Musings on Typefaces

It was interesting waking up to a discussion about Garamond this morning, as Garamond was my favourite typeface during my teens.

 

I'd grown up using Times New Roman (and really quite liking it in general - definitely much more than the Sans Serif fonts that were all the rage back then - Arial, Tahoma, and Verdana IIRC). However, being a teenager, I ended up finding it to look a bit too "plain" and "boring". So when I first discovered Garamond, it was a breath of fresh air - like, here's this elegant and fancy looking font that's like an improved version of what I'd liked for years. While others were veering off into simpleton land with Sans Serif fonts, I would have this fancy font to use instead!

 

That, and it was way better than the butt ugly Computer Modern font that LaTeX uses by default. Ugh, I hate that thing. The normal weight letters are too thin / light-weight, with and have a weird aspect ratio (narrow + tall). Meanwhile, the serifs on the heading / bolded fonts look so heavy + wide + "baroque" (as in, the original sense - i.e. "grotesque").

QML Quirks - A laundry list of bizzare happenings, bugs, and dodgy incomplete crap

Over the past few years, I've built a fair few UI's using QML (Qt's DSL for writing UI code) - proper ones, including one for a mission-critical / safety-of-life application, and another powering the tool to be used across a large group of non CS types. In other words, things that had to work, and not just be interactive "nice to have" toys (aka research prototypes).

Memorably, I was once asked during an interview whether I would recommend using QML and/or how it compares to using the more battle-tested QWidgets. At the time, I'd only really used it for a bunch of research prototypes (i.e. implementing HCI experiments to be exact), where it presented a great environment for implementing the kinds of dynamic non-traditional interfaces I needed. For that it was great and saved a lot of time. But, admittedly, it did also throw up a bunch of glitches (e.g. randomly sampling garbage from the wrong texture buffers / other applications even, particles not showing when chaining several scenes together but being fine when used in isolation, etc.). At the time, I could only attribute some of these to me perhaps trying to combine a few too many highly experimental techniques where perhaps the framework hadn't been tested so great.

However, knowing what I do now, I would strongly recommend that unless you were building something non-mission critical, and where the thing is loaded with animations / dynamic effects, that you really shouldn't be using it. Sure, you may be able to knock out a prototype quite quickly - but at some point - often at ill-timed moments, you will randomly stumble across one or more intractable bugs / quirks from left field that have you scrambling to rewrite / refactor the whole lot.

 

Disclaimer: Just to be clear - I generally do still like the idea of the QML language, and I think it does many things right. However, there are also many ways in which the "declarative paradigm" is really awkward to work with (*ahem* creating dialogs / temporary items / sequential-flow-based-types / etc.) 

More disconcertingly though, implementation-wise, it is seriously lacking in quality / completeness / stability, etc. in enough ways that mean that I cannot in good conscience recommend any new greenfield projects to start adopting it now.

(Plus, the fact that the embedded scripting / logic programming language it uses is Javascript... blegh!)

[Web Browser UX Proposal] Bookmarks 2.0 - Load / Save "Page Snapshots" Instead of "Bookmarks"

It's been a while since I last posted anything here. Since then, the Blogger editor UX has changed a bit (and I'd say, quite detrimentally in a few key areas) making it a pain to write + post anything here. At some point, I'll likely end up converting this blog to a statically generated format, so I'll have full control over the longevity + setup of it, as that's been a recurring issue with Google properties for a while now.

Speaking of UX issues, here's a proposal for a way to solve one of the bigger issues we have with web browsers currently. Specifically, it aims to improve the usability of bookmarks, reduce the reliance on having to keep so many tabs open for certain reasons, and may also help the Internet Archive in its valiant efforts to keep on top of the endless churn of the web.

Note: While writing this, I've been considered setting up a web browser dev env to tinker with doing this myself (and probably fix several dozen other annoyances in the process) - but that's probably just holiday-mode brain trying to take on too many side projects that will have to get dropped as soon as the daily work-year grind starts up again.

Anyway, just thought I'd post this here to get a bit of visibility onto it.

Spring is Here - Late August Weekend of Daffodils and Birding

The weather's been a nice and balmy 20-22 C this weekend here this weekend - perfect weather to get out and about to enjoy the daffodils and some bird stalking!

Tips for Making a Google Summer of Code Proposal | Developing a Software Project Plan

Today I was contacted by a student asking for help writing a Google Summer of Code proposal. With the deadline fast approaching in the next day or so, it's probably cutting it a bit late to start working on a proposal for this year's GSoC - but as every student will know, it's not a deadline if you're not waiting till the last minute to scramble up something, right ;)

 

While the advice below was written with the particular student's project in mind, I think the general concepts here are applicable to any software project, so I've decided to repost this info here in the hope that it may help others out there build better software in future.

Silvereye Season Highlights 2019

Every November, the Silvereyes come to visit the bottlebrush right outside my window, putting on a show of daring acrobatics, cheerful chirping, and occasional clumsy antics. For the past decade, it's been one of the photographic highlights of the year for me (and a big reason why I got into photography in the first place).

Good Morning!

While this year, I couldn't spend the whole day plonked in front of the window keeping an eye of them, I was lucky that the times I was around (e.g. early morning, before rushing out the door to get to work, and when unwinding after a long day at work) turned out to be the times when some of the most interesting lighting/activities happened anyway ;)

Draft Feature List for Aligorith's Unnamed/Hypothetical Programming Language - 2019 Edition

Perhaps it is finally time to think about creating my own programming language? It would be that long-term passion project that I can truly have complete control over, with the potential for truly minimal dependencies, and in which I can finally build that proper "property system" + "node evaluation engine" + UI toolkit" that will fully work the way that I want it to, and then use this as the basis for all the projects in my backlog which will require similar structural/framework support.  (I could also formalise that documentation system I've been using on all personal projects - the one I documented here once many years ago).

I'm not that crazy yet...   yet!

Then again, I have been thinking about these matters more and more over the past year, so it's highly possible that this may still happen. If I can muster up enough time/energy away from everything else I'm working on (OR if external constraints expedite this process for whatever reason).

So, if I was to write my own programming language/environment, what can you expect it to have. Here is an incomplete list of the important things I'd do.

How (Busy) Software Engineers/Scientists Use Their Computers - A Datapoint

Having spent a few years doing HCI research, I know very well the importance and value that getting data points (any data points at all) about how people set up their workspaces and organise their work/workspaces is - especially for anyone involved in Operating System UX, Personal Information Management (PIM), File Systems, or Web Browser UX work.

Today, I thought I'd make a quick post outlining my personal workflow, in the hopes that this will be a useful datapoint for anyone out there designing these systems (*wink wink* Microsoft ;).  Admittedly, the way I work is probably a bit of an outlier, but I there are many elements here that should be of general value. Hopefully this will be of use to some people out there who study this stuff :)

So, without further ado, here is an overview of my typical working environment.

SOFIA Flying Observatory Visit

It was great getting the chance to tour NASA's SOFIA flying observatory this weekend on the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing!

3 Pieces for Christchurch - March 2019 - #WeAreOne

A month ago today on 15 March 2019, a deadly terrorist attack was unleashed upon two mosques in my hometown, Christchurch NZ. Inspired by and in response to the outpouring of emotion in the wake of this horrific event, I wrote a whole bunch of music during this time - I guess partly as a coping mechanism in the wake of each day's events. From these pieces, I've picked the following three as they fit well together under the general theme of healing for a broken community.

Happy New Year 2019 (and a recap of 2018)

It's been a long time since I've posted anything here - May 2018 to be precise (!). Since then, a lot has been happening - so much so that I haven't really had time anymore to put together posts here. Some of these things I can't quite announce here publicly yet, but you'll no doubt find out in due course :) So, without further ado, here are some of my highlights of 2018.

In short, my 2018 was an epic year of travel, new experiences, and hanging out with many good friends old and new.

Code Quest - Weekly Roundup (Weeks 1-4)

Lo and behold, we're almost a month into the Code Quest already! I had originally intended to write this post after the first 2 weeks (already down from my initial target of maybe a single post per week). But... between making the most of my time here to explore Amsterdam/Europe, the day to day activities in the studio, having to deal with all the other "life crap" (e.g. cooking, laundry, groceries, and some ongoing struggles with our apartment's water heating system, etc.), and finally, a broken laptop this past 1-2 weeks (more on this in a moment), the third fourth week has been and gone, and I still haven't gotten around to putting this together finishing this post!

I'm going to keep this brief though, as I'm still running my laptop off its battery after the adapter started playing up (basically last weekend, it suddenly got somewhat fried, and is now only sporadically charging, and taking nearly a day to do so when it works)... just what I needed when development activity was starting to pick up pace here!

For more up to date info as it happens, I'll be mostly posting short updates to my Twitter feed, since that's a bit easier to update using just my phone. Hopefully I haven't already started getting my dates mixed up - I'd been trying to keep notes to help remember, but it's been a challenge even finding the time to get those done!