able to pronounce every word I've encountered during my entire life of reading. So, Anki grind.
https://preview.redd.it/swse2fx9ue5d1.png?width=714&format=png&auto=webp&s=96655a6ac2b1e0895f062b136221a4d0c7aef618
https://preview.redd.it/fvq2aqtaue5d1.png?width=828&format=png&auto=webp&s=c2d022e1c48e12a292a48db650d6a60ccdda6678
https://preview.redd.it/647p9gqr0f5d1.png?width=1201&format=png&auto=webp&s=c829172e1abb80ca4269f0326c5d869690d7a1db
I haven't missed a single day of Anki since I started learning on Dec 24, 2022. I'm at the moment actively studying 8550 words that contain 2513 unique kanji. These are my retention stats:
https://preview.redd.it/6o2pwb3nue5d1.png?width=1033&format=png&auto=webp&s=2240f1132e8cb958c337a331bb43de144df8e8bc
The sweet spot seems to be around 85%-90% so I've been at a good spot consistently for more than a year now. The more words you know and the more you read, the easier Anki becomes; and the more Anki you do, the easier reading becomes because you can instantly recognise more words. A vicious circle of exponential improvement.
Card creation is also important for retention, compare the following two:
https://preview.redd.it/gqmbjtk0ye5d1.png?width=1025&format=png&auto=webp&s=3862998b511f7c0724d218eccd1302a35137bb4b
https://preview.redd.it/d9jy70n1ye5d1.png?width=1072&format=png&auto=webp&s=580fad663967ab2c46818cfbe07fe56271f1c4e6
The first card was made during the first weeks of immersion. It contains everything that was on the Yomichan popup I mined it from, it's just a mess.
The second card is more recent, I now make them to contain the simplest JP definition. This effectively increases retention and rep speed, which allows you to either learn more words in the same amount of time, or do Anki faster and focus more time into reading.

FROM HERE ON OUT

Japanese as a language has become a fundamental part of why I enjoy reading VNs, I simply can't go back now.
I want to keep getting better and reach a point where I can easily read the most insane VNs without much problem, and then keep getting better.
I'm in a bind now, since I know I can safely tackle harder things now, and that way I'd get better even faster, BUT something in my head tells me I'd enjoy them more if I improve even further first. Reading speed and nuance comprehension are essential aspects of what makes a read enjoyable after all, so I'd like to save stuff like Muramasa for a few years into the future.
I have the Silverio trilogy in my sights, which seem to be pretty complex and it's something I don't feel the need to postpone. I'll be starting it next year probably. Also, in order to have some sort of goal to look forward to, I've decided I'll begin with Nitro+ VNs in release order the moment I reach 15k words in Anki.
For the near future, I want to keep reading Maeda Jun works and the Rance series (hyped as fuck for 03 since it should be a huge step up from 02). I also have like 20 other VNs installed that'll take me some time to complete.
Lastly, I'm gonna recommend Perdition and TMW discord servers in case you are interested in learning JP.
That's it, hope you enjoyed the long ass post. I'm going back to immersion!

As always, we're not professional journalists, but we do our best to provide fair, accurate reviews, with DeX and mobile computing in mind. Review items are provided by the company, but they have no input on the review, nor see it before it's posted here. So with that being said, let's proceed.

UPERFECT Delta Pro Touch is currently in the indiegogo phase of it's production, and the pre-production version I have is very close to the final product, but 1 major change. Let's take a quick look at the stated specs:

https://portablemonitor.com/
indiegogo specs
Pretty much everything in the pre-production version I have matches the specs, except that the screens are 60hz, rather than 120hz panels. We've heard from a few different companies now, that there's been quite a few holdups with 120hz panels lately. They did procure 1600p screens tho, and they're quite nice.

The Size of it all

It's big. Really big. The listed specs of 360mm x 237mm x22mm don't really bring the size to reality for me. Here is the Delta Pro Touch compared to the 2 other clamshell monitors that UPERFECT offers:
Delta 15.6\", Delta Pro Touch 16\", Delta MAX 18.5\"
As you can see it's slightly larger than a standard 15.6" inch monitor, but obviously not as ludicrously larger as the 18.5"
but it's......chonky
It's almost twice as thick as the 15.6\" and thicker than the 18.5\"
It's also quite heavy, at almost 2kg (over 4 lbs)
They've also opted for a slightly different kickstand style, compared to previous Delta series monitors.
Different kickstand design this time. I'm not sure it's actually as stable as the much smaller style...
When the monitors are open, the 16" Delta Pro Touch is almost as big as the 18.5" Max
The 15.6" and 18.5" are both matte screens, and non-touch. The 16" Pro Touch is a glossy touchscreen
The glossy touchscreen of the Delta Pro Touch stands out

PORTS

This is a spot where I REALLY like what they've done. They've learned from the feedback they've gotten from our community, and others like it.
Right hand side, bottom screen
On the right hand side of the screen, are the controls for the monitor, and 2x 3.5mm headphone jacks. That's right, you can use 2 sets of headphones with this monitor, and each monitor can use the speakers independently (or at the same time, but this is obviously not a good way to do things)
The button when pressed, brings up the menu for each menu independently.
The TOP button
The TOP button lets you select the input for the top monitor. Generally leaving it to AutoSelect is good enough, but when you want to manually toggle between C1/2, C3 or HDMI2, it's quick and easy to use the rocker button just below.
The bottom button brings up the main menu
Like the previous 15.6" Delta, the menu lets you select the specific input you like (usb-c or hdmi) and then the configuration of the screens
This is where the interesting bits happen. You can select a simple clone mode, where it just duplicates the screen of your input device, onto both top and bottom screens. This works with every device (DeX, steam deck, surface, PSTV, etc)
Standalone mode is also really straight forward. You plug any 2 devices in, using any combination of USB-C and HDMI (1 of each, both usb-c, or both HDMI) and each device gets 1 monitor dedicated to it
Surface and Steam Deck (both via usb-c)
DeX and Surface, again both via usb-c
Sequence Mode is really interesting as well. It essentially takes a single input (HDMI or USB-C) and presents both monitors as a single monitor with a 2560x3200 resolution
Steam Deck sequence
Surface Pro Sequence
One really odd caveat here, that wasn't present on the previous 15.6" Delta, in linux (steam deck) the Sequence mapping resulted in the screen refresh dropping down to 30hz. The Surface pro, with win11 was happy to do sequence at the full 60hz.
I'm not sure if this is a linux limitation, a steam deck issue, or just a dumb default, but I couldn't manually change on the deck. Surface Pro 8/win11 was happy to just do it, np
The really interesting config choice tho is Expansion mode.
This is where the monitor takes a single USB-C input, and (I'm assuming, they haven't confirmed) via MST you get 2 individual monitors
Single USB-C connection from Surface Pro results in 2 external monitors
DeX with it's limitation of a single external monitor obviously can't make use of this mode.
Oddly, the Steam Deck also didn't want to play nice with this mode
deck no happy
I'm not sure what's different, as the 15.6" Delta was happy to use extend mode with the Deck. Same cables, same power supply, same Deck.

Touch Screen Shenanigans

An upgrade from the previous versions is both screens are touch capable, as well as there is an included Stylus/pen.
I'm not going to lie, the pen is WAY nicer than I expected, and supports some pressure sensitivity, and angle detection.
Pen is a dead ringer for the original surface pen
Pen works on both screens, with single cable in use
Was really pleasantly surprised that it continued to work on the stop screen, when only physically connected to the bottom via single usb-c
Had the wife and oldest kid (who are actual pen users) give it a whirl and both were pleasantly surprised how decent the pen was for a free add-in
I had a bunch of weird issues trying to get the monitors calibrated for touch on the steam deck (linux). It had a really hard time dealing with the scaling of touch when using Sequence mode (the 2 high, but single monitor). I suspect I did a poor job of looking for the calibration sequence on linux, will revisit this if I end up finding it eventually.
Windows also needs to be calibrated, but it's a super simple process of "tap the screen you want to be a touch screen/pen screen" (you have to do both)

DeX resolution issues

Absolutely none!
No Good lock / multistar
I was super happy to see that DeX was able to see the native resolution of the monitor with no shenanigans needed at all. It did default to 2560x1440, but as you can see, it still recommended 2560x1600 which is the monitors native resolution.

Speakers

The speakers are located at the bottom lip of the monitor, so actually kind of face you. They're much better than the speakers we've been seeing on previous UPERFECT lapdocks and monitors (as well as other manufacturers).
They're not going to replace a proper bookshelf set, but they're really decent enough for basic web stuff, youtube, netflix, etc. You definitely notice the lack of proper bass with music, but for a productivity focused monitor, they've very acceptable.

Overall Impression

This monitor is pretty awesome. Both screens are nice and bright indoors. The 1600p resolution looks fantastic in DeX (as well as windows and linux). I would really have liked to have seen the 120hz panels, but it wasn't to be.
This is NOT a monitor you're going to toss in your tech bag to commute with every day. It's also not so ridiculously large that you couldn't take it for when you're going to be based out of a remote office/hotel for couple weeks at a time though.
The ability to use it with a single cable, and have it pass thru some charging to your devices makes for a really nice compact setup on cramped desks, or hotel spaces.
It doesn't pass thru enough power to use your laptop/surface/steam deck indefinitely. I've dropped roughly 7% battery on my surface in the 2-3 hours I've been testing it. Steam deck was awfully close to maintaining charge, until you fire up some games AND watch a movie on the top screen. But you'd still get EASILY a dozen hours before you'd have to start thinking about powering the deck directly
DeX however would run forever off the power supplied to the monitor
As pre-production, I'm not sure if there's plans to add VESA mounting holes to it, like the previous Delta monitors. The kickstand is fine, and pretty stable, but after mounting the previous Deltas, we really noticed that this one didn't mount....
You can find the Delta Pro Touch currently at UPERFECTs indiegogo campaign:
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/delta-pro-touch-unleash-perfect-creation#/
https://portablemonitor.com/
At the time of this writing in early June, the early bird price is $549usd for the 16" version

TLDR: The ordeal of doing a custom powdercoat finish on a Freewrite Smart Typewriter. And I ask what color I should attempt next.
The Pastel Turquoise Freewrite Story
A few years ago I got the (not-so) bright idea to create a one-of-a-kind custom-color Freewrite and it blew up in my face. Let me go back to the beginning...
In 2014 when Astrohaus introduced what was then called the Hemingwrite on Kickstarter I got wind of it and followed its journey. In 2015 I trekked to the Astrohaus Manhattan office with a friend to see an early production version. I was at the radio station WFMU at the time and had this vague idea of talking the Astrohaus marketing department into giving the station a Freewrite to use as a prize during an upcoming fundraising Marathon. We could put the device in front of a ton of professional writers while getting ourselves a kick-ass prize. We were led to a conference room where the first iteration of the Freewrite awaited us. I tried it out, then my friend. We kept our thoughts to ourselves as the marketing rep talked up the machine.
"It's distraction-free writing. Built for one purpose."
Yes, but will people pay for what appears to be a glorified word processor?
We left the Astrohaus offices and my friend and I expressed our reservations.
"Still, if we could get them to donate one..."
We couldn't. They didn't see the value in accessing WFMU's artistic community.
"Oh well. Good lucking selling your machine!"
All the while I stayed on the Astrohaus mailing list, searched for used Freewrites on EBay, read every online review and watched all the YouTube videos. I wondered if a device guaranteeing distraction-free writing could help with my concentration. When I'm writing on my MacBook or iMac there's always something that gets through: email notifications, texts, breaking news. I never remember to mute notifications or use Airplane Mode. Again and again I go down various rabbit holes, spending ten or fifteen minutes replying to emails (mostly trashing junk emails), responding to texts, checking the news, or wasting time on social media. But I kept putting off the actual purchase of a Freewrite, despite my love of typewriters and memories of my mother's hulking black Royal upon which I learned to type. Then the Hemingwrite came along. Astrohaus revived the original name of the Freewrite but this time it was authorized by the Ernest Hemingway estate. When I saw the first photos of the polished aluminum exterior and green keys I thought "That thing is sweet." But even with the extras–the carrying case, etc.–I couldn't see ponying up the asking price, even for a "limited-edition" of "only" 200 pieces.
"That's what I paid for my Macbook a few years ago."
But the emails from Astrohaus kept coming and I kept opening them. On the cusp of a milestone birthday I decided to indulge and buy a Hemingwrite as a gift to myself... and a future investment.
"I can finally write that book about the Nihilistics..."
The Nihilistics is the New York Hardcore band I founded and named at the end of the '70s. I'd written a few short pieces about the band, centered around my relationship with the bass playelyrics writer Mike (RIP). I referred to him as "...the booster rocket that helped me achieve escape velocity, falling back to earth in the process." One of my short stories about the band got published and I had a boutique publisher interested in the full story.
"I'll write the book on the Hemingwrite!"
When the box with my new distraction-free writing tool arrived (within a day or two of ordering) I moved it around from our porch to the office to our dining room but couldn't bring myself to open it.
"I don't deserve this thing. I can't justify the cost. Is it too late to return it?"
This went on for six weeks.
"If it IS too late to return it maybe I can put it on EBay. I should be able to get my money back. But I sure would like to see it first."
Then I finally freed the Hemingwrite from its box (I thought of doing an unboxing video but didn't). I gingerly cut open the tape on the box and extracted the leather carrying case from its bag. I opened the case and thought "This thing is sexy." It hadn't occurred to me there wouldn't be enough of a charge to use the Hemingwrite out of the box. But I started typing on it anyway, figuring I could charge it overnight and get the full experience in the morning.
"It's like mom's IBM Selectric..."
My mother owned one of the early Selectrics with the swappable type element (I still have on of the elements: the typewriter is long gone, as is the Royal). Typing on the Selectric was a fully tactile experience, just like the Hemingwrite. There's even the same delay between key-strike and "imprint," as I discovered the next morning after a full charge.
"I guess I'm not sending this back. Or selling it on EBay."
Since it arrived and I finally decided to use it, I've been on my Hemingwrite every day, cranking out a weekly newsletter and my book distraction-free. Every once in awhile I admire the bare aluminum case and remind myself I earned this damn thing and plan to keep it and pass it on to some deserving soul many years from now. There are things I'd change–could there be a spellcheck function, for instance? – but those who scoff at this tool haven't spent enough time with one. They don't "get" it. I got it. And I'm glad I did.
Fast forward a bit and Astrohaus decides to sell more "limited-edition" Hemingwrites. I wrote to the company, reminding them what their own Marketing department said about only producing 200 pieces. They responded with a bullshit excuse: this is not the same machine as yours, we've updated the internals. Well, no one bought it for the internals. It felt like a betrayal and I questioned how I could go about creating a custom-color Freewrite of my own and perhaps sell my Hemingwrite to recoup my costs. I managed to buy a stock black Gen. 2 Freewrite for $350 and $25 shipping. Before I could think about disassembling the Freewrite a friend expressed interest in it and I brought the machine to him, where it sat boxed under his couch for almost half a year. He was going through issues with the health of his parents and finally decided not to buy my Freewrite, so I went and retrieved it. Then I revived the idea of putting a custom color on it and selling my Hemingwrite.
There are no online instructions for taking a Freewrite apart, so with great trepidation I brought the Freewrite out to my garage workbench and proceeded as carefully as possible. It's a bit harrowing, thinking you might destroy a machine for which you've paid $$$. But after an hour of stomach-churning, detail-oriented work I got the aluminum shell separated from the innards of the machine and put all the electronic parts safely away in the Freewrite box. Because I didn't fully power down the Freewrite first, a black bar appeared across the E-Ink display and I was convinced I destroyed it. I kept calm and carried on. Next, I did some research online on removing a powder coat finish from aluminum. Initially, I thought the shell could be media-blasted (they don't call it sand-blasting any longer) but you can't media-blast aluminum without potentially dimpling the surface. It's suggested you use a powerful paint stripper and I opted for Jasco (approx. $28) based on discussions in a powder-coat forum. The Jasco stripper is nasty stuff and the only way to use it safely is outdoors while wearing heavy disposable gloves, eye protection and a respirator. I took the Freewrite to my backyard, put it on a folding aluminum table and began brushing it with the Jasco stripper. When done I let it sit the suggested twenty minutes for the Jasco stripper to do its work. Then, using a plastic scraper (you can't use a metal scraper on aluminum) I began trying to remove the powder-coat finish. It didn't go well. I removed some of the finish but most of it remained and I was confronted with three choices: sand the rest of the finish off, try another application of the Jasco stripper or bite the bullet and get it media-blasted anyway. I decided to try another application of the Jasco stripper the following day, this time leaving it on for thirty minutes. Then I went at the powder-coat with the plastic scraper again. I had to use a combo of large and small scrapers to get into all the recesses of the Freewrite's shell. But the Jasco stripper is not a miracle worker and much of the powder-coat stubbornly remained. I pivoted to multiple grades of steel wool, from 0 to 0000. This took several hours of meticulous work but when I was done I was presented with something that looked very much like my Hemingwrite. Believe me, it stung to know Astrohaus is selling a raw-finish Freewrite (sure, it's "hand-buffed") with green keycaps and accents at a substantial premium and I thought of stopping there and using a spare set of green keycaps I own to create an ersatz Hemingwrite. But that was never my intent, so I pushed on with the custom color idea, posting a poll to the Freewrite community on Facebook, asking which color they'd like to see on a Freewrite. Astrohaus, in addition to the Hemingwrite, produced and sold a blue Freewrite and a cream Freewrite (this is before the Mint and Lemon editions) that garner a premium on EBay. The poll revealed "Green" to be the favored choice for a custom color so I did a Photoshop mock-up of red and green Freewrites and put them on the Facebook group. The response was positive. I called around to a bunch of local powder-coating places only to find they concentrate on automobile rims and little else. I even drove the Freewrite shell to one place only to be quoted a price of $150, which seemed a bit much. Then I remembered a place I used previously, up in Kingston, NY, a two hour drive north for me. We have friends in the Catskills and decided to cart the Freewrite to Kingston and stay overnight. A week later we returned to Kingston and retrieved the Freewrite, paying $50 for the Pastel Turquoise powder-coat it received. Now I had to put it all back together. THAT was a nightmare. Believe it or not, the spring on the power button gave me the greatest difficulty. I labored over THAT thing a solid hour to get it functioning properly. The rest of the reassembly was fraught as well, and there was still the issue of the black box on the E-Ink display. Luckily, this went away after I let the Freewrite charge overnight and I breathed a huge sigh of relief.
After posting pictures of the newly-finished Freewrite to the Astrohaus Facebook group and garnering an enthusiastic response, I decided to sell it and earn back what I spent in time, materials and labor. To me, a fair price would fall somewhere between $600–$700, based on recent EBay sales of stock Gen. 2 Freewrites ($325–$425), the cost of materials (Jasco Stripper, $28, powder-coating, $50), hours of disassembly, stripping of the finish, driving four hours round-trip to/from Kingston, reassembly, taking of pictures and posting an EBay listing. All that work is apart from the fact I produced a one-of-a-kind (AKA TRULY limited-edition) custom-color Freewrite. When I created the EBay listing I chose to start at $400 and not set a reserve price (EBay wanted $52 for the reserve price in addition to a final value and listing fee), hoping the enthusiasm in the Facebook group would reflect in healthy bidding activity. It did not. One person bid on my Pastel Turquoise Freewrite and I was faced with the prospect of selling it for $425, a price I might've seen if I'd left it black and not gone through all the effort to transform it. So I cancelled the sale and refunded the buyer's money immediately. I've been buying and selling on EBay almost 25 years and did not take this step lightly. The buyer, understandably upset, took to the Facebook Freewrite group and expressed his profound disappointment. Someone else decided to wade in and run down my character, describing what I did (cancelling the sale) as "borderline scammy behavior." Wow. I'm not sure who he thinks is being scammed but I'd like to see a show of hands for anyone who's wiling to work for free, what I'd be doing if I accepted $425 for my custom-color Freewrite. Yes, I could've and should've handled things differently. I might've offered the Freewrite on the Facebook group, setting a price I felt comfortable with. Or used a higher starting price or set a reserve on EBay. Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa. But in no way, shape or form was I trying to "scam" anyone. Eventually, the buyer and I came to an agreement and he paid what I consider a fair price for the custom-color Freewrite. I also fell out of love with my Hemingwrite, due to the horrid software and ergonomics (I was getting bad neck strain from looking down at the screen for hours) and kept pestering Astrohaus, going further up the foodchain until they took back my Hemingwrite and issued a full refund. Now another Freewrite has fallen into my lap (it’s a friend’s who can no longer stand the machine’s peccadilloes) and I'm on the cusp of possibly creating another custom-color Freewrite to increase its value for a sale. I’d love to be talked out of it, BTW.
Thanks, Chris T.