makeshiftmind

I saw Transformers yesterday, and now I’m wigging out. Seriously, I felt like a little kid again. And not in the way that adults think of kids. You know that sad sinking feeling you get when you pop in a favorite childhood movie only to realize that twenty-something years has turned it into something depressingly less spectacular than you remember? I felt the exact opposite. I was re-living the awe that a five your old boy experiences when his Autobot heroes kick serious Decepticon ass. And I do believe my eyes welled up with tears every time Optimus Prime moralized the situation. Prime is a hero with clarity — he sees no fuzzy gray area between good and evil. His task is conceptually simple — defeat Megatron and save the innocent. And this is precisely how children see the world. As we grow older, we learn that things are often not that simple; that issues are more complex and involve laborious scrutiny. But complex issues often break down into collections of simple issues, and when you understand all the simple issues involved, that complex beast becomes just another Megatron to pummel. Thank you for reinforcing that Prime — may children in every generation hear of your greatness.

I now have a profile on Facebook. But fear not, I will still be posting here for all my adoring fans.

Here is a very interesting article on the origins of the “Arial” typeface. I’ve picked out a few interesting paragraphs below.

“There were two kinds of PostScript fonts: Type 1 and Type 3. Type 1 fonts included “hints” that improved the quality of output dramatically over Type 3 fonts. Adobe provided information on making Type 3 fonts, but kept the secrets of the superior Type 1 font technology to itself. If you wanted Type 1 fonts, Adobe was the only source. Anyone else who wanted to make or sell fonts had to settle for the inferior Type 3 format. Adobe wanted the high end of the market all to itself.

By 1989, a number of companies were hard at work trying to crack the Type 1 format or devise alternatives. Apple and Microsoft signed a cross-licensing agreement to create an alternative to Adobe’s technology. While Microsoft worked on TrueImage, a page description language, Apple developed the TrueType format. TrueType was a more open format and was compatible with—but not dependent on—PostScript. This effectively forced Adobe’s hand, causing them to release the secrets of the Type 1 format to save themselves from irrelevancy.”

[hmm… opening up a format to sink your competitors… sounds a little bit like open source]

“When Microsoft made TrueType the standard font format for Windows 3.1, they opted to go with Arial rather than Helvetica, probably because it was cheaper and they knew most people wouldn’t know (or even care about) the difference. Apple also standardized on TrueType at the same time, but went with Helvetica, not Arial, and paid Linotype’s license fee. Of course, Windows 3.1 was a big hit. Thus, Arial is now everywhere, a side effect of Windows’ success, born out of the desire to avoid paying license fees.”

[so the great licensing giant skimps on licensing fees, eh]