SOF Observed: Found in Translation
Category: general
Gentium is a free/open license font recommended to me by Nick, who’s something of a font connoisseur. It’s beautiful, particularly when printed out (vs. read onscreen), and it’s the same size as Times New Roman so it’s easy to make the switch.
Victor Gaultney designed Gentium for his Masters of Arts in Typeface Design at the University of Reading. His full explanation (pdf) of the design is thorough and intriguing. He used slightly different base shapes for the lowercase c, e, g, o and q, for example, because our eyes tend to read just the tops of letters, so it’s helpful for them to be distinctive. What’s particularly cool about Gentium is that it supports all the letters and diacritics of the “extended Latin” alphabet (proofs (pdf)), so minority language groups previously stuck using Arial Unicode now have an attractive, free font that can actually be used in print.
Oh my god, yes. This is gorgeous. Particularly useful for Vietnamese, for me. Look at all those diacritics!
(Source: http://scripts.sil.org/Gentium)
I’ve decided to help you more with pronunciation by posting more audio. Hopefully this will help you a bit 🙂
In the past, I’ve written some posts called “Survival phrases” where I’m basically teaching you random, more or less important phrases. So now you actually get to hear the phrases and not only read them 😉
Please read along while listening 🙂 SURVIVAL PHRASES 1
That vacation I had been planning to take in May, I finally took in August. So, 2300 miles later, here’s ten things I learned or observed on the road. 10. Sirius satellite radio. Channels of… read more »
Ten things about traveling
That vacation I had been planning to take in May, I finally took in August. So, 2300 miles later, here’s ten things I learned or observed on the road.
10. Sirius satellite radio. Channels of interested included Outlaw Country and The Coffeehouse. But other than that, I think I’d prefer my own music collection… if only the CD player worked.
9. Upper Peninsula Michigan is a gorgeous, moderate climate to visit in mid to late August. Highs in the 70s. Leave the window open and enjoy the evening lows in the 50s.
8. Indiana, I can’t leave you fast enough. Your rest stop areas are deplorable, unsanitary and unsafe. Your fueling stations are even worse. I don’t think there’s a gear in the automobile that gets me out of Indiana fast enough.
7. Miscalculated the miles per gallon ratio. Next fuel stop in 250 miles.
6. Every bite of Danish Kringle pastry is worth the 813 miles of travel. Now if I can lose the 20 pounds I gained.
5. Illy coffee really is that good. Especially brewed from a stovetop espresso maker.
4. Starbucks has free wi-fi. So does McDonald’s, truck stops and occasionally Perkins.
3. Those four books I placed in my bag and planned to read… didn’t get read. I guess it has something to do with don’t read and drive at the same time.
2. Sometimes visiting a hometown is simply finding that spot on the radio that is as much home as the house you grew up in. So when did my hometown radio station start running strip club radio ads? It’s like coming home to a brothel.
1. Oh, yeah, and that old house I used to call home… it’s now a parking lot.
There was a brief, shiny moment sometime in the early 90s when Barnes & Nobles and Borders were opening on every corner, and at the same time the bubbling dot-coms were luring editorial talent away from print and into digital publishing. Those two factors converged to make life as a Publisher or Acquisitions editor pretty lush for a few years — salaries in the industry went up by over 30% and the enormous competition to sign talent to fill the shelves of all those miles of shelves in those new stores (and that mysterious new thing called Amazon.com too) made way for expense accounts and advance budgets that were unprecedented. That crazy growth, however, was totally unsustainable. Once the dot-com bubble burst, and new stores were no longer coming online, we were left with no new growth, a significant erosion of independent bookstores, consumer trained to expect cheap prices on books, and a overabundance of new “B-level” titles.
High times in publishing! « ConfessionsOfAnITGirl.com (via fluffynotes)
A village split in two
There’s a place where the railroad splits a village in two and still tries to remain whole.
“Acht, neun, zehn” (Eight, nine, ten) is a graphic novel by a young, talented German comic artist called Arne Bellstorf. It was his diploma thesis and he also won an award for it. The story is about this kid Christoph. He doesn’t really get along with his mom, has to repeat his last schoolyear and is kinda lonely. It’s a really nice story and I love the drawings. If you’re into graphic novels, check it out. In German of course 😉
sitzenbleiben (irreg.) = (to) repeat a schoolyear
der Comic (-s) = comic
der Zeichner (“) = graphic artist (-s) / drawer (-s)
She says to me, even Kerouac said that road trips have unexpected turns. He also wrote, “My witness is the empty sky.”
The empty sky and tracks below
She says to me, even Kerouac said that road trips have unexpected turns. He also wrote, “My witness is the empty sky.”
A Midwest downtown on a Sunday afternoon.
Downtown
A Midwest downtown on a Sunday afternoon.
Quote
Eichelman Park
A long time ago I used to work at this place when it was called Atlantis Family Restaurant.
Last night for a few minutes it felt like August 1988. Driving west on Highway 11, a half moon rising to the southwest, a line of red radio tower lights on the horizon to the northwest, the evening… read more »
August 1988
Last night for a few minutes it felt like August 1988. Driving west on Highway 11, a half moon rising to the southwest, a line of red radio tower lights on the horizon to the northwest, the evening star the Greeks named Hesperus straight on to the west and Def Leppard’s hit song “Pour Some Sugar on Me” explodes from the auto’s stereo speakers. For a moment, I’m planning to leave this place and pursue an art degree. And I’m thinking about auditioning for the high school musical. And I’m wondering if… Then the song ends. And it’s not August 1988. And yet here I am again driving west on Highway 11.
Coffeehouse Junkie 
