"All computer geeks tend to fall in love with typography at some point in their careers"

We tend to be font nerds around the Fortress. Heidi as a Graphic Designer, of course, is paid to be a font nerd. I just come by mine for no good reason.

There's some real truth in the quote in the title - there's something about typography that really appeals to Computer Programmers where they live. Personally, I think it's in part because typography is arguably a mess of really complex algorithms - the kind that programmers think are really fun to untangle. That, and the fact that programmers also tend to be book nerds as well, and it doesn't take much of a book problem before you start to really notice how books are put together.

In any case, the star exhibit of this particular post is an article from CodingHorror from a year and a half ago (which would have gone on the blog then - if it had existed then,) - Typography: Where Engineers and Designers Meet. The article is inspired by the 40th anniversary of Helvetica, and is a pretty fascinating breakdown of Helvetica and computer fonts. However, as usual for Codign Horror entries, the real meat are the links. If you only follow one, be sure to read Mark Simonson's "The Scourge of Arial", a fantastic primer on the shady past of Arial, everyone's favorite least favorite font. Also a must read is linked to on that same page, "How to Spot Arial," which blew my mind the first time I read it.

Luis jr, back from beyond

In December of 2007, my favorite restaurant of all time - Luis Jr's - closed its doors, the building it was renting from having been bought by the Church of Scientology for conversion to some kind of Xenu observation platform.

The rumor was that they had to pay Luis Jr a significant amount of money to get them to leave their lease early.

I struck up a conversation with Luis Jr himself on the restaurant's last day, and he said they were expecting to reopen in a new location "soon."

A year and a half slowly rolled by.

And then - this.

Hiking past the Sutter Square Galleria at 2901 K Street, we find this sign gleaming at us through the window.

According to their answering machine, they're targeting an august '09 opening.

Thank goodness. The long dark may be over.

graphjam!

Good lord, how have I never heard of GraphJam.com until just now?

The basics: it's a website full of funny charts.  The catch: REALLY funny charts.Some examples:

Charting the Things That we Talk About.

Locations of Tupperware Lids.

The Acceptablity of Popped Collars.

Preferences re: Cake Vs. Death.

Things that Follow "Stop".

Things We'll Need.

Freaky Occurances charted by Day of Week.

Relative Level of Compatability with MacBooks.

Bono.

KISS's weekly calendar.

Breakdown of Things Happening to Alanis.

Things I May Say To Myself.

Amount I'll be Watching You Vs. Time of Day.

Things I'm Too Sexy For.

A breakdown of Sir Mix-a-Lot's Tastes.

Current Location of "It".

The best Venn Diagram I've Ever Seen.

Except for THIS ONE.

Another Link roll-call

Either the internet has really been cooking the last few days, or I'm more easily amused than normal:

Via the usual set of BoingBoing links:

• Retro-future designs are way too cool.
• GM's Stop Motion proto-lego people explain how the economy works in 1939, at exactly the wrong level of detail.
• Jesse Ventura claims that given a waterboard and an hour of time, he could make Dick Cheney confess to the Sharon Tate murders. (As a side note, how did we end up in a place where we need a former wrestler known as "the body" to provide moral commentary on torture?)

Also:

This comic strip sums up my entire lifestyle.
And this gentleman walks the thin line between Genius and Paralyzed.

Finally: It's MEGA SHARK VS. GIANT OCTOPUS.

Well, this might get interesting.

Well, they found a bunch of damage to the Space Shuttle.  It'll probably all turn out okay, but let's keep our fingers crossed.

Warren Ellis does a great job of summing up one of the big side issues here: namely, the Shuttle actually isn't sophisticated enough to get from the Hubble to the Space Station.  Ouch.

Star Trek: Capsule Review

Liked it. A lot.

Stealing a line from Wil Wheaton, if all reboots were done this well, geeks wouldn't respond to reboots with the venom that they do.

For an old-school "lapsed catholic" Trekkie like myself, it was really a kick to see Trek given an actual A-List treatment (and budget).

My only real complaint about the movie was that it has, possibly, the worst astrophysics of any science fiction movie I've ever seen.

Also, it needed a Wil Wheaton cameo.

Coming Attractions - some history

As previously discussed in this space, one of my all time favorite websites, Corona's Coming Attractions, has risen from the grave.

After the excitement wore off, some "wait, what happened there?" googling turned up a pair of articles from Hollywood Elsewhere that lays out the story.

Complexity - it's complex

Steve Yegge writes a truly excellent post on how things that only look a little tricky can actually be borderline impossibly complex.  One of the examples he uses is legalizing marijuana, where he points out that just "making it legal" is actually a huge list of "well, what about..." type questions that no one ever has an answer to.

The point is that complex systems (like the legal system, or a computer system)  are just that - complex.

Much ink has been spilled the last 50 years about the differences between "engineers" and "suits".  I think the main difference, and the one that matters most of the time, is that the "engineers" have been trained to intuit this list of follow-up questions more or less right away.  The "Suits" haven't.

D&D4 Test Drive

There's room for all kinds of analysis here, but I'm going to hold off on that until I come up with some.

The short version then, is that Hasbro has put the D&D4 quick start rules and the first adventure module they did up on their website as a free download.  I suspect this means that sales aren't quite what they were hoping for.

Its not a bad module, a little generic, but I don't (totally) regret having bought it for actual money last summer.

Worth a look, however, is the demo version of the character builder.  That's an impressive piece of software.

Links Spring Cleaning

Star Wars Meets McGyver!

Penn & Teller on the Neuroscience of Magic.

What with the auction of Neverland Ranch, someone went and took pictures of some the best stuff.  Man, MJ is one crazy, crazy dude.

Holy crap, someone wrote an interpreter for the old Sierra AGI engine - IN JAVASCRIPT.  Wanna play Space Quest I in a browser?

Sure, my iPhone and Hipster PDA are cool and all, but I really think I'm going to have to start carrying some Field Notes around.