Monthly Archives: October 2002

Happy Hallowe’en

Matt and CatI hope everyone has a safe and pleasant night. In honor of the night I coerced my lovely black cat Helza for a brief (she doesn’t like being held long) photoshoot. She was more interested in looking around than looking at the camera, so here’s what came out. Besides, would this be a blog without at least one cat picture? Her full name is Helza Poppins, which we named her because when she first joined our household she would hide behind everything and jump out when you least expect it. I’ve seen some pretty interesting costumes today, and of course the decorations are always fun.

Pun-A-Day #19

In the 1900s an English town had fallen on really hard times. For decades its primary industry had been its textile mills, but now the mills were all closed and unemployment was at an all-time high. Desperate, the town’s mayor looked frantically around for other industries to invigorate the economy. He found that there was a man in Germany who was looking for someone to take over his thriving hunting-dog breeding business. The man had made a fortune raising the animals and was willing to unload it for a fraction of its value so he could retire with his new wife. The mayor used his influence to have all the mills converted to kennels and all of the dogs transported to his town. Employment skyrocketed and the town prospered! Everyone was happy, even though, sometimes—especially on the nights with a full moon—the animals got a little noisy, keeping some residents awake. They just sighed and said, “The mills are alive with the hounds of Munich.”

Tired

I took a long rest earlier because I had a terrible migraine. Why am I so tired now? Too tired to read, too tired to talk, and too tired to work on the code I wanted to get to this evening. I think it’s time to try that sleep thing out again.

Matt Is Bored

Well, everyone’s doing it. Here we go, Matt is . . .

  • . . . it worth it?
  • . . . a critic, hear me roar, or snore!
  • . . . taking the extra
  • . . . currently married to the love of his life
  • . . . new Colts coach
  • . . . so cute
  • . . . a sad but amusing old drunk
  • . . . way better than chocolate
  • . . . a lil gerbil ish
  • . . . yummy
  • . . . a clown
  • . . . great!!!
  • . . . me name
  • . . . a babe

So there you go. If you’re really cool you can put your full name in there, but alas that did nothing for me. I might try “Matthew” later to see how Matts and Matthews compare.

Palm Tungsten-T Released

Well, just minutes ago Palm officially released their new Tungsten T product. They really need to start coming up with better names for these things. This is bad, and Zire? What’s up with that? Anyway this unit looks quite good, it has everything Palm has been lacking for so long:

  • Sliding graffiti area, so it should be pretty small.
  • Voice recording and playback, which has been missing for far too long on the PalmOS platform
  • High resolution screen (320×320), Sony has had this for ages. Again, long overdue.
  • Bluetooth, this is a big deal, and a first in the PalmOS market. Finally, innovation!
  • Multimedia Card and Secure Digital expansion slots. Groovy.
  • OS5: evolutionary, not revolutionary.

What’s going to decide how this unit does in the market is how Palm markets this, and how the well the form-factor and screen is received. Most people don’t admit it, but the feel of a handheld is really the one of the biggest factors in making their decision. That’s why people think the Treo looks funny but love it once they hold it in their hand. Palm hasn’t been very consistent as far as screen quality goes, so I’d really like to see how this one looks, and how it compares to the ones Sony is putting out. The only real flaw I see with this unit’s specs is that it has the headphone jack and hardware to play MP3s, but it says “separate

Hopefully this will be the unit that keeps Palm afloat and reasserts the PalmOS over PocketPCs. There is really no reason to buy a PocketPC anymore: not for speed (try actually doing something on that faster processor), not for multimedia, not for working with Office documents, and certainly not for the price. If you did somehow end up with a PocketPC through some twist of fate, do yourself a favor and put GNU/Linux on it.

Update: There in a nice review on Infosync by Larry Garfield, an old PalmStation buddy, where he covers pretty much everything I was worried about, including the screen. His review is very favorable. Palm Infocenter as a pretty detailed announcement with some good discussion. PDA Buzz has hands-on reviews from a number of people who have one already. Brighthand also has a new review up, but I’m hesitant to recommend them because their design looks a little too familiar.

Pun-A-Day #18

This guy goes into a restaurant for a Christmas breakfast while in his home town for the holidays. After looking over the menu he says, “I’ll just have the eggs benedict.” His order comes a while later and it’s served on a big shiny hubcap. He asks the waiter, “What’s with the hubcap?” The waiter sings, “There’s no plate like chrome for the hollandaise!”

Note to Self: Chenille

Never put chenille in the washer. Never put chenille in the washer. Never put chenille in the washer. Never put chenille in the washer. Never put chenille in the washer. Never put chenille in the washer. Never put chenille in the washer. Never put chenille in the washer. Never put chenille in the washer. Especially with other stuff

More on Monospaced Fonts

Well I’ve found a few more I plan to check out, and I’m going to give each at least a day’s worth of heavy coding, then narrow it down progressively until I finally decide on one. The non-free fonts that don’t look terribly promising I’m going to try and test drive online, but MyFonts anti-aliases things pretty heavily and indiscriminately, which makes it hard to tell how fonts work at smaller sizes. The new entrants in the contest are:

Several of these font suggestions come via Aaron Swartz’s favorite fonts list. Personally I’d like to see more lists like this, perhaps in a semantically meaningful way that could be indexed and presented in different ways. Any format come to mind? I know I’ve read a couple of similar lists before, so I’ll try and dig up some more links.

Font for Code Editing

I’ve been looking for a nice monospaced font to replace Courier New in my code editing programs. Several people suggested Andale Mono, so I decided to check it out. Unfortunately, I don’t have it on any of my machine, so I decided to hit up Google to see where it would be available. I went on a goose chase through MyFonts that led me to a dead end when I saw that Andale Mono was part of Microsoft’s TrueType core fonts for the web, which were available for free, but now aren’t offered for download from Microsoft. However, it looks like the original license the fonts were released under is broad enough to allow third parties to continue to offer the fonts for download, which led me to the Core Fonts Sourceforge project which on their download page had exactly what I needed. Ahhhhh.

However my search is far from over, in the larger sense. Andale Mono is working out great so far, but I’m not sure if I like the feel of it yet, and so I’m going to test out some commercial fonts to see if any of them suit me better. I’ll post the final decision once I make it.

Pun-A-Day #17

An oldie but a goodie

These three strings are walking along, dying of thirst in the middle of Death Valley. After a long, long trek. They come to a bar. “Boy, this is just in time…I can’t go any farther.” So he walks into the bar and orders a drink. “Can’t you read the sign there? We don’t serve no strings here” bellows the bartender. “But I’m going to die of thirst!” protests the string. With that the bartender picks him up, and throws him out into the street. One of his buddies says “I’ll disguise myself as a rope and go in to get us a drink.” So, in he goes. “Hey, I thought I told your friend that we don’t serve your kind here. Now get out that door before I stomp on you!” So he quickly retreats out the door. Finally the last string says “Hey, I’ve got an idea…I’ll tie myself up like a pretzel, and frizzle out my ends, so he won’t recognize me.” So in he goes into the bar. He gets up to the bar and orders a drink. The bartender eyes him a little susspiciously. “Hey, aren’t you one of those strings I told to get out of here?” To which the string answered “No, I’m a frayed knot.”

Into The Fray

Today I plan to do some major reorganizing in my room. There is art to go up, there are books to be put on shelves, there are way too many clothes. After that (assuming there is an after that) I have some major client work to catch up with. So I’m probably not going to be around here much today, but during the commercial break you should go check out the beautiful redesign at Zeldman. Absolutely gorgeous.