Tuesday, October 31, 2000

If my previous post was too heavy for you, ask yourself the following question. When was the last time your Iomega drivers were updated?

Posted 10:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

My family knows this. Most of my friends know this. And now, gentle viewers, thanks to the pervasive and communal nature of the web and my apparent need to write from my heart rather than from my brain, you shall find out too. As a kid, I only went out Halloweening once. I put on a cheap toy store sheriff vest over my power blue ski jacket and was, as much as I could stomach it, a cowboy. That's it. The entire history of my own All Hallows Eve experience, encapsulated in a single evening. Make no mistake, this was my own choice. Not even the allure of untold amounts of free processed sugar could sway my resolve.

I don't dread Halloween. I don't even try to avoid it anymore. But I certainly have never made a concerted effort to participate either. I have a vivid memory of my grade one teacher, who happened to be an old friend of my parents, trying to physically drag me out of the classroom in order to have me participate in a costume parade. No matter what was said by either party, or how much my leg was yanked, I was not letting go of the door jamb.

There is something about people in costume that triggers a particularly persistent alarm in my brain. It doesn?t even have to be me that is faced with the prospect of dressing up. Part of it is fear, part of it is the awareness of potential personal embarrassment. But I seem to feel embarrassed for the other people who are actually in costume. Just being in the vicinity is awkward. It's hard to explain, but it can be one of the most uncomfortable sensations you can imagine. Halloween is the worst. Clowns are a close second. Sports team mascots are right up there as well. I have never shown the vaguest interest in dressing up in costume. I even tense up into a semi-rigid form when faced with the prospect of having to role play during a corporate team-building exercise. It's not as bad as it sounds, but it is something I have to deal with. My kids love Halloween and dressing up, so I encourage it. If I avoided contact with this sort of thing, it wouldn't be fair to them or anyone else who honestly enjoys expressing themselves this way.

Happy Halloween anyway.

Posted 6:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Monday, October 30, 2000

From press release to complete dot com flameout. Elapsed time: two days.

Thanks Jon

Posted 7:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

If I was even marginally interested in gaming, that fact that Sega and Nintendo are forming a joint venture would probably bother me. But since I'm not a gamer, I honestly could care less. However, the last thing you ever want to witness is your favorite platform reducing itself to playing footsie with the competition. It's foreign. It's unsettling. It's just not natural. One thing I can relate to in this scenario is how it compares to when Apple and Microsoft struck that deal back in 1997 and everyone started thinking that Apple had sold out. Other than the rampant inaccuracies that gushed out of the press, the whole Apple-Microsoft thing was a laughable attempt at perceived goodwill. Still somewhat unsettling, but harmless. At least there weren't any indecipherable company names to deal with if the whole arrangement fizzled out. Taligent or Kaleida anyone?
 
[ Update ] False alarm, kids.

Posted 6:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Saturday, October 28, 2000

It's not a perfect segue, but it'll have to do for now. Oscar Wilde was once attributed with uttering the phrase: "Consistency is the last resort of the unimaginative." With that in mind, I'd like to announce that my Available Domain Name of the Week page has been consistently unimaginative for precisely one full year. Yes, I have supplied the online world with fifty two solid weeks worth of potential e-business concepts - all of them just itching to burst out of domain name latency. Some of the good ones are already taken, but there's still a wagon load of domain-squatting virtual gold to be mined. Remember, this is a free public service. Use it.

Posted 9:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Friday, October 27, 2000

An odd situation. My brain is absolutely full of things, and in fact, it has been all week. But right at this moment, I can't seem to find a way to put any of those cranial manifestations into something as useful or communicative as words or pictures. It's not a block. And it's not a rut. It's more like mental constipation, but much less uncomfortable. I'm completely convinced that everything will start moving when its good and ready. In the meantime, maybe a glass of juice will help.

Posted 9:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Wednesday, October 25, 2000

Speaking of parents. Jeffrey, I wish I knew what to say.

Posted 5:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Today my dad turns sixty-five. I can remember being eight years old and asking my dad how old he was. He was the same age that I am today, and now my daughter is the eight year old asking questions. This is a strange parallel for me. Obviously, there are some differences. For example, Molly has her own web site, and to the best of my recollection, my dad had never sent an email in his life. As the dutiful son, I'm going to help reduce the technological generation gap and buy him an iMac this week. I can mention it here without ruining the surprise because he doesn't have net access. Once he's set up with the new machine and his granddaughters have shown him how to navigate the web, maybe then he'll read this post. In the mean time, I'll just give him a call. Happy Birthday Dad!

Posted 9:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tuesday, October 24, 2000

Those groovy code monkeys over at Bare Bones Software sure do know how to release a minor dot revision. They list nearly six full pages of feature additions, bug fixes, and other functionality tweaks for the BBEdit 6.0.1 update. That's a lot of value for your software dollar. Actually, the update is free, but then I'd have to come up with another stereotypically lame sales pitch. Grab it while it's hot.

Posted 11:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

What am I not getting here? Adobe has this program called Clearly Adobe Imaging. It seems to be, in my mind, an obscure implementation of brand dilution that attempts to indicate and proclaim the benefits of "the technology you can trust", presumably from Adobe. The Clearly Adobe Imaging logo is positioned as recognizable iconic representation of this program. Let's assume for a minute that Adobe is indeed a fully digital, technology-driven imaging company, focused on providing "superior graphics, color, and text management capabilities" in their products. If this is the case, then what's up with the rippling pool of liquid? Is the logo illustrating Adobe's sensitive side by shedding tears of joy over the fact that it can solve all our publishing woes? Is there some connection to an unnamed international petroleum cartel that we're not aware of? Or is the logo simply paying homage to printing technologies of old by leaking like the fluid tank from vintage Gestetner spirit duplicator? If it is supposed to be representing liquid of some sort (it's completely beyond me why), the least they could have done was rendered it using a Photoshop ripple filter.

Posted 9:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Monday, October 23, 2000

Just when you thought it couldn't possibly get any worse, now we're all doomed to enter the era of slideware. Hold on to your Photoshop palettes, kids. That breeze you're feeling on the back of your neck is the self-replicating democratization of a million indecipherable business graphics careening willy-nilly through slide sorters around the globe.

"A good PowerPoint presentation is extremely important. You need it to paint a story around your points, you need it to connect with the visual types. PowerPoint is one of the best ways to connect with important people who are too busy to read your business plan."

I guess I've had it backwards all this time. I've always been under the impression that PowerPoint was the one of the best ways to create the illusion of a business plan without actually having to write one. Hey visual types! When was the last time you connected with a PowerPoint presentation. And remember, as profound an effect it has on your ability to understand a given concept, migraines do not count as connections. Neither does repeatedly slamming your head into your monitor.

Posted 9:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Apple: The message isn't even medium. Given the obese history of inaccurate platitudes and persistent hallucinations propagated by a blood-thirsty media, I have never understood why Apple doesn't just pull up to the intersection, slam on the breaks, and toot its own damn horn once in a while. Apple has always had lots to brag about, but at the same time, maintained the personality of a technological wallflower. Thinking different only gets you so far. At some point you need to do different. Put away the kid gloves Apple, it's time to bust some hardware heads.

Posted 9:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sunday, October 22, 2000

Nuts. After just over a month without a reboot, this server of mine decided to take leave of its stability. With the monitoring software I have running, it tries desparately to restart on its own, but after a couple of tries at forcing certain apps to launch against their will, the whole box needs a fresh kick in the pants. My apologies to everyone who relies on my server to host their sites. (Fools!) But honestly, what do you want for free? Even though I'm posting this Sunday evening, it will be Monday morning before you'll read it. I'll be darned if I'm going into the office to reboot the server tonight.

Posted 9:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Saturday, October 21, 2000

On Friday, Mike asked me if we could go get a coffee and chat sometime on Monday. Of course I said sure. Besides the fact that he's been trying to convince me to take home prime pieces of his computer collection, I've had the sense that certain external forces have been carbonating his view of life lately. And now something else is telling me that this won't be a normal coffee break. What the hell happened out on the playa anyway?

Posted 7:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I've mentioned this before, so bear with me. Gravité is one of my favorite, absolutely less than useful, Mac-only GUI-abusers. I'm not just saying this to repeat myself. The point of this post is to mention that it's been updated. Now with asynchronous "crash" sounds. What more could you want?

Posted 4:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Both Photoshop 6.0 and ImageReady 3.0 apparently support WebDAV (Web Distributed Authoring & Versioning) workgroup integration, but do you think I can find even a shred of documentation for it anywhere on the Adobe site? Other than brief mentions in feature comparison lists, Adobe is placing WebDAV functionality squarely in the "on a need to know basis" category. You think that this would be a bigger deal, or am I missing something? Why is this such a quiet feature?

Posted 4:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Friday, October 20, 2000

Dear Jane. Please be aware that I have fixed my "it's".

Posted 2:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Thursday, October 19, 2000

I know, it may sound like crazy talk, but I actually updated the Spiral Logo Critique tonight. No, really... I'm not kidding. A half dozen brand-spanking new, corporate offerings for all to peruse. Presented with finesse and care to appease the voracious design gods. Lightly-toasted to enhance the flavor. Spread the word. Share with your friends.

Posted 10:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Introducing another sure way of losing several more hours of your life sitting in front of the computer. AdFlip is like AdCritic for the dead tree set. Take it from Miss Fluffy Rice, she knows about classic advertising. Via dansays

Posted 9:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Wednesday, October 18, 2000

I can't nail the reason to the door quite yet, but XMacL could prove to be a very valuable resource in the near future. Especially with pointers to nuggets like Xpublish and FileMaker XML Central. All implied usefulness aside, doesn't the name XMacL sound like noise that someone makes while eating sticky, chewy crumb cake?

Posted 10:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So Photoshop 6.0 finally shipped. How can I tell? I came home to a FedEx box stuffed to the brim with yummy digital upgrade goodness. Never mind the context-sensitive options bar and the text warping effects, just the fact that I will finally be able to create polygonal image maps without resorting to yet another application is almost worth the upgrade price alone.

That's the good news. Now here's the rant.

Has anyone else being banging their head against their monitor during the convoluted upgrade installation process? This has been the most frustratingly complex and time-consuming upgrade for any Adobe product I have ever had the displeasure of experiencing. If you're upgrading, the installer asks you to insert a CD containing a previous full version of the software. This isn't so bad, in fact it makes sense for Adobe to want to take extra caution in assuring that a valid user is installing the product. The problem is that since you're installing from a CD, and the installer which is running off that CD is requesting that you eject that CD and insert another CD... well, remember what it was like installing PageMaker 2.0 on that Mac Plus with a single floppy drive? I like reminiscing about simpler times, but this ain't it.

After a half dozen "Please insert..." messages and a juggling routine that would put the Flying Karamazov Brothers to shame, the installer reads some chunk of data on the full version disc, waves its little white flag, and then proceeds to ask you to enter a valid serial number. This is actually the second time I have had to enter a serial number, because one is required before you can even place your order for the upgrade on the Adobe site. The serial number is entered, installation begins to take place, and then the Adobe software registration module asks me for a serial number again. You would think that if the installer needed the serial number to start the installation process, it could maybe keep track of it for the three and a half minutes it takes to suck all of the components off the disc, and then be kind enough to pass it along to the next step. Fortunately, by this point I had serial number memorized, so a typed it in and clicked the final button.

I won't dwell on it, but I'm pretty sure that I have been able to back up, reformat, and reinstall an entire Mac OS system in less time than it took me to get Photoshop 6.0 on my drive. Enough of this nonsense... now it's time to start playing.

Posted 8:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Monday, October 16, 2000

Man of many faces? EyeWire, my illustrious place of employ, is currently featuring a short and succinct profile of me focusing on my past and present type designing tendencies. I don't know whether to be flattered or embarrassed. Maybe I'll just be a little of each and leave it at that. Thanks to Jane for the words, and to Duane for poking and prodding me until my side was raw, finally convincing me to post the article. And yes, believe it or not, I do have an Emmy. Not for type design though...

Posted 7:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sunday, October 15, 2000

I was splitting wood for our fireplace this afternoon, when a log chunk of indeterminant origin leapt up and banged the heck out of my left index metacarpal. As much as it aches right now, I'm not going to complain about it. It was my own damn fault for not wearing work gloves. On the positive side, at least I didn't whack one of my toes off with the axe.

Posted 10:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Crap. This should be a simple task. All I want is to be able to check my American Express account balance and reward points online. I have an account number. Their system knows about my account number. The account number is all I need to get this same information over the phone. No password. No login. Just my account number. Left without anotehr option, I dutifully start the registration process. Naturally the two most common user names I use for my other online accounts are already taken, so I settle on the third one down my list. It's accepted. Additional data is requested and entered... email, birth date, work phone number, zip code. Zip code? Crap. Ever the optimist, I gamely attempt to enter my six digit postal code into the five character wide zip code field assuming that developers of this fine site would allow for address variations. Crap. Since the system obviously hasn't been designed for Canadian addresses, and my Canadian address obviously isn't configured with the required American zip code, I concede defeat. But wait, perhaps there's a Canadian version of the site that will accept six digit alpha-numeric postal codes. Ah, yes. There's the pop-up, right on the home page. Figuring that since my previous attempt at creating an account was aborted, I should be able to use the same user name, right? Crap. Even though the account creation was never completed, I am forced to pull yet another unique user name out of my hat because my third choice is stuck somewhere in the pipes. Nevertheless, I'm accepted again. Probably because I'm such a likable guy... The additional data is requested and entered... email, birth date, work phone number, but surprise... the Canadian site doesn't require a postal code. Good news. One less thing to get screwed up. However, I am presented with this little informational gem:

"We're Sorry... The American Express Online Services system has not properly responded to your request. Technical Support will be notified of this problem immediately, and will work to correct the situation as soon as possible. Please try again later."

I don't want to try again later. I either want the system to work properly when I use it the first time, or I want to be notified when the problem is fixed. Try again, my aunt fanny. I'm the customer. They're providing the service. Shouldn't the solution be at my convenience, not their's? Crap.

Posted 9:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Friday, October 13, 2000

In case you've been wondering, Array is now Dangerousmeta. Welcome back Garrett. Even though it's been less than two weeks, you've been missed. Your site had become a habitual visit for me at least once a day. Clicking that link in hope that your new domain would be live became one of those automatic physical ticks, like snapping your gum or blinking. It's a good thing I didn't start to think about what I was doing, I might have forgotten how. Glad to see you were still keeping your blog nimble during the dark period.

Posted 4:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Ranger Magazine interviews the cool critters behind the code over at Panic in the charmingly blunt Fuel For The Cult. I've been a fan of Panic ever since I stumbled across their site a couple years ago and then spent twenty minutes playing with and viewing the source of their elegant, draggable sticky note "what's new" window. Panic makes clean, wonderful Mac software like Audion and Transmit that has an attitude and just does what it's suppose to. Bonus points to Panic co-founder Steven Frank for maintaining the Beagle Bros. Online Museum. One quick look at that Beagle logo, and all those hours of programming in Apple II Integer Basic come screaming back and smack me like a two-litre Slurpee-induced brain freeze. Via svn

Posted 3:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Weren't we just discussing this topic? Amazon is getting a taste of its own patent-pending medicine via a spoonful of legal cod liver oil from the interactive television hardware slingers over at OpenTV.

"Although the company has its eye on the [interactive television] market, executives claim that its patent applies to electronic commerce of any kind. "We have claims on one-click shopping in any client-server environment," says OpenTV Chief Intellectual Property Officer Craig Opperman."

My wish is that all of these lawyer-driven paperstorms actually end up allowing more companies to use these innovations, rather then limiting them through the use of business model based patents. These guys should be trying harder to make their services more usable to consumers across the board, instead of digging trenches between each other filled with seething pools of litigation. What a tremendous waste of energy.

Posted 2:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We're still in the midst of discussions of whether or not to migrate a couple of sites over to a larger layout grid. This recent evolt.org article on designing to realistic window sizes has proven very useful in decided how to do this, not just whether or not we should. We used a method of measuring client screen size, window dimensions, and bit depth similar to this example on our primary site. The data that we have collected over the last month or so has shown that over 97% of visitors to this site have 800 pixel or wider displays. I know that I was expecting a fairly large number aligned with the other studies that have been done on this subject, but this just blew me away. One of the other more interesting tidbits is that of the plug-in measurable clients (this is defined as Netscape 3.x and later browsers with JavaScript enabled, approximately 20% of our total browser sample) there is 94% penetration rate of Flash, and a 92% penetration rate of QuickTime. We can probably extrapolate that the remaining majority of Microsoft-based browsers would also be supporting these plug-ins, but it's next to impossible to be perfectly sure. Regardless, these are much higher numbers then any of us had initially expected to see. The design flexibility this affords us is fascinating. Being able to know what your audience is able to interact with on your sites is a powerful thing indeed.

Posted 10:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Thursday, October 12, 2000

I was confused. I asked for help. I got what I asked for. A couple of fine folks have offered their thoughts on the whole linking to Amazon.com schtick.
 
Ever the towering embodiment of reason, Ian writes:

"The issue isn't really about Amazon. You've had a scathing denouncement of the patent on your main page for many months. Going back on that just makes you look fashionably militant. Surely those books and CD's can be found elsewhere on the internet. If Amazon is the last resort, then you have to debate whether the ends justify the means."

Well, Amazon isn't the last resort. It doesn't even occupy the newest building on the strip. It's just the first one you see as you're driving towards the city. And it also happens to have a hardware store, car dealership, and a auction house in the lobby.
 
From the Previously Enjoyed department, Toby offers another option:

"I don't think you should put the Amazon links back. I rarely buy new books and I think it would be much better to encourage people to buy them 2nd hand. Why not link to eBay searches for the same books? Unless they're really obscure, you will always pull up some auctions. I reckon that would be cool. The publishing industry is incredibly and unnecessarily wasteful of natural resources - most of the books bought are never read."

Based on this feedback, and some other back of the head soul-searching, I think my teeter-tottering has subsided. I won't be reactivating the links to Amazon. However, I will be linking to alternative third party suppliers of papery, musical things such as Fatbrain.com, Half.com, and Chapters. Yes, there is another way to do this, dammit.

Posted 10:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Wednesday, October 11, 2000

I'm seriously thinking of adding back all of the Amazon.com links on this site. There are books I want to talk about and music I want others to listen to. Linking to these items has some merit, doesn't it? I'm beginning to think that if I don't offer some sort of external, easily obtainable reference and support material, my site is somehow poorer because of it. Yes, I am still upset that Amazon had the tenacity to apply for and be awarded a patent for a business model that amounts to not much more than a form button on a web page. But has it really mattered? Maybe not. Let me muddle this through a bit more. If you want to share your views on the subject, please do.

Posted 9:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tuesday, October 10, 2000

Why Graffiti as an input method matters.

Posted 5:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Oh my good golly. Not only did Apple announce the availability of a public preview version of QuickTime 5 today at the QuickTime Live! conference, but I think they may have actually listened to the people who use the software. Among the requisite new hoosits and whatsits like built-in streaming MPEG-1 and Shoutcast support (apparently not a functioning feature in this particular release) and a walk on wild side of faux environmental immersion called Cubic VR, the interface is slightly better to boot. Gone (hopefully forever) are the counter-intuitive controls like the moronic volume wheel and the item tray. Well, the tray is still there, but now it's accessible by clicking a "TV" button and integrated as an alternate view mode into the normal player window. You still can't windowshade the app, but interface has been Aqua-cized, and is now reportedly skinnable (it's not readily apparent how the heck this works either). Perhaps one of the odder changes to the interface is the way you access the tone and balance controls. In version 4, these controls were hidden in another sliding tray which wasn't the best solution but seemed to work all the same. Now you click on the microscopic audio spectrum analyzer in the status display area to make these controls appear. Of course, there's no obvious keyboard command or menu item to trigger this display, so you need to resort to the hunt and peck method of functional discovery.
 

 

 
I am keeping in mind that this is only a preview release and that not all of the promised goodies are available right away. In fact, there isn't even a Windows version yet. My initial opinion? Most of the major annoyances have been vanquished, but a few new ones have cropped up. Thanks for listening Apple. Just keep you ears peeled as we move on.

Posted 3:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Always the cheerleader for resuscitating technology that has been relegated into the realm of perceived obsolescence, I've found another cause. It's time grab that old Palm Pilot that's been rattling around in the back of your desk drawer and convert it into the autonomous robot buddy you've always wanted. Of course, the crack team of vociferous sour-pusses over at Slashdot have already found a thread of reasons why you shouldn't use a Palm as a robotic controller, but who the hell cares. This is cool stuff. Why give your four year old nephew that tired PDA just to see him throw it down the basement stairs, when you could program it to search for the stair well via pattern recognition, travel across the room to the doorway, calculate an efficient trajectory, and then throw itself down the steps.

Posted 2:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Monday, October 09, 2000

It's Canadian Thanksgiving today and there's a huge meal waiting in the wings. (And, yes... the pun was intended.) There might be time for a couple of posts later. Or maybe not. Regardless, the weather is too nice today to stay inside. We are definitely going to the zoo this afternoon.

Posted 10:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Saturday, October 07, 2000

Two engaging type-themed weblogs to add to your already massive reading list. Webtype.org is a chatty, over-the-fence coffee break between font-loving neighbors. Lines & Splines is a meticulous romp through a garden of typographic digitalia and historical fundamentals. Pick a lane, or swerve back and forth across the median. I recommend both of these sites, along with Microsoft's (yes, I said Microsoft's...) Typography News, if you have even a vague interest in type terminology, technique, technology, or trivia. By the way, thanks for the mention, Jo!

Posted 4:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Friday, October 06, 2000

Ian sent me an email this morning expressing his need to see the cup of mouse from yesterday. He said it was "for nostalgia's sake... in a sick sort of way." Always happy to oblige.

He also mentioned something about needing "...to lay the boots to a crappy mouse, or throw a printer across your backyard..." Hmmm, perhaps you have some other unresolved issues that need to be addressed?

Posted 3:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Thursday, October 05, 2000

XML is killing the web? Once again, John C. Dvorak proves that he doesn't have the slightest clue what the hell he's talking about. He claims that XML and its acronymonic brethren are causing the "death of simplicity" in terms of web development.

"The way I see it, XML will sneak into the scene, and eventually browsers will be optimized for XML until simple HTML no longer displays properly."

Nobody ever said that HTML was going away. Nobody ever said it was going to be replaced by XML. HTML and XML serve different, but related purposes. If anything, XML is going to help open up the brain-bendingly complex world of web development to a much broader audience, because it has a fundamentally simpler document structure than proprietary or closed environment content storage systems. HTML will evolve into XHTML, which plays nicely with XML and is what HTML should have been in the first place. Via dack

Posted 9:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Do you know someone suffering from bloggerrhea?

Posted 8:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I killed a mouse today. A piece of crap Logitech three-button mouse. It had decided to stop working with any trace of consistancy, so I pulverized it into tiny, uniform pieces the size of a quarter using a fifty pound bar of steel. It's now resting comfortably - like so many bits of plastic confetti - in the spare coffee cup on my desk.

Posted 7:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The vaguely interesting statistic of the day. As of 9:46 pm this evening, I will have been maintaining a weblog on this site for exactly six months. For those of you keeping score, that's three hundred twenty two posts, roughly thirty three thousand three hundred seventy words, and approximately five hundred sixty seven kilobytes of Blogger generated HTML - including templated headers and footers. I should mention that it's Matt's fault that I started doing this in the first place. Back in November of last year I became enamored by the embryonic community forming over at MetaFilter. I posted a few dozen nuggets of interest, but gradually felt the need to control my own blatherment portal. Six months later... on with the show, this is it.

Posted 7:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Wednesday, October 04, 2000

My friend Chris MacGregor has run the Internet Type Foundry Index for as long as I've had an internet connection (read: a hell of a long time). While it hasn't been updated in a year or so, mainly because of Chris' other projects, it's still an amazingly deep resource of links to all things typographic and fonty. At least it was until a couple of days ago. Unfortunately, the site is currently off the air due to an issue I won't go into right now. Suffice it to say that I'm working on fixing that particular issue this evening.

Posted 10:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tuesday, October 03, 2000

That ugly chunk of plastic-wrapped technology known as the Cue Cat might actually be useful for something after all. Of course, it's not in the way the originating company intended. Barkeep! A round of disposable bar code scanners for all of my friends, and keep 'em coming...

Posted 5:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

All you frustrated type designers should jump on the wagon and contribute your own interpretive typographic nuances to Chinese Whispers, a collaborative online font design experiment. Using the concept of the typographic whisper, or a view into a single previous character design, as a template for your own submission, you can respond and contribute to a series of evolving typefaces. This project is similar to the Internet Type Design Project started by Joshua Lurie-Terrell back in 1996, where a series of designers would change a font through interpretive or deconstructive evolution. Chinese Whispers opens up the collaborative design approach to everyone by employing a clever Shockwave-based front end, rather than relying on the participant's ability to generate valid fonts using Fontographer. I've already contributed more than a half dozen characters across the five current works in progress, and I'm finding it only slightly less addictive than reading through the A List Apart archives.

Posted 4:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Monday, October 02, 2000

Now this is just too wild. The Anoto is a ball-point pen that can transmit the data written by its user to any Bluetooth-enabled gizmo that happens to be nearby. Its high-speed image processing meets wireless data sharing meets the poison pen. Sure, you need to scribble on specially printed paper for the one hundred frame per second digital camera to properly encode your chicken scratch, and you need to adjust to the fact that yet another RFI generating device is sitting next to your vital organs, but other than that...

Posted 9:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

An old friend of mine got married this weekend. It's not that he's actually that old, he's basically the same age as me, but we have been friends since grade one and that's about thirty years worth of time passed. That's what I mean by old. Back to the point, Pat married Robin. I've only met Robin a couple of times before this weekend, but she is by all measures, simply great. A yin to Pat's yang. And considering how much yang Pat has had over the past two dozen years, a considerable yin at that.

The event was not quite as unconventional as my wife and I had anticipated, but it definitely had its moments. It took place in a miniscule Alberta town called Wayne (population 56), a former coal mine community now consisting of a handful of buildings, a campground, the Last Chance Saloon, and a pile of friendly people. When we arrived in town, the power was out and there had been a strong northernly wind all day. In the midst of trying to resecure a wayward tent pole, the groom had been pistol-whipped across the bridge of the nose with a support wire that morning. Once it was realized that the ceremony could not proceed out of doors as planned, things were reconfigured inside the community hall.

With guests assembled, the groom walked into the hall accompanied by a lone bagpipe and the congregation singing the Bare Necessities. The legal ceremony was performed by another long-time friend who had received his temporary Justice of the Peace ticket from the provincial government just for that day. The happy, loving couple read self-written vows, and quite honestly, all of us in that room believed every word that they spoke. When the bride was kissed, the crowd of friends and family in the room let out a collective sigh of relief. The party played on into the evening. For something that most people thought would never happen, it ended up being a day full things that will never dissipate. Congratulations Pat and Robin. I think you've both found what you've been looking for, and that's very cool.

Posted 11:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)