I was just checking up on Facebook, and this ad turned up on the margin:

The first thing I noticed was the badly Photoshopped hands. (MY HANDS R PASTEDE ON YAY?)

But then I looked closer. I'm not very good at recognizing faces, but having watched SNL's Weekend Update quite a bit, I thought that the set in the background looked awfully familiar. And then I realized, hey, that does resemble Seth Meyers...

Google Image Search, and yep. That is, in fact, Seth Meyers. The un-Photoshopped original frame from Weekend Update even shows up in the search results.

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In case you're wondering what I ended up with for Christmas:

• From my parents:
  • A 32" flat-screen HDTV. Niiice. And yes, it does have an SVGA port to plug in my MacBook, as well as two HDMI ports.
  • Wii Fit. Yes, they actually managed to find a copy. (And wow, I'm a good bit out of shape...looks like I needed this even more than I thought!)
  • A rechargeable battery pack to go into the Wii Balance Board.
  • A new electric razor, to replace the one that often scratched my face up.
  • Some new pajamas, to replace the horribly torn-up ones that I had.
• From my sister:
  • Sonic Unleashed for Wii. (Insert "five golden rings" reference here...)

In return, I gave my dad an FM transmitter for his iPod and a copy of Jeffery Deaver's latest book; my mom, I got a replacement for her broken pedometer, and Dad and I together split the cost of a Roomba. For my sister and brother-in-law, I got a digital photo frame. (I wish I could afford to give something the cost of an HDTV, but I'm a graduate student...)

First of all, if you're not familiar with what a garden path sentence is, go read the Wikipedia article on them.

Now that that's out of the way... this was an actual headline in today's issue of USA Today (though interestingly, it was reworded in the web version), of which I've reproduced the spacing exactly as it appeared in the paper:

Obama's ad
buys dwarf
TV presence
of McCain

I had to read that two or three times before I realized it had nothing to do with little people starring in Obama ads.

current mood: amused

Now that the entirety of Google's Android phone OS has finally been released under the Apache license, I have modified the Droid Sans Mono font so as to include a more easily distinguishable zero, for the benefit of my fellow programmers. I thought it was a great-looking font for the most part, but the vague distinction between 0 and O simply wasn't good for peering through long listings of program code.

(Despite the Ascender copyright notices contained within the font files, they are indeed now licensed under the Apache license; check out the Git repository if proof is necessary. I have left the Ascender copyright in the modified font file, in keeping with the appropriate sections of the Apache license.)

So here is the modified font, which I have named "Code Sans Mono Z". I had originally named it "Droid Sans Mono Z", but there were potential trademark issues with my using the Droid name, hence the change.

Code Sans Mono Z

current mood: geeky

I just got what may be the most inept phishing e-mail I've ever seen. And I'm going to quote it below just to show how absolutely mind-bogglingly bad it is.

current mood: amused

I just discovered the music video for Justice's song "DVNO", and it's... a typographical feast, which I recommend to anyone who's a typography geek.

But what's particularly great is that pretty much everything in the video was inspired by TV and movie studio logos of the past. And as an Aspie who used to obsess over these sorts of TV-logo bumpers... this is fun trying to guess the inspirations. :)

Here's what I've got so far...

Christmas has passed, and my traditional blog entry on the family's gift exchanges still hasn't been posted. That's because we've all been preoccupied with said gifts.

For those who aren't really interested in personal stuff like this, feel free to skip this entry. :)

As a graduate student, I didn't exactly have a lot to give, but I had a good idea of something everyone wanted:

• For mom, my dad and I both chipped in to get a webcam, so she can video chat with me and other family members long-distance.
• For dad, I got a $25 iTunes card, because I knew there were quite a few songs he was wanting to download.
• For my older sister, I got one of those digital photo keychains.

My sister got me a second Wiimote so that whenever I've got people visiting (my niece and nephew, for instance... or my girlfriend...*hugs*) we can play two-player games.

Despite the fact that I really had no idea what I wanted for Christmas this year, other than one little thing, my parents still managed to give me quite a bit that will be of use for the rest of grad school (and some stuff for play too):

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So, despite the fact that I had no idea how my own gifts to the family would be received (they all were well liked) and despite the fact that I really had no idea what I myself wanted, it turned out pretty well.

current mood: merry

So yay. I've picked up a copy of Mac OS X Leopard from the UGA bookstore and installed on my PowerBook tonight.

Observations so far:

• Archive and Install worked much better than I expected. All my stuff, even all the applications I've installed, is still there; the only thing that was really affected was what I've compiled into the Unix directories (/usr/bin, etc.).
• Surprisingly, despite what Apple says, Photo Booth will run on a G4 with an external camera. The frame rate is atrocious, but it runs.
• Photoshop, InDesign and Illustrator CS2 all launch, though I've encountered a few random unexpected crashes after launching. Not sure if this is because of incompatibility, preferences getting zapped during the Leopard install, or both; I'll have to investigate later.
• Spaces. Seriously, why hasn't OS X had virtual desktops until now? VirtueDesktops was OK, but felt a bit kludgy; this seems to work far more... Apple-like. I particularly like how you can manipulate windows on the 'overhead' view and drag them among desktops.
• Safari 3.0 final seems to load much quicker than the beta version. And it doesn't take ages to display my bookmarks menu (one of the other big annoyances I had with the beta).
  • On that note, a Java chat that I sometimes visit seems to run more snappily as well. Not sure if that's because of Safari, Java, or a combination of both.
• How am I only now getting to checking e-mail? Oh, wow, you can sync notes and To Do lists with an IMAP server. This could be very useful for a scatterbrain like me.

I'll probably be posting more here as I discover more about Leopard. I still haven't installed Xcode yet; right now, I'm trying to move the archived Tiger install to an external drive before I even think of installing anything else, but it's going very slowly (and with good reason, since it's 10 gigs or so).

I also need to clear up enough space on my external drive to try out Time Machine... automatic backups, whee! Yet another thing that will be incredibly useful in the long run once I've got it set up...

Edited to add: Ooh, it's always the little things that really make a difference. Y'know how on the newer Mac laptops you can right-click by holding down two fingers on the trackpad? That wasn't possible on PowerBooks and iBooks in Tiger...but it is in Leopard.

current mood: geeky