I have to say that fonts aren’t something i can get excited about. Not in the same way i do about a good media server anyway. But today they invaded my world of media based geekery with the potential for chaotic consequences.
Onlyview is the server of choice for the show im currently programming and on the whole this is a great asset to the project. Unfortunately one of the limitations of this tool is its lack of support for newer fonts. The only such support it offers is for true type. You can therefore imagine my concern when the show fonts turned up as open type
Fontforge was the app that came to the rescue. The first thing i feel i should say about it is that its not strictly an OS X app. Its an open source project designed for flavours of unix, but the developers offer both comprehensive instructions and packages for running on OS X, Linux and Windows.
On OS X it runs pretty happily under X11, and i found the instructions to be the quickest and easiest of all platforms (just run the installer and off you go!). It offers a huge range of functions, many of which go above and beyond my knowlege of computing and fonts. Most notably for me was the easy conversion between font formats. Result!
Working, and doing a lot of it. To be more specific, I’ve been programming the onstage video for the Digital Music Awards that are being recorded for CH4 this next Tuesday. Unfortunately (for me) things have proved to be more complex than expected, resulting in a fair few late nights.
As always, i have to be careful what i say about these things until they’re over. But i can point you to their snazzy website over here
Look out for my photos post event!
Today i discovered Display Fusion. A freeware application geared towards those running a multi-monitor XP setup. You can pick the images from your collection or give it keywords for a Flickr search. It then allows you to span them across the entire width of your desktop maintaining whichever aspect you prefer.
Not one of those ‘i-can’t-do-without’ programs, but if you’re going to spend as much time staring at your screens as i do, you might as well make them look nice!
Find out for yourself here
This year I’ve been having a bit of a nightmare with technology failing on me. My technological obituary column includes a camera, laptop charger, and no less than four (yes thats 4!) hard drives. In the last nine months I’ve laid waste to a 500GB Lacie desktop drive, a 120GB Lacie ‘Rugged’ drive, the 40GB drive that sat in my Powerbook, and finally yesterday a 120GB Formac drive.
The desktop drive was replaced under warranty and the laptop drive was 5 years old, so i guess that you could call that fair play. But two 120GB so called ‘portable’ drives went without warning having barely lived long enough to reach their first birthdays. Incidentally both failed in the same way – the boards involved with communications failed.
As my line of work is programming video for live performances i use a 120GB drive in much the same way most people will use a thumb drive. Passing large video and image files between servers is a daily if not hourly occurrence and as such i rely on my hardware to keep up with the pace.
Please can drive manufacturers start making the boards and connectors in their portable drives more robust!
Welcome to the new look www.rich-porter.com. My site has had a face lift in that i’ve switched from the Joomla content managment system to the simpler interface of Wordpress. Joomla was proving to be high maintenance beyond my skills and therefore limited my ability and motivation to post. I hope this shift will mean more posts more regularly!