Thursday, March 22. 2007TyporamaI've always been interested in proper typography, especially in combination with internationalisation. Anyone who has worked with me on a project that would involve either will know that I'm particularly anal when it comes to finding and using the most appropriate layout and glyphs for the job. My favourite examples are often ‘İstanbul’, ‘naïve’, and the difference between a Pound (‘£’, with one bar) and a Lira (‘₤’, with two bars, for which Wikipedia is presently incorrect). To this end, I once unwisely offered potential flamebait to the Unicode group regarding single and double bar dollar signs. I know that historically the double-bar form depicted strength, but became the single-bar form because of the difficulty in representation using tiny sorts. I also know that Australia prefers a double-bar, New Zealand prefers a single-bar, and the USA don't care anymore as long as they get paid at the end of the day in their own currency. Despite this, I have been very lax in this regard when it has come to my blogging. Continue reading "Typorama"Friday, March 16. 2007The pain of web designIt's been a long time since I've done some proper web design, but now I'm working on a mysterious project (long story) that requires me to dive-in once again. Compared to many other people, my design skills are mere tinkering in comparison. At the very least, though, my tinkering isn't as bad as the average MySpace page which is more likely to lock up your computer (it is considered the worst website around by many sources). Unfortunately life in web design land is still a world of pain and torture. Continue reading "The pain of web design"Monday, March 12. 2007Smart appliances using old technologyRecently I've been talking about an article Dave Winer wrote about one of his long-time favourite rants: embedded HTTP servers in devices. Once again, I'm left with the bitter feeling that there's something built into human nature that makes most of us love waste. Not only physically where we are become an ever-increasing disposable society, throwing away perfectly good things that just need small repairs, but also digitally on the Internet where we are wasting more and more bandwidth and CPU cycles with our bloated, lazy protocols and software designs. It's time for me to put on my Womble hat and flog the dead horse one more time. Continue reading "Smart appliances using old technology"Saturday, March 3. 2007Configure S9Y sidebar items per categoryI like Serendipity for blogging, and have no intention to move to WordPress despite constant nagging from fellow bloggers. The great thing about Serendipity is the ease at which new plug-ins can be created. While their plugin API documentation looks like it's lacking substance, it makes sense once you get going and realise the blanks are fairly obvious. Continue reading "Configure S9Y sidebar items per category" |
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