helvetica vs. arial
First, read one of my favorite articles, The Scourge of Arial, then go play Arial vs. Helvetica and win one for the gipper.
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July 24, 2003
gutenberg
A center at the Texas University just made available digital images of one of the last remaining copies of the Gutenberg bible, the first book ever printed using a movable type printing press. Since one of them costs about $20 million, it's pretty nice to see the beautiful reproduction. I had no idea it was so lavish.
July 22, 2003
who would marry this madman?
I got to express my appreciation:
I gave her a ring, and asked her in the garden.
P.S. It wasn't ten minutes after I asked her that we were already discussing how we were going to blog about it.
July 10, 2003
the business of business...sucks
I'm always desperately trying to bite off more than I can chew, and then when I finally do it, I'm always sorry.
I decided to do something I'd never done before, and take a job to do some print work. I'm designing a catalog for the Stroum Jewish Community Center, and it's just ended up being incredibly complex, and meeting deadlines for a job that you don't understand exactly how to do is no fun.
It's not that I think I can't do it, but it's just becoming a hell of a lot of stress.
Then, as some of you may know, my housemate Ben and I are putting together a little web development house called Robotic Cat Communications.
Now I know you're saying, "God, Daniel, you totally ripped off your logo design from Movable Type to which I would say, I swear it was subconscious, and besides, I can't draw a fucking Robotic Cat. Try it sometime.
My friend Josh, who incidentally got me the SJCC catalog job, looked at me and said, "How hard can it be?"
So I said, you draw a goddamn robotic cat, and he grabbed a napkin and started sketching. He got into the face and I said, "That looks like a post apocolyptic death cat!"
Luckily I had my digital camera with me to record it for posterity.
Did I get off track? Hells yes.
The point is that Ben and I were discussing a more realistic (read: re-evaluating based on not getting it to work the way we originally hoped) business model, and I just really felt what a pain in the ass it is to try to manifest something like that. Then I remembered what a pain in the ass it was to work for an employer.
Yes, the business of business...sucks.
July 2, 2003
grown-ups send birthday cards
Dear Friends and Family,
(if you don't care about all the hairy details, just skip to the last paragraph)
You see, I've never been very good at remembering numbers and dates. It seems to slip from my brain in elusive ways. I've been...untimely about my own mother's birthday too many times. God knows it's not that I just don't care...I really do care about people's birthdays and phone numbers.
I was really happy when I first got a cel phone and realized I never had to remember anyone's phone number ever again. Technology had saved me.
Well, at some point in my web development career, I realized that technology could help me again. For a long time I've wanted to write a little application to remind me about dates I needed to remember via Email in a way I could completely configure and scale. Just recently that became a little more technically feasable for me.
So, because I really do care, and I know people like it when they get aknowledged for their birthdays, (and because I finally finished up some of the web development work I was heatedly working on) I've decided to go ahead and make myself this tool. I'm sending this to everyone I can think of, (even to people who I actually know their birthdays!) and posting it to my blog...so if this message reaches you, and you'd like to be aknowledged on your birthday (or some other date) please send me your complete name and date of birth, and your mailing address if you don't mind (I lost a lot of this info in a sad computer crash about a year back). Thanks so much for your help in my being a grown-up.
Love,
Daniel Talsky