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Helveti.ca

Helveti.ca screenshot

I bought the domain Helveti.ca about four years ago, and had a weblog there for a few months. There was a mixup with hosting, the site was deleted and there was no backup. After languishing for awhile, I revived the site earlier this year and put up a tumblelog.

Obviously, the site is a homage to Helvetica, the ubiquitous typeface created by Max Miedinger & Eduard Hoffman. I try to avoid posting anything that just happens to use Helvetica. Opting instead for artwork, articles, videos, etc. that directly reference the typeface in one form or another.

Stop by and have a look around. Subscribe to the RSS feed or follow @helveticablog on Twitter to keep up to date.

Little houses

In Japan, Living Large in Really Tiny Houses takes a look at Japanese micro homes.

“If you tried to build a normal house on a super-small plot of land, it would end up being really cramped. So in order to make the house as roomy as possible, we have to think up new structures and assembly,” Yamashita says.

Designers indulge in fantasy, like asymmetrical walls, cantilevered floors, or cover their houses in a translucent skin, in order to exploit all available natural light.

History of rap

A history of rap medley featuring Jimmy Fallon, Justin Timberlake and The Roots. Fun to watch, very well done.

Update: In their infinite wisdom, NBC has decided that videos should “expire” on the internet. So much for legal sources. Do a search, I’m sure you can find a copy.

Classroom gaming

Video games in the classroom explores the use of games as a teaching tool.

Salen’s theory goes like this: building a game — even the kind of simple game a sixth grader might build — is equivalent to building a miniworld, a dynamic system governed by a set of rules, complete with challenges, obstacles and goals. At its best, game design can be an interdisciplinary exercise involving math, writing, art, computer programming, deductive reasoning and critical thinking skills. If children can build, play and understand games that work, it’s possible that someday they will understand and design systems that work. And the world is full of complicated systems.

For a generation growing up immersed in technology, it offers a great opportunity for cross-curricular learning. Implementing a broad program like that could be problematic with the compartmentalized subject structure found in most schools. There would also be issues in an educational system with standardized testing, where you pretty much have to teach to the test. Regardless, it’s an interesting approach that has a lot of potential.

An article about a scientific paper

A brilliant sendup of half-assed newspaper articles about scientific papers.

In this paragraph I will state the main claim that the research makes, making appropriate use of “scare quotes” to ensure that it’s clear that I have no opinion about this research whatsoever.

In this paragraph I will briefly (because no paragraph should be more than one line) state which existing scientific ideas this new research “challenges”.

The origins of abc

Ever wanted to know where our alphabet came from? Read The origins of abc from iLT.

That story spans some 5,000 years. We’ll travel vast distances, meet an emperor, a clever Yorkshireman, a Phoenician princess by the name of Jezebel, and the ‘purple people’; we’ll march across deserts and fertile plains, and sail across oceans. We will begin where civilisation began, meander through the Middle Ages, race through the Renaissance, and in doing so discover where our alphabet originated, how and why it evolved, and why, for example, an A looks, well, like an A.

An excellent read, with a great layout for the web, and a collage from Able Parris to boot.