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Quote of the Week:

All solitary dreamers know that they hear differently when they close their eyes.
-Gaston Bachelard

Notes from Notchcode

12.22.2005

Geoluhread

Just what did they call the color orange, before people found oranges?

Check it out:
Before the orange fruit was introduced to the English-speaking world, the colour was referred to (in Old English) as geoluhread, which transliterates into Modern English variously as yellow-red, yellowred, or yellored (all pronounced the same).

posted at 10:30 AM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

12.21.2005

No E-mail = More work done

I had an incredible day today. Got lots of work done on a really neat branding project. Met with my main word-idea co-conspirator over sushi (yes, cliched, I know, but oooh soo tasty...) last night, and we hashed out the "voice" for this particular brand. So today I tried to put some words into that brand's mouth.

My word friend has his idea-ordered Roget's Thesarus, and so I went and bought an interactive version of that, called (not surprisingly) Visual Thesaurus. They offer a web-based and a standalone version (I got the standalone, as it's a bit faster), and was able to get a little word-association thing going. For example, I could input "marvelous", and I get something like this on my screen:
 

 
So, for a guy like me who is a visual thinker, and not really so good with the written word, this is a godsend, straight from Odin himself. They include a lot of options, like including/excluding different classes of words (nouns, adjectives, etc.), and different ways of displaying the found info. Check it out.

The other great thing that allowed me to get work done is I GOT NO E-MAIL ALL DAY. It was astounding. I know, it may make me look like a bit of a digerati loser, but you know what? I was twice as productive today as I would have been if I'd been peppered with e-mail every 15 minutes (I set my e-mail check interval to 15 minutes so I don't obsess too much about it anyhow. I know people who set it to once every two hours, and others who only check it once a day).

posted at 4:49 PM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

12.19.2005

Typography Matters

Today's tip: Typography does matter on the web. Really. A List Apart has a nice summary of why. One thing they mention that I've been telling people for about seven years: SHORT PARAGRAPHS GET READ. Oh, and don't capitalize whole words, much less sentences.

posted at 9:43 PM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

12.15.2005

Money Money

If only american money could look like this.

posted at 9:56 PM Leave your comments here: 1 comments

The Only Good Use for Power Point

...can be found here. David Byrne has made art out of the horrible, nasty, lo-res, faux-formatting-driven Microsoft tool.

I know Power Point is very popular, but people like Byrne show how absurd a tool it really is for greating meaningful content. Ed Tufte has a lot to say about it as well, and has written about how viewing a Power Point presentation actually dumbs-down the information that you're trying to convey in such a way as to obscure the true emphases, meanings, and ideas.

posted at 3:32 PM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

12.12.2005

Book of the week: Designing Brand Identity


Alina Wheeler's book, Designing Brand Identity, is an essential reference for anyone who is contemplating a branding project. Full of a wide variety of examples, and practical processes, this book will make your life easier, and ensure you don't forget even the smallest detail of any brand program.

posted at 2:18 PM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

12.08.2005

new notebook update


Just started using my new Moleskine Reporter's Notebook. I use it like a normal notebook, with the binfing on the left hand side, and not, as Clark Kent does, with the binding at the top.

A few notes: the paper is lightweight, and doesn't take the ink from my Tombow fountain pen as easily as the old journal did. The surface of the paper is smooth, and probably ideal for a rollerball or ballpoint pen, and not a fountain pen. The paper is just to the ivory side of white. And the "large" size, which I bought, comes with 240 pages; about enough for six months' worth of writing, for me.

posted at 5:20 PM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

Lorem Ipsum

Cicero would be happy to know that his "Extremes of Good and Evil" is probably read more in the 21st century than in the -1st, when it was written.

"Wha???", you ask?

Here's a bit of it:


Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Proin arcu felis, tristique sit amet, porttitor a, varius vel, lectus. Integer enim nisl, vestibulum at, egestas in, facilisis condimentum, nibh. Morbi nisi. Sed eget velit eget eros posuere tempor. Phasellus id est vitae nulla sodales pharetra. Vestibulum sapien nulla, gravida vel, vehicula sed, laoreet at, lorem. Aliquam metus tellus, dictum et, aliquam sed, imperdiet et, urna. Morbi sagittis fringilla urna. Nam nunc nisi, sollicitudin quis, auctor sed, aliquet et, odio. Nam ultricies, justo id egestas accumsan, velit quam hendrerit ipsum, pretium accumsan purus lacus et velit.


The "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet" bit is used by designers worldwide who, lacking meaningful content from their clients during the design concept phase of their projects, use this as text filler. This text reads as "real", without having any actual meaning (well, unless you usually read in Latin, in which case, we apologize for confusing you). The reason for using this bit of text, rather than actual text provided by a client, is so the client focuses on the design, and not the words used within it. Take my word for it: clients will often take issue with the content of the text, and comment on it, rather than the design, if we use their words, and not a lorem ipsum passage.

Rest easy, though. Your text will appear on the final version!

If you want to create your own lorem ipsum text (say, as filler for a report to the boss), just go to this wonderful Lorem Ipsum Generator.

posted at 4:59 PM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

12.05.2005

Dealin' With The Archives

Not only is this a great name for a good DJ Greyboy song, but it's what's on my mind today. As digital content creators, we end up with a lot of bits and bytes to store when the job is done. I'm up to 7 CD-ROMs-worth of archives for Notchcode...representing about six years' worth of content created just for you, my clients. Not every CD is full to capacity, but the catalog still reaches over the 40 GigaByte mark. 40GB...that's a lot of potatoes, as they say in the old country.

Well, as I was cataloging the 71st archive CD, I counted up the total stored, and realized "hmmm, forty gigs...I could put that on a hard drive, these days. And then, I could have a fully content-searchable stash of all my archived content."

Now, six years ago, a 40 Gig drive was no small potatoes, cash-wise. People usually didn't plunk that sort of change down unless you needed it for something important, like rendering scratch disk space for example. But now, you cna get a gig for a buck or two, and I've got about three times that sitting in the form of spare hard drives, just laying around the office. So now, this is sounding like a better idea.

And how to search all of this newly online archived data? Well, six years ago, Apple hadn't released Spotlight, their new indexed searching technology (I hear the new Windows release will have something similar, whenever that comes out, har har). But in late 2005, it's everywhere, bundled into the newest operating system, and ready for me to access across the LAN, if I want.

So, I am a happy archiver today. And if you have a spare 40 Gigs laying around, and Spotlight, you can be, too.

posted at 1:50 PM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

12.02.2005

nose to grindstone

Well, when it rains, it pours.

I'm working on three websites, a large branding campaign, consulting, more branding, and a couple of print pieces, too. With all this real work, who has time for these blog things?

Oh, wait, that's what I'm doing. Right. Now.

Here's an update on the notebook situation, though: I think I will stick with the system I've got. It's just so convenient, and it's nice to have quick access to, say, the last few days' worth of notes in chronological order, so I can remember who said what, when.

posted at 9:20 AM Leave your comments here: 0 comments


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