Arteliance

This morning started out with a simple question: What to blog about? In a random act of looking for inspiration I typed blog into the Google Search box and clicked the I’m Feeling Lucky link. Luckily, Google took me to the Wikipedia entry for Blog where I learned that:

A blog (a portmanteau of web log) is a website where entries are written in chronological order and commonly displayed in reverse chronological order.

Naturally I was propelled to learn what a portmanteau is and stumble upon this interesting tidbit:

This usage of the word was coined by Lewis Carroll in Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871). In the book, Humpty Dumpty explains to Alice words from Jabberwocky, saying, “Well, slithy means lithe and slimy … You see it’s like a portmanteau—there are two meanings packed up into one word.”

This connection between my web journeys and Alice in Wonderland is wonderfully apropos.

This morning started out with a simple question: What are the font variants after some of the font names in Font Book on Tiger e.g. Lucida Grande CY and CE? This led me on a fascinating journey through the  Apple  Human Interface Guidelines; onto a sort of strange but complete and nicely designed listing of resources by Luc Devroye; then naturally the Mac OS X 10.4: Fonts list; and perhaps most inspiring, a simple and informative discussion of the entire Lucida family of harmonized typefaces from the font designers themselves, Charles Bigelow and Kris Holmes Notes on Lucida designs; and finally, a sidetrack onto the code style font sampler. The web can be like that sometimes - taking one on unexpected and fascinating adventures.

Fascinating material and a lot to think about the next time you’re reading a web page. BTW, CY is a font that contains Cyrillic characters for Eastern European Slavic languages.