Created by Ian Hunter
There are a lot of fonts out there, but it seems that few get as reused as Papyrus does. Since I've begun looking for it, I've seen it nearly everywhere, from product labels and advertisements to the signs of the stores marketing them. Papyrus is generally the Font of Choice for the organic and healthy food market; it'll often show up on packaging for teas and whole-grain foods. In an effort to document the widespread usage of this otherwise-unique font, I've developed a website, Papyrus: A Plague of Typography, in which users are free to post their own photographs of semi- to wholly- permanent instances of the font. These photographs must be coupled with a concrete street address, because, once posted, they are automatically placed on a map displaying all of these sightings from around the world.
It'd be wonderful if all who are interested would participate in this project.
5137 comments
Last week I had the face-melting pleasure of visiting the grand old city of New York, New York. It was incredible, and I'd have stayed much longer than a day had I the time. There's hardly a drought of NYC vacation logs on the Internet, so I'll spare the ramblings about the skyscrapers and Lady Liberty; but I must at least say this: Mars 2121, despite being both a delicious and fun restaurant, smacks of a fancied-up Chuck E. Cheese.
Something more interesting than the buildings, themed restaurants, and historical monuments was the immense variety of people. All shades of colors, all income levels, all with their own set of interests and personalities. And I had my camera.
But how do you photograph someone from a place like that? Everyone seems so pretty, so important, so hurried. I was tempted a few times to ask certain people, "Excuse me, may I take your photograph?" but stepped down out of fear of being punched in the eye or kicked in the navel. Instead, I just put on the appearance of a crazy tourist snapping pictures of buildings, when in reality I was really just a crazy tourist snapping pictures of people.
In other news, I work at a bookstore now. With my employee discount and our already cheap prices, I've been tempted to buy a few books. After getting my first paycheck, I almost pulled out the few books I've been eying; but, in the nick of time, I decided against it and went to the library. It turns out you can save lots of money by just checking out books from your local library! And there are additional, even-more-significant bonuses that you get from library books that don't come at a bookstore:
Strange smells
Yellowed pages
Ability to know that your book was first checked out on October 7, 1988
Brown smudges
Contagious diseases
Illegible markings
In fact, I'm still trying to decipher what the markings mean in my borrowed copy of The Screwtape Letters. For whatever reason, some dastardly fellow scribbled on multiple pages. Was his intent to highlight his favorite passages? Or did he (or she) simply not like the material on pages xix, xxv, 1, 41, 48, and 53?
I don't know, and neither did "Rg"--the alias of one of the librarians--who first noted the markings on January 1, 2004.
6086 comments
June 14, 2008
Notice anything different? You should, because I've redesigned the whole website. That's right: I've crossed over from "pretty boring" to "slightly less boring than before;" this time around, I've cut out some doodles of mine and pasted them around the website (digitally speaking, of course). Yes, believe it or not, for the past two months I have been working on the website--I've just done a miserable job of updating you (the webcrawlers and one or two friends I've coerced into visiting this site regularly).
[NOTE: To avoid copyright infringement, I've changed the name of the Thesaurusizer to the Thesaurifier. I preferred the previous one, but someone already has a hold of it on the Net. Just be grateful I didn't name it the Thesaurinator like I almost did, and would have, had it not sounded like a stupid bathroom joke.]
For starters, I'd like to point out the Thesaurusizer. It's basically a program that rewords phrases for you. For example, if you don't particularly like the way the first line of A Tale of Two Cities starts, you can plug it into the Thesaurusizer and read an entirely new beginning:
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness
Becomes:
It was the outflank of multiplication, it was the worst of times, it was the eld of wisdom, it was the long time of folly
And if your children's story doesn't really have that kick that you want, give the Thesaurusizer a spin:
Rover the happy dog lives in a big box
Becomes:
Wanderer the felicitous frump survives in a self-aggrandising box
If your word comes up with a confusing synonym, simply click on it, and the Thesaurusizer will attempt to find a new one for you.
The program's not completely reliable, which is evident from only one or two uses, but it helps to pass the time if you're a little bored. I plan to continue to work on it, so expect to hear back from me on the topic. If you have any suggestions, find any bugs, or just want to comment on the program, you can do so here.
Oh, and for those of you who want to know what the old site looked like, I've archived it.
1007 comments
read more in the blog