Over the weekend, I spent some time updating the CSS (cascading stylesheet) of this blog. There were two main purposes for this: Less and @media queries. […]
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If you have a presence on the web that’s not just Facebook, you ought to go check out the 444-and-counting free font families available at Google Web Fonts. They’re a great way to spruce up the look of your web site for very little work. For example, on this blog I’m now using Oswald for the headers, Droid Serif for the main text, and Inconsolata for the code blocks. (I’ve been using the former two for a few months now, and Mehul prompted me about trying the latter this evening). The headers are very sharp (I really like the condensed look of Oswald, but it’s a shame there’s no italic form – I dislike slanted roman a’s) and the code displayed by Inconsolata is very legible. The Droid Serif body text (what you are reading now) is readable without being tiring. All in all, I think it’s working out very well. […]
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a post about the nefarious phrase “could care less” (The popularity of “could care less” cannot be underestimated) saying it was not worth getting uptight about its use. I must have some very lenient readers because no one took umbrage at this thesis, which kind of made my exhortation at the end a little superfluous. […]
READ MOREA week or so ago, I bought a cheapo remote electronic timer for my Canon Rebel XTi from eBay as a device to play around with creating animations. It was about $15, shipping included, so if it didn’t work or failed miserably, it wasn’t much of a loss. It is, essentially, a knock-off of Canon’s Timer Remote Controller TC-80N3 which, even at B&H, is $136, about ten times more. (Love you and your gear, Canon, but come on.) […]
READ MOREOne of the kinds of art I really enjoy is art that shows off the draughtsmanship of cartographers, especially from the early 1900s or earlier. We have a small collection of framed old maps from places we most closely associate ourselves with: London, Derbyshire, Yorkshire, Normandy, Colorado. Road maps, railway maps, topographic maps. I find them utterly fascinating, tracing in my mind’s eye how the countryside has changed or the urban expanses filled out, squinting to read the names. […]
READ MOREIn 1897 a new bill was submitted to the Indiana General Assembly. It was written by an amateur mathematician called Edwin J. Goodwin whose ability to understand basic mathematics was so poor that he firmly believed that he’d squared the circle. (The proof that it can’t be done was published in 1882 by Lindemann.) The bill was presented as a contribution to education in Indiana and was titled “A bill for an act introducing a new mathematical truth”. The interesting passage is this one: […]
READ MOREHere we go, another grammar article full of the most awful bollocks. 20 Common Grammar Mistakes That (Almost) Everyone Gets Wrong by Jon Gingerich. Go read it, I’ll wait. […]
READ MOREFor your jaunt down memory lane today, I present another calculator from my collection: the Casio ML-81. […]
READ MOREPersonally speaking, I find the usage of “I could care less” instead of “I couldn’t care less” to be a little annoying. I’d even go further: to my ear it sounds illogical: “hey, if you could care less then you must care a bit!” Much merriment and good-natured joshing ensue, ho, ho, ho. But, to be honest, life’s too short to start a grammar war over it. […]
READ MOREFor our wedding anniversary this year we went to the Peak District and stayed at a hotel in Baslow, just north of Chatsworth Park. Of course, since we were so close, we had to go visit the House and grounds. […]
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