Month: October 2008

From one of the flight sim message boards I read (yes, yes, I know…), a link to this gallery of work by photographer Jessica Ambats. Gorgeous stuff, particularly in the dawn and dusk light. Personal favourites include the resplendent Grumman Mallard amphibian, and the portrait of author and pilot Richard Bach. Unfortunately it’s a Flash gallery, so I can’t link directly to those pictures.

This morning, a complaint:

Only two entries in what seems like weeks, and both for geeks. I can hardly bring myself to switch on the computer in the morning knowing that it will be a screenful of disappointment when I click on The Daily Grind. Students are suffering, shows are badly directed, my child thinks “Oh bugger” is what you say when you turn on the computer…
— Thanks, Patrick.

[Oh, and don’t miss the action stream thing here, which has my Twitter and other updates from around the web, compiled into a neat little microblog.]

I’ve groused in the past about how Final Cut’s font handling is broken, only allowing you to select its choice of typefaces, and screwing up weights for OpenType fonts, amongst others.

Here’s a solution: some hacked-up titling tools that allow you to type the full font name of your choice. It’s a work-around, really, but anything that allows me to lob a quick caption up in a font I actually choose, rather than one FCP picks for me, is welcome.

Also see Andy’s Basic Text plugin.

(via FreshDV)

I’d be hopeless in an American prison: I’d eat the unit of currency.

(via Kottke)

Today: the BBC News site. Front page, no less.

Of course, once you’ve seen one article pointing out how ubiquitous Trajan is, you’ve seen them all.

Flossie’s way of asking, from the other room, if I’d like some tea, was to send me this:

It’s a wordle composition of some of my posts here that feature the word ‘tea.’ Apparently, I mention tea rather a lot.

This is, I think, exactly what YouTube was built for.

Interesting and thoughtful article at El Reg about some odd attitudes appearing around the government’s new Council for Child Internet Safety.

I need to read up around all this, and actually read the Byron review. Thus far I’ve only dipped into the deluge, but I’ve an unexpected observation already: everything I’ve seen makes the assumption that children are consumers first, with their value as contributors a distant second if it’s considered at all.

This worries me even more than nonsense about premoderating content.

See also: Tim Davies. I’d point you to the UKCCIS website too, but as far as Google can tell, there isn’t one. Read into that what you will.

It’s unusually good tea, this.

I’ve never understood that. I use the same tea supply, day in, day out. The same water, from the same tap. I’m reasonably ritualistic about the process, warming the pot (pottery, not metal), two bags, sloshing in water at a running boil, and all that. The milk is very carefully quality-controlled, doubtless. I aim for a regular shade of old-fashioned warehouse-worker’s coat beige. Same small set of mugs from which I make a daily selection (current favourites: SF:MOMA and Bernard Shaw Penguin)

Yet, some days my tea is subtly more pleasing than others.

It’s hard to define. It’s the difference between ‘Mmm, tea’ and ‘Ooh, tea’. I’ve never managed to work out the details.

More experimentation required.