Quotulatiousness

May 18, 2011

If you take typography seriously, you will surely go mad

Filed under: Humour, Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 15:51

Frequent commenter Lickmuffin sent in this link with the subject line “This is amusing AND SPOT ON!”.

This is freaking me out today. You see, I hardly look at my calendar date on the iPhone. But today I did. I looked at that pixel-perfect, beautiful Retina screen and this problem got instantly into my eye, like a white hot scalpel pinching through my retina until it reached the back of my skull.

See what I mean? Can you see IT? The 1 is off center. Instead of being optically centered, it’s geometrically centered. So it just looks wrong. Really, what happened there, Steve? Where did all that love for typography and attention to detail go? Out the fucking window of your silver Merc, that’s where.

Perhaps this is some kind of cruel April Fools joke from Cupertino. Maybe they are all at the office, hahahing at their clever joke. OK. I don’t find it fucking funny, but I understand your desire to torture your users.

But rather than leaving it there, whimpering, Lickmuffin was suddenly seized with a typographical fit:

Well, the “all phones have it wrong” answer might be correct. [Name] sent me the Gizmodo link through Skype, and I went on and on about why the 1 is off:

[2:10:58 PM] Lickmuffin: The 1 is off centre because they are centering on the width of the entire character — that serif off to the left with no serif on the right of the 1 makes the whole character appear off-center.

[2:13:46 PM] Lickmuffin: The “wrong” version 1 has about 44 pixels on either side of it, measured on the left from the edge of the white box to the serif, and on the right from the edge of the white box to the body of the 1. I say “about” because how you measure depends on whether or not you include the aliasing in the character.

[2:14:26 PM] Lickmuffin: In the “wrong” illustration, the 1 is off-center — it measures 41 pixels from the white box border on the left, and 49 pixels from the white box border on the right.

[2:15:56 PM] Lickmuffin: What the author is complaining about is common — graphical apps tend to base centering on overall character width. For example, when I create callouts in an illustration that have a number in a circle, simply centering the number in the circle will not always look right: the 1 is usually off, especially with sans-serif fonts. The graphics apps center on the width of the 1 as an object, not on the “visual center” of the character that would make it look right.

[2:18:49 PM] Lickmuffin: There are ways to fix this — fonts can carry information called “metrics” that help align fonts when they are placed together. Most often, metrics are used to adjust side-by-side spacing of characters by nudging characters closer together when they fit together. For example: WA Here the app (or the font) would nudge the W and A together. In the case of the 1, metrics could tell apps to center the character on an imaginary centre line, rather than on the actual centre line determined by the character’s width.

[2:19:01 PM] Lickmuffin: Fonts are F A S C I N A T I N G !

Yes, I know that the dongle on the “1” is not a serif — it’s actually part of the “stroke” of the letter. But you know what I mean.

Humph.

After his collapse, I understand that Lickmuffin is now lying down quietly in a darkened room with no visible letters or numbers. Perhaps he will recover, in time.

New iPhone app for Prince Edward County wineries

Filed under: Cancon, Technology, Wine — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:24

There’s a new iPhone application devoted to the up-and-coming wineries in Ontario’s Prince Edward County. WineTour is in the Apple app store now (although I’m at a client site today, so I won’t be able to download it until tonight).

Touring the wineries of Prince Edward County? Plan your trip with WineTour, and find your way around the area with ease. We’ve collected all of the details you need to get the most out of your visit — so you’ll know what’s on, where the nearest wineries are, and what hours they’re open.

Most of the information in WineTour is available without the need for an internet connection, so iPod Touch owners, or those with an iPhone or iPad who don’t have a data plan will find it a valuable companion while travelling.

WineTour features continuously updated open / closed status information to help you see which wineries are open now, which are closing soon, and which are “by appointment”. It also includes the contact info for each winery so you can easily call, email or visit their website for more information.

China facing recession?

Filed under: China, Economics — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 12:03

At risk of setting my hobby horse to full gallop, reports like this one are starting to sound a few mild alarms about the real state of China’s economy. But accepting official Chinese government statistics like this isn’t going to help:

The Chinese central bank has responded to overheating in its economy by raising interest rates four times since October 2010. Inflation has subsequently cooled, slowing to 5.3 percent in April, but the economy is still roaring with a 9.7 percent increase in gross domestic product for the first quarter.

The rate moves have raised questions about whether the government is going too far to slow things down, and whether the country can accomplish its desired transition from an export-driven economy to growth based more on internal consumption.

As I’ve said several times before, you can’t trust these kinds of numbers because they’re not independently generated from reliable data. They’re numbers that range from kinda-sorta in the same ballpark as reality all the way out to the lower stratosphere. The people providing the numbers are subject to rather more risk than just losing their jobs if they displease the government. Honesty is not a virtue when your life may depend on providing the “right” answer.

As Monty puts it:

I’ll keep hammering this point as long as I’m able: The Chinese “economic miracle” is mostly a sham. The Chinese are awash in cheap Western money, essentially, and when that money dries up (which it is doing right now), the Chinese don’t have much of a domestic market to fall back on. Plus, in case anyone forgot, they’re still run by Communists who don’t really believe in that whole “capitalism” thing.

I’ve ridden this hobby horse many times before. I don’t doubt that I’ll be riding it many times again in the future.

Neil Davenport: The cognitive dissonance of “SlutWalk”

Filed under: Cancon — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 07:35

It’s possible to feel a bit sorry for Michael Sanguinetti, whose anachronistic, ill-advised, yet well-intended caution to female students at Osgoode Hall in Toronto triggered the SlutWalk phenomenon. By phrasing his advice in such a retrogressive way, he became the poster boy for all that women perceive as being wrong with the criminal justice system’s approach to solving the problem of violence against women.

However, as Neil Davenport points out, the reaction seems to be directed at the legal system and attitudes of thirty years ago, not the system of today:

The legal system, at least officially, now takes any accusation of sexual assault against women very seriously. It’s ironic that SlutWalk is supposedly exposing the ineffectiveness of a legal system at a time of high-profile sexual assault charges made against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange and IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn. More than ever, law enforcers in Britain and the US are likelier to act on an accusation of assault, even if the alleged crime took place years previously.

Faced with such a gap between feminist thinking and how society actually views violence against women, the anger expressed by SlutWalk protestors and cheerleading feminists rings a bit hollow. Although the protestors are aiming to avoid being victimised on the basis of what they wear, their offence taken at one police officer’s comments suggests a willingness to claim the mantle of victimhood for themselves. In this case, women are victims of a patriarchal state that doesn’t take violence against them seriously, even though the evidence suggests that the state is all too keen to monitor and regulate any type of contact between men and women. Feminists used to have many issues on which to express genuine grievance on the unequal treatment of women in society: equal pay and employment rights, abortion rights and so on. But since many of these issues have been resolved, more or less, there seems to be an on-going search for examples of oppression to facilitate the elevation of women to the exalted status of victimhood.

It’s perhaps not helped that the frothy issue of sexual identity is at the heart of the SlutWalk debacle. Some feminists argue that the protestors are feeding into a wider ‘raunch culture’ that is having a debilitating impact on young women. The sexualisation of society, the argument goes, is pressurising more young women to make themselves available to men in order to be accepted. SlutWalk is simply buying into the old madonna/whore duality that was often cited as an example of women’s inferior status in society. Again, though, this ignores how far society’s attitudes towards sex and women have changed. Women’s greater independence in society and the depoliticisation of marriage and the nuclear family have all helped transform attitudes towards women and sex.

Wendy Kaminer: University students are “unlearning liberty”

Filed under: Education, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 07:18

Wendy Kaminer looks at the disturbing trend in universities that shows female students seeing themselves as helpless and in desperate need of protection from (and active suppression of) the free speech rights of others.

I don’t know the ages of Obama’s OCR appointees, but they seem to be operating under the influence of the repressive disregard for civil liberty that began taking over American campuses nearly 20 years ago. As FIRE president Greg Lukianoff remarks, students have been ‘unlearning liberty’. Concern about social equality and the unexamined belief that it requires legal protections for the feelings of presumptively vulnerable or disadvantaged students who are considered incapable of protecting themselves has generated not just obliviousness to liberty but a palpable hostility to it.

Sad to say, but feminism helped lead the assault on civil liberty and now seems practically subsumed by it. Decades ago, when Catherine MacKinnon, Andrea Dworkin and their followers began equating pornography with rape (literally) and calling it a civil-rights violation, groups of free-speech feminists fought back, in print, at conferences, and in state legislatures, with some success. We won some battles (and free-speech advocates in general can take solace in the Supreme Court’s recent decision upholding the right to engage in offensive speech on public property and public affairs). But all things considered (notably the generations of students unlearning liberty), we seem to be losing the war, especially among progressives.

This is not simply a loss for liberty on campus and the right to indulge in what’s condemned as verbal harassment or bullying, broadly defined. It’s a loss of political freedom: the theories of censoring offensive or hurtful speech that are used to prosecute alleged student harassers are used to foment opposition to the right to burn a flag or a copy of the Koran or build a Muslim community centre near Ground Zero. The disregard for liberty that the Obama administration displays in its approach to sexual harassment and bullying is consistent with its disregard for liberty, and the presumption of innocence, in the Bush/Obama war on terror. Of course, the restriction of puerile, sexist speech on campus is an inconvenience compared to the indefinite detention or showtrials of people suspected of terrorism, sometimes on the basis of unreviewed or unreviewable evidence. But underlying trivial and tragic deprivations of liberty, the authoritarian impulse is the same.

Reminder: check state law before videotaping the police

Filed under: Law, Liberty, Media — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 00:02

Clive sent me this Wendy McElroy post from last year, but it’s still (mostly) valid today:

In response to a flood of Facebook and YouTube videos that depict police abuse, a new trend in law enforcement is gaining popularity. In at least three states, it is now illegal to record any on-duty police officer.

Even if the encounter involves you and may be necessary to your defense, and even if the recording is on a public street where no expectation of privacy exists.

The legal justification for arresting the “shooter” rests on existing wiretapping or eavesdropping laws, with statutes against obstructing law enforcement sometimes cited. Illinois, Massachusetts, and Maryland are among the 12 states in which all parties must consent for a recording to be legal unless, as with TV news crews, it is obvious to all that recording is underway. Since the police do not consent, the camera-wielder can be arrested. Most all-party-consent states also include an exception for recording in public places where “no expectation of privacy exists” (Illinois does not) but in practice this exception is not being recognized.

It shouldn’t need to be said that the police and the courts who’ve backed the police on this issue are wrong. But they appear to be running scared, at least in a few states:

Carlos Miller at the Photography Is Not A Crime website offers an explanation: “For the second time in less than a month, a police officer was convicted from evidence obtained from a videotape. The first officer to be convicted was New York City Police Officer Patrick Pogan, who would never have stood trial had it not been for a video posted on Youtube showing him body slamming a bicyclist before charging him with assault on an officer. The second officer to be convicted was Ottawa Hills (Ohio) Police Officer Thomas White, who shot a motorcyclist in the back after a traffic stop, permanently paralyzing the 24-year-old man.”

When the police act as though cameras were the equivalent of guns pointed at them, there is a sense in which they are correct. Cameras have become the most effective weapon that ordinary people have to protect against and to expose police abuse. And the police want it to stop.

Powered by WordPress