Sunday, August 21, 2011

IBM's favorite science-fiction font

- Life gets better at 50.  Why?  It sounds incredibly cynical, but makes perfect sense when you think about it, "In some ways, we become relieved of the burden of a future."
http://news.yahoo.com/life-gets-better-50-012600469.html



- Ten words you need to stop misspelling:
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/misspelling


- The IBM PC turned 30 last week.  It's form-factor defined how people think of a desktop PC:
http://technologizer.com/2011/08/11/ibm-pc-oddities/


- Star Wars pilgrims:
http://www.foxnews.com/travel/2011/08/08/star-wars-tourists-follow-films-around-globe/


- Apple passed Exxon in market-cap last week.  According to the Dow Jones industrials, Apple is the most valuable company in the world.  However, there are many ways to judge the size and value of a company.  Given other metrics, Apple isn't even near the top:
http://arstechnica.com/apple/guides/2011/08/does-this-metric-make-my-company-look-big.ars/


- 42 of the best fonts for writing computer code.  I prefer Consolas and Monaco:
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/work/FontSurvey.aspx


- Ten science-fiction books that changed the course of history:
http://io9.com/5832078/10-science-fiction-books-that-changed-the-course-of-history


- 90% of people who buy video-games never finish the game they buy.  Lord knows I can be a lazy SoB, but do not lump me into this category.  I bend over backwards to finish the games I buy.  I have played over 100 single-player computer/console roleplaying games, and I can think of only two I have not finished: Wizard's Crown (super-old computer game) and Dragon Age (currently sitting on my living room shelf.)  The reason why people don't finish video games applies to everyone, even if you don't play video games:
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/TECH/gaming.gadgets/08/17/finishing.videogames.snow/


- When you read as many websites, blogs, RSS feeds, message boards and FAQs as I do on a daily basis, you start to notice over-arching patterns in online writing.  Online writing is different from academic and journalistic writing, but wants to have the same amount of intellectual credit.  Online writers want to have a conversation with you, as long as you subconsciously notice that the writer is striving to be sophisticated, witty, grammatically correct, and a little quirky.  Online writers tend to belong to generation-X.  Nothing scares a typical gen-x'er more than not being liked.  Bloggers often frame each sentence they write to not only entertain you, not only inform you, but to also make sure they don't say anything to you that might cause you to "no longer like them."  Passive-aggressive words and phrases are the norm.  Starting sentences with words like "sort of", "really", and "pretty much" give a feeling of easy conversation, and also allows the writer to casually distance themselves from future sentences that may offend someone.  Am I guilty of this writing style?  Sure.   If you want to find the person who may be responsible for creating the modern online writing-style, start with David Foster Wallace:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/21/magazine/another-thing-to-sort-of-pin-on-david-foster-wallace.html