Tiny Little Life

The software I wrote in January called FontClustr is now available under the GPL.

If you use my methodology to improve font selection in your own program, I would appreciate the hell out of it if you credited me in some way.

For the impatient, you’ll need the following:

• fontclustr.py
• tree.py

Run it by making fontclustr.py executable and executing it. If all goes well, you’ll be in for about 4 hours and 400MB to make all the output. At least, that’s what it took on my machine with about 1000 installed fonts.

Hit the jump for all the boring stuff.
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(With apologies to Aaron Sorkin)

BP: You want answers?

America: I think I’m entitled to them.

BP: You want answers?

America: I want the truth!

BP: You can’t handle the truth! Son, we live in a world that needs energy. And that energy has to be produced by men with drill rigs. Who’s gonna do it? You? Obama? I have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom. You weep for the Gulf of Mexico and you curse the oil companies. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know: that the drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, while tragic, produces energy. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, produces energy… You don’t want the truth. Because deep down, in places you don’t talk about at parties, you want me on that drill. You need me on that drill.

We use words like mud, blowout, top-kill… we use these words as the backbone to a life spent producing something. You use ‘em as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to people who rise and sleep under the blanket of the very energy I provide, then questions the manner in which I provide it! I’d rather you just said thank you and went on your way. Otherwise, I suggest you pick up an engineering degree and produce your own energy. Either way, I don’t give a damn what you think you’re entitled to!

America: Did you order the drilling to continue?

BP: (quietly) I did the job you sent me to do.

America: Did you order the drilling to continue?

BP: You’re goddamn right I did!!

This dung fly was sitting around my compost bin. No surprises there, I guess.

Shots like this make me realize how crappy my camera’s CCD is.

Dear Make Magazine,

It’s over. I’m done with you.

I like the idea of a magazine dedicated to DIY culture, but (as of late) the “Maker Revolution” is to “the next industrial revolution” as “breast implants” are to “inner beauty”. I’ll admit: you have your moments now and then. But, standards have fallen; currently your magazine is at best a tribute to mediocrity, and at worst it’s a cargo cult.

For me, the last straw was Save My Oceans Upcycle Contest, Win an iPad, reprinted here. To raise awareness of water contaminated by decomposing plastic, you promote it with a DIY project that puts plastic in water. Apparently you’re under the impression that plastic intentionally placed into a body of water is not the same as global pollution. Whether that’s explained by you (and the rest of the community) being evil, ironic, or just plain ignorant of science, I don’t want any part of it.

Also, the fact that the reward in this contest is an iPad — from a company whose policies are 100% at odds with the DIY culture you claim to represent — is really sad.

Read on for 5 other major things that made me lose faith in Make.

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On the left is my old Booq bag (Mamba Pack), on the right is the new one that they sent me for free. You see, Booq is an amazing company with an amazingly designed bag… and when my old bag developed a problem, they not only sent me a new bag for free but fixed the actual problem.


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Google searches on this subject were not very enlightening, but I can now say from experience that an 800-watt inverter attached to a car battery is able to power 2 oil burners (furnace and hot water heater), with enough juice left over for a sump pump, cable modem, router, hub, and laptop.

It helps if the car is idling; my car has been idling for at least 6 hours and I still have more than half a tank. With the car off, I’ve read that you’ll only get 20-30 minutes of power.

I can make no claim on the suitability of inverted power for your oil burner over the long term. Also, rewire your house at your own risk.

I built a pedalboard for the guitarist in my band, based on a “best of” from designs I found online.

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I’ve expanded FontClustr to be an interactive Javascript application.

Bear in mind, this HTML was generated by running the clustering algorithm on my specific computer — your installed fonts will be different if you check this out on a non-Ubuntu machine. In fact, if you don’t have ALL of Ubuntu’s font packages installed, you may see a lot of fonts that look the same; your system is switching to a default font.

On the other hand, if you have access to an Ubuntu machine, you’ll be able to experiment with the sample text, its size, and colors.

I will try to get access to a Mac so that I can do some final checks on the code. The next hurdle will be trying to get Python modules installed in a Windows machine.

My thanks to John Maeda for getting the word out on twitter! Follow me here.

My font clustering project (originally called Fontr) is now called FontClustr. If you found this page via a search engine, the page you want is probably one of the ones in the FontClustr category.