Watching a cloud move slowly across the summer sky
Blog
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How trees work
Looking out my window at the leaves
that finally came in the last few weeks,
and having played this video game Fortnight
where you build shieldish fortresses,
I can see that my tree building a shield
so it can incubate things along its thick brown branches
behind the green ruse we use, we and our crafty cousins,
to ward off the sun who loves the green
and forgets about us, and forgives the trees -
Coda 2 review
Just bought Coda 2. First impression:
Apple store download took a while. Then I entered into some kind of OSX Lion spaces environment–weird, but maybe it’s because I don’t install stuff from the app store very often.
I opened it, and was prompted to jion the mailing list, which I did. The second checkbox, allowing me to sync with iCloud, was greyed-out, and I couldn’t check it. Weird.
I was prompted to import my transmit favorites. Yay! but I had to allow Coda to access my private credentials for each one. I have like 75 on this machine. So 75 clicks later, I finally imported all my transmit favorites. This could use some work, Panic.
Looking forward to playing with it today! -
On teaching
The best way to teach is to learn with your students.
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Old Count Chocula vs New Count Chocula
I saw a group on facebook devoted to this cereal, and I’ll join, but I hate that Chocula followed the path of most good cereals-over design. Here’s how it works:
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Typography
I’m at the typecon conference and a lot of people are talking about how to teach typography in the education forum.
My take: Tap into the love of typography students had when they first learned how to write. My kids all scribbled and stuff, but the revelation came when they learned how to write their names. Nancy, in particular, writes hers all the time now, and puts curly flourishes on the ends of all the letters.
Kids grow up loving to write letters–but usually not the letters they are forced to write by their teachers. They (the interesting ones, anyway) fill the edges of their notebooks with all kinds of funky letters and words.
My conclusion: every typography class should feature a section on hand-lettering. It could be structured like the kind I learned about in my workshop with Stephen Rapp yesterday, or more informal and experimental, like one I would love to teach. Once students reconnect with the fun of letters that they may have lost long ago, typography has hooked them.
