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I have no idea why I am unable to assign a title to this entry. [Note from 2017: I put one in when I redid the blog, so nothing would crash.]

Well, let’s start with the fonts. Fonts are abstruse; I’ll forgive you if you skip right on down to the next paragraph, but I’m going to write this one anyhow. As you can see if you’ve been scrupulously paying attention to the thread, I’ve now had some help as to figuring out how to market a font. Paul D. Hunt and I swapped a few e-mails. I finished kerning just tonight – hopefully (I don’t think I can think of any more pairs) – and tomorrow I’ll hit the AutoHinting button, which I’m not sure what that does, but apparently you’re supposed to do it. And then I’ll fire off an e-mail to either Veer or MyFonts – I haven’t decided which yet – and see if I can get this thing sellin’. Within not too long, I hope, I’ll have enough money to upgrade from TypeTool to FontLab, and then I can make my fonts quicker and better and sell them even faster. As soon as I get FontLab, I’m going to expand Newt to encompass Latin-Extended and Greek, and then I’ll use the handy feature where its encoding system actually WORKS to do the same with Cyril; I’ll also be including Cyrillic and Cyrillic-Extended.

You have reached the next paragraph, wherein I write about a krokay game that Matt, Aaron, and I had a few days ago on the 5th. I had previously scoped out Melody Park, which is a few hundred yards from Aaron’s house, and decided that it was perfect for a krokay game. It’s located in a deep depression behind the houses on Melody Street. Technically its name is Brentwood Park, but Aaron says that even the people who live on the street across the park from Melody Street, where there’s a sign that says Brentwood Park, call it Melody Park. Melody is a cul-de-sac, but there’s a little outshoot from the sidewalk that runs between two houses’ fenced yards. Then it turns into a steep and extraordinarily tall staircase. It reminds me of the staircase in The Worms of Kukumlima, which is a book that no one has read, even though it’s a spectacular children’s book. I think Daniel Pinkwater is probably the best kids’ author around. His scenes are more evocative than those of, I would say, any other author I’ve read, even “serious”, “grown-up” ones. I’ve felt like I was there watching the action unfold in other books, but in Pinkwater’s, I feel like I’m there actually actively taking part in the action. As you’re descending the staircase watch out for that low branch. (Aaron hit it.)

There was even more challenging, fun krokay terrain than I’d thought. They had dug up a tennis court that was absolutely covered with graffiti. Melody Park does have the distinction of being the most graffitied park I know of. They graffitied the picnic table, trash can, and even several of the trees. The crater left by the tennis court is an interesting, relentlessly sticky mud with ground-up bricks mixed into it. I put two wickets in the crater. I also put two in between pairs of trees, some at the edge of a creek, and the turn wickets on a little incidental slope. We got off to a flying start, and we all pretty much stayed neck-and-neck. The turn wickets were what got us all. It was easy enough to get through going down, but there was nowhere to position yourself going back up after you hit the stake, so you just had to hope you got lucky. Aaron was fired out through the wicket after about fifteen turns, Matt after twenty, and I after twenty-five. Of course, that meant that Aaron became poison and came back and killed both of us. It was his first win, though, so I’m willing to let him go this time. Afterwards, we all took Matt’s car to Skyline, and didn’t have enough to pay, so Matt took Aaron to work before he was late, and then brought some more money to foot the rest of the bill.

I’ve been practicing parkour. Note: a parkour-doing person is called a traceur. I found Whitaker’s playground. It has a jungle gym that isn’t much, but it’s still enough to practice on, and to bulk up a bit. I did 13 pull-ups the other day, which was good. I’m also doing an ab exercise that I came up with: I hang upside down and then crunch upward. I’m sure someone else has done these before, but I came up with them independently, so I don’t know what they’re called, and I just call them bar-ups. I’ve also been jumping around like a mad squirrel and, for all that, sustaining surprisingly few injuries. The only one was that I fell down on some bars a few days ago and hit my shinbone, but it’s still very intact. Collateral damage. Whenever I do something fun, such as jump over a sofa or something, and then ask Dad if he can do anything akin to it, he always answers that he doesn’t care to because he’s done a risk-benefit analysis and can find no benefit that outweighs the risk. And as such, I haven’t seen him do anything physical purely for the fun of it for years, except when we portaged to Ritchie Lake a couple years ago, and when we took a bike trip a few months ago. Even the bike trip he treated more like a chore. He’s paralyzed by risk, having no conception of fun through exertion and even danger. Wonder how long it’s been since he got an adrenaline rush because of something he himself did. Decades. I like to do stuff that I enjoy without being frozen by considerations of consequences. Which is not to say that I ignore consequences completely – I stay safe, because I enjoy being in one piece – just that I don’t let them control me. I was going to blog something else, but I’ll leave it for next entry.

File under: fonts, krokay, reading


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Anonymous

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What is the difference between daring and nuts? And I hope you don’t find out the hard way. But then I also hope you have some good times, too, before the ol’ adult responsibilities take over. And anyway, my job as Grandma is to worry like the dickens about all my kids and grandkids, and I take my job seriously. Grandma the worrier

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