glyphobet • глыфобет • γλυφοβετ » blurb

Who’s more popular, The Rani or Borusa?

glyphobet — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 04:29:22 +0000

This visualization of Doctor Who villains since 1963 will tell you:

Move over, U+20A8

glyphobet — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 03:36:47 +0000

India unveils a new symbol for the Rupee.

Dan Ariely on online dating

glyphobet — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 05:03:47 +0000

Interesting interview with the economist Dan Ariely on why online dating is so unsatisfying:

Online dating is becoming the poster child for a class of problems that software / the web is really, really bad at solving.

No clue about type design

glyphobet — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 04:46:59 +0000

Bruno Maag doesn’t pull his punches in this interview about Aktiv, his Helvetica-killer:

…Max Miedinger [Helvetica’s designer] didn’t have a clue about type design. He was the salesman at [foundry] Haas’sche Schriftgießerei for Christ’s sake.

Ouch.

Giant toy robots and donuts

glyphobet — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 18:13:11 +0000

Eric Joyner paints retro-looking toy robots and donuts exclusively, like Too Many Choices II from 2008:

A day of MUNI

glyphobet — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 05:55:06 +0000

Red is less than 19 MPH.

Comic Sans brings it

glyphobet — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 00:00:15 +0000

What an arrogant bunch of vectors…. (Via httf)

And speaking of tinfoil hats…

glyphobet — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 19:47:27 +0000

Magnetically Induced Hallucinations Explain Ball Lightning, Say Physicists. And if UFOs are actually ball lightning, then does the X-Files ultimately owe its popularity to lightning storms?

Fuchsia, baige [sic], puke, butter yellow, pistachio…

glyphobet — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 23:10:21 +0000

In a fascinating bit of amateur lexical analysis, Stephen Von Worley created this color strata image, using data collected from XKCD’s Color Survey:

Sadly, pistachio, a hue that’s notoriously difficult to pin down, is nowhere to be found. Spencer Finch will be disappointed.

If anyone’s interested in the actual linguistics behind color names, Berlin & Kay’s Basic Color Terms (Amazon link) is the seminal work, although I’m pretty sure they didn’t discover color names like baige [sic], puke, or butter yellow.

Nine years of sleep

glyphobet — Sat, 08 May 2010 22:37:46 +0000

This infographic of one person’s sleep patterns over nine years is fascinating:

Just because it’s lost doesn’t mean it can’t be stolen

glyphobet — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 06:40:50 +0000

When normal people find something left behind, in a place of business (like a bar), that someone will likely want to have back (like an iPhone), they leave it with someone who works there (like the bartender). Then, the person who left it behind has a way to check if anyone has returned it. Taking it is stealing.

Gizmodo probably suspected that the prototype iPhone they bought was stolen. By now, they’ve made back the purchase price in page views, with a healthy return on top to help cover legal fees.

And if you think any of this will hurt the new iPhone’s sales, I have a bridg^H^H^H^H^Hphone to sell you.

Cultivated play or cultivated players?

glyphobet — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 00:11:32 +0000

I’m not sure how much I buy it, but this scathing critique of Farmville is a must read.

Union Jack Cube and Trapped Outside

glyphobet — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 00:59:28 +0000

Finally received prints of my two new rapid-prototyped 3-d sculptures: a revised version of Trapped Outside:

And a three-dimensional, assemble-it-yourself version of the Union Jack Cube:

Safari ain’t a fixie

glyphobet — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 19:54:17 +0000

Very clever parody of web browsers as transportation technology:

But Safari as a fixed-gear? Really? At least make it a 24-speed with a carbon-fiber frame or something.

Ten more ways

glyphobet — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 20:01:15 +0000

Following his hilarious Ten Ways to Wreck Your Database, Josh Berkus outlines ten ways to destroy your open-source community. When I started at BitTorrent back in 2005, it had long been guilty of 3, 4, 5, 8, 9 and 10, and it never recovered.