Current Configuration

  • 0 + 0 = 0

    I stood at the coffee pot this morning, noticing our coffee grounds canister was low, so I reached up in to the cabinet to dump out more from the bags. As I brought them down, I realized suddenly why I’ve been so groggy after my morning coffee and why my weekend pre-coffee headache hadn’t subsided as it normally does.

    Somehow, I neglected to buy any caffeinated coffee and have been blending two types of decaf beans into a distinct brew of…decaffeinated coffee.

    Where’s my Nobel Prize? Where is it? I am leading the human race forward here, people.

  • Typographica: Our Favorite Fonts of 2006

    Typographica’s ‘Our Favorite Fonts of 2006’ list is out. A bit late, but certainly no less worthwhile. The list is a bit longer than usual, since 2005 was pushed to two parts with the second ultimately withheld until now, due to the “sheer volume” of entries this time around. To me, this is a good sign for type design (or at least for Typographica). For the second 2005 installment, I chose Dino dos Santos’s Estilo (Flash site). It’s a distinct little deco display face that’s quite fun to set.

    Our Favorite Fonts is an excellent resource for quickly putting your finger on the pulse of type design and get a quick look at some of the most interesting and notable fonts released during the year. Plus, the authors are type and graphic designers, which gives this list a bit more depth and character than a straight-up specimen list. Too much great work for me to even pick a few favorites from the list this year, which actually reaches back into 2005. Give it a skim to see how varied and vibrant type design can be in one year.

    Also see Part 1.

  • Prioritize the Friendly Skies

    Yesterday during an IM conversation about United Airlines shutdown with my friend Steve, I wondered aloud if the reason why legacy carriers are so terrible at managing the actual experience of commercial flight is because all of their tasks break down into two categories:

    1) Things that can kill hundreds of people.

    2) Things that won’t.

    I could see a lot of office conversations at UAL going something like this:

    Sir, people don’t like the food or the leg room on our planes. They also don’t like losing their luggage 25% of the time.

    I’M KEEPING PEOPLE FROM TURNING INTO PULLED PORK IN AN INFERNO OF JET FUEL AND TOILET SANITIZING AGENT RIGHT NOW. I’LL GET TO THE TRUFFLES AND BELLHOPS LATER, JOHNSON.”

    I’m guessing when you have two daily to-do lists on your desk, the one that does not involve preventing catastrophic tragedy tends to get balled up and used for waste basketball more often than the other.

  • Creature Comforts

    Have you seen the new American edition of Creature Comforts? If not, you should make a point of getting in front of your TV on Monday at 8pm and flipping to CBS. It is a thoroughly entertaining and oddly soothing bit of TV.

  • I Know You Got That Sweet, Sweet Peggle for Me

    The logotype for Peggle Deluxe, on a cheery rainbow and grasslands background, flanked by two characters.

    Don’t start playing Pop Cap Games’ Peggle. Doing that will require you to stop playing.

    That is hard to do.*

    If you’ve got some spare minutes, Peggle’s a lot of fun. It’s a buffet of bite-size levels that offer variations on a simple mechanic: fire a bouncing ball into a Pachinko-like game field. Throw in zany power-ups, lots of good audio and visual feedback, and it’s a recipe for an addictive “just one more level” game. Peggle is a PC-only game, so you Mac-only people are safe from the bottomless pit of sugar-coated gaming fun.

    But be warned, at some point you will have to stop playing. And that is hard.

    *But I do manage to stop. I swear.

  • We Believe in Nothing!

    I noticed this last night on a package of ‘Hearty Grains’ Thomas’ English Muffins:

    The label on a package of Thomas' English muffins that reads, Hearty nooks tasty crannies...good for your heart.

    Aren’t they describing the very parts of the English muffin that are nothing?

    I mean, I know the “nooks & crannies” thing is their hook, but don’t start assigning adjectives to pockets of nothing; adjectives that are, by their very nature, describing qualities of things made of matter.

  • No, YouDon’tTube

    A brilliant idea, put forth by my man Jon:

    They should rig things such that posting a comment on YouTube takes a month off your life. If you think about it, it’s win-win all around.

    Someone should get to work on this immediately. Google, I know you’re watching this.

  • 28 Weeks Later

    The 28 Weeks Later logo on a red background.

    28 Weeks Later is a music video. Well, a series of them.

    A shame, really. Its predecessor, 28 Days Later, was an excellent reinvigoration of the zombie attack genre.

    (more…)

  • The What Test?

    I understand that it may both be rapid and a test, but I’m going to have to still vote No on the name.

    In marketing, it often helps to ask a few people about your idea before sending it out into the world.

  • Spider-Man 3

    Spider-Man, in his black suit, looks a the viewer through the rain.

    We saw Spider-Man 3 on Friday, as we’re big fans of the first and second installments. The second is one of the best comic superhero films out there, so the expectations were very high. It was a lot of fun, and they packed tons into the film. It’s a very entertaining and thrilling flick, but it loses track (a little bit) of what made the Spider-Man franchise work, falling prey to the Bigger Is Better philosophy that drained the original Batman movie franchise of all its worth. Fortunately, everyone involved still delivered thrills and laughs to make up for the wafer-thin helpings of everything but action.

    Minor Spoilers: Most of what I describe is in the trailers, but if you don’t know anything, you might have some plot points spoiled.

    (more…)