2013 — 31 December: Tuesday
Is it my imagination, or is it getting slightly lighter slightly earlier these days?
I was sent...
... a strange tale — of font-based shenanigans1 involving the river Thames — that appeared in the "Economist" magazine, to which I once subscribed for a year in hopes that it would get a single financial (or other) prediction correct. I must have been mad. Anyway, source and snippet:
Between August 1916 and January 1917 Cobden-Sanderson, a printer and bookbinder, dropped more than a tonne of metal printing type from the west side of [Hammersmith] bridge. He made around 170 trips in all from his bindery beside the pub, a distance of about half a mile, and always after dusk. At the start he hurled whole pages of type into the river; later he threw it like bird seed from his pockets. Then he found a small wooden box with a sliding lid, for which he made a handle out of tape — perfect for sprinkling the pieces into the water, and not too suspicious to bystanders.
As one who spent (wasted?) a considerable number of hours laboriously trying to turn a Letraset (who remembers Letraset2 these days, heh?) sample of data70 (which I first spotted used in Kubrick's "2001") into an Acorn RISC OS format font over two decades ago3 I can sympathise with the efforts of Robert Green obsessively resurrecting the Doves type, though (it seems) a crafty Swede yclept Torbjörn Olsson may have beaten him to it. Odd that the Economist feature reproduces exactly the same sample block, is it not? (Link.)
I definitely need to get out more. Into the kitchen, for starters. [Pause] What glorious weather... for ducks.
A quick trip out to the tip while the rain seemed to be easing a little. Then it will be a good time to think about a bite of lunch.
I had somehow...
... failed to spot the late Richard Matheson's screenwriting credit on one of today's trio of final deliveries (thanks, Mr bedraggled Postie) for 2013:
... let alone noted his passing earlier this year. I'm forced to conclude that I didn't read Ansible quite as carefully as I usually manage to. I was probably distracted either by the summer heat or perhaps by the Californian court confirming Americans' inalienable right to read werewolf erotica in prison.
Precisely two years since I tried this particular trick:
That was talking to a server in New York. Here's the same test, but performed within the UK, talking to a server up in Lancashire:
I see the idiots...
... are out and about in force this evening. The people who like noisy fireworks, that is. Not for me, thanks all the same. I much prefer my peace and quiet.