Quality Time with Pepper, originally posted by Erik
My apologies for the short notice, I've been working on a project that uses Facebook Events (*cough*movingtarget/half-assedAPI*cough*) and absent-mindedly created an an event for this party instead of our usual Pingg invite, thus missing a bunch of people.
If you're available, we'd love to have you! If not, it's my fault. Come to the housewarming instead.
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“Listen, kid. We’re all in this together.”
There are likely to be many on the side on which I’ve been standing who are looking to destroy those on the other side, as a manner of repudiating the thinking and damage done in the last eight years. I fully expected to be one.
This morning my realization that I wasn’t in that camp prompted me to remember a well-respected Republican admonishing:
“Why, madam, do I not destroy [my enemies] when I make them my friends?”
It’s going to take every one of us to roll up our sleeves, pull the wheel, and turn the Ship of State off the suicidal course on which it has been directed for the last 8 years.
Let it begin with me. Yes we can.
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This afternoon I tendered my resignation. I leave behind a great group of people on the cusp of major to stratospheric success. It was a very hard decision, but my destiny lies elsewhere.
The top half of the page at left isn’t as true as it’s been in the past, making the decision all the more difficult. But the bottom half sings a profound truth.
I was not looking for a new gig. But a few kept landing in my lap that I couldn’t pass up. I’ve accepted the senior developer position at Emmet Labs, an early-stage social platform startup in San Francisco.
There are many reasons this excites me: learning a lot while working on interesting problems in a cool (metaphorical) space surrounded by fascinating (and occasionally famous) people in a dynamic and passion-driven environment. That’s where I thrive!
Obviously there are a lot of other, less exciting emotions tied to the coming and the going, but I feel the need to keep this entry short. Perhaps I’ll catalogue them in a future post.
]]>I’m putting together another all-abilities, all-ages, slow as molasses, stop & smell the roses bicycle ride over the Golden Gate Bridge on Sunday, June 22.
Deviations from these options are highly encouraged! Any questions? ASK!
]]>I’m in Miami for the week, and I feel a bit vulnerable without having the ability to connect with folks, either at home, in the family, or people I want to see/meet here.
But beyond that, I don’t know what to do moving forward. Palm is dead as a platform. The rumored impending release of the 3G network iPhone would be absolutely perfect, except:
It’s that last one that is so problematic. I feel completely hypocritical even considering an iPhone. Yeah, sure, Android, um, see #2 above.
]]>I play at being a misanthrope. It’s not all charade, there is certainly a fair bit of my character that is completely anti-social, and while I’ve come out of my shell in shocking and scary ways in recent years, I’m still rather introverted.
But at the deepest level, the essential kernel, I am an optimist. A humanist. A romantic.
There hasn’t been much fuel for that spark in the public space in recent years, in fact in most ways we haven’t been sliding toward oblivion so much a stampeding toward it.
And yet, as I observed the political process recently I’ve found myself experiencing some odd emotions. While reading reading Jon Taplin’s Blog I put my finger on it. The odd sensation I couldn’t quite grasp was hope.
I feel hopeful. Not that we’ve turned around and are headed in the right direction, but that maybe we’ve turned a (slight) corner. That some more people are starting to ask hard, important questions. That people might actually be willing to put aside differences, and dig in for the herculean task of rebuilding everything the last 8-10 years has torn down.
I fully expect these hopes to be dashed. We, as a nation, have been coddled and encouraged to stick our heads in the sand for too long for it change overnight. And the siren song of blissful ignorance is powerful. But, if the cards fall well, that dashing could be delayed until after January. Several months of hope could do me (and many of us) a world of good.
Edit: I finally figured out what was breaking the crossposting of this entry. The original draft of this entry, had I been able to publish it, would have coincided perfectly with the speech about which everyone is talking. It’s gratifying to see so many of us feel the same way.
I know it’s more of that blinding hope, but I can’t help but feel that the choice before us is between the politicians of the past; and a statesman, the likes of which we haven’t seen in a generation, who will lead us into the future.
]]>In reality, my hand was forced. When Six Apart announced plans to release Movable Type 4 under the GPL, I was overjoyed. I’d been itching to upgrade our installation (version 2.65, circa 1999-2000), and it was the perfect opportunity. I’m very glad that WordPress’s design (single blog, single author) made me put off spending any time seriously considering it.
But it left me with dilemmas: First, the ljcrosspost plugin for 2.x was abandon-ware (I submitted a few patches, and the website disappeared shortly thereafter), and even if it wasn’t, it suffered some major flaws. After failing to find a suitable replacement[*], I resigned myself (with some excitement, I’ll admit) to write my own.
And then there was the design for my site. If I was going to have to rework my Movable Type templates for my blog, I might as well revert the templates to the new defaults and update the design as well.
And here we are. It’s not finished, but most of the major pieces are in place. And I don’t hate it. This in itself is a victory. I’m actually more or less pleased with it, for now.
[*] I’ve since found a cross-post plugin that is written by someone who knows what he’s doing, has a nice preference UI, and does more than just LJ. But he doesn’t have all the features mine has (though arguably some of those could/should be a separate plugin), and the license terms are less than ideal. So I’ll keep working on mine. (With the intent of releasing it under the GPL)
I need a replacement for Franklin Gothic Extra Condensed:
One with an honest italic (not just slanted romans). One that will contrast as beautifully against my body font (currently a simple Bodoni Book, with both lining and old-style numerals as appropriate) without clashing.
You see, I don’t want the world, I just want your half.
My current front-runner is Agenda Semibold Extra (or Ultra, I haven’t decided yet) Condensed (Italic):
[ I've decided to remove the samples for Agenda, you can find it if you care, but as I said in comments in the cross-post I realized I liked it a lot less once this was posted.]
While it is quite nice in its own right, it's too round, lacks the subtle, oblique stress that (was one of the elements that) drew me to Franklin Gothic, and the lack of a branch terminal on the spine & bowl mating of some forms (“b,” in particular) doesn’t sit well with me. It doesn’t feel as . . . classy. You see, I’m still hoping for a long-lost italic cousin to come out of the woodwork.
I can’t seem to shake that sense. A little help?
The romance began slightly more than 10 years ago. I don’t remember now if it was love at first sight, but it was something close. It definitely led to the awakening of my interest in the arcane world of typography.
Oh, sure, I’d long known about fonts, and I collected as many as I could find. I’d long before hit the 127 face limit in MacOS. But typography still lay just outside my purview. This project would prove to be the first step on that awakening.
It came at a perfect confluence of events, I had just read[1] Robin Williams’s Non-Designers’ Design Book (it's been through a few revisions since) and just attended a re-employment seminar that charged me to rewrite my résumé from the ground up. Granted, most of the results are now cringe-worthy, but at the time I felt on top of the world.
I was using Times Roman[2] as my body font (I know, I know, they were baby steps at first), so I wanted a very strong sans serif with a much darker color for my titles. The speed and satisfaction with which I settled on Franklin Gothic Extra Condensed was rather unsusual for me at that time.
I soon realized that I needed to distinguish between employers and job titles, so I applied an italic style to the titles. PageMaker, not finding an italic font dutifully slanted the romans. I can hear the type geeks screaming in pain, and I wish that was the extent of the sins I must confess, but there is more. And I think (in my defense) the ungainly, mildly disturbing width of those letters eventually pushed me in the direction of learning what an italic really was, and started opening the world of typography to me.
When I migrated away from PageMaker into building the PDF from XML source using FOP, I lost my slanted roman “italics.” After casting around for a replacement font, I eventually dug in, learned the PDF file format and figured out how PageMaker transformed the letterforms, and spent far too much effort perpetrating that particular crime. I eventually wrote a Perl script to apply the matrix transformation to the right text in my PDFs, and as I upgraded FOP a few times spent time hacking my script to work again.
With the latest upgrade I finally said, “Enough!” I no longer had an excuse — I know what I was doing was wrong. I must correct myself. My inner type geek can turn a blind eye no more.
And so, here I am, trying to replace my first lover. The one who opened my eyes to a new world, in so many ways. Yes, she’s a troll. But I’ll always have a speical place for her.
...And I just realized that this whole entry could have been condensed down to a pithy, personal ad format. I’m sure anyone still reading to here would have gotten more amusement out of that than this missive. Oh well. Next time.
[1] (or was about to read, chronology of events has always been a slippery thing for me, and events from this time in my life are particularly elusive)
[2] It wasn’t until much later that I moved my body font to Bodoni Book, not realizing that in so doing I was using two very different faces by the same designer, Morris Fuller Benton.
]]>Really, who but a candidate for a doctorate in astrophysics (now properly defended) could write such a heart-wrenching song about the perils of relativistic space travel?
I know I've had my suspicions over the years, and, sure, it could be argued there are other interpretations (I'd expect nothing less from such a master), but this coincidence is too strong to ignore.
Look, I know things are busy for you right now, so you probably won't even hear my cries over the din of all of the mail you're processing, however I have two comments:
In short, my package should have been here overnight 1 week ago (even giving you the benefit of the doubt). I have no visibility into your process. I just want my damn package!
no love,
E
Dear Random Cyclist Who Likes to Draft Me on Moffett Park Blvd.:
First off, I am greatly honored by your obvious trust in my abilities, but I have two questions for you as well:
In short: thanks, now please back the fuck off!
No Love,
You Don't Even Know My Name
Dear Random Other Cyclist I'd Never Seen Before:
I'm sorry my passing you was such an affront to your machismo that you felt you had to be a complete prick about it. But let's compare:
I nearly ran right into you, asshat! If I'd been aware of what you were about to pull I might have out of spite. I hope your manhood has been vindicated. Now kindly cut that shit out.
Whatever.
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