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?
All posts by Andrew Boardman
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.
Can
I hate to post things about pure evility and I’m repulsed, but I’m amazed about this report (about which I had not heard about until tonight) of a man willling to die and be eaten by another, in Germany of all places. The two met over the Net. Now the cannibal is speaking and may make some money.
Three Electronic Messages
The spam I’ve been getting recently has been getting really interesting for some reason. I’m fascinated with the poetics of three emails in particular and I refuse to delete these three in particular from my Junk inbox.
The first one has a subject line which I adore. “Brandy Mcneill” writes:
“purl candlestick disastrous.” This is gorgeous.
The second begins with the following message and is written by “Jeremy Conrad“:
“clubhouse fredholm spellbound handclasp viceroy hedonist edward acquaint haw death fanfold batchelder amber hutchins wrought
adoptive juncture chenille demurrer jubilate burial chariot prothonotary pollux heel plebeian boric paramagnetic par polarography immobile promulgate autistic allegiant teat bloodstream baldy boutique dihedral tungstate arise price cytolysis canna array thrust prohibition allison cocklebur suffolk trapezoid
questionnaireJust a way to CANCEL your DEBT.defrock
abolition congregate versailles presentational bosom bstj bayesian lin worm antoinette cheesecloth declaratory cowan dreary cayley explosive cycle icy contravene brent wiggly windbag oneida abed downstate stardom contention acclimate alpheratz fruition consist cox affinity basket battalion freemen hillbilly cortical rebelled consort” I have never seen these worrds in this order except for the finest poetry.
The third message is from “Mohammedan E. Coastlines“:
Good morning.
muscle relaxers
Your way to more info
http://www.hu6yre5f.jinhai.info/m001p/index.php?id=m0027
Qil xin
http://www.j8tWe.jinhai.info/m001p/byebye.html
online medication its easy to use
no waiting in line for your meds
relax easy today
Grandaddies
I’m probably the last person to review the new Grandaddy album, Sumday, but I’m so awed by the band’s range of influences — and the fact that they’re very willing to wear them on their sonic sleeves — that I’m compelled to write. Sumday is an excellent album, in part because it stitches together some of the best bands of the past three + thirty years but also because the gentlemen who play in the band are truly talented instrumentalists that clearly leverage their individual talents and interests in British and American pop for the sake of the overall sound.
Here are their overt influences, in order of importance, off the top of my little head.
– The Beatles
– Flaming Lips
– Luna
– Galaxy 500
– New Pornographers
– The Beach Boys
– The Cars
– ELO
– Pavement
– Simple Minds
– The Waterboys
– Night Ranger
– Foreigner
– Moby
– Big Country
– INXS
– Velvet Underground
– The Psychedelic Furs
– Cheap Trick
– Thomas Dolby
There’s also one other band from the 80s that I cannot for the life of me recall — their initials was like INXS but they sung high-pitched, sad-sweet songs; not Soft Cell, not OMD, not Tears for Fears but British nonethelesss.
E.S. P.S.
In my haunted quest to own every album of the late Elliott Smith, I acquired his Roman Candle and Mic City Sons, the latter of which is technically by Heatmiser, his 1996 Portland band. Both are pretty great after about 30 listens each.
That skating guitar plucking, melancholic, gravel-up and gravel-down voice, and troubador melodies appear throughout both albums. I was wondering when Spin would cover this artist’s life and they do so in this months’ issue. And, if you’re a fan, take a look at Amazon.com’s special feature on Smith, replete with a rare interview and live tracks. Caution: The hated RealAudio Player is needed to listen to these. And here is one of his last interviews ever.
Why Mac is Cool
In case one is sitting around thinking that Mac still doesn’t deserve it’s measley 5% market share, here’s an article, posted on Friday, called BYOB: Build Your Own Browser by Andrew Anderson. Using Mac tools called WebKit that are built into the OS, Mac folks can actually create a customized, simple website browser, not unlike Netscape 4, which probably took 500,000 project hours to complete and still causes me and clients mad headaches.
2
A certain someone turned two recently and I can’t help but reflect not only on these past few years but upon the nature of the past and its reflection on the lives we lead now. There is a deep part of me that believes that the past never existed and the future will never be here — but as I approach my later years, I know this is not true.
Further, it’s this complex of suspicions, arrogance, and insecurity that makes me question the past and how it is and how it lives in our lives. Afterall, I look at the photos of this certain someone and note the change in expressions, in bodily form, in composition, and in personhood, all of which are either communicated through photography or have accomodated our drive for having those things communited to us. But I’m less interested in how someone like Susan Sontag would describe the perception of the world through these images than I am in the way that I now interpret the past through the scrim of these photos and how that veil is more or less a distant shadow of me.
Let me try to be more clear. I see an image from the past. I know that person and that time of my life inherently, coherently. It moves me and I then see the world as someone would after my death, through my eyes, without them being me and perhaps never knowing me. It’s as if the photos are personal and profoundly apart from me and the shadows they cast are that of death, which is both personal and profoundly apart from me as well.