Ploafmaster General

McSweeney's strikes again with a fine lampooning of Thomas Kinkade.

Those loyal half-dozen readers of mine may notice today that I have a new link in the side bar (unless you're pimpin' the RSS goodness).


Gentle Graffiti is the online presence for a little arts magazine published by my friend Stephanie DeSocio and her cohorts. The web site is updated with reasonable frequency and typically contains entries about photography, music, art exhibits, and the like. Quite fascinating, and a lot of it quite up my alley. I hope you feel the same way. Go check it out.

So I couldn't help but notice that Helvetica is available in Excel on my Windows computer here at work. I decided I was going to try to have my entire spreadsheet use Helvetica, but to my dismay the program continued to display Arial in its stead.

I printed a test page, and at least the proper type was used there, but I'm still sorta miffed that Microsuck would force it's own crappy font on me even when I specifically selected a different one.

Well this evening Valerie and I purchased Adobe CS3 Web Premium. This was mostly for her as she already knows how to use Photoshop and Illustrator. She's pretty psyched, and I'm happy for her, but now I know that I'll have limited computer access for the next few months :-)

John Gruber's Daring Fireball links to Adobe's new font family, Hypatia Sans Pro. The page describes in excellent detail the background behind the design. Good read, if you're a nerd like me - or simply appreciate good design.

I spent the weekend reveling in God's creation and the company of some fine friends.

Valerie and myself, along with three other couples and the parents of on of the wives stayed in the parents' cabin on Spanish Oak Mountain in North Carolina. About 30 miles from Boone, this retreat was situated in the middle of glorious hard-wood trees at the peak of their colorful leaf-changing process. The weather was cool, and the air was crisp. We attended two local craft-ish festivals containing equal parts kitsch, serious artisanship, and carnival sillyness. I positively love little celebrations of local culture, and the Valle Crucis Country Fair as well as the Wooly Worm Festival did not disappoint.

Walking through the woods with several fellas I looked up to in college was time well spent, and playing guitar in the freezing night around a struggling would-be bonfire was fun despite the numbing finger tips.

Rarely has it been so difficult to return to the "civilized" Atlantic Coastal Plain.

Probably one of the more interesting pieces of writing on art I've yet read:

Art Statements, Pitchfork, and fancypants analysis