Mr. Softwarepants

The Broken Record by "Twink" (don't know anything about them) is like "DJ Shadow-does-children's records". Or, actually, kind of like Fish by Mr. Scruff.

I have a Technics SL-BD22 turntable, which works just fine, hooked to a Sony STR-6045 amplifier (think 70s). From there, it's connected to, uh, my PC audio-in via the headphone-out on the amp.

I'd prefer to have something with reasonable line-out, so I'm not cramming signal out the headphone jack, or so I could hook to a component system (the amp has bare-wire clamp outputs in back.

Any recommendations, that aren't too expensive, for amps with phono-in and line-out? (I'm also open to turntable recommendations, but this isn't audiophile country. It's strictly scracthed up thrift store vinyl.)

I've been using a French Press at work for a couple weeks now, and I'm hooked. Mmmm, buttery.

My work alternatives are:
* Brew drip at home and bring it in.
* Get it from Bruggers, along with a morning BLT.
* <redacted>
* Use the single-unit brewer downstairs in the kitchen.

Bringing in from home is actually OK, but I prefer not to shuttle a travel mug back and forth. Trying to open doors while juggling a briefcase, travel mug, and prox-badge is a good way to get coffee on yourself.

Plus using a press at work means having an excuse to try out different coffees. This Kenya AA is pretty good, so far.

Flickr Pool: Notes To NetFlix.

The first tasks I took at work relate to accesibility (mostly readability), usability, and general user interface concerns for the new client-side app. It made sense for me to tackle these since (1) my last project was about 1/3rd UI, and (2) I work on-site, which makes it a lot easier to walk around to users' workstations.

The first, and most basic question is, "What target window size are we designing screens for, anyway?"

I came up with an answer to this, but I also have a configuration recommendation to go along with it.

The standard monitor at work is a 17" LCD with a native resolution of 1280 x 1024. Nearly all non-IT staff have the resolution on the monitor set to what it was when IT brought it downstairs: 1024 x 768.

The monitor scales up the input resolution to fill the screen, which means that every pixel gets smeared into 1.25 pixels horizontally and 1.33 pixels vertically. UI elements are "bigger", but they're also blurrier. And it gets worse!

TrueType fonts can contain "hinting" that tells the type renderer where to put pixels on the screen at various sizes. When you're sending the font out to a laser printer, the exact placement of dots on a curve isn't all that important at 600 dpi. But on screen you only have 1/6th the resolution, about 100dpi, so the placement of individual pixels is important.

When you scale from 1024 x 768 to 1280 x 1024 on an LCD, not only do you turn solid horizontal and vertical lines into blurry lines, but you make the pixels rectangular instead of square. TrueType hinting assumes "actual pixels" and "square pixels". (It would be even worse under Windows XP with ClearType turned on, as the subpixel placement would be completely wrong.)

Going from 1024 to 1280 is a 25% increase horizontally. But... if you change from normal fonts (96 dpi) to large fonts (120 dpi), that's a 25% increase as well.

So my recommendation will be to let people try 1024, 1280, and 1280 with large fonts and see which they like better. And when we move to Windows XP, to show people ClearType options. This will involve IT (or me) sitting with people individually and changing workstation settings, a time consuming process, but one that I think would be worth it if we're taking readability seriously.

Of course, it's entirely possible that most users will have no preference other than "don't change things", but at least I'll have tried to help.

My target design size will be 1024 at normal fonts.

Is there any non-ass typographical convention for turning a function name into a verb? As in, "all values are escape()'d when set".

The official Dot Net logotype is vexing. It's not smallcaps, it's, uh, whatever the opposite is. "Large-lowers". It looks like in print the official rendering is ".NET". Didn't anyone notice that .NET doesn't flow well in a sentence?

I'm thinking about a style guide for my other site, so now I have to decide between writing .NET like Microsoft does or .Net which looks better (if still dorky.)

I'm not sure which of these fills me with more shame:

1) I used BitTorrent for the first time.

2) I realized that a track on FSOL ISDN samples the servos in ED209's feet as it's trying to walk down stairs.

Lileks mentions the Moonbeam. I have one sitting on my (now empty) bookcase right now. Except mine has a brown face, is vintage, and also doesn't work. I should take it to a clock shop some day and have it fixed.