unless, that is you’re a blogger: Why your Movable Type blog must die. I have to say I agree with one part of this unfair but uniquely passionate rant: that Google is becoming overwhelming influenced by weblogs and their often incorrect and misplaced thoughts, ideas, recommendations, and suggestions, including this one. Thanks, V!
Monthly Archives: February 2004
Car Chase
I was at the laundromat just now and had the opportunity to watch a live car chase on television. A guy in an SUV (what else?) was driving very scarily around trucks, into cars, into pedestrians (apparently) and across median strips. The driver then flew down small streets in small neighborhoods in Jersey City, New Jersey as a few bright white cop cars followed in tow. My heart pounded while I watched the inanity because I feared for a poor inadvertant kid crossing the street to get a misplaced soccer ball. In truth, I worried that I would be the inadvertant witness to a live death on television.
The whole thing came to a slightly riotous end as one policecar smashed into the tail of the SUV as it slowed and forced the driver into a driveway, whereupon the driver ran and was overrun by a swarm of police. The helicopter that filmed this escapade focused on the maelstrom from above. (I looked for a link but there are no stories posted yet — the chase ended at 5:07 p.m.) Time to go for a walk.
Dizzy
For so many years, folks complained that it was the Walt Disney Company that unselectively was homogenizing the cultural space of the world. It turns out that Disney is a shrinking violet and that the new corporate love is going to be Comcast. If they purchase Disney, that means that the one company would have a market capitalization of about $125 billion. Wouldn’t that be cool?
Back in 1980 or so, Comcast started rolling out cable television in our neighborhood in suburban Philadelphia. I loved watching Triumph and Billy Squier stroke their instruments every hour on the half hour on MTV. Little did anyone know that Comcast, the pipsqueak delivery boy of Buggles videos, would come to outlive and outlove big, heartless Disney.
Swords into Shares
Found on the Tiffany & Co. | Frequently Asked Questions section. I wonder if this is a little like asking Krups if they manufactured that World War I machine gun I have sitting in my basement. (Note large historical ellision between 1846 and 1950).
A Watch
After many months trying to keep track of my projects via my watch, the little time window in the corner of my monitor, and an egg timer, I broke down and spent a few too many dollars on DesignSoft’s StopWatch Plus.
I have to say, it’s quite a nice tool — it neatly keeps track of the seconds, minutes, and hours spent on a given project and records those times in a sharp little spreadsheet. The data can then be imported to Excel or Calc and fondled — I mean massaged. It’s geeky and ridiculous but because I can no better keep good track of hours than I can remember what I ate for breakfast, this thing might Cheerios. I mean help.
Crappo
It’s such terrible weather outside right now. Cold rain, icy streets, dark clouds. The skies look as if they are falling in on the earth, the air outside is nothing but raindrops, the color of everyone is grey. The cats inside are blinking their tired eyes and, for some reason, the lightbulbs here are humming. I wonder about the animals and the people who are outside and who aren’t going home because they don’t have one. I’m thinking about how luxurious it is to write under artificial light, in dryness, and on a newish keyboard.
A number of years ago I re-visited Majdanek, the concentration camp of concentration camps. In the middle of the camp there is a large mausaleum, where thousands of pounds of cremated bodies lie open to the wind and the public. The camp stands today, idly and the town around it grows. When I was there, it rained and poured and I was drenched. The wooden barracks smelled of death but were dry.
The world is wet and it appears that our entire civilization is built around keeping some dry.
Intentionality
I’m used Alsoft’s DiskWarrior today to fix a problem with an external harddrive. Not interesting.
But when I looked at the product’s software license, under Paragraph 2, Permited Uses and Restrictions, the text reads:
“…THE ALSOFT SOFTWARE IS NOT INTENDED FOR USE IN THE OPERATION OF NUCLEAR FACILITIES, AIRCRAFT NAVIGATION, COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS, OR AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL MACHINES IN WHICH CASE THE FAILURE OF THE ALSOFT SOFTWARE COULD LEAD TO DEATH, PERSONAL INJURY, OR SEVERE PHYSICAL OR ENVIRONMENTAL DAMAGE.”
This raised two scary-ass questions for me: a. What kind of software do they actually use at nuclear plants? And, b. If it’s not good enough for air traffic control machines, why am I using it?
eGone
Exactly a year and a half ago, I wrote about how ridiculously expensive the new magazine eDesign was.
Since then, I shelled out the obligatory $29.00 for a subscription and guess what happened? The thing went defunct. Did I receive one issue? No. Did I receive an acknowledgement of receipt of payment? No. Should I have listened to my generally strong intuition about wrong-headed businesses? Yes.
I hate eDesign. Thanks Administrative Contact Howard Cadel of RC Publications, Inc. at 3200 Tower Oaks Blvd in Rockville MD, 20852 whose phone number is 301-770-2900!
Gill Sans 1
There’s been a huge resurgence lately of the use of the Gill Sans typeface. It’s not clear why, but I see it in print everywhere these days — on posters, in brochures, and within reports. Unlike its most recent flare-up in the mid-90s, the current use of Gill Sans is rather spare and seems to accompany other slab serif typefaces like Bookman.
Here are some suppositions as to why Gill Sans is being used by designers yet again:
1. It’s a quick fix because it reads well for large amounts of set type and there is an assumption around that it hasn’t been seen in a while.
2. It’s a reaction to the sheer quantity of print design currently using Helvetica, which is essentially a refined version of Gill Sans.
3. As a supposedly “humanist” typeface, it’s legibility and friendliness is not off-putting to clients, which are in short supply and request nice, easy solutions.
4. It unwittingly harbors the start of a new economic depression as the Gill Sans’ original release, by Eric Gill around 1929, harbors remnants of the start of the Great Depression.
5. The lower-case “g” is nice.
CBS
Boy, CBS sure isn’t doing politically well these days, between its so obviously intentional breast revelation and its refusal to air moving ads supported by MoveOn. (I wrote about these ads earlier.) It serves the execs at CBS right, with its refusal to air “The Reagans,” starring James Brolin as the former President, and the company’s terrible programming generally.