The End Of A Year, A Visit To Fry’s … and Goals

1890.I think that I’m kind of starting from zero again, in a way. I’m back on a capable computer, which I got by with a little help from my friends, and I’m looking forward.

If my life was a poem, it would be “Finnegan, begin again”. I always seem to be.

Anyway, I’m taking it as a positive sign. And now I look forward. Kris Coppieters has purchased my services, and I’m getting started on this with the new year, and the way I see it, designing someone’s logo is a great way to start. It was what I was meant to do. It’s why I keep looking for the opportunity, because there is no other option for me.

Looking over the Macintoshes on sale at Fry’s tonight, I saw what I hope will be the future of my tools. I got back on the PowerMac G4 after a bit of begging. I’ll work toward the MacPro/MacBook Pro/whichever by earning this.

Until then, the G4 will serve well. But there is only so far she can take me.

Welcome 2009. You’ve got to be a better deal than 2008 was.

Technorati Tags: Samuel John Klein, logo design, ZehnKatzen Design

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A Snowy Calm, Just Before The Storm

1889.A view of my favorite downtown in the world, with a dusting of snow … just before the big one hit last week:

Clicky here to embiggen.

Technorati Tags: Downtown Portland, Oregon, Portland Photos, Oregon Photos, Oregon Winter Storm 2008

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A New Style of Portland Street Sign Debuts at 117th and Division?

1888.I believe I’ve stumbled onto something new and rather exciting, and it’s been rolled out on one street sign in my own neighborhood.

Recently I saw, on the north side of SE Division Street at 117th Avenue, the street blades you see here:

Interesting, yes? And just in this one spot so far.

This represents sort of a quantum leap in the design of the basic Portland street blade. But more about that in a ‘mo. Here’s a few more views.

They’ve added the crossing street block index! It’s now an integral part of the blade, and in a slightly surprising way.

Next:

It reads well from a distance. Nifty!

The avenue blade retains the traditional Portland look, now within the new white frame with rounded corners. It’s looking pretty good … and readable!

Here’s how it might look from a car. You know what corner you’re at.

Now, for a little design discussion.

One of the biggest drawbacks of the basic Portland street blade is the lack of a block number. Whether or not you get that the crossing street blade holds the block number of the street you’re one (the block number of the named street being self-evident from the number of the avenue), we take it as axiomatic that it’s just plain nifty to have the block number on the street sign itself, thus preserving your sanity and relieving you of the need to peer at the front doors of nearby houses, thus perhaps drawing reproachful return glares.

But in general it saves you a step. You have the block number at a convenient, findable place, and it’s finally been integrated into the design of the blade itself, just as it has in almost every other major city in the Willamette Valley. Currently, the block number comes on a tab bolted on to the blade itself, and, due to the ways you can have the blades stacked, not always in the same place. Moreover, several somewhat-poorly designed sign-toppers for neighborhood identification omit this information entirely, and the tab has been removed in some of these cases. This design neatly solves that problem.

Now the question becomes how efficiently the information gets delivered. We feel this design does the job quite nicely. By placing the directional (SE), specific (Division) and generic (St) all on the same baseline, the eye reads the street name at one go quite naturally. Reducing the type size on the generic preserves the traditional Portland look. And, by placing the block number a bit up and toward the upper right hand corner of the blade, the eye arrives at an important supplemental bit of information last.

On top of all that is the sheer niftiness of giving the blade a new rounded-corner profile with a wide white stroke around the outside actually contains and defines the design into an aesthetically pleasing whole.

I don’t know who in the Portland department of making street signs came up with this idea, but my friend … you’ve nailed it.

Beautifully done.

Please make sure you get more of these up. You make me proud to be a Portlander.

Technorati Tags: Portland, Portland Street Signs, Street Blades, SE Division Street, Mill Park Neighborhood

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A Christmas Gift To All … Wallpaper For Your Root Account Desktop

1887.Now, we who have Un*x-based systems (OS X and others) know that occaisionally need to get a root account enabled because sometimes you just have to do a superuser thing or two. I occaisionally need to grab files from another account but you can’t always do that when just logged in with Administrator priviledges.

But you know how dangerous root access can be. You can delete all files from your system, and the system will go ahead and let you.

I like doing this … this wallpaper lets you know exactly what kind of fire you’re playin’ with when you go root. I give this idea to the general public and urge everyone who has a root account on any sort of Un*x to put it up there. Enjoy:

Merry Christmas!

Technorati Tags: liff, silly, photoshoppery, unix mojo

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Our Substance Is Lessened By This Loss

1886.It would seem that we’ve lost another dear friend and associate.

This has been a season of loss and of travail. Old friends of great mind have departed this sphere of existence and we will not see thier like again; this is a guarantee.

I cannot say whom at this point, but it was unexpected and he died too young. And I ribbed him but I respected him utterly.

I wish I had a chance to tell him that. Now, I never will.

Technorati Tags: passages, liff, lost friends, SCA

Our Substance Is Lessened By This Loss

1886.It would seem that we’ve lost another dear friend and associate.

This has been a season of loss and of travail. Old friends of great mind have departed this sphere of existence and we will not see thier like again; this is a guarantee.

I cannot say whom at this point, but it was unexpected and he died too young. And I ribbed him but I respected him utterly.

I wish I had a chance to tell him that. Now, I never will.

Technorati Tags: passages, liff, lost friends, SCA

A Test For The Laptop

1885.

Now this is a test of something called ScribeFire, an addon for Firefox. This is being done from the G3 iBook because I want to have an alternative from Qumana (which I have a beta of that works on OS X but the downloadable doesn’t and they’ve gone quiet over there), Flock (which actually is starting to grow on me) and the Blogger interface (which I can’t stand (nothing personal, Blogger … it just doesn’t work for me.)).

This has a bunch to say for it … categories in the interface and Technorati tags?

Nice so far. Let’s publish it and see if I can live with the results.

Brain Graffiti

1884.I was trying out yet another blog editor … a plugin for Firefox … and it left the last bit of dross in attempting to spawn a live preview.

I decided I liked it so much that I’m going to leave it there.

On a wholly unrelated point, you know how it is that they hire endowed young ladies to staff Hooters? Why don’t you see more one-legged servers at IHOP?

Discuss.

Tags: liff, silly, humor, Samuel John Klein, The ZehnKatzen Times

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I Love It When This Happens (updated)

NB: There is a public update, 1438 18 Dec. Please seen end of the post

1884.

The bestest thing about the intermet is that it allows me to be an open admirer of something and sometimes the creator notices my hat tip and returns it.

This time, it’s Michael Everson. He developed this font, which I fell silly in love with, called Everson Mono:

The thing about Everson Mono is that it’s monospaced (as the name would suggest).  A monospaced font is one in which every glyph, regardless of shape, occupies one unmutable space, and all the spaces are equal. If you used Courier or Arial when you had a better choice available, that’s a monospaced font … and we’ll be sending the design police round to duff you up a treat, as they say.

Well, clear your Arial and your Courier off your drives, peoples, consign them to the dustbin of type history. If you must use a monospaced font, use Everson’s; it has little filips and touches, is eminently readable, and actually has a little art to them. And, as I said then as now, I adore the minuscule g.

Anyway, M. Everson acknowledged my little love letter and I must say thank you. What better way to show you where to download the font:

You’ll get it for free here. That’s free, as in it ain’t cost you nuthin’. Free fonts, people … do I really need to tell you what to do here?

The world will look a little better for your efforts and Michael Everson will be duly enshrined as the man who brought attractiveness to the monospaced font.

Yes, you have to do this.

While you’re at it, cruise the rest of the Evertype site. Cleanly designed with an impressive reach.

UPDATE: As correctly pointed out by commenter zwetterman, Everson Mono is not actually free, but shareware:

Everson Mono is shareware. If you use it, please support its development by buying a licence to do so. The shareware fee for using one or more than one (that is, any or all) of these Unicode-supporting coded font programs is EUR 33.00. The licence gives you the right to use these fonts on three CPUs and three CPUs only. (That’s two at the office and one at home, so please don’t complain.) Shareware is not freeware. You may not use Everson Mono for free.

That’s what you get for not reading the license, which is a little embarrassing because I usually always read the license.

However, I will point out that you can download the font for nothing, and would highly suggest that everyone that can pay for it, do so. Genius like this deserves to be rewarded.

Thank you zwetterman for the sharp eye. I’ll continue to advocate for this font, because I like it just that much.

Tags: typography, type design, michael everson, everson mono

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