Ne-e-e-e-e-erd!

Typography

Posted on by Patrick

I was fid­dling with the Evans site this evening — adding a post about dona­tions, etc — and came across this post, which made ref­er­ence to the wp-Typog­ra­phy plu­g­in. I installed it on the Evans site and had a look.  I must say, I’m impressed.

It allows for hyphen­ation, for one thing; it also han­dles wid­ows and orphans, some­thing that I vague­ly under­stand.  More impres­sive­ly — at least to me — it also han­dles “smart” quotes prop­er­ly.  Smart­ly, in fact.

This is a buga­boo of long stand­ing for me; I find it irri­tat­ing to see con­trac­tions like ’tis start­ing with an open­ing sin­gle quote rather than a prop­er apos­tro­phe.  This plu­g­in seems to solve it.  (If “’tis” is spelled right in this post, it’s thanks to the plugin.)

Pedan­tic? It sure is.  But we all have our pet peeves, & for what­ev­er rea­son, improp­er punc­tu­a­tion is one of mine.  And I’m glad to have stum­bled across a tech­no­log­i­cal solu­tion to the problem.

Update: I see from the notes on the theme I’m using that wp-Typog­ra­phy is in the Rec­om­mend­ed Plu­g­ins list. I thought sound­ed vague­ly familiar…

“Japan’s first robot buddy cop movie”

Posted on by Patrick

There’s a phrase that makes me perk right up and pay atten­tion. I found this on the Inter­net, thanks to Wil Wheaton, and it struck me that whether or not it’s true, the sto­ry is awesome.

And I quote:

Japan’s first robot bud­dy cop movie, a silent film released in 1919, was shown only once, to an assem­bly of wealthy land own­ers in Tokyo. When the film end­ed, the audi­ence demand for afford­able giant robots to work their fields and con­trol the peas­ants was so insis­tent, emper­or Hiro­hi­to had the only copy of the film impound­ed and destroyed to pre­vent the idea from cap­tur­ing the public’s imagination.

Found via Wil Wheaton’s tum­blr. Go ahead, click through. There’s a great pho­to and everything.

Star Trails

Posted on by Patrick

Star Trails

The trails are stut­tery because the clouds rolled in, off and on. But I’m quite enam­oured with the colours that I end­ed up with.  (And here I con­tem­plat­ed doing it up in black and white, to avoid the orange glow of the streetlights.)

Video:

The Evans Theatre

Posted on by Patrick

Part of the “web­mon­key” side of my pro­file:  I’ve been mon­key­ing with the Evans The­atre’s web­site, try­ing to make it look pur­ty and be use­ful. I’d like to think I’m close.

Have a look:  Evans The­atre’s new site

<nerd>It’s a hand-cod­ed Word­Press theme using respon­sive design con­cepts.  Check it out at var­i­ous brows­er widths — the images should (most­ly) scale nice­ly.  If you’ve got an iPhone or some oth­er pock­et brows­er, I’d love to hear comments.</nerd>

So?  Is it pur­ty, or what?

They liked it

Posted on by Patrick

That went well.
As they say, “That went well.”  The Face­book com­ments for my sto­ry “Exit Inter­view” were all very pos­i­tive. (Whew.)

You can click the lit­tle wee screen­shot to see ’em, if you want.

On tap for tonight: Write Club. (Fol­lowed up, almost cer­tain­ly, by a farewell to a cou­ple of our writ­ers, who are going to Guelph* and Chi­na, respectively.)

____
* I think it’s Guelph, anyways.