Frederick's Timelog

The Thing with Fonts

I love fonts… well, I love some fonts to a great extend and vehemently despise others. I don’t consider myself a typographer — and I don’t make fonts — yet I probably have a keener eye for type than the average citizen. And my documents typically reflect the period of my life in which they were produced, because, well, I have favourite fonts… and these preferences change about every year.

The thing with fonts is that they contribute greatly to the overall feel of any production, whether it’s a logo or corporate identity, a book, a newspaper/magazine, an essay, or an advertisement. Choosing the right typeface for a particular purpose is like an art, and typography itself is an art. Unfortunately, most average Joes lack awareness and skill in this area.

To test your ability, see if you recognize the fonts below; click on the image to see the answers. (Windows users should have no problem with these.)

You know these fonts

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Won a contest

I just found out this afternoon that I was the 1st place winner of a giveaway contest at OMNINOGGIN, so I get to have a free custom banner design from buytemplates.net.

(As a side note, I think the links or ads on the high traffic and high ranking site are generally more valuable to me than the custom banner design. But then again, those are only for 30 days… so I’ll stick with this valuable prize.)

Now I have to decide: what do I want to promote with the banners that will be designed? Should it be one of my sites (for instance, this blog?), an affiliate product or service, or… perhaps… a social/political cause?

Help me choose.

Things that annoy me

Here are a few things that really irritate me:

• inconsistent usage of Canadian/American/British spelling; for instance, writing ‘favour’ throughout but slipping in something like ‘neighborhood’
• bad marking schemes
  • taking questions off after the evaluation is written; for instance, an exam out of 119 becoming out of 100 — in that case, every loss of a mark is much greater in terms of percentage
  • an evaluation with required questions that become optional; for instance, questions 101–119 becoming ‘bonus’ questions when nothing specifically makes them harder or more suitable as bonuses
• mentions of topics that pique one’s curiosity, followed by a denial of that curiosity in the form of a “never mind”; for instance, mentioning a piece of highly interesting gossip and then refusing to speak about it
• mainstream media
  • constant bombardment of viewers with biased reports; for instance, Lou Dobbs
  • mentions of online or Web 2.0 communities specifically with the intention to appear ‘cool’ or ‘hip’ or ‘up-to-date’; for instance, CNN’s unnatural use of Twitter
• Windows Live Messenger’s ads at the bottom of the contact list
  EDIT: I’ve removed them by using A-Patch, but A-Patch doesn’t change the fact that I’m annoyed with those ads.
• Safari 4’s unreadable tabs on Windows Vista+
• music without verifiable ‘artistry’ to which fanboys and fangirls listen repeatedly or habitually
• books and movies with fans who are attracted by mere plot or appearance or celebrities
• “buggy software”
• EDIT: also, it is hugely distressing for me to hear intelligent people degrade themselves… I understand that not everyone has good self-confidence, but come on… you guys are smart and have amazing potential. Don’t discourage yourself from achievement.

Violence in a civilized society

I am certainly not the only one appalled at the shocking shootings that occurred in Winnenden, Germany yesterday. Even more shocking was that the warning he sent over chat was laughed off — just as a number of people thought a man who committed suicide on webcam was joking.

“S*** Bernd, I’ve had enough. I’m fed up with this bloody life. It’s always the same thing – everyone laughs at me, no-one recognises my potential.

“I mean this seriously, Bernd – I’ve got a weapon here and tomorrow morning I’m going to go to my old school and give them hell. Maybe I’ll escape and you will hear from me tomorrow morning.

“Keep your ear to the ground. Take note of the name: Winnenden. Don’t say anything to the police.”

Source: Telegraph

We have to take people seriously.

I’m certain that every one of us is capable of evil actions. What holds us back from committing evil? An inert sense of morality or justice? Religion?

"God, where were you?" Photo by Alex Grimm/Getty Images

“God, where were you?” the above sign asks.

Students mourn; Photo by Alex Grimm/Getty Images

What ordinary human can tolerate this kind of violence?

A rose is placed; Photo by Getty Images

Some have criticized ineffective gun restriction laws, while others have argued that restricting legal gun ownership is pointless as most crimes are committed with illegally owned guns. But guess what? The shooter had access to weapons in his home that were legally owned and killed over a dozen people.

Police roam around the school; Photo by Miguel Villagran/Getty Images

In the end, what do weapons do? What sort of violence do they propagate?

Bullet holes; Photo by Miguel Villagran/Getty Images

This is the sort of thing we cannot tolerate as a society.

Flags at half mast; Photo by Carsten Koall/Getty Images

What will we do about violence in the civilized world?

Further photographs may be found at the BBC.

Blog scraping

As a blogger, I’ve encountered the issue of trackback/pingback spam coming from splogs that scrape content. It is sometimes frustrating when a new post is immediately reproduced on spammy sites that do nothing but scrape content from other sites.

It used to be that these splogs would just quote the content word-for-word and add a link to the original source. As time went on, search engines and other tools became aware of them, and these sites were short-lived, as many of them made it onto blacklists.

Yesterday I posted about the Mercedes GLK, a sponsored blog post that was quickly and automatically copied by a splog.

I noticed something new. Instead of simply copying the original text, this splog uses computer intelligence to replace words with synonyms, evading duplicate content detection and content theft tools.

The first screenshot is my original post from yesterday. The lower screenshot is from the splog.

Original content from my blog

Splog's stolen content

Now what? What will we see next from Webmasters who attempt to profit from scraping content?

Mercedes-Benz GLK

Where do you see yourself?

That’s the slogan for Mercedes-Benz’s new midsized, premium sports utility vehicle, the Mercedes GLK. This is clearly a car for those who love style, comfort and elegance — concepts shared by Mercedes’ new mini-site promoting the GLK.

The promotional mini-site is actually rather artistic. A fully Flash-based site, it is amazing in usability and experience, as I might expect the GLK to be. The site has a few major sections, which include a place to ‘watch’ — that is, to look at high quality photographs and promotional videos for the car —, a place to learn — that is, to review information about the car —, and a place to ‘create’, which apparently means to answer a very short personality quiz to create a background image that remains consistent throughout the site. (There’s also a feature to download that background to use as a wallpaper image.)

Prospective buyers will get all the technical information and product insights that they need from this GLK mini-site. While being dazzled by the site’s amazing functionality, high-res pictures and persuasive commercials, buyers can still get what they need to know about this new model from one of the world’s most reputable high end automaker.

In times like these, you want a fuel-efficient vehicle that will reliably stay with you for years to come.