Saturday, 23rd July, 2005

The Pedantic Web

(It's a joke — a pun if you will — a bit like The Semantic Web but less informative and much more grouchy)

Despite all evidence to the contrary (my spelling, my lack of enthusiasm for going back and decapitalising the second letters of words that I've typed in a hurry, that sort of thing) I'm a bit of a stickler for detail.

I like the idea that some things are right, not things like philosophical questions or "is Organic food healthy?" (although remind me to rant about that one day...), but things like the differences between Helvetica and Arial, the theme music from The Omen ... that sort of thing.

See, I think the intarweb is a wonderful thing — but one of the downsides of it is that it has the ability to spread erroneous snippets of information like wildfire.

My Lovely Friend™, Mr Betteridge, put it rather well the other day...

One of the best things that I learned doing seven years of philosophy was a simple one: Truth is not consensual. Simply because 30,000 say that Apple is preparing to launch a phone company doesn't make it true. It just means that 29,999 bloggers saw it on Scoble's blog.

[http://technovia.typepad.com/technovia/2005/07/why_30000_blogg.html]

Anyway, far from being a rant about the ins and outs of truth, all that was just a little introduction to a rather wonderful web page that I found a few minutes ago, called How to draw the flag of the United Kingdom — accurately

That's what I love about the internet — finding little pockets of gold in amongst all the crap. Little nuggets of well-formed (and well-researched) information

Now, that guy's site (www.jdawiseman.com) seems to be a large collection of stuff about financial things — stuff that goes waaaay over my head. But as well as info on drawing the Union Jack properly (and what it's actually called), he has "A map of Jet Set Willy II, the classic ZX Spectrum platform game, with a recommended route"

w00t!

...

This is probably very sad of me, but I must confess that I collect stuff like that. I've got a folder packed with PDFs and EPSes ("EPSs"?) of logotypes and dimensions and things like that.

I used to froth inwardly every time a client would bring along some repro work that included An Official Thing™ — like an EPS of the Tube Map, or Barclays's typeface — not because I had any use for them (although I was going to make a film using the Tube Map once), but because I like having them.

I've got stacks of stuff lying around:

• The Channel Four 4:3 and 16:9 branding images, including several PDFs about how to use them properly.
• The BBC Widescreen Guide, with all sorts of stuff about Safe Areas
• Almost every manual for every interesting piece of software there is.
• pr0n

I went through a period (and still do I guess) of downloading every single PDF I came across online, in the belief that some day, it would be useful. And to some extent, some of them have been — like when I grabbed a set of typefaces based on the Department for Transport's Alphabet Drawings. I ended up using them to modify a set of road signs for the DVD menu of one of my students' work.

Indcidently, following that link, I've just discovered this and I'm about to OPTION-click every single link on it...

Migratory toads! How cool is that?!

(Dear The Crown — sorry about the copyright )

God knows what I'll use them for, but I'll think of something...

Caption Competition

In the spirit of what's going on in Joanna's comment box right now, and in a 'whiling away a lazy Saturday afternoon' distraction kinda thing, the first person to come up with a hilarious caption for these roadsigns will win a prize. (A prize that I will invent later on, depending on who wins )

Insert "Long Horn" joke here

(http://www.joannasdiary.co.uk/blog/2005/07/microsoft-curry.html)