- Bryant is the font that MOO.com use for their logo and headings… It’s really nice. I think they use the alt version with the single looped ‘a’. [Update 18th June, 6.05pm – Thanks to Peter for informing me that they actually use this variant, which now I want even more than ever]
Author: Tom Coates
A very quick microtip that I’ve just discovered since buying my new camera. When I’m taking pictures, I have the camera set to take a number of photos in a row. I do this particularly when there are low light conditions as then hopefully you can grab one shot where someone isn’t moving or your hands aren’t shaking too much from the DTs. The result of this is that when I open up iPhoto I get ten or fifteen versions of any particular shot, most of which are almost identical. I sort through them by hand, comparing them as appropriate and deleting those that are blurry or too dark to use.
However, I have just discovered that deleting something from the Library in iPhoto isn’t like deleting something from the rest of your system or even like deleting songs from iTunes. If you delete a photo it doesn’t get removed when you empty your main trash, nor does it prompt you about whether or not to delete the original file sitting on your computer anywhere. In fact, if iPhoto is keeping your originals, it will even keep a copy of photos you’ve deleted, clogging up your hard disk, pretty much in perpetuity.
The only way to get rid of the originals of photos you’ve deleted (which in my case can be ten or more two to four megabyte files for each photo I actually keep) is to explicitly use iPhotos inbuilt ‘Empty Trash’ feature, concealed nicely under the main iPhoto menu. This is a completely non-standard feature and nicely concealed. As a result it’s almost totally undiscoverable and means that if you’ve used iPhoto for a while you may very well be building up a completely unnecessary clog of large files. In my case when I finally found this feature, iPhoto asked me whether or not I wanted to delete over two thousand items taking up around eight to ten gigabytes of hard disk space. Needless to say, yes.
- To compensate for yesterday, here’s where you get to tell me all about my bad traits… This is nohari – the negative of johari. Everyone was frankly far too easy on me yesterday, so now we get to see the dark stuff…
- Kurt Vonnegut has died aged 84… One of my all-time favourite authors, responsi ble for the creation of probably all-time favourite book Slaughterhouse Five, has died. Gutted.
- The Guardian has a rather better obituary for Kurt Vonnegut
- The Johari window allows other people to describe you and matches that with how you describe yourself… This is my Johari window. Choose some words that you think describe me (don’t be too unpleasant, please) and it’ll help me get a better sense of myself. If I take it seriously. Which I hopefully won’t.
As some of you know, I’m on the advisory board of ORG, the British Open Rights Group which is a non-profit organisation focused on making sure that British people have the right to use technology in reasonable ways and that their traditional rights aren’t compromised by companies using technology in restrictive ways. The organisation acts as a balance to some of the vested interests in business, government and elsewhere. It’s there to try and fight people who would rather compromise your rights to protect out of date business models than they would innovate and change. It’s there to make people aware of the abuses or errors that might result from electronic voting schemes or huge databases of information on UK citizens. It is, generally, a pretty honourable little organisation and a smaller, bottom-up version of the EFF.
But that’s not important right now. The important thing is that they’re having a party for supporters and people who are interested in their activities on Shoreditch High Street in London next Wednesday, and that you should find some way to come along.
There will be ‘public domain’ DJs celebrating the importance of publically owned culture, remixed visuals and free culture goodie bags as well as the appearance of Danny O’Brien, long time NTK nerd, EFF activist and general wit. It’s free to attend, although obviously we’re hoping it’ll result in a few more people signing up to fund ORGs activities.
The event will be at Bar Kick at 127 Shoreditch High Street, London E1 6JE from 6pm until 11pm next Wednesday 11th April. You can find more information and register for the party on the support ORG page which also includes a map and instructions for how to find the venue. Hope to see you there. There’s also a raffle
- EMI songs are to be sold on iTunes without DRM and at a higher bit rate for a bit extra cash… Now this is a significant step in the right direction and I have to confess a surprise! We’re all agreed that DRM is a clumsy and often inadequate experience, but normally it’s been the rights holders forcing it. Stunning news.
- Matt Webb performs his latest opus at ETech 2007… I imagine a form of viral consciousness that finds a sympathic mind on earth, and then seeks to propogate itself through the conference circuit via slides, strategic pauses and enforcing hand gestures…
Tomorrow I’m going to be talking at the Information Architecture Summit in Las Vegas on a panel about Information Architecture beyond the level of the individual site. Myself, Margaret Hanley, Matt Biddulph and Lisa Chan will bet talking about the web of data, building data for reuse and all that kind of thing. You can read more about it in the IA Summit’s description of the panel: Real information architecture ‚Äì new mighty deeds. If you’re around at the event, I hope you’ll consider keeping us company and asking lots of scary questions.
In the meantime, I’m split about 50/50 between immersing myself in the conference and getting lost around Las Vegas with my new camera, the Leica D-LUX 3. I chose it because since I bought my first camphone I’ve been taking pretty terrible quality pictures, but I’ve also felt very little (if any) compulsion to take my IXUS around with me. The difference in quality between the phone and the IXUS just wasn’t significant enough to justify the extra space it would take up in my pocket. The Leica is a whole other story. It’s sufficiently good quality for me to take pictures that are dramatically superior to my phone and sufficiently powerful for me to learn about aperture and focal length and all of that stuff without having to carry around a huge SLR all day.
Which brings me to my photos. Being in Las Vegas is affording me some interesting opportunities to take some interesting shots. Here are some of the pictures I’ve managed to get together so far. You can see moreas usualon my Flickr stream:
Wandering through London the other day with an old friend from University, I stumble upon Savill Row and the main London shop for Gieves & Hawkes. After a couple of seconds parsing the adverts I find myself disoriented and confused. They are extraordinarily weird. They have an ostensible father/son theme, but it’s a strange articulation of it. It’s set in weird environments more appropriate for romantic photography and using many of the same icons – the loosely hanging tie, the power differentials of looking and looked at, a rich evening light. After a while I come to view them as a strangely subversive public gay photonovella. I therefore present the four photos that they had in the window—the only four (this is not a case of selective editing)—under the title, The conquests of a Silver Fox and posit that their clothing is now mostly being marketed at older gay men of phenomenal wealth who are looking to buy gifts for their younger male companions. Or at least I’m contending that this reading is at least equally plausible as the father/son reading and that it may be intentional that both can be supported by the same imagery.
Apologies about the reflections in the glass.
- Qbesq – sort of like a little Spirograph for your personal computron… Fun little Flash widget with very little else to say for it than the fact that it’s highly entertaining and kind of pretty…
- There’s a sort of interesting article on BBC News about Global Warming and Al Gore… I’m a bit puzzled by the responsibility of organisations like the BBC to report on ‘critics’ who disagree with the overwhelming climate change consensus. If it was a gay issue that I felt strongly about, I might feel differently I suppose…
- I’m totally excited about Doctor Who Series Three, and more excited still to hear that there’s going to be a series four… It’s actually terrifying how many people in the UK watch Doctor Who. Pretty much all my peers in the industry and their significant others are bubbling over with excitement and anticipation…
- There’s a fascinating article on BBC News about the world’s longest tunnel being built to bridge the Alps… The villages and towns up in the Alps are both delighted and worried. They’ll get less freight passing through their towns, but also fewer tourists. There may also be a station underground connected to the surface by the world’s longest elevator.
- MacInstruct has some interesting hints and tips about using your Apple iRemote… I’ve talked briefly before about the car alarm like set-up you can pull together using the iRemote. These tutorials also show you how to pair your remote to your computer…
- Twitterholic lists the people who have the most followers, favourites, friends and posts on Twitter Wow. I know all these people. Well most of em, anyway. We need to go outside more.