Cabinet

a Navy man

The best part about my job is the people I meet. There is one older man in particular I feel compelled to write about. After spending just a few days in his company, I felt that this is the kind of person I want to be when I grow up. I’m not sure if I’ve ever felt this way before, even when I was much younger. I may have wanted a particular achievement or trait of someone I looked up to, but never in such an all-encompassing way.

I’m not very good at guessing ages, but he must have been in in his mid-to-late 60s. He was tall, but I could tell that he was even taller in his youth by the way his back curved into a slight hunch in his shoulders. He moved at a regular pace—never slow, but with purpose. You got the feeling that he knew exactly what he was doing at all times.

When he spoke, it was difficult not to listen. He had a pleasant voice, that rolled and rumbled from within him, the way it does with older people—just enough to suggest his age, but otherwise having all the power and energy of someone much younger. He was clear and articulate, and as confident in his spoken word as in his action, which served him well as an interpreter. Before he left, I told him that I admired him very much and hoped to be like him one day, though I couldn’t explain why at the moment. I don’t think I’ve ever been as honest and revealing before, but I could trust that he would understand. He explained that he was a Navy man. As the captain of a ship in the middle of the ocean, he had nobody to rely on but himself and God. He served for 19 years, and recalled them as the best years of his life. Without a hint of pride, he said that some of those who had served with him named their sons after him, and that it was a feeling he could not explain. If I had met this man sooner, I just might have joined the Navy.

That was about the only conversation I had with him. He thanked me for approaching him, which he must have taken as a compliment, and he greeted me at the end of the evening with a hug and a kiss on either cheek the way Italians do. He reminded me of my grandfather, a gentleman in every sense of the word.

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Sunset from my window

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What do I do?—Part One

One of my responsibilities at work is to maintain a bi-monthly newsletter. It’s not much, just two A4 spreads for each issue. The catch is that it must be released in four languages in addition to English. The languages are Spanish, French, German, and Italian. Not speaking any of them doesn’t help, but I’ve picked up a fair amount of each in my time here so that I can at least get the gist of what’s in front of me. Doing what I do, there are some potential nightmares when dealing with different languages in a fairly rigid layout. I spent the past year working with the existing layout to understand the nuances of each language and how much wiggle room I have in altering the leading, tracking, font sizes, etc. In an ideal world, I would simply copy and paste a translation into the corresponding text box and it would fit perfectly, creating a work that is equal in my original intention in every way but the language. Some people (my sister) think this is how it works. I’m about to tell you otherwise, and hopefully in the process, expand your appreciation for the printed word. Or at least me. Appreciate me more.

I begin by sending out a request to the contributors to send me an article. For about a month, I harass them with reminders of the due date, with increasing frequency towards the final week—much like the work of a bill collector I imagine. Once I receive them all (about 4-5 depending on the issue), I send them to a proof-reader to make sure all of the i’s are dotted and t’s are crossed. Then I have about a week to work on other, always urgent, pending work. The articles come back to me in perfect English, and I experience an increased desire to drink until intoxication every single night.

Even with a pre-designed layout, I can expect to spend a good four or five hours playing with the text. First I like to adjust the tracking (space between words), eliminate the widows (single words that drop to the next paragraph), rivers (wide white vertical lines running down a column of text), and inappropriately hyphenated words or phrases on a per paragraph basis. If I’m lucky, I’m left with something that is either a bit to short or a little to long for the space it needs to fill. This is usually corrected by increasing the spacing after each paragraph. I try not to alter the content, especially at this stage. I’ll also try to keep leading (space between lines of text) and font-sizes consistent above all, as everything is aligned to a baseline grid of 6 points. I think these are some of the most noticeable attributes of badly set copy. After about an hour of trimming, tucking, and caressing—I turn my attention back to the screen.

This is the part where I take some liberties with my position. Many times, the articles I receive are written originally in a language other than English, or by a non-native English speaker. They’re not poorly written, but the read could be a bit friendlier with some punctuation. While I stay away from changing the actual wording, I go to town with the dashes. I have a particular love of the em-dash, which comes in handy because everyone loves their run-on sentences.

Oh merciful, glorious, beautiful sun that is praise-worthy and worthy to be praised, every single day before my morning jog in the wooded trail behind the home where I dodge the heated licks of your hot hot rays!

A well placed em-dash can defuse the situation without altering the meaning or intention of the sentence.

Oh merciful, glorious, beautiful sun that is praise-worthy and worthy to be praised—every single day before my morning jog in the wooded trail behind the home where I dodge the heated licks of your hot hot rays!

It really tickles the nerd in me to see an en-dash—or even worse—a figure dash used in its place. I know nobody cares, but I actually enjoy reading about em-dash versus spaced en-dash arguments and style guides for publishing houses. Also, sites like Pain in the English.

My favorite punctuation mark of all time has to be the no-break space. It’s more of a rule than a punctuation mark really, but it exists in my glyphs palette, so it qualifies. This nifty device is used to tell the program to keep a certain set of characters together on the same line. Handy when dealing with something like bible verses (Jn 3:16-18) and French punctuation (more to come on this one.) I think I like punctuation marks because they’re so powerful, but not as overwhelming as words can be.

Though I could easily spend a whole day kerning, I do have other work to do. So, I leave it up to my typeface of choice for this particular project, which is National primarily throughout and FF Meta on occasion. The first thing I did when I came here was purchase National. The glyphset is one of the most comprehensive I’ve ever used, and I really enjoy using all of the characters, especially German.

Links to PDF files of the issues: 2008, I had no hand in, while 2009 was my first issue, and 2010 the most recent.
ICCRS Newsletter, Volume XXXIV - Number 2, March-April 2008
ICCRS Newsletter, Volume XXXV - Number 2, March-April 2009
ICCRS Newsletter, Volume XXXVI - Number 2, March-April 2010

It’s easy to redesign something for the sake of doing it, but that wouldn’t be very responsible of me. I made changes out of necessity—switching programs from Corel to Adobe, licensing typefaces, and moving production in-house. All of this ended up saving me a lot of time and effort, but most importantly money for the organization. This is just the first step in trying to produce more consistent design across print and web, especially after I’m no longer here. Among other things, I am looking forward to producing my first style-guide for an established entity. My idea of fun.

What I really want to talk about next though, is international punctuation rules, which is when things get really interesting. Seriously—that’s Part Two.

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Another year

About this time last year, I stepped out of Fiumicino airport into the mild winter of Rome. The ride home was lined with statues, buildings, and piazzas straight out of an art history book. It was dreamy, foreign, like my first time listening to Sigur Rós. In the coming months, I began to note the differences and similarities in my lifestyle here and at home. Eventually, I came to the conclusion that everything is more or less the same, wherever you go. You eat, sleep, and shit. Work on weekdays, go out on the weekends. Eat a little healthier, maybe get some more exercise. Read more. Care more. Try more. And don’t drink so much. The unavoidable rituals, motherly advice, and half-hearted goals that make up the bulk of a life—the constant, I guess.

Not knowing the language, leaving friends and family at home, and adapting to a new culture turned out to be surprisingly painless. I found that all you really need to communicate is a permanent smile and furious hand gestures. Newfound friends taught me this, and a substitute family is easy to find in a hospitable country like Italy. In the end, the most significant differences are the little ones. The variables. Not finding ginger ale. “Please, please, take my order.” The bus ticket that is never checked, but always paid for. Damn, it’s hot (no central a/c) and damn, it’s cold (no central heating). Eating more pasta than I did in college. Birds that cropdust the streets, and everything on it. Shops being closed Sunday, including the Tabacchi…

And, of course, the good things. Discovering there was no microwave at home, or need for one. Pizza, really good pizza—and gelato. Churches that actually move you. Looking up to find the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica guide you home. Orange and teal. Italian. Touching a Brancusi, sitting on a Bernini, and talking smack on Berlusconi. Beautiful people. Wandering into the places that never made it into history books. Pounding cheap beer under the gaze of priceless statues, looming facades, and sparkling fountains. Really old cars. City blocks that turn with the street. Orange and teal. I imagine most of my memories from this time will be tinged with these colors. Philly’s got its brick-reds, New York has its greys and metals, and Seoul—flashing neon.

When people ask what living in Rome is like, I don’t really know what to say. It’s just the little things I mentioned before that make life interesting, and the rest is the same. I don’t mean to suggest that it’s not worth visiting, because it definitely is. But visiting a place, is different from living there. This is why when you say, “but Italian food is so delicious…” I want to smack you in your mouth. Because after we have our delicious pasta dinner, you can take your little flight back home to a cheesesteak, burrito, or even take-out Chinese. I’m eating pasta. If everything is awesome, nothing is awesome.

So, I’ve got high hopes for 2010. Knowing that I’ve put in a year, somehow makes the next one seem manageable. I think 2009 was generally overwhelming. I’m shooting for consistency in ‘10. By the way, how does everyone say ‘10? I just murmur a little before saying ‘ten.’ Is this acceptable?

And just for merde e risatine, I leave you with this. Best purchase of 2009: Bicycle. Worst purchase of 2009: Cycling shorts.

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expressionengine 2.0

I’ve updated and bought a Freelancer’s license for expressionengine 2.0. Unfortunately there is no free core version anymore, but since I’ve invested so much time into learning ee, I figured that I might as well pay to upgrade.

You won’t notice anything different actually, so it’s really just for me. It’s like I just upgraded from cotton to silk boxers. The entire back-end has been reorganized and there are some nice new features like a File Manager among others. Anyway, version 2.0 has come at a good time, as I’m beginning to really get started on the website for work. A slick back-end means that once I set everything up, I can teach someone else in the office how to maintain the site, while I have multiple coffee breaks and/or long lunches (like a normal Italian.)

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The art of the mixtape

I’ve been listening to a lot of mixtapes in the past year, ever since leaving home last December. It probably has to do with not having access to the internet 24/7 like I did before, but even now that I can be online whenever I want, I find that not too much has changed in my listening preferences. It makes me wonder how I got my audio fix in the past. I mean, I know how—I would just download a ton of albums and filter through them each day, but I don’t have the desire or patience to do that anymore. I basically used to listen to music with my finger on the next button with a liberal use of repeat. In hindsight, doing it this way, I managed to play out even the best of songs quickly, and I don’t think I was getting the full album experience intended by the artist. Even now, I find that there are few albums worth listening from the front to back, but a good mixtape can find a place even for filler tracks.

My recent post about Chopin helped me realize what I’ve begun to suspect is a large part of why I like mixtapes—that you’re forced to listen to them. Think about that next time you’re driving with a passenger-side DJ. That one guy who can’t listen to a complete song, you know? I think it’s a more active way of listening to music, trying to find that perfect beat or melody, right when you need to hear it. Like I mentioned above, I used to listen to music that way too, but it gets tiring. These days, I prefer the passive route—letting the music affect my mood rather than trying to find the right music for however I happen to feel.

Also to clarify, I’m not talking about rap mixtapes or compilation albums. They serve a different purpose, and the mixtapes I’m referring to are the same ones you probably made in middle school, but never gave, to that one girl in math—or maybe that was just me. There seem to be so many rules now, even though the medium has evolved much since the cassette tape (I’m too young for 8 tracks.) Whatever the rules are though, I’ll always remember staying up late to catch that one song on the radio and hit rec just when the DJ stopped talking and let the song play. I wish I still had those tapes, as I can’t imagine a better way of trying to figure out who I was then. One of the greatest moments of realization in my music listening history happened when I recorded DMX over my dad’s church choir tape. I was blown away when “Stop Being Greedy” abruptly cut into a really crude rendition of “Ave Maria.” It’s that element of surprise I really like in a good mix tape. I think you can really discover a lot about your tastes when you hear something in a different context than what you’re used to associating it with.

The mixtape culture runs deep on the internet, and there are more music blogs than I care to actually visit in my lifetime. Luckily, sites like Last.fm and The Hype Machine do a pretty good job of pooling some of the more popular blogs and integrating a social networking aspect to the whole thing. Unsurprisingly, blogs dedicated to more obscure or niche genres are less well-known, but this tends to help them stay afloat longer than the ones that get too popular for their own good. Partly for this reason, I’d rather not post links here, but I’d be happy to share if you ask. And, if you know of something I don’t, let me know.

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Thanks

Thanks friends, family, enemies—all of you who make my life interesting. I love you all.

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A blessing and a curse

I work in an institution sponsored by the Vatican, so a lot of my correspondence end with some sort of blessing. There’s a lot of “God bless you,” and “May the Lord be with you,” which are the typical ones I guess. Personally I go with, “Peace & love.” I like to keep it rock and roll. Anyway, I’ve noticed a lot of variety in my international encounters. More or less, it all means the same thing, but the delivery is interesting, especially in face to face conversations. There’s a French priest that likes to tell me simply, “God loves you.” I’m particularly fond of a traditional Irish blessing, which goes something like this:

May the road rise to meet you.
May the wind be always at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face.
And rains fall soft upon your fields.
And until we meet again,
May God hold you in the hollow of His hand.

It’s one of the longer ones, and definitely works better written than spoken, but it’s quite beautiful in a simple way. Blessings given by non-Americans make me think for a split second longer than the usual, “that’s nice.” They just seem more creative and personal, and I’ve been trying to incorporate this into my own language, though I just don’t seem to be quick enough. My automatic response to a sneeze is obviously, “God bless you,” but I really want to say something like, “God bless your nasal passage and face,” or something a little more specific, though I’m still working on it.

For those that don’t get blessed too often, another way to notice these cultural differences is to listen carefully when you act like an American in another country (listen to the insults). A short car ride with an Italian would make an English speaking sailor blush. Sometimes I concentrate and try to translate the obscenities literally, and it’s amazing how much thought goes into them. There’s even a term for that one guy who honks as soon as the stoplight turns green. When you’re riding shotgun, you can hear my friend mutter, “asshole of the light, take your wheel and put it in the hole in your ass, you pig of a whore with the head of a dick.” There may be some grammatical errors but the literal translation is more or less on point. I still believe that if I can hold my own in a heated argument, I’d consider myself fluent in Italian.

While I’m on the topic, I also want to share my thoughts on profanity. The word ‘fuck’ is uninteresting and I don’t think it deserves the shock factor associated with it in the media and to little children. The only reason it’s still offensive is because it’s restricted. It doesn’t really mean anything in the majority of the contexts it’s used in, and it’s something people say when they’re too lazy to really describe how they actually feel. This is the only real reason that compels me not to use it. It’s a lazy word. It’s not really funny, except maybe when it’s used ironically. That little flutter in your heart when you hear the word “fuck” should be saved for all the times you hear the word “love.” Did you know that the word ‘profane’ means “outside the temple” in Latin? I didn’t, and it blew my sexual-intercourse-having mind.

So, as we continue to use our profanities, I challenge everyone to get more creative with your insults, and be more accurate in describing your shitty day. It just makes for better conversation, I’m not really thinking of the children.

note: There’s a book by Steven Pinker that I’ve been trying to get a hold of, and it’s supposed to be a very interesting (and fun) read on language. Check it out at after the link.

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Tender

My roommate Tender. A deaf and part-lame German Shepherd. He hears things in his head and doesn’t stop barking until he sees that someone notices him. Sad really. His breath is also flammable. I may be allergic to him.

R.I.P. 20/03/10

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On action

I have a lot of respect for artists that do things. Wow, deep, I know. What I mean is, I don’t care if the work is good or bad, but just the fact that it has been created, is enough to justify its existence, for me. So I don’t know why it’s so hard for me to feel the same way about my own work. Anything I do, I immediately think about the big picture. Who does this affect? How will it be received? Am I proud of this? I think it cripples me with fear and I end up either trashing and starting over, or anxiously wringing my hands as it is exposed. It’s not even that that I think that my work is precious. Because I know, that whatever I do, I will have a different opinion of it in one week.

I realized in a conversation I had with Nelson that this is something that sets us apart. I have all these preconceived notions of how something should be done. We were discussing the making of a book, and I began thinking out loud. Within five minutes I had gone from the simple question of, should we, or not, to suggesting changes to a website. This is a huge weakness. I am my own corporate red tape. After hearing me out, Nelson will usually respond with, “why?” And it usually pisses me off. What do you mean why? Everyone knows you need a business model. Or, everyone knows you need a target audience. Everyone knows that. And that is when I realize, I am wrong. Or, maybe I’m not necessarily wrong, but why am I not even questioning that maybe I am? I don’t know where or when I picked these things up, but I’m desperately trying to get rid of this prejudice that is turning me into the person I have been trying to avoid. I don’t want to be ‘the Man,’ but I am. And not like “yo you’re the man” but in a “stick it to the man” kind of way. It sucks.

So, this is my personal ‘call to action.’ To act first, discover, then think later. Because it’s harder the other way around, and because that’s how I’ve been doing it this whole time, except in the work I’m actually pleased with.

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8track mix

Just a few songs that keep popping up. I like this site, 8tracks, and I hope it sticks around.

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Mamihlapinatapai

Mamihlapinatapai (sometimes spelled mamihlapinatapei) is a word from the Yaghan language of Tierra del Fuego, listed in The Guinness Book of World Records as the “most succinct word”, and is considered one of the hardest words to translate. It describes “a look shared by two people with each wishing that the other will initiate something that both desire but which neither one wants to start.”

For anyone that speaks more than one language or has even attempted to speak a second, accurately translating between the two is a common problem. I know that as someone who speaks Korean more or less fluently, I invent words, or use them out of context all the time. On my last visit, I was told I had great pronunciation and a very convincing accent, but my grammar and vocabulary shifted between that of an uneducated village boy and an elementary school student. I don’t really mind, and it has rarely put me in a difficult position. It’s amusing to watch the expressions of the person I’m speaking to change from confusion to understanding to amusement within a few milliseconds.

When you look at the word mamihlapinatapai, it kind of leaves something to be desired from the English language. I’ve realized that it’s pretty straightforward to translate a word from English into another language, but to do the opposite requires a lot more work. I think by having a single word to describe something like mamihlapinatapai, you are more prone to recognizing it when it happens. There are a lot of Korean words that I wouldn’t know how to being to explain, and I feel like this is why ancient Chinese proverbs sound so ridiculous in English.

Still, there are some good times to be had in broken translations. I was once given a suggestion and told it was just “a fruit of [her] mind”—meaning it came from her imagination. Something poetic about that isn’t there? And then there was that one time I was asked to be raped.

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Ares I-X Launch

NASA’s Ares I-X test rocket lifted off Oct. 28, 2009, at 11:30 a.m. EDT from Kennedy Space Center in Florida for a two-minute powered flight. The flight test lasted about six minutes from its launch from the newly modified Launch Complex 39B until splashdown of the rocket’s booster stage nearly 150 miles downrange.

These are photos taken of the Ares I-X test rocket from a few days ago, and there are more after the source link below. There’s some controversy surrounding the nasa budget, especially with the Constellation Program, but I can’t help but enjoy moments like this when such an enormous project is realized. I can’t think of any other team effort requiring as much specialized knowledge and trained professionals. Can you imagine what the launch party must have been like? And then the after-party—so many nerd babies will be born in July 2010.

Anyway, it isn’t really the focus of the news these days, but this article by Leroy Chiao (former astronaut) on the “Future of US Human Spaceflight” can quickly bring you up to date on the current state of space exploration. It’s sad to me that nasa and the US space program has lost so much relevance. I feel like our generation views it as a ‘50s era thing that doesn’t have anything left to offer. With the world focus having shifted to being eco-friendly and saving the economy, it isn’t hard to see why some people might consider it this way. However, a lot of good things came out of it—technological advancements, improved international relations, and even a boost to the nation’s morale—and I think it’s important to keep investing not only our money, but public interest and support. Plus, what’s going to be the substitute for sci-fi? All the kids have right now is Lady Gaga and autotune. That really sucks.

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Work & Play

In a little under two weeks, what began as ‘research’ for my next big project at work turned into this. I began testing layouts for a new website to be made for the organization I’m volunteering at, and I’m not sure at what point exactly I stopped sleeping and shaving. It definitely wasn’t on my list of things to do, and I actually thought I was done with the web for a while. Regardless, it’s here now, hopefully unchanged for a long long time. I’ve learned a lot in the process, and I’ll get to that in later posts, but for now I just want to share some of the resources I’ve used. I want to make it clear that much of this is all new for me, and the result you see here is thanks to a ton of people answering questions, posting guides, and otherwise holding my hand the entire way.

First, the basic structure that sparked my interest in the first place, is found at Typogridphy. The code and css is free, written by an eighteen year-old from the UK. His mark-up is so clean and clear, that even I could understand enough to alter it to my needs. A feature that really intrigued me about Typogridphy, that I wasn’t able to resolve in the end for this site, was ‘creating vertical rhythm.’ Basically it means trying to achieve a baseline whereby everything on the page aligns. I ended up giving up on that after the first week, because I just couldn’t get the math to work. If I knew a week ago what I know now, I think I could’ve done it, but at this point I’m over it. It’s a goal to consider for the upcoming site though, so if only for that, I’ve validated my time spent on this. For myself anyway, my boss has no idea. Even though I ended up changing a lot of the css, I wanted to give credit where it was due. Also the guy is eighteen. I was probably buying flowers for a girl or some shit like that at eighteen.

The rest of my html questions were answered by visiting the World Wide Web Consortium, which reminds me of this, but is unrelated. With just the W3C site alone, you can teach yourself how to build a site in html and css.

Then, I use ExpressionEngine to manage my content. EE lets me set everything up at once, and I don’t really have to think about code again until I pull some stunt like this and redesign everything. Actually, even if I did do a redesign, I wouldn’t have to touch anything EE-specific if I really didn’t want to. Basically it bridges a lot of gaps between design and functionality, and everyone loves bridges. There are a lot of great things said by others who’ve already drunk the Kool-Aid™, so I won’t say any more on that.

Other sites I found helpful were Web Design+ (same guy of Typogridphy), Blind Text Generator, and Textism. Of course, I looked at a lot of different page sources to study how real developers were structuring their code, and achieving certain effects. I looked a lot at Subtraction.com actually, and the article written by the nice man who actually coded it.

So, with this new website, I really just hope to use it as a space to share things, and eventually last as an archive. I planned the column on the left to hold all of my own photography, writing, or whatever. The right column will hold anything I’ve found and don’t want to forget, whatever the reason. We’ll see how things go, but I’m pretty hopeful that I can keep up with something like this at a relaxed rate, now that I’ve spent the time properly building up the structure to support it. Like I’ve mentioned before, I really had to teach myself a lot through this process, and I know there are a lot of mistakes. I appreciate any criticism and suggestions, and I hope to finally get some sleep now.

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