Inconsolata

First and foremost, Inconsolata is a humanist sans design. I strove for the clarity and clean lines of Adrian Frutiger’s Avenir (the lowercase “a”, in particular, pays homage to this wonderful design), but also looked to Morris Fuller Benton’s Franklin Gothic family for guidance on some of my favorite glyphs, such as lowercase “g” and “S”, and, most especially, the numerals. Clearly a lot of thought and care went into the design of this monospace font. If you are writing code or working in the terminal, try replacing your default with this one, which happens to be free. I am using it at 14 point with ant-aliasing on, and it’s gorgeous.

10 Things to Check Before Using a CAPTCHA

This is an interesting article about combating form spam, using ten techniques other than CAPTCHAs, which are the extra fields a lot of sites use to verify that the user is an actual human and not a spam bot. They add an extra step for the user, and can be frustrating, especially if the words you are asked to type are hard to read. This article explains ways to avoid their use, and still cut down on spam significantly.

Just Landed

Pretty cool visualization of travel data pulled from Twitter and mapped with Processing. It seems like more and more of the data visualization work I see online is being done in Processing.

Concept Maps

These infographics are stunning. I love seeing that much data organized in such a fashion, it really is a beautiful thing. The Domain Name System is shocking in its complexity, but the map is easy to read and understand. Very inspiring.

MK12

One my favorites from back in the day is back with a new reel for 2009. I haven’t visited in a long time, but it looks like they have a new site (meh) and a lot of new work (whoa). I particularly like the title sequence for Kite Runner.

Fun with Overflows

This page demonstrates how to use overflows and jQuery to slide elements side to side, as well as how to click and drag an element. It also includes links to a couple of screencasts showing the effects and how they were achieved.

Kutiman, Big Media, and the Future of Creative Entrepreneurship

Remember: the only person who can sit on your ass is you.

Merlin Mann uses the Kutiman ThruYou videos as an example of what can be done with a little disregard for the status quo, and a whole lot of creativity.

Why Does “Dream” = “Ideal”?

Scott Simpson, of YLNT fame:

On my ideal date, a pretty lady laughs at my jokes over a delicious meal. We end the night by making passionate love. On my dream date, my 7th grade science teacher points and laughs at my teeth as they slowly crumble into the gravy boat. Our sommelier, Nick Nolte, brings us a bottle of live ants.

March PHX Drupal User’s Group Meeting

Another Drupal meetup in Phoenix; two months in a row! This time we are meeting on the ASU campus, and it should be quite interesting:

Chris Yates will be giving a presentation about the scientific and publishing applications he and his team are building with Drupal at the Mars Space Flight Facility at ASU.