Finite Jest

Get your motor runnin'/Head out on the Clearview Hwy

So I’m designing a map to print out, and I want to make larger Interstate icons to label the roads. You know, the shield in red white and blue. I grab that image and wipe out the current road number, and as I go to insert the correct interstate number I recall a story earlier this year about a new font that was designed for roadway signs. It’s called Clearview Hwy, and the research and work that went into its design is quite impressive.

So I do a search, pop over to that site, and see that you have to buy the font. Fine, I’m a dabbler not a designer and mostly I download free fonts but I have on occasion paid a few bucks. Then I click Buy. Yowza.

Never bought a real commercial font before, and I think I can safely say I never will. Did you know typefaces cost hundreds of dollars?

Pumpernickel? I don't even know her... nickel?

Just read an intriguing post about a local bread-making class. I’ve been interested in bread-making but only tried once. Coincidentally, perhaps, I made pumpernickel and was always pleased to tell everyone that it is really just rye bread with cocoa to make it dark. Well, the Wikipedia article there will tell you that this is merely American pumpernickel, and that Old World pumpernickel is not colored but just cooked longer to darken.

There’s also a bit about etymology in both links. Sounds spurious to me, when you pull words from other languages as roots for current words, but the references do date back to the 1700s.

O, my pumpernickel was, in a word, horrendous. It was insanely dense, and not in a good way.

Reasons I Think I Like Peter King

Peter King, sports (and particularly NFL) writer extraordinaire, comes to the rescue again.

The best thing that happened to Sirius NFL Radio this off-season was Peter King joining the morning show twice a week. I always switch over at 8am to see if he’ll be on, because he is not only more informed than average, he’s less bombastic than most of the hosts and also less dogmatic. Sure, some issues (like spygate or visiting Iraq) become his personal dogma and he can go on a bit, but the fact is he will debate and question the regular hosts in ways and on topics that aren’t usually challenged.

Believe it or not his weekly column, Monday Morning QuarterBack (MMQB) — which can balloon to 7 rambling pages during the season, is not my favorite. He has great access and decent insight, but I couldn’t care less about his Starbucks addiction or his weekly travel incidents, and the format of listing random thoughts in bullet lists seems pretty lazy.

But he’s really good on the radio. And today he led off the show with a fantastic bashing of one of the regular hosts who made a terrible assertion the day before. Randy Cross responded to a caller that the Steelers were by far the class of the AFC North and would win 12 or 13 games in 2008. A couple months ago everyone was loving the Browns and picking them, and now the pendulum has swung back. Peter set everyone straight and eliminated the rhetoric by calling it a “flat footed race” between Cleveland and Pittsburgh, and 10 or 11 wins will take the division. I couldn’t agree more.

The Browns are clearly in ascendancy, and while some of it might be flukey (Derek Anderson?), some of it is quite real (the O line). This off-season some serious free-agent pickups showed that they will improve on the D line this year or next. And I happen to feel a lot of players, now fresh into starting roles, are going to be fine in the defensive backfield (Eric Wright, Brandon McDonald, Sean Jones). Yes, we’re still woefully thin there but D line improvement will also help.

In PA they could be a team in decline. Part of this is wishful thinking but I can make a case. Everyone acknowledged far too many sacks and poor line performance last year. I believe when Polamalu was out for a stretch of 3 or 4 games their defense had a lot of problems and they clearly weren’t as strong. What does everyone like? Fast Willie Parker, Najeh Davenport, and Vernon Haynes seems a pretty potent run offense — performance declined when Parker was injured but I don’t think it’s a weakness. They also have a top 10 receiver in Ward and a pretty great #2 in Santonio Holmes than many believe will emerge this year. So what were their biggest acquisitions? Mewelde Moore and Rasheed Mendenhall at RB and Limas Sweed at WR. They lost their best lineman (guard Alan Faneca) and marginally improved their center (Hartwig).

So they haven’t improved areas of weakness. We have.

I still give them a slight nod for what they’ve shown on the field and we have yet to, but there’s no reason to think only the Steelers can play. And as for 12 or 13 wins, Randy Cross clearly had not examined strength of schedule. Many times you can discount strength of schedule, but I don’t think that’s the case here. The two divisions the AFC North plays are expected to be tough. The NFC East is perennially strong and deep, and usually three could be playoff caliber (NYG, WAS, DAL, PHI). The AFC South has one great team (IND), two that battle to make the playoffs regularly (JAX, TEN), and one everyone thinks was better last year and should improve this year (HOU). Pittsburgh also gets to play the Patriots and the Chargers (the Browns get the Bills and Broncos).

Again, the Brownies have every chance to win the division, in my opinion. And hardly any chance at all to take a wildcard.

Even for this blog...

E Dub Classique

I subscribe to one magazine. My fiancée subscribes to Harper’s, Scientific American, and Newsweek. I get Entertainment Weekly. Go ahead and judge.

EW arrived yesterday and after a couple of G&Ts we scanned and debated their latest feature — EW New Classics. I’m not sure what they held themselves to, but I feel they broke the #1 rule of defining “classics” — they allowed works from the last 10 years. You simply don’t have cultural perspective to know what is going to hold up and what is going to seem dated. Since they’re looking for new classics, they cap the time range at 25 years ago.

There’s plenty to argue about in the movie list, but overall I think they’re on firm ground. The other categories we examined just got more and more ridiculous. For Tv, they have such disparate shows as Oprah, Survivor, The BBC Office, and the Simpsons. I think they should’ve limited themselves to individual seasons so that this even makes sense. This list also highlights an issue that recurs in all lists — they give a little to much credence to massive popularity. Baywatch is on the list at 50, ahead of Deadwood, Oz, and NewsRadio. I’ll admit to never having seen an episode (I didn’t want to sully my memories of Michael Knight) but I can’t imagine anyone seriously comparing those. And it’s not just because it’s a soap — I’m OK with Dawson and 90210 making it (speaking of nighttime soaps, no Dallas? They appear to only include shows that debuted within the 25 years, which is a bit silly).

After Tv, things really go to hell because criticism of books and music is so scattered anyway. One glance and you’ll see Radiohead’s latest album, In Rainbows, is #10. Seriously? Kanye gets #4, while the Pixies don’t show up until 58 and the Police at 94. Maybe I’m an old fart but in terms of long term listenability, c’mon. Born In the USA is #75 — QED.

So, go check out the movie list, you’ll see some interesting choices (Pulp Fiction, Die Hard, Crumb up high) and some head scratchers (does anyone own an Ed Wood DVD? Do they ever watch it?). The other lists, probably just give a miss. If you’re like me it’ll get your angina up.

Big Blues

I got an email today at 1:50pm. IBM’s Websphere Commerce platform, which I support all over my company’s clients, had a small glitch. They had an “End Date” on a “Shipping Arrangement”, and that end date was last night at 11pm.

If you still had this default date in your DB your site kept running but gave errors whenever someone tried to add an item to their shopping cart. That error was “Out Of Stock”, which was wholly inaccurate and less than unhelpful, in terms of troubleshooting. There was an error in the log about not being able to find the “fufillment center” [sic].

IBM sent out an email 15hours later in case your site has been unable to accept orders for that long.

My monitoring woke me up around 4am telling me it had been a suspicious amount of time without an order, and I spent hours looking at inventory, db and app server conditions, and finally engaged my DBA who had done some work over the weekend. She tracked it down and we got it fixed, well before IBM thought to alert anyone, I guess.

The fix IBM sent? Enter a new date: 2018-06-22, 23:00. This way in ten year’s it’ll hit on a Friday night. Mark your calendars now, I’ll wager a few of your favorite sites won’t be accepting orders.

PS We set ours to 2100, when commerce websites will of course be trying to access users’ purchasing servers with items Amazon suggests, payment will be in rupees, shipment just digital files to your matter-printer. This bug will cost numerous pensioners (you and me) their lives.