Done. Man, that was fun.

Better than The Order of the Phoenix but just as lengthy. It’s darker, but it fits perfectly with the overall development of the plot and characters. And thank god Harry got over being an idiot, for the most part. I wanted to smack the little jerk in the last book. Another plus is that, for the most part, she avoided the long explaining-past-plot-points-again thing, which avoided a lot of the dragging points in the previous book.

One this book’s greatest strengths is how Rowling capitalizes on the tensions she’s been building since the beginning, which allowed her to follow the general formula of the series without driving you crazy. Even with all of the talk about the major plot points before I got my hands on the book, very few moments felt expected or obvious.

Well, it was totally obvious that Luke Skywalker is the Half-Blood Prince. But you didn’t need me to tell you that.

For seven years now, The Society of Typographic Aficionados (SOTA) has held an annual type conference in a different host city. This year, it’s in New York City and I’ll be there.

My very generous friend Paul is even letting me crash at his place so I can begin the type-geekery one night early. If I make it out of this without leaving my job for an internship drawing type, I’ll consider that ‘not losing my head’ during the con.

To say the least, I am pumped.

Is it odd that I feel cheated somehow, even though the fortune was free and it came true?

I saw a Texas quarter recently (I’m holding right now, in fact, and you can see one to the left here.) and I’d like to thank the Texan government for providing such a durable lesson in typographic basics, in the form of a ‘what not to do’.

Texas, as we know, is ‘The Lone Star State’. So, it makes sense that the designer (State. Governor Rick Perry) would want to use this phrase in his quarter. Unfortunately, as is often the case, the type gets the short shrift and is jammed under Texas’s western prominence. In order to fit the type into this oddly shaped area, Perry deemed that the line should be broken twice, and nestled under the southern nub of the prominence. In accommodating the shape, the lines also required tight leading*, which could get extra-tight because there are no descenders** in the phrase ‘The Lone Star State’ to accommodate. So far, not so bad.

I admit, I’m gleeful that such a high-profile Republican sleaze-merchant* like Karl Rove (shown on the left) is running from the harsh gaze of the spotlight concerning his exposure of Valerie Plame, a formerly covert CIA operative. That being said, it’s not easy to get a handle on the whole debacle and subsequent public squirming by the White House. Which is why it’s great that Matthew Baldwin of Defective Yeti has written a nice, easy-to-read, mostly even-handed summary of the events that lead to the renewed hullaballoo.

*I don’t call him that because he’s Republican, but because he’s the wet-work, dirty politics player who keeps Bush looking clean to those who can’t connect the dots, but allows Bush’s campaigns to be conveniently timed with sudden slander campaigns and malicious rumor mills.

So, one of my favorite musicians, DJs, and hip-hop artists, DJ Shadow, re-released his first full-length album, Endtroducing as Endtroducing: Deluxe Edition, back in June and I promptly snapped it up on its release day. The re-release is a two-disc set, the first of which is the original album and the second is rarities, remixes, and alternate takes. There’s also a booklet included in the new packaging that contains: an excerpt from the Continuum book on the original Endtroducing, a hello from Shadow, and some brief notes on each new track. If you’re an avid Shadow fan, then it’s worth it. If you’re not, or you spend a lot of time on whatever file sharing service isn't being closed down at the moment, then you may have heard most of it before, or won’t care enough to invest the cash for the new disc.

As some of you may know, I’m hopelessly addicted to Half-Life 2. Well, now I can feed my twin vices of HL2 and comics by reading Concerned: The Half-Life and Death of Gordon Frohman. It is hilarious and witty, with tons of subtle I-get-it-because-I-played-the-game humor. The prologue alone will give anyone who waited for the much-delayed release feel warm and gooey inside. But there’s usually enough generally-accessible comedy that non-gamers will probably get something from it. If you’ve played HL2 or are familiar with it, go read it now. If not, there’s a premise page to get you mostly up to speed. You may not get 100% of the references, but the comedic timing and construction is very well tuned and it still holds together overall, even if the humor of a few strips is lost on you.*

Thanks to Jon Sung for this one.

*This may be false.