June 2, 2004

Summer-esque Slothdom

Isn’t it amazing how productivity comes to a grinding halt once the first hint of warm weather rolls around? The most puzzling part about it is that I hate the summer (I know its not summer yet, so lets call it summer-esque). Well, in a manner befitting of summer-esque slothdom, here is a loosely joined collection of miscellanea.

To help celebrate their 8th anniversary, Born Magazine has delved deep into the vaults to showcase some of their most celebrated works each week. Kevin’s Spectacular Attacks was up a few weeks ago, and now my collaboration for Your Voice is up for a second go-around (original post). Please check them out for old time’s sake.

I also finally got around to seeing School of Rock, and I must say, it was damn funny. This movie could have been a complete wreck, but it was done very well. The kids were dead on, Mike White’s script was great (why the hell is the Freaks and Geeks box set so damn expensive?), and even Jack Black turned in a wonderful performance. On a related note, Philadelphia’s own Paul Green’s School of Rock (was around before the film) is the subject of a documentary called (surprise!) Rock School. I have seen these kids live and they are something to behold. Watch the trailer for the film and you’ll see what I mean. “Don’t fucking make mistakes! Not on Rebel Yell!”

I would like to thank Shaun Inman for a quick Javascript fix for my footer. Now when you resize the window the footer remains relative to the widow height without cropping the spine image. It did this before but at the price of some ugly code. So, Inman saves the day again. That guy really knows where his towel is.

Despite the wonder that is Jay Allen’s Blacklist, I have been getting way too many damn spam comments. I feel so violated. This last thrust has been mainly focused in the barnyard sector of the porn industry, which really isn’t my forte. In an effort to curb some of that unwanted traffic I have closed comments on every post except for the four on the front page.

Typeradio has stopped broadcasting for the moment. Though this is a seriously high form of design nerditude, set somewhere just below a sitcom about a family of designers (“Jeez sis, learn how to kern”), make no mistake, Typeradio is where it’s at. Coming to us from the talented folks at Underware (makers of just about the only pixel typeface that matters, Unibody), Typeradio brought us heated typographic debates and interviews with the likes of Stefan Sagmeister, Robert Bringhurst, Jonathan Hoefler, and the craftsmen at House Industries. I am patiently waiting for them to hit the airwaves again.

Commentary (5):

1. brian says… jun 2, 2004 | 10:58 am

i picked up that freaks and geeks box set at best buy for $45 i think. it has 6 discs in it ( apparently there were 18 episodes made ) so it seemed worth it to me.

2. Jason Santa Maria says… jun 2, 2004 | 12:00 pm

I know, I’m pining over the Limited Edition :D

3. Tim Murtaugh says… jun 3, 2004 | 2:52 pm

I have a question re: comment spamming… Since many sites, like yours, break comments into a separate page, why not tell Google not to spider your comment pages?

The main reason (AFAIK) for comment spamming is to build Google juice for the spammer. If the comments aren’t spidered, no juice builds, and there’s no reason for the spam.

Comment spam isn’t something I deal with much, so I’m not terribly well-read on the subject. Perhaps this has come up before.

4. Jason Santa Maria says… jun 3, 2004 | 3:06 pm

Good question! But in order to adequately ask it we must first remove any sense of logic or consideration from our heads.

I would venture a guess and say that whatever the spammers use to fuck up my site (and other) doesn’t look to see if Google is watching and spidering my site. They are just trying to cover as much ground as possible by hitting as many sites as possible. That’s one thing. The other is that comments are also on the archived pages for the articles, and I do want Google to index those.

5. A Friend says… jun 3, 2004 | 5:29 pm

Thanks for the heads up on the font, Jason. Also wanted to thank you for updating again - yours is pretty much the only blog that I learn something new from everytime I read, what with Zeldman’s failure to post occasionally and Meyer only ever talking about various species of Seagull.

Thanks.