On IKEA’s sad validation of Verdana

IKEA 2010 catalog, set in... GAACK! VerdanaAny use of a font is a validation of its aesthetics, and since I find the aesthetics of Verdana appalling, I am sad to see it get validation from the likes of IKEA.

I feel like I got a bit of a scoop here, because I first noticed the use of Verdana at IKEA about a month ago. At the time I thought it was a fluke — I saw it on one of their vertical banners, posted near the cafe, and it appeared to be a locally-produced sign advertising some particular regional specialty they were temporarily adding to the menu. It looked like someone at the local store had tried to design a banner to match the corporate standard, but was ignorant of the nuances of fonts, and used Verdana because they either didn’t have Futura or couldn’t tell the difference (gasp!)… or both.

But then earlier this week I was leafing through the 2010 IKEA catalog that was sitting on our coffee table, when it struck me that the whole bloody thing was set in Verdana. How could this be?!

As I said, I feel like I got a bit of a scoop here, because I mentioned this observation on Twitter three days ago, and only now is it showing up on Daring Fireball via lonelysandwich via Hunk-O-Mass via jhn brssndn via hellaposer via Typophile. And apparently Typophile does not yet have the bandwidth to handle being “fireballed” and “sandwiched” (and… uh… “34ed”… yeah, that’s it), since I can’t get it to load right now.

I feel like I’m in good company though, because these guys are echoing my longstanding sentiments towards Verdana. From Gruber:

I have never seen Verdana look good in any way other than in small sizes on-screen.

And, even more on-the-money, from Lisagor:

Sure, Gruber uses it tastefully, but at anything larger than 11pt, it feels to me a bit squat and dopey. Friendly and readable, but a little bit simple, in the way you’d say a person is simple, but only behind his back.

Well played. Part of IKEA’s rationale is that “they want to be able to give the same visual impression both in print and the web.” Well, that can be done without resorting to this abominable solution. Especially with the imminent ascension of @font-face.

Here’s hoping 2011 will bring a return to sanity.

Honda Fit iPod controls: when something is worse than nothing

Honda FitI own a 2009 Honda Fit. It’s the second Fit I’ve owned, having purchased a 2008 model less than a year earlier. It’s not that I disliked the 2008 — I loved it. But we wanted to get down to one car, and it worked out perfectly to make an even trade of our 2008 Fit plus our old 2000 Civic for a 2009 Fit with a few upgrades. But we’ve already been over all of this.

One of the things I was most excited about with the 2009 Fit was the integrated iPod support. I have an old iPod that I’ve dedicated solely to providing music in the Fit, and it was great to not have to rely on the 1/8-inch audio input jack, but instead to stash the iPod in a special second glove compartment with an integrated USB port. Plug the iPod in and forget it — you can control it straight from the car stereo. Perfect.

Or so I thought.

Yes, it’s true that you can do all of that. But the controls for operating the iPod from the car stereo are abysmal. You can browse the iPod’s contents by playlist, artist, album or song, but there’s no secondary browsing (other than albums by artist). When you’ve got a 30 GB iPod with thousands of songs, from hundreds of albums, by hundreds of artists, this method is inefficient, to say the least.

What’s worse, you always have to start from the beginning in each list, and it doesn’t wrap around if you try to scroll backwards. Good luck finding music by a band like Yes… you’ll be scrolling for days. (And did I mention how slooooow the scrolling is? Spin that dial as frantically as you want, it’s still going to tick through the list one item at a time, at the same leisurely pace.) And if you’ve taken the time to scroll all the way to the Y’s and are listening to Yes, then you decide you want to listen to U2, don’t think you can just start at Y and scroll back to U — oh, no — you’ll find yourself right back at A.

I’ve been incredulous about this horrible navigation system since almost immediately after I bought the Fit, and I have been searching for any kind of relief — a firmware update would be best, but I’d even settle for the simple ability to turn off the console navigation and control the music directly from the iPod. But as soon as you plug it in, the car stereo takes over and you can’t control the iPod directly. The only solutions I’ve found are to unplug the iPod and set up the music you want, hit play, and then plug it in — the stereo will at least keep it going from that point — or to skip the USB altogether and go back to the 1/8-inch input. But that’s on the dash next to the stereo controls, and you’d end up with a cord dangling there — not the elegant, enclosed solution the hidden USB port offers.

What a drag. I’ve been searching for an answer and apparently I’m not alone. I’m hoping, at least for the sake of others, that Honda has improved the system in the 2010 Fit. But that won’t help me.

In the past, I’ve found that blogging about something like this often attracts the attention of someone with an answer. Here’s hoping it works this time. Someone… help!

Facebook and Twitter: bane of the blogger

Fail.I’ve been writing this blog for about seven years now. My engagement with it has gone through its ups and downs; there were periods in 2004 and 2005 where I’d go for a month or more without posting. But over the last three years or so I kept up a pretty reliable stream of posts, until some point early this year when I started using Facebook and Twitter a lot. (I won’t bother linking to them — if you can’t figure out how to find them, you’re probably better off anyway.)

Some people are fairly careless about how they use their blogs (if they have them), Facebook, Twitter, etc. Every online presence is a virtual confessional, therapist’s couch, and personal reality show, all in one. It’s all out there, never mind the aftermath.

I’ve tried to be a bit more careful and organized in my approach to things: I’ll get fairly personal in my blog, but it’s mainly about my geeky interests in technology and music, where personal information (other than my tastes, such as my inexplicable fixation on ’70s progressive rock) is irrelevant. And there are lines I won’t cross.

Facebook is the more personal, friend-oriented venue for me: I assume that what I am writing there is only going to be seen by people I know; people I can reasonably trust and expect to care at some small level about personal details that are irrelevant in the context of a blog. But there are still lines I won’t cross, because it’s hard to keep track of 130+ “friends” and it’s even harder to keep track of Facebook’s nebulous, ever-changing privacy policy.

Twitter is a strange one: many people use it in many different ways. I’ve taken the approach of some blogger/Twitter quasi-celebrities (John “Daring Fireball” Gruber, Merlin “43 Folders” Mann, Andy “Waxy” Baio, Adam “Lonely Sandwich” Lisagor, Jason “Kottke” Kottke) I seek to emulate (though admittedly it’s weird when you get to an age where those you seek to emulate are your peers — or are even younger than you are): Twitter as “microblog.” If you have a clever, “blog-worthy” idea, but you don’t have time to write a blog entry, or it’s pithy enough that you think you can squeeze into 140 characters, Twitter is the perfect venue. It’s a natural complement to Facebook, in some ways: the personal stuff goes to Facebook, the public stuff goes to Twitter.

The problem is, both Facebook and Twitter encourage ill-conceived, dashed-off, incomplete thoughts. Why bother taking the time to contemplate an idea, explore all facets, carefully compose your thoughts, and perfectly craft a 500-word essay no one but yourself (and probably not even you) will ever read?

Well… what are you leaving behind? What is the legacy of your online endeavors?

Instead of a body of intelligent writing that may someday lead to something more useful, or at the very worst, will be something I can point at with a modicum of pride and say, “I did that!” all you’re left with is an unnavigable, treacherous sea of mental jetsam, and the vague sense that, at best, you’ve wasted your time and, at worst, you’ve left the back door wide open for future identity theft, libel suits, employment rejections, or something else that is presently inconceivable but will soon ruin your life because someone figured out a new way to exploit all of the unflattering information you revealed in drunken Facebook postings in 2007.

Wait, was Facebook even around in 2007? The online world is moving so fast, it’s hard to remember days before Facebook and Twitter. You know, the days when, if I wanted some online adulation, I had to take the time to compose my thoughts and write a blog entry (or, at least, write a blog entry, and maybe compose some thoughts along the way), instead of just idly loading Facebook on my iPhone while lazing on the couch and announcing to the world (or at least my so-called “friends”): “OMG! Did U C that stoopid reality show? Those morons on there are total morons… 4 realz!!!1one!”

Maybe it’s time to get less social with my networking, and get back to the one true, perfect venue for narcissistic online exhibitionism: the blog.

Or, as Lewis Black so eloquently put it…

For your reference:

John Gruber: blog • Twitter
Merlin Mann: blog • Twitter
Andy Baio: blog • Twitter
Adam Lisagor: blog • Twitter
Jason Kottke: blog • Twitter

And finally, to be fair, it’s not entirely Facebook and Twitter that have led to my unfortunate neglect of this blog. Over the past six months I’ve also started two other blogs that have demanded most of my blogging energies: Hall of Prog and 52 Coffees.

09 14 08 00 41 00

09 14 08 00 41 00“09 14 08 00 41 00” is 10-plus minutes of down-tempo, chill-out electronica for a rainy summer night. Composed, recorded, mixed and mastered in less than two hours, it’s fresh from my brain to your ears. Enjoy!

[audio:http://blog.room34.com/wp-content/uploads/underdog/room34_091408004100.mp3]

Download MP3 10:20 • 19.3 MB
Right-click the link above and choose “Save as…” or some such.