kunstgeschichte.de – this is a typical example of what i scorn so much regarding german web activities. and it's like that simply too often.
if the big goodie in windows xp is sub-pixel font rendering (aka "cleartype"), somebody is condemning catastrophe for flirting with desaster.
joel spoolsky writes in his article "three wrong ideas from computer science": "if you try to read a paragraph of antialiased text, it just looks blurry. there's nothing i can do about it, it's the truth. [...] using a form of antialiasing they call 'cleartype' designed for color lcd screens [...], i'm sorry, still looks blurry, even on a color lcd screen".
text, especially tiny one, is best legible on a screen using screen fonts like verdana (to mention the most widely used one): "instead of creating a high-resolution font and then trying to hammer it into the pixel grid, they [joel refers to the microsoft typography group, but i rather would refer to the typography-savvy generally*] finally accepted the pixel grid as a 'given' and designed a font that fits neatly into it".
we need more pixels, not more blurring techniques.
* while microsoft indeed made screen fonts available for almost everyone due to their power of distribution, i don't think it is justified to claim they've invented screen fonts. there are countless screen fonts but as they still have to be installed on the client machine to be displayed in an html document, they could not get that popular (although e.g. jason kottke's "silkscreen" made it into the hearts and font collections of state-of-the-art graphic designers). similarly, microsoft did not invent the mechanisms behind "cleartype". as steve gibson details: "twenty-two years ago apple ii programmers wer using these techniques". and gibson is not the only one who doubts that "cleartype" is a technological breakthrough by microsoft. ron feigenblatt reports about his "research into the problem of rendering on color mosaic matrix displays", which took place in the late 1980s. this also might be from importance since we have to cope with another patent issue here (and ask ourselves what the hell apple was doing in the meantime).
flomatic, the well-known word wizard, tells us another photo love story from london and in german – gorgeous entertainment! a must read.
my first viennale movie this year: "the wedding march" by erich von stroheim.
surprisingly, this silent movie from 1928 was not boring at all. instead, it was entertaining, thrilling and – really tragic (here are some very impressive, large screen shots). the orchestral soundtrack did a good job, too.
fay wray, the female leading actor in "the wedding march", attended the presentation (btw. a premiere of the recently restaurated footage). she must be already 90 or more years old but she is looking and especially behaving much younger. still like a grande dame du cinema, a great diva throwing kisses to the audience and spreading her arms to virtually embrace the people.
she was as thankful and honoured as the people down in the hall to be in vienna, the city that was partially cloned in the paramount studios for the film and where she played "mitzi", the tragic beauty and unfortunate lover of a prince at the eve of the austrian empire's demise.
most people might know fay wray from the first king kong movie.
on thursday, edward w. said lectured about the near-east conflict at the diplomatic academy of vienna – finally (a few months ago he was invited by the freud gesellschaft but they suddenly cancelled the invitation due to twisted circumstances as to be read in "werkblatt", a magazine for psychoanalysis and social theory).
said, a palestinian himself living in the states, is pro-palestinian and emphasizes on some viewpoints that are very often (if not most of the time) abstracted in western media: israel is an occupant of palestina, a military super power (not at last due to help and weapons from the united states) fighting against an almost unarmed resistance and invading defenseless villages full of poor, civil inhabitants.
israel says they have to do this to protect themselves and to gain and guarantee security and peace for their nation. said says, by doing so israel will achieve the exact opposite, instead they do everything to gain insecurity, war and enmity.
a people that suffered so hard (and there is no doubt about this) claim that this time they would not be the losers and rather make another people feel the pain. better fuck them than being fucked yourself again. in effect, these victims of the victims one day will have to prove their will to survive, too. and so on, and so on. this is the downward spiral, the mortal coil of violence. it has to stop. good to know, huh?
der standard: "ein gott der bomben und der erdnussbutter – kulturwissenschafter edward said über den 'konflikt der kulturen' und verschiedene formen der ignoranz".
yesterday i attended the big brother awards in flex club and this was fun. here are "the winners". i especially like ars electronica being among them...
did some dancing moves again after a while to the fabulous electro grooves of toktok and the charming voice of soffy o.
à propos surveillance: a webcam can be a scary thing, too: this picture was taken when i was not in the office. and i don't have a clue to whom this hand may belong... ;->
using timeserv to set and synchronize time on windows nt++.
i just wonder why this ntreskit service hasn't been included at least into win2k by default... withal it's so simple. for synchronisation e.g. with the atomic clock at physikalisch-technische bundesanstalt braunschweig (ptb), the following should be sufficient for timeserv.ini:
[TimeServ] Type=NTP Period=0 NTPServer=ptbtime1.ptb.de timesource=no Log=yes TAsync=no
entering timeserv -automatic into a shell adds the service which then eventually has to be started with net start timeserv.
update via e-mail: earl knows how to do it easier in win2k. net time /setsntp:"server1 server2 server3" net stop w32time net start w32time
"here's the situation: you have a site with a weblog, but now you want something that's more manageable, better organized, and collaborative. you want to create a weblog, and share editorial responsibility with a few friends. you want tools to manage the content easily and syndicate to another site with your own design. do it here." – onclave, collaborative weblogging.
antville is "today's recommended site" at the complete guide to weblogs.