The Widmann Blog
2008-07-22
Font design
Normally when you design a font these days, you use a program like FontForge, which is basically a glorified drawing program.You can do anything you want, but it's basically up to you to make the individual characters looks similar so that they combine to form a unified and beautiful font.
If you use a program like METAFONT instead, you have more options. You can define a "pen", for instance a rotated oval, that you can draw shapes with, and you can define functions, for instance to produce serifs in a given location. However, you have to sacrifice drawing the basic shape with your mouse and have to use mathematical expressions instead.
So I've been wondering for some years whether it would be possible/feasible to write a font design program that lets you define a sophisticated "pen" that not only has a shape, but also comes with serifs to leave at the start and end points of a line. The serifs and the shape could depend on the direction of the stroke.
So with such a pen defined, you could then draw the basic shape in your drawing program and all the sophisticated bits would appear automagically.
In other words, I suggest drawing the top character on the right manually in the drawing program, but using fancy "pens" to turn that basic shape into all the variants beneath.
The resulting font could then be loaded into FontForge for fine-tuning, but it should be much faster than drawing an entire font by hand.
Has something like this ever been done yet?
Labels: en, typography
2008-07-19
Sudoku website
However, I'm not going to do this anytime soon, but I've already started playing around with it.
The hosting company claimed it was OK to put up Perl CGI scripts, so I thought that would be fun to test.
So I took a small Sudoku generator that I wrote a couple of years ago and added an HTML interface to it.
The result is here.
I probably should disable the 16x16 option – it's really slow, and the servers might have better things to do than doing this kind of number-crunching.
Apart from that, I guess I should optionally show the solution to each puzzle. Some other day...
2008-07-17
Phonetic destiny
Likewise, German seems to be obsessed with hardening initial consonants. First the Germanic one, then the High German one, and now in many varieties, /ptk/ are aspirated and thus ready for another shift.
And Slavonic seems to have undergone several palatalisations, one after another.
It can thus feel like languages are destined to move in a specific directions, thus the title for the posting.
However, destiny is not a very scientific concept, so what is really going on?
One possibility is that it's random. This cannot be dismissed out of hand, and further study is needed to determine whether phonetic destiny is statistically significant.
If it isn't random, my best guess is that it's caused by ways of speaking. Some languages are on average spoken faster than others, some are spoken more sloppily or with less jaw movement, and then there's the contrast of syllable-timed vs. stress-timed languages.
My guess is that certain ways of speaking leads to certain sound changes being likely while effectively ruling out other sound changes.
For this to be the cause of phonetic destiny, it would require such ways of speaking to be much more stable than specific pronunciations, lasting centuries if not millennia.
This long time-frame makes this very hard to investigate scientifically. I guess one could try to find old perceptions of other languages. For instance, have any Norwegian or Swedish medieval sources commented on how the Danes pronounced their language?
One could also try to find unrelated languages that are known to have gone through similar sound changes recently and investigate whether their pronunciations are similar in other respects, e.g., whether they are spoken equally fast.
Does anybody know whether anybody has already investigated this topic?
Labels: en, linguistics
2008-07-16
Regional polls
I've been a fan of Electoral Calculus for some time, especially of the pages that allows you to predict Westminster elections, either for the UK or for Scotland only.However, it's often annoyed me that you had to do either, but never both at the same time. Because the Conservative revival hasn't happened north of the border, where we've instead seen an SNP surge instead, it's been a problem for accurately predicting the results of an election.
So I wrote to Martin Baxter some weeks ago, and now he has implemented my suggestion!
It's only a beta version for now, but it seems to work really well. You can put in national values and it will then fill in regional values that you can then override where necessary. Do try it!
I tried it out using two recent opinion polls. Counting seats, instead of Cons 450, Lab 148 and LD 24, I get Cons 450, Lab 138, LD 21 and Nat 21.
2008-07-15
Biofuels are not the answer
There is an interesting bit of information in it:
The grain required to fill a [95 litre] tank with ethanol would feed one person for an entire year.It so clearly demonstrates why biofuels aren't the answer, as it means driving a car means many people can't eat – it's not as if your car could run the whole time on the left-overs from dinner.
Labels: en, environment, politics, science, transport
2008-07-14
Forbedret
Det undrede mig derfor en del, da jeg tog mig selv i at udtale forbedret som /fʌˈbɛðʔʌd/, ikke det forventede /fʌˈbɛðʔ(ʁ)ʌð/.
Er det bortfaldet af /-ʁ-/, der skaber mulighed for dissimilering?
Er jeg den eneste med denne udtale?
Labels: da, linguistics
2008-07-13
Pirosmani
Close to our hotel, on the Rue Boutebrie, we found a wonderful Georgian restaurant, called Pirosmani (named after the painter, of course).
I had lobio and xink'ali, and Phyllis had ajapsandali and kharcho, but Anna liked the ajapsandali best.
აჯაფსანდალი ajapsandali (recipe here) is diced aubergine that has been cooked till it's very tender with tomato and lots of herbs, and she just loved it.
Why aren't there any Georgian restaurants in Glasgow? My lobio was just great, and if Pirosmani had been here instead, I'd definitely go there often.
Labels: en, fooddrink, ka, travel
2008-07-09
Food pairing
I found a link on "En chokomans bekendelser" to an extremely interesting Belgian site on food pairing.I must admit I don't understand fully how they made it. What they write is this: "By comparing the flavour of each food product eg strawberry with the rest of the food and their flavours, new combinations like strawberry with peas can be made. The way to use is, is just to select a food product like strawberries. You will get a plot where you have strawberry in the middle surrounded by other food products. Take one of those other food products and try to make a new recipe by combining those two. The more flavours food products have in common the shorter the distance between the food products."
It'll be fun to test some of the wackier pairings they suggest.
Labels: en, fooddrink, science
Limbo Brown
But Brown's premiership is one long limbo dance - just when you think he cant get any lower, he surprises everyone.
2008-07-08
Lots of fun summer weekends ahead
So far, we've got gas and electricity put into the new kitchen, we've painted the walls, Dougie put up new lights, and I'm nearly done laying a nice laminate floor.
Today Ikea then delivered all the units – as you can see from the photo, there are a lot of boxes!
I'm sure that will provide lots of weekend entertainment for the whole family for many weeks to come.
We still have to buy worktops (we didn't like Ikea's), a sink, a tap, a cooker and an extractor hood.
And finally, we'll have to clear out the current kitchen and put up wallpaper and lay a nice floor.
When will I find the time to finish my precious greenhouse? :-(
2008-07-07
Glasgow East
This article from The Spectator is a good introduction from a political perspective.
For a wider and more historical view, read this one.
I highly recommend reading both. People from outwith Scotland might be somewhat shocked by some of it...
2008-07-06
Til bryllup i Skotland
Vi var inviteret til bryllup og reception, men da jeg spurgte Phyllis, om det betød, vi var hjemme til aftensmad, så hun undrende på mig: Reception betyder "bryllupsmiddag", og hvis man ikke er inviteret til det, hedder det evening only. Idéen er, at dem, der er indbudt til reception, kommer til selve vielsen og bryllupsmiddagen, og når der så bydes op til dans, kan resten troppe op.
Brylluppet fandt sted i Greenock Town Hall, så jeg formodede, der var tale om en borgerlig vielse. Men nej, der var salmer på elorgel og en rigtig præst (der talte med tyk gælisk accent).
Efter vielsen fik vi et glas champagne og lidt snacks, mens der blev taget billeder.
Vi stod såmænd kun ret op og ned i toenhalv time, før vi blev budt til bords.
Alle gæsterne fandt deres pladser først, og så ledte en sækkepibespiller brudeparret ind, mens folk klappede.
Vi fik så en lækker middag, uden at blive afbrudt af taler eller sange, og derefter blev der holdt tre taler: En af brudens far, en af brudgommen, og en af brudgommens best man.
Derefter blev gulvet ryddet, og en DJ begyndte at spille musik. Ingen brudevals, kun moderne musik.
Og det var så det bryllup.
2008-07-02
Another party leader quits
In it, he announces that he's stepping down as leader of the Scottish Libdems. He says it's for family reasons:
But when it goes beyond that, when it crosses a line, something has to be done. And at that stage - when you have to make a choice between family and politics - there can only be one answer.That sounds to me like his wife has given him an ultimatum: Either you leave that job, or I'll leave you – no?
The Convenor writes this in a separate email:
Our election rules mean that the post of Leader must be filled by an MSP who must receive the nomination of at least one other MSP. If the election is contested, then there will be a ballot of all Party members. The whole election process is likely to conclude by the start of September.I hope there'll be at least one good candidate – somebody who realises that the Libdems are not that far removed from the SNP on many issues, and that many Libdem voters are actually in favour of Scottish independence. Nicol Stephen was definitely far too unionist for my taste.
