A simple, wonderful word:
Pleasure in another's happiness.
I discovered this word listening to Something Rhymes with Purple. It’s a podcast about words and language hosted by the utterly fabulous Susie Dent and the ever-entertaining Gyles Brandreth. (It’s hurple by the way.)
Many of us are often in situations where we need to speak to a non-native speaker of our language. For me the opposite is even more frequent – I speak passable Japanese for most situations, but I’m certainly not native, not even highly proficient.
In those situations, I’m doing my best to keep up my end of the conversational bargain to communicate to the best of my ability. Nonetheless, I must also place a burden on the listener. I hope that they will work with me to find meaning when I forget a word, use the wrong word or pronounce it with the wrong stress. Fortunately for me, I gave found that an overwhelming number of people do. They’re even polite enough to go along when I’ve misunderstood and responded in an unexpected way.
There are people who fall outside that category, which is unfortunate for us both. Nothing will get me more nervous and mealy-mouthed than the dead look in someone’s eyes as I attempt to make conversation. As the article suggests, they may be able to overcome this by practising. For people in the areas where I live in work, however, they’re not afforded many opportunities to do so.
What may be remarkable, then, is that so many people are good listeners. For them, I am thankful.
The famed Hoefler&Co have a new modern web site. It looks good, but there’s a lot more to it than that.
The individual typeface pages have been made much more useful. An overview page displays a wide array of specimens featuring multiple weights, sizes and lengths of text.
Even better, though, are the ‘How to Use’ pages (like this one for Sentinel). All sorts of advice is given, like what font sizes fit each weight, how to create emphasis and texture, and how to use any special characters in the fonts.
There are also better tools for choosing a typeface. The ‘Fonts’ menu guides the user to collections based on style, proportion, sizes and uses. This really helps to narrow down your selection before getting started, and getting overwhelmed with options.
One of the finest touches to the new site is the new ‘Meet Hoefler&Co’ page. There they celebrate that their company is made up of people. Notably, the biographies for the typeface designers reveal some of the faces they’ve worked on. After some of the unpleasantness of the past, this is nice to see.
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog – perhaps the most famous of all pangrams. They’re sentences which use every letter of the alphabet at least once. In English many of these tend to use some of the same words frequently (vex in particular comes to mind). There’s still plenty of creativity to be found if you forego the ‘perfect’ pangram and use some letters more than once.
Some of my favourites:
Don’t miss: Richard Rutter saved a huge list pangrams in English and other languages after they were deleted from Wikipedia.
The area known as Oharaimachi extends from near Uji Bridge at Ise Shrine’s Naikū (the Inner Shrine) in the city of Ise, Mie Prefecture. The heart of this area is Okage-yokochō, a recreation of the Ise-ji road as it might have been during the Edo period (1603–1868) and the Meiji era (1868–1912).
I’m lucky enough to live a short walk away from this area. A summer doesn’t really feel complete until I’ve had the Akafuku mochi shaved ice, which is relentlessly cold and sweet, but balanced by the warm tea served with it.
The main attraction of the area is the Grand Ise Shrine, whose grounds are resplendent with green. This and the low mountains in the area are what cemented my desire to live here. Years later I’m still captivated by them every day.
The internet has been incandescent today with the news of Panic’s new handheld gaming system.
My own excitement – and I am very excited about it – comes from the feeling I get looking at the device. The colour alone shouts joy. Joy for gaming and for designing interesting and beautiful hardware to play games on.
Secondly, the crank. It at first smacks of silliness, and then I think back to how silly the idea of swinging a Wiimote around sounded. The innovation it allowed is what made the platform so successful. I don’t know that a crank is quite at the level of responsive motion control, but I have no doubt it will open interesting new interactions. Then you realise it is silly and bound to be fun.
Also: At least one of the initial library of games is by Keita Takahashi, creator of Katamari Damacy, which I love irrationally.
A couple weeks ago, Brent Simmons reminisced about small directory web sites for web communities. His gave the example of ScriptWeb, and wanting something like it for iOS. (The solution to that problem is Rose’s Automation Orchard as he later noted.)
Today another such community site was born upon the internet, Mac Open Web:
A collection of open and indie Mac, iOS, and web apps that help promote the open web.
It’s a fantastic idea and taking Brent’s advice, its creator, Brian Warren, has put the project on GitHub so that others can contribute to it.
Isn’t the Internet wonderful.
OmniFocus has long had the ability to drop projects that are no longer part of your system. Dropping is like deleting, except that the item stays around in the database, should you ever want to find it again. More likely, you may just want to keep a record of not only what you chose to do, but things you chose not to do.
Starting in OmniFocus 3.4 for Mac and 3.3 for iOS, actions will gain the same ability to be dropped. You can sign up to help test the feature.
Flexbox Froggy is an interactive tool, ostensibly a game, designed to help you learn how to use CSS Flexbox.
The Flexulator tool I’ve linked to before deals with the flex and grow properties of Flexbox. Froggy on the other hand concentrates on positioning using justification, alignment, wrapping and order.
The twenty-four exercises provide a controlled and increasingly-difficult sandbox in which to learn. I might not call them fun, but they were a helpful challenge.
Reporters sans frontières have produced their 2019 index of press freedom:
The RSF Index, which evaluates the state of journalism in 180 countries and territories every year, shows that an intense climate of fear has been triggered — one that is prejudicial to a safe reporting environment. The hostility towards journalists expressed by political leaders in many countries has incited increasingly serious and frequent acts of violence that have fuelled an unprecedented level of fear and danger for journalists.
Along with their evaluations, they produce rankings for the 180 countries. Those two numbers provide a quick understanding of where your, or another’s, country lies on the spectrum of press freedom.
For a visual understanding, RSF produce a colour-coded world map. The range is from white to black – better to worse – with yellows, oranges and red between.
Japan ranks at number 67. This is better than many other Asian nations, but this remains worrying, to say the very least:
Journalists have been complaining of a climate of mistrust toward them ever since Shinzo Abe became prime minister again in 2012. The system of “kisha clubs” (reporters’ clubs) continues to discriminate against freelancers and foreign reporters.
Matej Latin, author of Better Web Typography for a Better Web, has started a blog. It is probably no surprise that its focus is to be web typography.
His first post is about fluid web typography, something I’m still struggling with. I attempted to deal with it better in the latest redesign, completed last month. I wouldn’t call my solution complete, but it works acceptably given this is just a personal site.
As the Wikipedia page for ‘synonym’ notes:
The word poecilonym is a rare synonym of the word synonym. It is not entered in most major dictionaries and is a curiosity or piece of trivia for being an autological word because of its meta quality as a synonym of synonym.
Words, particularly ones like this, delight me to no end.
(Via The Morning News.)
We know just how vital journalists are to the fabric of our society and how stretched their resources can be. Journalists often put their reputations and their lives on the line to report stories. This means that they are often targets for doxxing, harassment, hacking, and other security nightmares. …
This is why we offer 1Password for Journalism, which is a 1Password membership for reporters that is completely free.
1Password is a fantastic tool for anyone’s defence on the internet. I can see journalists also using it for secure data storage, too. (Though I have no idea how journalists work, so they may use more appropriate solutions.)
I missed this when it was actually Press Freedom Day, but nonetheless, it’s a kind gesture by Agile Bits.
(Via Jeff Perry.)
In 1997, Larry Tesler and Chris Espinosa of Apple gave a lecture called ‘Origins of the Apple human interface’. Fortunately the talk was recorded and recently the Computer History Museum, where the lecture was delivered, have uploaded it to YouTube.
The first part, presented by Tesler, is about the Lisa. He presents memos and shares anecdotes revealing how the Lisa’s interface was designed. What struck me was how many of the ideas they worked through have persisted to today. Espinosa’s second part is shorter and focuses more on the Apple II and Macintosh.
Unbelievably, Riccardo Mori transcribed the two hour-long video. This entry links to that transcription, which also features excellent commentary and highlights from Mori himself. He also provides some additional screenshots of the Lisa.
(Via Michael Tsai, who also shares what he found notable in the talk.)
Jason Del Rey put together this oral history of how Amazon Prime came to be and evolved into what we think of today.
This is the story of how the greatest retail innovation of the internet age was created, in the face of sound logic and reason that suggested it might very well be disastrous. It’s also a story of how a frankly bland idea — fast shipping — was powerful enough to alter consumer psychology forever. …
The story is told by the rank-and-file employees and the top company executives who built Prime.
Prime shipping in Japan operates differently as even free shipping often takes only one or two days. Instead, being a Prime subscriber allows you to choose your delivery date and time when you order. Even this is somewhat less useful as the couriers are very accommodating and generally allow you to choose your delivery time in advance.
Despite offering video services here in Japan, I still think of Prime as a shipping service primarily. Though English content is widely available, it is all subtitled in Japanese, and can’t be disabled. They’re distracting so I avoid them at all costs.
Given my lukewarm feelings for the service, I didn’t expect to enjoy this article as much as I did. I think I enjoyed seeing how they were able to make it work and how the gambles they undertook ultimately paid off.
Jeff Johnson comes to our collective rescue once more:
Have you ever been annoyed that Safari on macOS 10.14 Mojave wants to open Apple News articles in News app instead of in Safari? Well no more!
I am fortunate enough to not be bothered with these links too often. I haven’t found any value in Apple News and this ensures I never have to encounter it unwillingly.
I’ve written about what I think makes ‘The Curious Cases of Rutherford and Fry’ a special podcast. In short, it has the feeling of an independently-produced podcast, despite being a highly-produced radio programme.
The first and last episodes in this latest series have been two of my favourites. The first, The Mesmerist is especially fun when you know the presenters well. They investigate hypnosis and in the process undergo the procedure to hilarious results. The final episode, Jurassic Squawk, is not only about dinosaurs (cool) but features one of the best Curio of the Week awardees.
The programme generally takes two to three months off for production between series. As Dr Fry will be delivering a baby in the coming weeks, their hiatus will be prolonged. The next series should begin in October, which means now is a great time to get caught up.
Owen Earl has lovingly re-drawn three classic typefaces: Bodoni, Clarendon and Futura. The former are aptly titled Bodoni* and Besley* after their creators. Jost* was formerly known as Renner* but had to be renamed to avoid copyright conflicts.
All three typefaces feel true to their origins, but they’re not just reproductions of the old typefaces. Mr Earl goes to great lengths to add features like additional weights and extended character support. In the case of Besley*, because there are no original Clarendon italics, he had to draw his own. For Bodoni*, he has produced seven optical weights (so far) so the type looks right no matter what size it’s used at.
The fonts are licensed under the SIL Open Font License meaning they are entirely free for any use. Fortunately Earl not only accepts payment, but encourages users to pay, but only what it’s worth to them. Doing so is not just generous, but also pragmatic – it must be very difficult to compete against the big type foundries. One hopes that the generosity he shows will be reciprocated by users and help to garner clients in future.
The iA Writer support site is, to no one’s surprise, full of information about using their app. What did surprise me is that an entire section is on the subject of ‘How to Write’, in four parts.
The first part is on Using Parts of Speech to Improve Your Writing. This is in part marketing for an iA Writer feature – but it’s still full of great advice.
The last three sections are republished essays:
It’s delightful that iA offer these as part of their ‘support package’. They believe that part of using the software effectively is by writing effectively. I admire that. However, they – justly – caution:
Remember: reading How-To tips will not make you a better at anything. Exercise does. The most efficient way to improve your writing skills is to write daily.
I love this song.
Joe Coscarelli has a video interview with the song’s producer, songwriter and Lizzo herself. Watching it, it’s clear that all three had just as much fun making the song as we do listening to it.
‘Juice’ is imminently danceable. I’ve been playing it during Friday afternoon boogie with the children at school for the past few months. It may not be ‘Macarena’, but no one asks to skip over ‘Juice’.
The entire album, ‘Cuz I Love You’, is great. Lizzo’s voice is wonderful to listen to.
Don’t Miss: ‘Juice’ music video