Awakening to Self. Body Shamanics. Healing. Thoughts and images. Technology and interfaces.
A font change. For the past two years this site’s font sported the unique reversed asymmetric lower case t —which has been common to the many dyslexic fonts released over that time. Today marks a departure and return to the clean geometric cross t —albeit, uniquely with its subtle descending overall x-height stem length. The frequency of the glyph combined with its stark geometric shape renders a…
still more font changes. Though, it feels like the journey has finally reached an end, near full circle to a geometric sans serif font. While the Atkinson Hyperlegible Font played a large role in the various typefaces created here, it is the abandonment of the various hooks towards starker strokes—of the grote font —that now find favour with my ereading. A return to the Bauhaus geometric…
it’s rare to have an entry here. But 2023 appears to be a year of changes. This all started innocently in 2022 with the acquisition of a Supernote A5X .. the intent, to delve deeper into digital journaling—eink reading being a primary driver for that thought. After a lifetime in technology i find myself gravitating towards the analogue despite my involvement with keyboards and optimizing their…
font creep. completion. It took awhile but, save for the title font (which is safe for now), all the other fonts used on this site originate from the work done on the Monolexic font and the font families subsequently derived from that for coding and writing. Of course, none of this would have been possible without the Iosevka font upon which these font families are generated from with their own…
it was inevitable.. from the development of.. my original monospaced coding font based on the Atkinson Hyperlegible Font for the visually impaired to the ereader variant of that font further enhanced for dyslexia that these cumulative enhancements to advance font legibility and readability, would be merged with my coding and system fonts for the computer desktop and applications.. and ultimately,…
with the focus on font type legibility satisfied (on my desktops, ereaders and web site), it was time to address the resultant aesthetic of this site. So, with some further CSS tweaking and server side magic.. a big face lift! First and foremost, the former outdented lower case lead in word following all headings—a quirky distinction this site has had from its inception as a stylistic…
my descent into all things fonts continues.. Unica One , a condensed unicase sans serif typeface which this site has used for awhile for subtitle headings, while adding a unique contrast to the Major Mono Display titles, lacked high legibility which had become the focus of recent musings on my use of the Iosevka font . Enter Unica One’s natural successor with a custom variant of my monolegible…
the last entry was about fonts. Fonts for this site’s look. Covid continues to be a time in which reading books (when not immersed in the web) fills the day. More so i have found than media. Whereas streaming media content is largely at the mercy of social trends limiting one’s choices, the written word waits for the inquiring mind. And as a UI obsessed nutter, i am always in the hunt for the…
fonts. Fonts. FONTS. Without them, the keyboard layouts detailed here would all be rather moot. At least for me. A sort of the chicken or the egg dilemma. Keyboard keys might caress the fingers but fonts! They seduce the mind**. This site has touched lightly upon fonts and the deliciousness of fonts on ereaders . Unlike more established sites, the darnedest thing is subject to the whimsy of its…
like the normalization of keyboard layouts across the various matrix and split keyboards used.. qcocktwo’s Major Mono Display font eventually made its way to the Tiny Tiny RSS banner theme.. and from there to this site, transforming the traditional large font URL banner to a much less obtrusive (both visually and in line height) geometric typeface with thin square monotype capitalized headings—all…
changes fast and furious. The look continues to garner attention—influenced, in part, by my Kindle ereader font themes (Futura) and a desire to impart a less “technical” look to this site. On the keyboard layout search, I have finally settled on BEAKL Ti , finger memory being a deciding factor in the matter, it ultimately being a wash with BEAKL Vi . What does this all mean? Writing. And a return…
lots of changes under the hood. First and foremost, the look , gets a facelift with more modern fonts and corresponding page layout changes. The site search limitations have been effectively removed. Not only were search results previously limited to ten entries, due to the sort order, these were also the ten oldest entries. An effectively unlimited search limit fixes this. The past while, the…
it’s a slow and methodical process. Step by step, extending an already feature rich window manager, molding it to one’s will. Fixing corner cases that invariably pop up over extended usage. Then adding visual flair with ricing scripts to enhance the user experience and keep it fresh. Distraction free plugins for vim complete my particular setup which is now complemented by an artful desktop. Time…
over the months, many under the hood changes have been made to the development server. Moving from zsh to dash for all shell scripts initiated a rethink of the standard way to organize scripts—namely, to go from a typical bin directory containing every manner of user script to a directory hierarchy of scripts. This led to a wrapper/source function organization of scripts which percolated to the…
a subtle but significant change to this web site. The home page now shows the most recent articles posted for the various topic threads which comprise this site. Dependent on publication date, not all topic threads will necessarily be represented by their latest journal entry. Regardless, this should now make the home page appear less stale dated. Surprisingly, despite not having touched the web…
colours.. Dark gray, light gray and beige. Cherry profile Gateron PBT keycaps are on their way for my Poker 2 . The muscle memory from a month of Colemak Shift-DH layout usage has been fully established. But infrequent modifier key combinations are often keyed with a glance at the keyboard, dependent on the workflow. Hence, a stab at a tri-coloured keyboard layout which, hopefully will still be…
well, it didn’t take long to return to a more classical hand positioning for touch typing (versus the flattened fingering I was experimenting with). With that, I have returned to the original Colemak Shift-DH layout after playing with the Shift-mod CV keymap swap—that it didn’t appear to impact typing negatively was expected but finger memory of some bigrams is much happier with the return.. `~ =…
not the usual site specific announcement but I guess this must be the final keyboard layout which future content will be composed on. For the curious, the keyboard and layout evolution can be found in numerous articles in colophon The Colemak plus Poker 2 journey led to this.. `~ = 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 [ ] Esc - Q W F P B J L U Y ; ' Del Tab / A R S T G M N E I O Enter \ Shift X V D C Z K H , .…
since getting the Poker 2 mechanical keyboard, it has been weeks of exploration—reviewing the merits of various keyboard layouts, and examining and unlearning the left hand impositions learned from classical touch typing. The possibilities of designing a more ergonomic keyboard layout are made practical with a programmable keyboard which can be easily configured and simply plugged into any…
a flock of cedar waxwings . Hundreds of them. I estimate 300 plus. All perched on the leafless branches of a neighour’s tree. Soaking in the western rays of the sun. Then all taking flight to return and land on the tree ten or so minutes later. Time and time again. Cedar waxwings. Spring!
funny what a toy can bring. I’ve been adapting to a 60% keyboard for a month now and the finger memory has developed to the point that a 80% tenkeyless keyboard feels foreign and awkward. An even bigger collection of keyboards will be gathering dust. Adding the final bit of personalization to the Poker 2 — a svelte milled aluminium case which lowers its height and tilt—and settling on the optimal…
dotfiles are the big addition to this site. They reside, of course, on github , and have been a long time coming—the recent interest and requests for the bspwm and Conky configurations was the final nudge I needed. I have been a consumer of github content for a long time and track a lot of packages from there. This change in status to a more participatory one, undoubtedly, will lead to more use of…
dates. Dates. DATES: the articles’. They get updated a lot on this site because I tend to go back and correct/amend material that has been written in an attempt to keep the content current and, as best as I can, accurate. In a way, it is too easy to amend the content that feeds this site, causing the chronology of the web pages to get shuffled. This pertains to the colophon mainly but I revise the…
the browser landscape has been somewhat active of late, with the demise of dwb (the author embarking on a new browser) and the entry of qutebrowser —a PyQt Webkit browser not using the traditional WebKitGtk+ library—and lispkit . Luakit has been my go to browser for some five years but has not seen much development the past few. Fresh with the transition to herbstluftwm , vimb caught my eye after…
lots of minor tweaks have been made to the content and presentation of the colophon. Most notably, the code snippets are now, I hope, more legible and better formatted (in particular, line wrap is no longer by word for a clearer presentation). I still do not present code in the typical scrolling code box, largely because my preference is to be able to see all the code at a glance—as it is,…
changes continue. Lots of them, both hardware and software. New Poker 2 keyboard, stabilized overclocked motherboard.. and, not least of which, a new window manager, herbstluftwm . The look of the colophon section, in particular, has changed significantly, for anyone perusing code. I still eschew the convention of scrolling code block windows, just because I like to see all the code at a glance…
since Covid the diminutive Georgi keyboard had been my daily driver. Not as a steno keyboard for which it had been designed (and upon which i dabbled with Plover ) but as a standard keyboard, albeit with my highly tuned beakl wi layout. What made this combo unique was not only the minimal finger travel of the beakl layout itself, but the significant gain from the chorded use of just two horizontal…
after time with the Chocofi Beakl Wi and the Chocofi Beakl Wi staggered layouts, the winner is.. beakl wi hybrid Save for the staggered pinkie finger chord—from the top+middle row to the middle+bottom row (with tuned glyph placements)—the chords for base alpha layer, and the thumb layers remain the same as the non-staggered Chocofi layout. This layout merges the non- and staggered alpha base…
hot on the heals of Chocofi Wi layout is the contemplated staggered pinkie version of the layout. The utility of shifting the pinkie cluster down a row is dependent on one’s physical hand proportions. Hands whose pinkie finger length is substantially less than the ring finger may find this staggered layout more relaxed. Those who have good typing hand posture and dexterity—much like a pianist—will…
this layout uses the Georgi keyboard and a (firmware) chording engine .. Edit: Added QUIKEY shortcut editing overlay layer Edit: Added Ctrl-Left and Ctrl-Right keys to Cursor layer Edit: Added Comma Period chord Edit: Swapped GUI (Super) and Alt key positions Edit: simplified number layer functions and reduced CAPS layer codebase size (by changing MK(LSFT,key) to STR(LETTER)) Edit: harmonized with…
while a descendent of the singspiel font, the gotham font is a return to a more traditional visual presentation with fewer flares whilst continuing this site’s focus on the improved dyslexic legibility and readability. straight m With yet another simple unconventional glyph shape change—replacing the familiar rounded double arch (shoulder) lower case m ( singspiel’s earless-corner,…
with the advent of the singspiel font and almost a dedicated year of reading on the Supernote Manta , the koreader settings originally published have long been due for an update to reflect the evolved Manta eink specific settings. The most significant impact from the original Manta settings is merely the ripple down effect of manually setting the display resolution (versus auto-detect)—which was…
the ottawa font follows on the heels of the gotham font. It couldn’t be helped -:) Whereas, the gotham font has a very clean, linear architectural feel (with minimal descenders visually accentuating the horizontal baseline and a Futura like leanness), the ottawa font re-introduces the cross t descender (though much more subtly than the singspiel font) and extended f .. The descender of the…
the singspiel font marks a visual departure from the font series released on this site with the re-introduction of the familiar lower case cross t . For those unfamiliar with the dyslexic fonts from this site, some history .. asymmetric t over the course of the past two years—has it been that long!—the reversed asymmetric lower case t became the uniquely defining glyph for the dyslexic font…
this TD;LR write-up covers KOReader on the new SuperNote A5X2 or Manta . This is not so much an installation guide, as a collection of companion notes to the detailed Kobo KOReader installation write-ups.. Grokking KOReader KOReader Settings outlining Manta specific settings and issues resulting from its differing hardware and size. From a settings perspective, most of my Kobo settings (gestures,…
early on in this dyslexic font journey, a universal grotesk font variant was created with its unique descending lower case f , aptly named grotesk whilst applying the signature non-mirrored glyph set common to the fonts created on this site. The grotesq font adds this glyph to the lajt font with its latest edition of the non-mirrored dyslexic glyph set which, with the descending capital J ,…
(die) luft or air, breeze. This new font’s name encapsulates the unique glyph set development on this site with.. the ascending cap height lower case l introduced with the galley font (and till now, my default KOReader font) the unique (AFAIK) reversed asymmetric lower case t introduced with the licht font in 2024 the toothless rounded lower case u —one of the dyslexia focused non-mirrored glyph…
just as the luft font had established itself as my favourite ereading font, version 33.x of the Iosevka font introduced an angled “top-cut” single storey lower case a in three glyph variants—serifless, serifed and tailed, leading into its introduction with the laft font. The angled top-cut glyph is significantly more distinguishable than the standard serifless single storey a , at least to these…
“flat” fonts and the asymmetric lower case t have become my main focus of late—the increased air between lines taking precedence over earlier typefaces using extended/descending glyphs. A different feel that i have settled on for small font sizes on ereaders. tl;dr Typeface differences.. letter grote stria patio (eye) I descending-serifless serifless serifed a toothless-double-storey…
completes the evolution of the monospaced dyslexic fonts and their unique set of asymmetric glyphs and double cell width characters—adding a tweaked cap height to the Unolexic font. By increasing the cap (capital) height—a very small amount without significantly affecting the monospaced character cell proportions—at small font sizes, with a line spacing of 1.4 or more (YMMV), font legibility is…
the search field can be found at the top of every page to the right of the site name by the faint colored magnifying glass icon and can filter for any article containing the search criteria entered. Search criteria may contain a list of one or more words of the form.. expression filter word any article containing word prefix* any article containing partial word +word article must contain word…
i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart)i am never without it(anywhere i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done by only me is your doing,my darling) i fear no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true) and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant and whatever a sun will always sing is you here is the deepest secret nobody knows (here is…
you are encouraged to send your comments regarding the darnedest thing . Every effort has been made to make the commenting system as effortless and secure as possible should you have anything to add or ask regarding what is presented here. Personally directed correspondence is another matter. Unfortunately, my personal computer (email) systems, and communications devices in general, have been…
each thread – the submenu titles below the the darnedest thing — has an about link which describes the thread, its purpose and intent. It is the starting point. And, by design, easily overlooked so as not to get in the way on future visits. A catch-22. The link is quite simple to identify as it is the first link on the page below the lead in content, titled “about”. The main or home page has a…
i have sung the praises about the Kobo Libra 2 since purchasing it almost two years ago, shortly after its release—replacing my Kindle Oasis as my daily driver for consuming digital content. Both ereaders use a 7” eink display but it is Rakuten’s Nickel software that elevates the Kobo past the Kindle IMO—its intuitive UX, more granular control of page layout and font control, and Calibre…
following grokking koreader are the settings—and importannly, their menu location—currently used on my Kobo Libre Colour. As much as anything, this document is meant as a record for rebuilding this custom configuration should it be necessary—useful because setting locations fade with time, as one achieves the desired “look”. Along with my custom KOReader patches, i enforce a uniform page layout…
descenders have been a hallmark of the latest fonts presented on this site (amongst other things) but the recent creation of the ascending lower case l has spawned the creation of a typeface with more traditional glyph geometries and a fuller sans serif expression. Enter the galley font.. the first font from this site with a standard height (non-descending) serifless capital I AND serifless…
birders are a broad community, captivated by the flight and fancy of feathered creatures and enchanted by their complex song. The number of bird varieties is endless yet we rarely are aware of their presence and beauty in the city. And often take them for granted in the countryside. I have come to birding late—which is probably not all that uncommon given my superficial observation of the average…
serifless cell width and 1x spacing after extensive reading with the pencil font with its ascending lower case l and descending capital I , further cell width tightening for these single stroke serifless glyphs is possible without diminishing the overall monospaced visual cadence of the font—the extended lengths of the glyphs providing a distinctive visual separation from adjacent characters. This…
fonts. drift and adrift had been my goto fonts for several months. Highly legible, its glyph set even influencing my source code fonts. chalk and pencil bring a return to my geometric/Univers Grotesk leanings expressed in earlier font sets , notably with the lower case extended f , single-storey a and (newly introduced) ascending l , and descending glyphs unique to the fonts created on in this…