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The speakers are good, but it is hard to sit still for hours at a time. I like workshops much better.

So I spent the night getting the basics down of wordpress theme customization and as I figured it is easy, but there were a few hurdles. It was definitely easier than Drupal, and I think this will be my focus of study for a while…

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.

In the upper-right cornerof the screenare some little circlesarranged in a gridthey are different colors—maroon, sky-blue, tan  They remind meof circles I sawwhen I was very youngvery tactileI could almost taste them

So I started swimming. Last night I went 3000 yards in an hour. Not bad for being out of it for a year.
I’ve always loved swimming on a certain level. There’s no impact, just a “plodding along” type of thing. People hate it because it’s boring compared to running or biking. There’s nothing to look at, nothing to discover. I like it for those reasons. With running or biking, you’re always kind of wondering how you’re getting home. You keep your eye out for dogs, potholes, cars… In swimming, there’s none of that. There’s just you and the 25 yards/18 strokes/6 breaths till you get to the other end.
When I was swimming a lot, I guess I was around 12 or so, I did long course at  the local university. The pool was enormous. I remember having visions of the most beautiful lettering, it was green and blue and kept shifting from one word to another. I must have been really oxygen depleted because it was definitely an extraordinary experience.

I see a singularity in media, and it comes in the form of a special combo visor/glove.

Parts of visor can be activated, or it can completely take over your visual space. It acts as your phone, home theater, gaming system, tv screen, etc. This way the visor can enhance the real world or replace it entirely. It’s interface is managed by the glove, with endless combinations of finger movements. Audio is transmitted through the visor’s earpieces.

I can’t see us going in any other direction. When people talk about mobile media, I get a little queasy thinking about the tiny screens. I think about David Lynch’s iPhone rant. I imagine the sore neck/eyes/back/hand I’ll have from staring at a tiny thing in my hand. I also think about wireless data charges running wild, $1000 monthly bills for all the news, video, music, and movies I’ve watched, but that’s another issue I guess…

Anyways, here’s a sketch with my idea for how this all works:

anyway I’m sure it’s been thought of so I can’t wait for my visor!

When I was very young, I spent a lot of time at the Steins house:
View Larger Map Around the corner was a kid named Chucky. He was a little younger than Matt Stein and me, so we pushed him around. He was really weird. I don’t think his parents lived in that house; I think it was his grandparents or his uncle/aunt. There were lots of weird things about his house. First of all, we never went there through the front door. We always got there through the back, from Steins. It always seemed like we went through a forest to get there. The uncle/aunt/granparents never really knew if we were there or not, and they’d sometimes get mad at us when we popped up. A few things about Chucky’s house:

• There was a garage in the back that we used as a club house.
• We had a fight with the club from W. Milton St. I was in both clubs.
• Chucky had some “land” in front of the garage, basically a 6’x5′ plot. He said his U/A/G gave it to him. He tried to grow shit on his land, we dug it up and he got mad.
• Chucky’s UAGs were eccentric. They made a helium balloon in the house (not hydrogen, “it’s highly flammable!”). They taught me how to play chess. They had all kinds of knick-knacks, I think there was tons of war memorabilia.
• Chucky had a little sister who bore the brunt of lots of teasing.
• Chucky had very long, black hair but white skin. He looked like a vampire.

“Let’s go to Chucky’s!!”