Tihr Smooth
I’ve finished up and released the ultimate version of my Tihr font. It started out as a pixel font and then I enhanced it into a “superpixel” font with angular edges. Now that it’s got beautiful curves I think I’m finally done tweaking it. Enjoy!
Falling Asleep
When my brain doesn’t want to slow down and let me fall asleep I trick it with ambient music. For over a year my go-to album has been Hammock’s rare North West East South EP, but thanks to a recommendation received via twitter I now have a second album to throw into the mix. Geotic’s Bless the Self is now lulling me to sleep and is provided as a free download on the artist’s site.
Happy listening!
A Midnight Couch
Today is father’s day! (Also Juneteenth, but that’s neither here nor there.) In honor of this occasion I’m reposting this story from 2004, from my old livejournal account. (With the punctuation and capitalization edited. Because, seriously, why did I ever think it was a good idea to write like that?) It’s a story tangentially about how awesome my dad is. So without further ado, the couch fiasco.
What do you get when you put together a Marky Mark, Michelle Uphoff, The Kari Kari, Mark’s house, Mark’s family, and one couch?
A huge couch fiasco!
So tonight after small group and mini golfing (a little after eleven o’clock, that is) The Funky Bunch came over and we attempted to get the couch (which we picked up from Michelle Chestnut’s parking lot) into my basement. We looked at the door into the house from the garage. Definitely too small. So we took it through the front door. The stairs up to the second floor are right inside the door though, so we had to maneuver it halfway up the stairs. And we left a few little marks on the wall there. They should rub off.
We got it through the kitchen just fine. The problem was the basement door. Not very navigable, that hallway that the basement comes off of. So, it didn’t fit. we stood it up edgewise and tried to navigate it around through doorways and we just couldn’t get it through the basement door for anything. So I decide it’d be a good idea to take the door off. So I start going at the hinges and I get one out without making much of a ruckus, but the other is going to be a pain I could tell.
About this time my dad comes down (in his robe) and he is like, “you gotta take the legs off that thing or it won’t fit” (Michelle and Kari were sure he was going to be pissed; I was like, “I hope my dad does come down because I’m sure he would know how to get this thing into the basement.” And my dad rocks so hardcore that that is exactly what happened). So we get the legs off (Paul was the one who figure out how) and get the door off and squeeze a bit and take some paint off of a door frame, but we for sure got that beast tamed and into the basement. After that, the chair we took was nothing.
So, with the exception of a back cushion for the chair (which we’ll go scrounge for later) I now have totally functional new furniture! And someone suggested I do stadium seating in my basement (maybe Caleb Simpson, but I can’t remember), so I just might have to try and get that set up there then.
And Kari didn’t think the couch would ever fit through the door into the basement, so now she has to pay for my game of mini golf. Mwahahahaha.
I don’t think we ever went back and got the cushion for the chair. Not sure if Carrie ever paid me for that round of putt-putt, either.
But I’m happy to have a father who has always been gracious and helpful, willing to put us ahead of his restful night of sleep. Thanks Dad! Happy father’s day.
Vacation
Vacation is finally here. I left my work computer at the office since I’ll be back there the first day after vacation, my phone forwarding is off, my out-of-office messages are in place, and I’m completely disconnected. It’ll be nice to get some time off to refresh. Sit on the beach and get a sunburn. Do some shopping, or hang around in bookstores on my sweet new MacBook Air. See Aimee and Adam and enjoy Georgia. Spend time talking and laughing with Carrie.
And I start it all off by rocking Chicago with Blake and Brandy when we drive up Easter evening to see Arcade Fire with special guests The National!
3D Backgrounds
I was messing around in Structure Synth, a 3D cousin of Context Free, and decided to make some more backgrounds. Previous backgrounds can be found here. Enjoy!
A Birthday Present
For the past week or two Carrie had been asking me what I wanted for my birthday, but I never knew what to tell her; After all I’d just gotten paid for making a website and had used the money to buy all the things off my Christmas list I hadn’t received. What else could I want?
But then, Monday night we were sitting in the living room. I’d been on my laptop working on moving my website back to markegli.com (sorry to all of you whose RSS feeds exploded as a result) and Carrie had been on her laptop, probably seeing if her copy of The Sims Medieval had shipped yet. My laptop was plugged in and hers was not, and she kindly requested that I let her use the power cord for a while.
I unplugged the power cord from my laptop and BOOM. It was dead. Guess the battery doesn’t hold a charge anymore. And thus the thought was planted: “I wouldn’t mind a new laptop for my birthday…”
…and Carrie agreed! Excitement of excitements! A refurbished MacBook Air was promptly ordered (“what a smooth checkout process,” I thought, “I don’t need to enter any information because it knows it all from my AppleID”) and the giddy wait began.
But oh treacherous fortune! Apple’s checkout process which I was so ready to praise was the metaphorical Trojan horse. This morning I awoke, ready to track the shipment and see if my computer would arrive today, but what do I see? Destination: Champaign?!
How could this have happened? I tried to think back to Monday night. Why had I missed changing my shipping address? How could I have overlooked this crucial piece of information? My billing address was right; had I seen that and thought all was as it should be?
Panic sets in. I call FedEx to see if they can hold the package but it’s already out for delivery. I call my mom and she gets in touch with the new tenant to explain why a new laptop is going to show up at their door, but as it turns out they’re not going to be home. I arrange with my sister-in-law next door to put a release on the door that will enable them to leave it on the doorstep, but FedEx has already come and gone.
I call FedEx to see about picking it up, and they say the fastest thing is to wait for them to try delivering it again, but I don’t want to go through that all again. Can’t they hold it? It turns out they can hold it, but they have to redeliver it to a FedEx retail store (née Kinkos) for me to pick up so I can’t get it until tomorrow evening.
I can breathe again. I’m already going to be in Champaign tonight and tomorrow and having to wait a day to get my new computer is a small price to pay for it actually getting to me. You can bet that from now on I’ll double-check the shipping address on everything I order.
After all that delivery mix-up I’m thinking maybe I should name this laptop Adam Young. That would be problematic with Adam the Young Hawk alway about, though. Does anyone have any other ideas for a name?
Peoria (pt. 2)
We gather together and sit in a living room and try to approach an infinite god.
We think in abstract terms of city boundaries and subjective measures of betterment, personal revelation, divine contact. We pray in concrete terms of broken hearts and tears and messy lives.
Behind words expressing goals and desires and expectancy lies the real fear and truth that we’re doing something natural but hoping for supernatural results.