Category: Communication
Book Review: Just My Type
I just finished reading what I think is possibly the best book you’ll read on Fonts and typography. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, it’ll change your life… it changed the font here on St. Eutychus. I decided I was bored with Georgia and switched to Palatino. They look almost indistinguishable.
The book takes an entertaining walk down memory lane, stopping to study different fonts – as though they’re shopfronts – along the way. It makes the most of the Interweb’s collective fascination with typography – featuring the type of thing you’ve no doubt encountered here and elsewhere (including a vivid description of Max Kerning).
You’ll learn fun facts about Helvetica and Arial, the history of Futura, German blackletters, old school printing press movable type… how fonts are designed. You won’t regret it. Promise.
If you’ve ever been curious about the world of type but not known how to dip your toes in – or if you’re a bona fide expert who knows your baskerville from your goudy old style – then check it out. It’ll no doubt provide some good blogging fodder over the next few days before I return it to my dad. Who I borrowed it from.
Of quick foxes and lazy dogs
I’m reading a book about fonts at the moment. A fairly long, and well written, entertaining book about fonts. It’s called Just My Type (Amazon)
And then mentioned that most fonts these days can be carefully examined using these two one word options:
Handgloves
or
Hamburgers.
Apparently all the rises, falls, and curves of the significant letters in a typeface can be tested in those two words. So there’s really no need for the fox after all.
Guy named Dragan reinvents the term “jumping the shark”
When a television show channels its inner Happy Days and features something as ludicrous as the Fonz jumping over a pair of sharks on waterskis those in the media biz know its days are numbered. It is said to have “jumped the shark”… this is a pejorative description of the act of doing anything to garner ratings and attention. Or it was. Until now. A Serbian man named Dragan was swimming at the beach and decided that it would be fun to jump off a high diving board. He landed on a shark. A man eater. Killing it. Here’s the news story, corroborated on the New York Post’s website.
Here’s a snippet:
“Dragan climbed on the jumping board, told me to hold his beer and simply ran to jump. There was no time for me to react or to try to stop him, he just went for it” says Milovan.
“Dragan jumped high and plunged down to the sea, but didn’t make as much splash as we thought he would”, explained Milovan.
The reason could be because Dragan Stevic ended up jumping straight on the shark which was lurking near the beach, probably looking for its next victim. Dragan had nailed it right in the head, killing it instantly. The Egyptian police found the shark washed out on the beach that morning.
Sadly. The story is a fake. Not even a good one. And it’s an indictment on the state of modern journalism that the New York Post decided to run it just because it had already reached a viral tipping point online. They have jumped the shark.
Dictapen
Livescribe is my next Christmas present. Unless I change my mind in the 350 days or so between now and then. It would take all the pain out of lectures. Because you can scribble and draw little bits and pieces – and the whole time it’ll record the sound that’s going on in the background. Sounds useful.
The Dos and Don’ts of Facebook Photo Albums
My friend Steve Tran is a pretty top photographer, bloke, and coffee drinker. He wrote this post about Facebook photo albums that is worth thinking about if you’re the type of person who puts photos on Facebook. Like everything else in the world that’s good – he subscribes to a less is more philosophy of sorts. Read it.
He took this photo of me that I like so much I turned it into the background for my new about.me profile.
Here’s the reciprocal photo I took at the same time…
If Steve wanted to guest blog his photography tips from a presentation he did on our Toowoomba mission earlier this year I reckon that would be pretty worthwhile. Maybe I’ll ask him in this paragraph.
Of Peas and Cues: Why some people need autocue
This video just goes to show that peas and cues matter.
Tagxedo: A shapely Wordle
Steve at Communicate Jesus dug this up. Tagxedo. It makes shaped tag clouds. Beautiful.
Here is a dove shaped cloud from the sermon I preached on the Beatitudes for my “trials for license” in Townsville.
Daily Mail Fail: Interesting flood coverage
When I want to know what’s going on in regional Queensland I turn to that bastion of quality reportage – England’s Daily Mail. Because they have all the bases covered. Reporting not just on Queensland but the separatist state of Capricornia – there will be some in North Queensland who think this is a good thing indeed.
From the Daily Mail, via Findo.
2010 on St. Eutychus
I missed my end of year wrap up yesterday because I was reading a book. Sorry. But here are some facts, figures and highlights from the year that was.
Stats
In 2009, 31,705 Absolute Unique Visitors made 48,733 Visits, making 82,916 Pageviews
In 2010, 31,869 Absolute Unique Visitors made 52,965 Visits, making 83,668 Pageviews.
At the time of writing I have 78 Facebook fans (become a fan – I’m now sharing links to stuff I don’t blog, or that is in my queue, to Facebook fans ahead of time), and 22 Google Connections.
So small increases across the board – but more importantly. No decreases. Hooray.
In 2009 I posted 1,106 posts here on St. Eutychus. In 2010 I managed 1,434. A 29% increase. And some people said being a college student would slow down my blogging. As it was – I used college as an opportunity to create more content.
My favourite college related series and posts from the year.
1. Some language resources (some for Mac, some for typing on a Mac)
2. Reflections on the “Disciplines of a Godly theological student”
3. My guide to First Year Greek
4. The things I love about College
5. The things I’d change about College
6. My Wisdom Literature Essay (part two, three, four, five, six) – my favourite essay of the year.
7. Pre-exam prep: New Testament 101, New Testament 102, Old Testament 101, Old Testament 102, Church History 101, Hebrew 102
8. Greece and Turkey Report(s).
9. Liveblogging Ben Witherington.
10. Liveblogging Gary Millar (one, two, three, four, five)
My favourite useful posts from this year
1. How to write a Media Release to promote your church event
2. How to talk to Atheists about Christianity
3. Awareness Raising is Overrated, (and the prequel – The Facebook Booby Trap, and the sequel about Movember, and a follow up about Social Media)
4. How to not raise bitter ministry children
5. Social Media Strategies for Churches (and a follow up on Venn Theology)
6. How not to be very good at Facebook
7. My election posts – Julia Gillard’s atheism, my Christian values election scorecard, why I won’t vote for Family First, wrap up.
8. Coffee and ministry.
9. Five cheap ways to exegete your suburb.
10. My Five Steps to Better Coffee series
Many of these are the type of thing I hope to post at Venn Theology this year (2011).
My favourite coffee posts this year
1. Seven Deadly Coffee Sins
2. From Cherry to the Cup – a look at processing and roasting coffee: part one, two, three, four, five
3. Brisbane cafe reviews: Dandelion and Driftwood, Cup, BlackStar
4. The sin of Instant Coffee.
5. Coffee and Ministry
6. A coffee gift guide.
7. Science says “don’t freeze your coffee”
8. How to make Greek Coffee.
9. A beautiful guide to coffee drinks
10. My “Five Steps to Better Coffee” Series
My favourite frivolity
But it wasn’t all serious. Here are some of my favourite posts/series from this year.
1. Ten steps to planting a mega church (with a follow-up “how to name your megachurch“)
2. 23 Bacon products that will take your breath away.
3. Mark Driscoll Ruined Facebook.
4. The Devil Wants you Fat (series – that I probably should finish now I have a scanner).
5. Backwards Masking Unmasked (The Jacob Aranza Series)
6. Mad Skillz Week
7. Liveblogging Chuck Norris’ Invasion USA (part 2, part 3, part 4, Robyn’s report).
8. The Make Me A Mexican Challenge
9. About “Hot Wives”
10. About Church Slogans (a bad example).
11. A Guide to Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (part one b, part two, part three)
12. The definitive and authoritative guide to the six basic plot lines
13. A look at “Objective Ministries” crazy Christian conspiracy to take over the moon
14. Reverse engineering the perfect chip
15. The Art of Improvised weaponry
16. K-Strass the Yo-Yo guy
Most popular posts in 2010
Here are the most popular posts (mostly because google loves them) by visits this year. A couple of these were written last year and continue to attract a steady stream of traffic.
1. How to make Sizzler’s Cheese Toast (2009), the 2010 follow up was equally popular
2. Five things that would make atheists seem nicer: this accounted for about a quarter of 2009’s traffic. By itself. Not so much in 2010, but still enough to rank second.
3. Mark Driscoll Ruined Facebook: This one had a bit of a spike in traffic around publication, but continues to get about 10 hits a day.
4. Ten steps to planting a megachurch: This was one of my favourites, so I’m glad it did well.
5. Chuck Norris Jeans: The little engine that could. Google loves this post.
6. How to get the Facebook Like Button working on WordPress: Certainly my geekiest post of the year.
7. Bible Stories for Boys: Ehud the Left Handed
8. Eight things I’ve learned from arguing with atheists online (and why I’ve mostly given up).
9. Let’s not fly Jetstar: a 2009 post about a Jetstar nightmare.
10. Facebook Login Fail: a little post about a funny story about people googling “facebook login” and landing in the wrong place.
Most popular posts from 2010
A slightly different list – because it does away with a couple of “long tail” posts from last year.
1. Mark Driscoll Ruined Facebook
2. Ten steps to planting a megachurch
3. Chuck Norris Jeans
4. How to get the Facebook Like Button working on WordPress
5. Bible Stories for Boys: Ehud the Left Handed
6. Eight things I’ve learned from arguing with atheists online (and why I’ve mostly given up).
7. Facebook Login Fail: a little post about a funny story about people googling “facebook login” and landing in the wrong place.
8. Some Greek and Hebrew Resources
9. How to make Sizzler’s Cheese Toast How to Make Sizzler’s Cheese Toast: The 2010 follow up was equally popular
10. Typographic Moustaches
Thanks for reading.
Font of knowledge: A collection of font resources
Right. More font stuff to clear from my set of open tabs… Hopefully you’ll find these interesting or useful.
Here’s an “anatomy of a typeface” picture to examine so that when you read about fonts you know what’s going on.
It’s from Font.is. You can get it in wallpaper size here.
I tend to stick with Helvetica as a user friendly sans serif for the web, and Georgia for serifed fonts (like on this site – at the moment). But if you want to stand out from the crowd (though arguably a Times derivative and Arial are the fonts of the masses). Then here are some alternative serifs, and sans serifs, for you to consider.
If the idea of matching fonts seems daunting to you – and it should… Because golden rule for graphic design and fonts #1 is don’t mix too many fonts… then you should check out Smashing Magazine’s guide to choosing fonts. It’s a five point list. One of the points is “know your types” – did you know fonts can be described in the following classes:
This little snippet on how to use fancy fonts (like the one in my header on St. Eutychus). The answer: sparingly.
Periodically, there’s a need for a font that oozes with personality, whether that personality is warehouse party, Pad Thai or Santa Claus. And this need brings us into the vast wilderness of Display typefaces, which includes everything from Comic Sans to our candy-cane and bunny fonts. ‘Display’ is just another way of saying ‘do not exceed recommended dosage‘: applied sparingly to headlines, a display font can add a well-needed dash of flavor to a design, but it can quickly wear out its welcome if used too widely.
Good stuff. Keep it on file.
Then find out what font you are using this video quiz. Apparently I am Bifur.
ShadyURL: A non truncating web service to scare people
Got a link you don’t want clicked. Or that you only want clicked by idiots who are more likely to give you their username and password for something?
Shady URL is here to help.
is now
Google’s Guide to the Internet
This is a beautiful website/book designed to introduce people to the internet – Google serves it up when you download Chrome for the first time.
If you want to know about the Internet, or have an old or young relative who keeps pestering you – then you should send them to that link.
BibleCloud
This is cool. While doing a little googling for that last post I came across this. It’s called 66 Clouds.
You can buy posters for each book of the Bible – or a coffee table book. It’s exactly what it looks/sounds like. Word clouds of each book of the Bible, get it on Amazon
Obviously you can make your own with wordle.net. Where you can even tweak the colours. But ’tis nice.
There’s an Internet Law that describes why you people don’t comment…
It’s called the 1% Rule. It has its own wikipedia article. And getting a wikipedia article is more difficult than you might think. So it must be true.
But here:
That explains it.
January 13, 2011