Fun With Fonts

For those folks who read my blog as an RSS feed,  or those who read it with an older browser (such as Internet Explorer 5.0 or less, Firefox 2.0, Safari 1.0, or others), you won’t notice much of a change, but if you are looking at this page or others with a newer browser, you should be seeing some interesting changes: mainly the fonts for the headlines and body type. How did I do this? I’ve been playing with the typekit service (www.typekit.com – if you don’t see anything yet, it’s because I got an early invitation. They’ll be going live for the general public soon, I think. ), which has started  to post web fonts for those people designing and building web sites, as well as the browsers that can see them, and they’ll be offering a free account with 2 fonts on a single URL. I decided to use the font  ”M+ 1c” for the headlines and “Droid Serif” (which is actually one of the fonts designed for onscreen reading on the Google Android OS) for the body copy.  I probably will need to tweak some other settings and CSS (Comments and a few other items in the content areas are still showing up in Georgia), but overall, I’m intrigued with the prospect of web sites and blogs that use fonts other than the 6 or 7 that we’ve been seeing regularly for the past 10 years or so. I hope this does catch on, as I think it could spur a renaissance in web design. In the meantime, it’s always a thrill to be an early adopter and catch some of this at the beginning.

Blog Vacation is Over

I admit it: I was taking the summer off from blogging. A combination of lots of change in work/life combined with some really great get-out-and-enjoy-the-outdoors weather pushed typing at the computer screen right off the schedule. Until now.

What pushed me back to the blog? Lots of changes in day-to-day life around here:

1. The new CanadaLine, which is essentially a subway (with a bit of it above ground once you get further out – just like the good old Boston T) started service this past Monday (the first day free from 1 till 9). That means, for all intents and purposes, that the city that I know of has instantly grown. Richmond, as well as parts of the city closer to the Fraser river are now just as convenient to get to as Burnaby, the city to the East. Pam and I rode it from the second stop (Granville/City Centre) to the last one (Richmond) – but did not take the spur to the airport. This new transit line also brings Vancouver the distinction of being the first city in Canada to have a transit line that links the downtown to the airport, just like London, Paris, Beijing and other cities not in North America.
2. The harbinger of the end of the summer is around the corner: The PNE. I look forward to this ‘County Fair’ just outside the city (although technically it’s still within the city limits) every year.  This will be our (gasp!) fifth one.
3. A shocking and sad announcement that Workspace, one of the favourite gathering places for the tech community here in Vancouver, will be closing its doors at the end of the week. Workspace was an engaging combination of café, office space for creative technological entrepreneurs, incubator, clubhouse and even a little bit of a Soho gallery (lots of local art on the walls). The floor to ceiling views of Howe Sound and the mountains, the grittiness of the train tracks (and trains passing close by), along with the white paint over a former slaughterhouse all contributed to a unique space that I will miss terribly. Fortunately, as I write this, there is some heartening traffic on Twitter about something to fill this gaping void in the Vancouver technology and social scene. We’ll have to see what comes out of the ashes of that gem of a location that holds many fond memories for me (and I’m sure it does for many others as well).
4. I mentioned changes in work. I don’t usually blog about work on this blog. My philosophy has always been that there was plenty of other things to talk about, and there was always the potential of offending someone or making some other career-limiting move, so why chance it?  That said, I’ve resigned from my position of VP of Creative Solutions at Business Logic (if you want to find out why, I can tell you over a couple of beers), and I’m once again looking for a permanent position, despite the fact that I have a contract at a local Financial Planning company.  I know all too well, when contracts are done, there is often nothing else waiting in the wings, especially during certain months of the year (although I’m pleased that for once, I’m working in August, despite the fact that I’m not an employee anywhere – yet).
5. I’ve also got a backlog of some video and photos to show. The summer of events and people continued with the always entertaining and colourful Gay Pride Parade, Vinocamp (and Cheesecamp), a pleasant Wedding Anniversary picnic at Kits Beach (and thanks to Netchick for the idea). I’ll try and post some pics and video before it’s too ancient. If nothing else, the video of out first trip on the Canadline has some great vertigo-inducing footage looking backward down the tunnel (I couldn’t get anywhere near the front of the car, but the back end was more accessible, hence the backward-looking video).

So, as my father is fond of saying ‘The only thing you can be certain of is change’.  He’s right, and I suppose it makes life more interesting. I have to admit that I’m never a huge fan of change, but I’m getting better at it, and some of these changes haven’t been bad. Just the Workspace loss. Yup, that one just plain sucks.

A Brilliant Idea: Concerto for Nora (the Cat) and Orchestra

Composer and Conductor Mindaugas Piecaitis in Lithuania had an idea. Why not build an orchestral accompaniment around the now-famous YouTube video of Nora the Piano Cat? The result is a brilliant, if sometimes quirky piece of music that gently and playfully interacts with the cat video.

Despite the title ‘CATcerto’, this is actually a sensitive and at times contemplative piece, and shows just what a composer can do, how they can make some interesting compositional choices in response to almost random events, and make sense of it all. As Igor Stravinsky once said: “The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one’s self. And the arbitrariness of the constraint serves only to obtain precision of execution.”

We now live in an Internet-connected world, where digital video, composers and chamber orchestras can all somehow blend into something that’s…well, Art. I’m all for it.

Helen Back (As In, I’ve Been To)

I’m a little bleary-eyed, but I am here, awake, and still able to blog. I believe that I’ve exorcized all of the demons (or daemons for the UNIX folks out there) that were putting in the SPAM in my posts and RSS feeds. I did locate code in my xmlrpc.php file that had a graphic of a spider (in ascii – how old school!) and then a bunch of what looked like Russian. It had everything but ‘From Russia with Love‘ in it. I didn’t keep it around long enough to figure exactly what it was doing, but after several tries at cleaning out, I inevitably had to blow away my WordPress install and reinstall from fresh files. After all of that, reinstalling and reconfiguring plugins, re-entering and updating passwords, and pinging servers,  I finally appear to be back in business, and most of what I had is back (save a few plugins and other niceties).

So, by way of a test, here’s a video I took with the Flip Camera of our second visit to the Night Market in Richmond last night. This evening I had Bánh mì (the incomparable Vietnamese sandwiches of ham, paté and crisp vegetables on crunchy French style baguettes) and Taiwanese deep-fried squid which was absolutely fantastic. Pam had a Green Papaya Salad with shredded beef jerky and a piping hot waffle filled with red bean paste. Too bad the video can’t be smelled or tasted.

This is also a first attempt at using the quick and dirty FlipShare software to make a movie from my short clips, and despite the rather ugly opening titles, I think it actually does a pretty good job.  It’s certainly faster than iMovie, but then again, I didn’t do much but trim a few of the clips. Let’s hear it for raw video, free of spam!

The Massive Technology Show, Fourth Time Around

As I’ve written in earlier postings, I have soft spot in my heart for the annual Massive Tech Expo. I remember learning about it first in Boston, before I moved to Vancouver, and then deciding to have our first exploratory visit to the city coincide with it, back in 2005. Readers of this blog know that it was through this show that I eventually got my first job here, and also met the owner of the condo that we ended up buying. That first Massive was good to us.

This year, I have the somewhat less urgent needs in terms of employment (am working now, even if it is a little sporadic to begin with), and housing (we are still in the same place we got via that first show). The first time I attended it, the conference and show floor occupied the Telus Science World ‘golf ball’ (geodesic dome) at eastern end of False Creek. In the years after that, it grew to take up part of one of the show halls in Canada Place (the big building with white ‘sails’ on the the roof, looking out on the Burrard Inlet), the show’s largest footprint. This year, ‘Massive’ was noticeably less massive, and housed in less fancy digs (partly due to ongoing construction), the UBC Robson Centre, an underground downtown campus that sits smack in the middle of the city, across from the Vancouver Art Gallery, which I’d say is the city’s heart, as well as its living room, pillow-fight/flash mob site, party room and Olympic Count-down clock mantel. Has it shrunk because of the current economy? I’d say that’s a good bet.

I was pleased to run into some friends there: Jonathan Narvey, who covered it well for TechVibes, as well as Jenn Lowther, Kris Krug and Tris Hussey. I also chatted with Chris Breikss at the 6S Marketing booth, and had a photo taken of me with my face turning crimson (I wish I didn’t blush so easily) as I held up my free T-Shirt (for tweeting the fact that I was visiting the 6S Marketing Booth, of course) flanked by 2 pretty girls, with the slogan ‘Show us your tweets!’ on it.

The afternoon (I had to do a work thing in the morning, and hence, didn’t get to the show until around 2), was mainly spent chatting with vendors, exploring the possibilities of some referral programs and potential business opportunities for my company, but it was actually pretty low-key and friendly.  The most stressful moments were when I was interviewed live on the Internet (streaming video) by the folks at Media2o, a video/multimedia production company (the company Tris works for, who produce the local tech TV show “ConnectedLife“). I don’t think I blushed for that, but I can’t be sure, as I didn’t see the feed.

If my usual good luck that involves the Massive show applies, I’ll bet that one of the people I met or talked to or deals I explored will result in something good down the road. It’s only a matter of time.