all of a sudden I feel like Robert Doisneau

I have just bought myself a new digital camera. This is a proper grown up digital camera, the one I had before was the cheapest digital camera you could buy in Argos. I was keen to test out whether I would actually use it, and I certainly did not want to lash out on an expensive model, that would just sit unused on a shelf somewhere. The fact that you could spend anything from £20 to £20,000 on a camera was also pretty scary. What to buy, what is actually the difference between these different models and prices.

Having established that I really, really, did want a digital camera, I used some money I got for my Birthday. A little research on the internet, and I decided to get a Canon Ixus, Argos were doing a deal on the Ixus 950 IS. It was going for half price, though according to the reviews it was certainly well over-priced at full price. I think that Argos are shifting discontinued stock, but it is a good price, for a decent camera. It actually seems to be pretty easy to use, and reasonably intuitive. I hate fiddling about with inscrutable knobs, impenetrable menus, and the like. After only a few days, I am starting to get the hang of this, so it must be pretty easy. It also has a pleasing heft to it. I feels substantial. Less impressed that the battery cover seems unreasonably happy to slide open, particularly as you tend to hold onto the camera there. However that is a minor niggle.

Of course the proof of the worth of the camera is in the photos, and it does seem to take remarkably good photos. I particularly like the zoom option, and the way that it will focus for you. I'll just carry on shooting off a variety of photos, to try and get an idea of how to get the best out of it.

Of course as soon as I got the new digital camera, it was straight onto Flickr to set up an account. There should now be a link on the start page for this site. Nothing much uploaded as yet, and actually nothing yet from my new camera, but I'll get to work with uploading stuff, and taking stuff, and uploading stuff.

All very exciting this photography lark, all of a sudden I feel like Robert Doisneau.

from there to here, and back again

A bit of an odd sort of day, following an odd sort of week, I guess.

I've been playing around with Fontstruct, which is really quite engaging and restful, tinkering about, a letter at a time. My first font, was straphanger, which was a display font which I wrote about last week. I am working on a softer gentler version - which is more legible. I'll call it Commuter. I am also working on a dingbat font, with little people or whatever. The limitations of the tiles, basically mean that rather than deciding what you will draw, you start experimenting, and gradually proceed towards something that you can actually make some sort of representation of, which generally has no relation to your initial intention. Currently only Straphanger is a public font, but I'll make the others public once I get a bit more work done on them. I would love to actually get a Fontstruct pick recommendation. Something to aim for.

Today the weather has been iffy to say the least, so I have been catching up on paperwork, but in a rather halfhearted fashion, as I cannot really be bothered.

Attended a few interesting seminars and meetings during the week, always good to get out and meet folk. Next week there are a few holidays so with good weather, I should be able to make a dent in the weeding next week. I managed to put a pretty severe ding in the blade for the Flymo, so had to order a new blade online. I'm so used to ordering things that you can download, actually having to wait for something that arrives by post, just seems, like incredibly, like slow now. However replacement blade now safely here. However still in the annoying - waiting pile, still to get an external La Cie hard drive fixed. They did indicate that I would get a replacement, but still waiting for the proper details on that. This is a long running saga, I suspect that most people would just have given up by now, but I am feeling stubborn.

I might think of something more sensible to add tomorrow, but for now, this will have to do.

fontstruct - shoutout

After writing about names for imaginary fonts, I have finally had the chance to create one, as per the banner above me. Fontshop, where I indulge my love of fonts, has just released a web-based font creation tool, FONTSTRUCTION. Rather than being vector based, it is tile based, but there is a large and growing selection of tiles available, and after all, constraints are the mother of creativity. Once you have created an account, and logged in, both easy, it is then incredibly easy to play around and create individual letters. There are a variety of character sets available for your font, so it is possible to create something pretty professional. Once finished, you can make your font available to all and sundry, and even download it as a truetype font to your own computer.

HOW COOL IS THAT.

So, I have been distracting myself lately developing my first font, straphanger. Basically, I just started at A, overshot slightly as I was laying it out, but quite liked how it had turned out, so I just carried on with the rest of the alphabet to match. I tried to keep it simple, down to just three tile types. There are a few little flourishes, and some idiosyncracies, so I cannot claim that it is high in legibility. However, hopefully the individual letter shapes are appealing, in particular the upper case ones.

I have taken inspiration from the Operina font, which uses very ornate upper case letters, and high ascenders in the lower case, as well as one of the Rian Hughes fonts, where the upper and lower case are similar, but there is a slight stylistic variation to mark that they are different. One of the appealing things with Operina is that it is nice to look at, but not always very legible, which is not necessarily a bad thing sometimes.

I've published straphanger now so that it is available to all and sundry, though it might well still be a work in progress. There is always a little more tinkering to be done with these things.

Having done one very pixilated font, I should try something a little more mainstream next, or maybe do a dingbats set. Anyway, safe to say, I will be playing with Fontstruct for some time to come.

the burn goes on

After last week, with my incendiary impulses in full flow, I am once again burning things. This week the slightly less fragrant, burning of old chipboard offcuts.

When we moved into this house, I floored the loft, no mere bagatelle this, it was the Sistene Chapel of flooring, but I digress. I seem to recall that there was one piece of chipboard that did not need cutting to length, and I have found a use for some of the offcuts, but this left behind a pile of offcuts about my height. I did of course feel that they might come in handy, and was considering constructing furniture out of glued together chipboard offcuts. However I never got round to it, and I figured that if I was to reclaim any useful space in the loft, then I would need to get rid of some of my precious treasures. So I looked the mountain of chipboard in the eye and decided to get rid of it. All ferried out, and my galvanised burning bin, has duly been fired up, a smokey burn yesterday started it going, and today I have returned to the task. Once established it is not too smokey, which is just as well, as the smoke is boggin'. The burn has been going since ten this morning, and it is not even all that clear that much progress is being made on the pile, however I am resolved to just keep burning the little blighters until they are all gone.

As ever, the reason these little tasks never quite get done is generally that they really are not little tasks at all. This burn could still be going in the wee small hours. Nevertheless my stubborness is starting to kick in, having started on this, I really don't want to be returning to it again. In any event the offcuts are now sitting right in the entrance of the shed, so unless I can get rid of them, I'll never get into my beloved the shed again.

The upside of this chipboard offcut flit and firing, has been that with a little bit of careful rearrangement, I once again have some useful floor space in my loft. While the loft is mainly for storage, it is useful to make use of the space in the middle, where you might almost be able to stand up. Initially I thought that this would be for woodwork, but it now looks more likely that I'll end up with overspill IT equipment up there. It is not unattractive looking, with a couple of comfy chairs, outsize clock, and whitepainted walls! I would like to put in some shelving, so that some of the books that live up there, might be stored a little more usefully.

I'm not sure much else useful has happened this weekend. We had a trip to a couple of garden centres yesterday, and I bought some bamboo at one, and more compost at another.

Also printing off papers for my meeting next week. Also, now that I think about it, my new printer arrived, so I have set that up, put the old one up in the girls room, and put in the new USB hub that I bought the other day. The mail order company I buy my ink cartridges from, were offering a free printer, if you bought a stack of ink cartridges, so I opted for a combined colour inkjet, scanner, copier. It seems okay, not the quickest, but for the price, pretty impressive. Also great to get back to having a scanner, for copying those odds and ends that seem too useful to throw away.

As with the loft, I have tried to rearrange purposefully, so that there is useable working space.

Casting my mind even further back, it was good to get out of the office, down to a board meeting on Monday, which strained my feeble ability to travel to breaking point, although the meeting was interesting and the people were great. At the other end of the week, we had an awayday, which was held in my old university halls of residence. Of course the uninspiring halls that I used to stay in, were demolished, to be replaced with something much more swish. Life has clearly gone all coffee shop for students, not bitter brown and hot, from polystyrene beakers, but milky in a big cup. I particularly like the planting, they have a raised walkway, with huge bamboos down below. By having an area of purely bamboo, with big clumps of different species, it really makes you feel like you are somewhere completely different. Not sure that I could achieve the same effect with my garden, but it is always wonderful to visit places that you really find inspiring. Also while I think about it, I was at an all day seminar in the middle of the week too, so it has been a curious week.

Probably more absent minded than normal, as we are currently basking in the glory that is the long weekend, or in our case, being kippered in the fumes of burning chipboard, so not only is my mind on weekend things, but having an extra day, probably attempting to do things that would not fit into the normal horrifically short weekend.

Anyway, out to chuck another offcut on the fire, ...