Results tagged “muse” from muse

I have been up to something else ever since I became more and more into web programming (think my last post hints at this, no?). Admittedly, I never really got very far at programming software, but my ganas has shifted onto something else and I don't think I will be calling myself a graphic designer anymore.

A list of things I have done over this week, while having the midterm exams every morning. By the way, it's stupid seeing people dress up for exams. But yeah at least there weren't any PJs.

• MacPorts and the software available through it. It's so awesome I can't help consider switching to Ubuntu.
• Computer networking related stuff, such utilizing MITM options of ettercap, nice uh?
• Bought a hand-bound notebook that has handmade paper. Writing on it feels special!
• My moleskin notebook is now in red.
• I use violet ink, get that!

During the past week I have been developing a website for my school's photography club. It's a blog-like photo gallery thats supports multiple authors, I also implemented author registration for the sake of convenience.

After looking at MovableType (and its plugins), TYPO3 (and its extensions), ExpressionEngine, and WordPress, I decided to go with Symphony. The main reason I chose Symphony is because of its extremely user-friendly and minimalistic backend interface. So people who are not-so-good-at-computers won't get totally confused. Believe me, there are people who don't know how to post a photo in WordPress; user-friendliness is important.

However, I have never had any experience with XSL or XSLT, so I spent half of the development time learnig XSLT. But it is easy to learn since it doesn't really have complicated functions and whatnot. BTW, I know Symphony beta 2.0 is out but since I don't have the time to constantly maintain the website I used 1.7.

Here is a list of functions I added/modified, in addition to the default ones.

• Homepage as an index of photos
• Categories of photos
• Featured photo
• Pagination
• Author Registration

Started by off by adding Custom Fields(CF) and pages. I was a bit confused with Data Sources and Utilities at the beginning and wasted some time (didn't read any documentation but who reads them anyway?). Applied my limited knowledge of XSLT when editing pages and utilities. Eventually I added new controllers to work with pages. It took me some time to realize that Utilities must associate with Data Source to work, and Controllers pull data from Elements, which you can choose which ones to include.

This page is extremely helpful, and also search in the overture forum when you have problems, searching in Google is not really helpful.

A quick one. Photoshop, 3DS Max.

Coffee is good.

"Sleeping is overrated."

:-)

Monticello: History of a Typeface By Charles Creesy
Project M: T H I N K   W R O N G
Oddhero prints Typography related prints (see below) and beautifully designed t-shirts

OmniWeb just released an upgrade to 5.8. I was hoping for them to resolve the issue of Gmail picture attachments, but obviously they did not.

This has been bothering me for quite some time, I don't get why it is so hard for the developers to fix this compatibility issue with Gmail — such an awesome and popular email service!

Last week there was a rather problematic issue when I tried to clone the display to two monitors. The display card, unfortunately, is ATI X600, a rather outdated piece IMHO but I could do nothing about it.

The goal was to clone the display to a TV, which Windows XP refuses to recognize as monitor, if XP ever recognized it at all (it didn't show up in the hardware list).

At first I didn't install ATI Catalyst Control Center, only fooled around with XP display settings. I discovered that it works with another standard monitor, but I could only extend the desktop onto it. And the TV just kept showing "no signal". Then I installed ATI Catalyst Control Center and tried to clone the display to TV, but even the Control Center didn't recognize the TV, while it recognizes a standard monitor.

The final solution, or workaround:

• Connect to TWO standard monitors, make sure the Control Center recognizes both.
• Set the display to CLONE MODE. Apply settings.
• Simply unplug one of the two monitors and plug in the TV. TV should be showing the same thing as the monitor.

Later I found out that if you restart, even with the TV plugged in, the Control Center will not recognize the TV. So every time you restart you have to go through above 3 steps again. But logging off is OK.

An update on Openor, my first serif font.

在美国，星巴克已经成为又一家快餐连锁店。宣布关闭600间分店的举动可以看成是拒绝快餐化，但无法掩盖的是一杯星巴克的卡布奇诺实质上不过是一堆脂肪和加了咖啡因的糖水还有牛奶，典型的美国标准迎合典型的美国人对于快餐和每日清早一杯咖啡的需求，外挂一副无辜的"饮料"外表让人以为其热量并非恐怖。可以肯定是星巴克的拿铁中牛奶所占比例绝非"标准"，无怪我当初享用完冻拿铁后腹部翻江倒海，日后光临星巴克除黑咖啡外其余均从菜单上删除。Tom Mullaney 在芝加哥论坛报上感叹星巴克在1990年代的辉煌一去不复返，这看来全是 Howard Schultz 的错。

星巴克几乎可以在美国任何一家机场找到，然而，那种店只是一个柜台，旁边一个巨大的玻璃柜塞满各式各样的点心，全然一副快餐店的景象，可惜的是连快餐店理应有的坐椅都找不到，更何况沙发。

中国的星巴克是咖啡馆，找一个角落在沙发里窝居上几个钟头，附加免费wifi。哦，美国的星巴克也有wifi，不过要求T-Mobile账号外带昂贵的价钱标签。

考虑到星巴克在不同国家的发展意图，我现在终于明白为什么中国没有罐装的星巴克咖啡。Doubleshot, Doubleshot Light, Iced Coffee 等一齐消失得精光，连影子都不见。
当星巴克原本的意图在它的发源地无法实现的情况下，或许在其它国家还有一线希望。当然，在美国经济不景气的现在，5美金只为一杯咖啡似乎太随意了。

DestroyFlickr

其实很简单， in-genia 早就发布了英文版的集成包， 只需要运行一个安装程序， mysql 和 php 以及 typo3 就都安装在本地电脑上了。下载链接在 这里 。最新的版本在最底部(德国人的奇怪思维)。

软件主要是通过MAMP来运行的， 该软件还包括一个简单的widget， 可以控制mysql服务器的运行以及打开主程序界面 (一个网页而已)。 php可以选择 php4 或 php5。

TypeCon Poster Gallery Call for Entries. This year's TypeCon is in Buffalo, New York.

Frutiger serif, Adrian Frutiger's 80th birthday, via designer-daily.com.

NYTimes Modern Love college essay contest second place: Instant Message, Instant Girlfriend.

Geek is chic, a geek blog for girls: geeksugar.com.

A collection of unexpected photography: FILE Magazine.

Melbourne-based graphic design studio: The Co-Op.

Barcelona-based graphic design studio: Albert Folch Studio.

接着讨论中国两千年人口变化图

A collection of funny, and sometimes true, sayings in the form of "Language X is essentially language Y under conditions Z". Link

English is essentially a bizarre dialect of Chinese, pronounced
entirely in the first tone. —John Cowan

Cat is essentially Dog spoken while chasing a piece of string. —jmallett

One thing about sanserif letters is that they seem fairly easy to construct, and require minimum effort to modify. However during the process of designing capitals for Veronica I quickly discovered that the above claim is not true.

The low contrast of sanserif letters only created more problems, the most obvious one being congestion, and not to mention the change in proportions. I found that modern sanserif typefaces rarely use classical proportions, except for geometric sanserif.


I consider modern sanserif typefaces mostly as "squarish", for example Unit, Neo Sans, Tabular and Klavika. They are modern, but seem to me a bit colourless due to their mono-proportion, especially Klavika, which I consider more like a display typeface, like Infinity(see the image at left). Soho gothic is also squarish and modern, no less appealing than any other sanserif I mentioned earlier.

Geometric sanserif seems easier to design because of their simplicity in proportions, you could almost calculate mathematically how wide a letter should be, and the amazing device "Plaque Découpée Universelle" for constructing mono-width lettering, which I found to be a great idea for programming.


The pursue of "simplest form", or the essence of letters should not end with sanserif; we are  living in a "modern" era, in which minimalism is making everyone stupid. One may conclude that when sanserif first came out, the name grotesque is actually an appropriate name.

Eurostile was originally designed by Italian type designer Aldo Novarese, released in 1962. Eurostile Next is designed by Akira Kobayashi, Linotype's Type Director. The redesign of Eurostile "contains a rethinking of the fonts' accents and special characters", and found the following images very interesting.
I like the detached cedilla very much, it's a great step towards the minimalism of modernity. The change in angle is doubtful, I think that would give Eurostile Next more readability, but in setting text? I don't think so.

There is a very inspiring poem by architect Moshe Safdie on TED.

He who seeks truth shall find beauty
He who seeks beauty shall find vanity

He who seeks order shall find gratification
He who seeks gratification shall be disappointed

He who considers himself a servant of his fellow beings shall find the joy of self expression
He who seeks self expression shall fall into the pit of arrogance

Arrogance is incompatible with nature
Through nature the nature of the universe and the nature of man we shall seek truth
If we seek truth we shall find beauty

-- Moshe Safdie

"muse"--an astray dump of the many things I enjoy doing.

Theme and site design by Marika.

My other profiles:

"ITC Garamond looks like a typeface with bell bottoms. All the proportions are wrong - when it bends down, you can see its butt cheeks."
------Erik Spiekermann

via link

The opentype typeface Libertine has a beautifully drawn capital eszett: link. The form is based on Andreas Stötzner's proposal (Signa Nr.9).