Approves of the WiFi.
Hopefully the economy will improve to the point where I can afford a device that will can take advantage of it (why should everyone else have all the fun?).
Technorati Tags: atrios, eschaton, WES, SUPERTRAINS
It is, as some acquaintances might say, fabulous!
Technorati Tags: Internet Memes, Memes, KPTV Fox 12, Channel 12, Joe V, Tony Martinez, Kimberly Maus, Matt Davis, Portland Mercury, Aretha Franklin’s Hat, Lars Larson
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It teaches a lesson on meaning. As Magritte himself is said to have said:
The famous pipe. How people reproached me for it! And yet, could you stuff my pipe? No, it’s just a representation, is it not? So if I had written on my picture ‘This is a pipe,’ I’d have been lying!
In the spirit I interpret coming from the great Surrealist (who also happens to be my favorite 20th Century artist) I provide what to me is a sign of the times:
Given the disucssion above, you can see this works no matter what POV you have. If you think Sam should resign, then the image explains itself. If you enjoy the play of semiotics, then you know that this is not a Mayor … it’s just an image of one, it can’t vote or attend City Council meetings or fib about dating an 18-year-old when he should have known better, and it can never redeem itself or earn forgiveness, and you can make that observation whether or not you care about whether or not he resigns or continues.
And if you really like meta, the message can be that the news coverage about the situation may not be the true story of the situation at all (I wonder if we’ll ever know).
So, as the master might have said about this, “The famous Mayor … how people have reproached me for it! But can you elect it to office? No, it is just a representation, is it not? If I had written on my picture ‘This is a mayor,’ I’d have been lying!”
Technorati Tags: Mayor Sam Adams, Portland Mayor Sam Adams
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Back on 28 December, in posting #1888, we shared a happy discovery we found at the corner of SE 117th Ave and Division Street, in our humble neighborhood. It looked like this:
(go to this posting to see the other images, and the design discussion on it) We were quite excited about it at the time … the design of Portland’s street blades is something we think has been a long time in coming. The breakthrough was in the large, clear format which still had that “Portland” look to it, and most importantly, includes the crossing street block number as an integral part of the design, which is a boon to people trying to find an address.
Well, coming east on SE Division Street a few days ago, we spotted another example of this sign in the Franklin High School area, specifically, SE 57th and Division:
That building in the background there is Atkinson Elementary School. But is this not nifty? Here’s a view of the Division Street blade:
The “2400″ block index on the sign isn’t an error by the way. Between SE 42nd Avenue and SE 82nd Avenue, Division Street jogs a half-block to the north to become the 24th street south of Burnside, therefore the 2400 block. The 2500 block is defined by a little street called SE Windsor Court, which exists in a few fragments one block south of Division in that area. Everywhere else, it’s 2500.
The numbered avenue blade also fowards the design we saw on SE 117th Avenue:
As you can see on the right there is one of the MetroFi WiFi antennas. Kind of a set here: the street blade is your tax dollars at work, the WiFi antenna is your tax dollars at rest. Oh, were do I find the wit for these things?
But it’s not just the north side of the street that gets the new blades. It’s on the south side too:
It’s nice and visible even at the kinda-crappy resolution of my awesome plastic fantastic.
For those of me who obsess about these things, this is a big signal. One new set of street blades at a street corner out near 122nd and Division could just be a test. Three new sets … including a completely-signed intersection on both sides of the street … indicate that this may indeed be the new design for Portland’s street blades.
It’s intriguing that they’ve so far done two intersections that so happen to be on Division Street.
And this design is a good one, as I’ve said before. I don’t know who came up with this look, but, seriously, you’ve hit it out of the park, yo.
Technorati Tags: Sign Design, Street Blade gallery, street blades, Portland Street Blades, SE Division Street, SE 57th Avenue
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I need a picture of a sign I saw near Flanders and 10th Ave NW in Portland. It depicts a hand dropping a coin, as if into a parking meter, and is meant to remind people parking their cars at the curb to pay for the time they’ll be there at a nearby parking kiosk. I need it to prove to the City of Pasadena, where my wife was shopping when she was ticketed, that a clearer, more direct means of communication exists by which a city can easily convey by signage their expectation that folks will pay. Pasadena has misleading verbal signs that fool people into believing that one hour of parking is free…and then there parking patrol officers tag cars with expensive tickets. Hope you’ve got one of them in your archive somewhere. Thanks.
Hey, Paul, thanks for asking. It’s actually quite flattering. But here’s what I think you were looking for. Let’s go to the corner of NW 10th Avenue and Flanders Street in our legendary Pearl district:
(click here to embiggen this and to go to the Photobucket album where large versions of all these illustrations are located) At first I was afraid that I wouldn’t know what to look for but when I went down to that corner, I knew what Paul was talking about immediately, which I think sort of proves his point. Moreover, if you look down about midblock, you’ll see a sign that locates the parking ticket dispenser for you.
Let’s get another look. These signs are crucial, because unlike a city where parking meters are located at every parking space, you need these signs to be in your face as you drive by. They need to be noticable at eye level and they also need to be simple enough to be read quickly while still containing enough information to deliver the proper message.
This is an ever better view of one. There are letterforms just below the symbols to small to see, but you know at once that you’ll be paying to park here. That’s just the beauty of hierarchy. And it’s at a height that’s impossible to miss as you’re driving past. We saw many of them as we were driving through. They’re almost impossible to miss.
Let’s move in real close, and see just what sort of information each sign delivers:
Can it get clearer than that? The questions of what, when, and where is amply answered by the sign, and every intersection has them mounted on every corner showing in the direction every car is likely to be coming in. The symbology even shows you what the shape of the machine it is you have to be looking for.
Here is what that machine looks like, from the street side (you fellow Portlanders already know this):
It’s a system that is clear and unambiguous. It pretty much documents itself. Each different parking limit has a distinctive color and very clear signage designed to be seen by a person with normal vision from up to a half block away (as we saw in the first one)
It’s so clear that one thinks that even someone from the City of Pasadena could use it. Your mileage, of course, may vary.
Technorati Tags: Portland Street Signs, semiotics, parking signs, Parking in Portland
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Clicky here to embiggen. The Portland that our parents and grandparents knew was pretty much that area in yellow, orange, and red in the middle. Growth continued but slowed during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s (the smaller bits round that hot central area) then really started galloping to the north and east mostly as the area between Portland and Gresham got gobbled up in a mere 10-year span (1985-1995, approximately) and the floodplain of the Columbia at about the same time.
The reddest part there, in the middle covering Old Town and today’s Downtown district approximates, unless I am very much mistaken, the old Donation Land Claims of Captain Couch (north of Ankeny Street) and the Lovejoy/Pettygrove partnership (south of Ankeny Street)
The small red-orange quadrilateral touching the river in today’s Lloyd district might approximate the old city of Albina: the part of the great orange area south of today’s Banfield Freeway approximate the former City of East Portland.
You can get your own PDF copy of this map by going to the Bureau of Planning and Sustainable Development’s annexations web page here and looking for the link that downloads the document. It’s at the bottom of the third paragraph, and reads historical map of large annexations to the City of Portland (or you can just click that link there–dialup users warning; it’s 2.8 MB)
Technorati Tags: Portland History, Portland Growth, Portland Annexations, East Portland, Albina
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Since he comes from Adobe, you should listen to him. As you do with me, you should do whatever he says.
Go now to Phinney on Fonts.
If you don’t, kittens and ducklings will cry, because you’re a mean person. you!
Technorati Tags: Thomas Phinney, Typographers, Type Design, Typography
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In September 1935 Gill drew for Monotype a stressed sans-serif type with many prophetic qualities: it looked forward to Hermann Zapf’s ’serifless roman’ Optima of nearly a quarter of a century later. Although it was given a series number (430), and a few trial sorts were cut, it was never issued to the trade.
— Sebastian Carter, Twentieth Century Type Designers
A clipping from one of the sites talking about it can be seen here on the right.
It’s quite a beautiful thing that does indeed anticipate Optima (seen at left), an exercise in subtly-classic design accomplished by the equally-great Hermann Zapf. It has the same visual aspect, the same subtle softness in the curves of the design while retaining clarity.
Though another avid type blogger found working drawings in the Monotype archives, the sorts were never actually ever made. It was given a name of Series 480.
Nothing else to say about this except that it’s understated and quite gently poetic.
Technorati Tags: typography, type design, Eric Gill, Monotype
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Messages on voice-mails? Waking up Nick Fish in the middle of the night?
Well, at least Sam’s made his decision. At least he’s done that.
You get back to work, Sam. Try and make something out of this mess. We Americans love a comeback story, a story of redemption. But, I’ll tell you, this is making me nostalgic for Ivan C. The Terrible.
I never thought I’d be nostalgic for Ivan C. The Terrible.
Technorati Tags: Sam Adams, Sam Adams Scandal, Portland City Council, Mayor Sam Adams
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Photobucket hosts some of the content I use as illustrations here. Eariler today, I noticed a problem with my header image … it wasn’t loading. So I tried going to the album in PB that hosts it and found that Firefox was being redirected.
Not anything else. Tried Opera and Safari. Just Firefox.
The redirection took me to a page that swore that my hard drive was infected and that it needed a cleaning, and a download sheet that I couldn’t opt out of.
But after I cleared private data, it stopped. I of course reinstalled Firefox.
Not a problem since.
BTW, Crackers? Do I have your attention? Yes, most people have WindowsXP, but not everyone, you savvy? If you’re going to have a fake virus scan display take over a web browser, we OS X users can tell a WinXP interface when we see it. At least make the effort to make the infterface experience look all OS X-y, okay?
Not only did your hack not work on me, it makes you look like you’re phoning it in.
C’mon, you dips … a little artistry, yes?
Technorati Tags: photobucket, crackery, hackery, system exploits
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