I know a lot of you come to this site to read the IE7 z-index bug post: this one’s for you. My company has recently revamped our various web presences and launched a blog, where we write almost exclusively about web design and development. If you are interested in these things, check us out! You can follow the links in this post, or the link to our blog in the sidebar/footer.
And now the obligatory disclaimer: other than the ones about web development and design, the opinions on this, my personal site, are in no way reflective of my company or the people I work with.
Interesting article on features to look for in a good UI/screen-legible typeface. Apparently it’s pretty important that there be two-story lowercase as and gs.
I’ll leave you to read his conclusions yourselves. Though I don’t necessarily agree with all of them*, I must mention that I do agree with his recommendation of PT Sans; I’ve recently become quite enamored of this humanist sans and will probably be using it in a future incarnation of this site’s template.
Every election in California is physically and mentally exhausting. What with the near-endless stream of ballot measures we are presented on every voting occasion, being a lowercase-d democrat here is a full-time job. After a near-all-nighter yesterday and a consultation with a like-minded friend, I felt like I was prepared for easily the most interesting election I have taken part in as a Californian.
Maybe because there is no incumbent but an interim appointee, there is a huge array of serious, qualified candidates for San Francisco Mayor this year (no Chicken Johns this year, thank goodness), and the use of ranked choice voting has ensured that the candidates are (mostly) running on the issues. Fortunately or unfortunately, the candidates largely agree with one another on key issues, so narrowing the field was a bit of a challenge. My method was a combination of their personal statements, their answers to the Chronicle’s questions on current municipal issues, and their ability to speak and think quickly in a debate setting.
My top three choices were:
- David Chiu. He’s hands down the best one for the job. He’s smart, has a strong big-picture plan for the city, and has already proven he can get things done.
- Jeff Adachi. He seems to me a bit like Gavin Newsom in that the mayoral office is a stepping stone towards some larger ambition, but he has a detailed and comprehensive plan for improving the city, and years of experience in public office.
- Joanna Rees. I didn’t expect to like her—certainly think she is a bit too much of an outsider to be effective in office right away—but her no-nonsense answers to the debate/interview questions and common-sense plan for the city make her a good third choice.
As for the propositions:
- A – yes. School bonds are more or less the whole reason we do ballot initiatives. And who’s going to vote no on seismic improvements to old school buildings?
- B – yes. I hate to keep signing away money that has already been misspent, several times, for the same thing, but our roads suck, and they have to be repaved. Reluctant yes.
- C – yes. Weak sauce, but it’s a start, and it is a consensus plan.
- D – no. Goes further in the right direction, but was written entirely in isolation, and has some potential legal issues.
- E – hell yes. Give power back to the legislators at the expense of ballot initiatives? Oh, yeah.
- F – no. Seems like a good idea, but the rider that allows the ethics commission and the board of supervisors to change the ordinance without voter approval kills it for me.
- G – no. No ballot-box budgeting.
- H – no. Seems like a poorly-thought-out solution to a small part of a big problem.
Let’s hope good things result.