I’ve been watching the PBS American Masters documentary about Woody Allen and I’m enjoying the heck out of it. Manhattan is one of my all-time favorite films. And how about Hannah and Her Sisters? He’s made so many good, thoughtful movies, though I’m not always crazy about his “funny” movies. I am looking forward to Midnight in Paris, too. Why? It’s about Paris!

Anyhow, the font I used in the image above is called Blackout and it’s another free font by Tyler Finck, the same guy who created Ostrich. Blackout is a very bold font with 2 styles that are inverses of each other: 2AM and Midnight. All the open spaces are filled in and they makes you sit up and take a second look. :)

(+) apple miniatures

My copy of Steve Jobs arrived this week and I’m happy to say that the book is way better than the hype — it’s fun, easy to read, and very gossipy. Within the first few pages of the intro, I got my money’s worth.

Back when I was taking my automata class at SFSU, Professor Wall would sometimes begin lectures with a story about the good ol’ day of computer science, back when programmers had to use paper punch cards to write programs. I think mainly he wanted us to know how easy we had it compared to the founders. One day, he told us what he believed to be the reason Apple picked its logo of an apple with a bite out of it.

According to Professor Wall, the Apple logo is an homage to Alan Turing, the British mathematician we recognize as the father of computer science. Among other things, Turing led the efforts to break the Enigma code used by the Nazis to send encoded messages. His successful efforts helped bring World War II to an end. Additionally, Turing described the idea of a “Turing Machine”, which modern computers are based on. And he was also one of the first scientists to write about artificial intelligence — the idea that a computer could act in a way indistinguishable from a human being. We’re all familiar with those annoying CAPTCHAs, right? Every time you fill out a captcha form, you are using a “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart”.

Anywayyyyyyy, Turing was gay, and homosexuality was illegal and considered a perversion in England back then. You could actually go to jail just for being gay! In 1950, Turing was arrested and persecuted for his sexual orientation. In court-ordered efforts to “cure” him, he had to choose between doing hard time in jail, or chemical castration via hormone injections — he chose the latter.

After two-years of these horrific estrogen injections, he was found in his home dead of cyanide poisoning. There was a half-eaten apple, laced with cyanide, by his side. Ironically, one of Turing’s favorite tales was Snow White, and he loved the scene where the Witch dips the apple into her poisonous brew.

According to Professor Wall, the Apple founders chose to honor the Father of Computer Science, Alan Turing, by choosing an Apple with a bite out of it as the company logo. Granted that the second version of the Apple logo is known as the rainbow logo, it’s easy to see how this story would catch on.

Back to the biography, Walter Isaacson writes, “At one point, I e-mailed to ask him if it was true, as my daughter had told me, that the Apple logo was an homage to Alan Turing, the British computer pioneer who broke the German wartime codes and then committed suicide by biting into a cyanide-laced apple. He replied, that he wished he had thought of that, but hadn’t.”

Sorry, Professor Wall. Your lecture was the best ever, but that logo might be an homage to Sir Isaac Newton. :)

Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.

~ Steve Jobs, Apple Inc. (via Wikipedia)

R.I.P. Steve Jobs

SJ (Apple Outsider)
Here’s to the Crazy One (TechCrunch)
Universe Dented, Grass Underfoot (Daring Fireball)
The Man Who Inspired Jobs (The New York Times)
Steve Jobs at the Pearly Gates (The New Yorker)
Eternal Flame (xkcd)

Good design is often strange… but I don’t think it works to cultivate strangeness. The best you can do is not squash it if it starts to appear. Einstein didn’t try to make relativity strange. He tried to make it true, and the truth turned out to be strange. The only style worth having is the one you can’t help. And this is especially true for strangeness.

~ Hackers and Painters by Paul Graham

When I heard that Steve Jobs had resigned from Apple, my heart sank. Over the years, I’ve grown to admire him and many times I’ve asked myself, when I had doubts which direction to take, what would Steve Jobs do? The answer is always: be honest and be true to yourself and always follow your dreams.

As you may know, Steve Jobs has has been fighting cancer for many years. To resign from Apple can only mean that he has moved on to the next stage of his life, and to more important concerns: his family and friends. I miss him already.

I leave you with Steve Jobs’ inspiring 2005 Commencement Address at Stanford University:

I downloaded Ostrich Sans a couple of months ago, thanks to a heads up from Greta who suggested that I might like it and she’s right — I do! I finally got around to experimenting with the font last night and as you’ll see after the jump, I’ve been having a lot of fun with it.

Designed by Tyler Finck, Ostrich Sans is an open-source font that comes in a variety of styles: dashed, rounded, ultra light, black, and bold (race track style with double lines). You can download it for free from The League of Moveable Type. While you’re there, you might want to check out their other open source fonts, as well.

where i got my quote:

I recently watched Flipped, a teen movie about the quintessential issues of growing up. I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. The dialogue had some high spots that were really quotable. As you may have already guessed, “A painting is more than the sum of its parts” is a quote from the movie.

This hyper-active image makes sense if you play the Da Da Da song below. :)

If you’re not saying ‘Hell Yeah’ about something, say ‘No’. ~ Derek Sivers

I was on a No streak in June. My response to many kind invitations for lunch and freelance work was simple: thanks so much, but no thanks. I was juggling web stuff and some non-web projects and saying No was the only reasonable way to maintain my sanity. However, a few weeks ago, Susannah Conway asked if I would be interested in creating the badges for the upcoming August Break and the answer was immediately very clear: HELL YEAH! And this is why…

I first heard about Susannah Conway’s August Break from my friend, Rhianne. As much as I wanted to join, the thought of deviating from my blog schedule was also very frightening. Anyway, I ended up joining and August of 2010 ended up being one of those extraordinary months. Besides the photography practice and the new blog pals I made, the time away from my normal blogging routine gave me a chance to relax, leave my bat cave more often, and explore several new ideas, like Blog Bling Premium Access. My August Break spawned the realization that I might really be able to turn blogging into a livelihood and I seriously have Rhianne and Susannah Conway to thank! ♥

An important lesson I learned is that it’s important to take a break when I need one (and I really did need it). Since the August Break of 2010, I’ve taken two more breaks: a Holiday Break and my March Move Break, both following The August Break format of posting a text-free photo post every day. Since Pugly Pixel has already taken a month-long break in March, my August Break photos will appear at my other blog, Geek Girl Chronicles.

By the way, did I mention that I’m a Susannah Conway fan-girl? She takes beautiful photos and her writing is just like butter! My favorite Susannah Conway posts:

• How to take a photograph
• The Art of the Polaroid
• Scenes from the Weekend #1
• Scenes from the Weekend #2
• A Girlie Day
• When Sarah Came to Stay
• All I Have
• Oh, Montreal

JOIN THE AUGUST BREAK