Monday in the HTMLab

Stop Coding This Right Now, part 5: Informal Fonts for Business Sites

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Choosing which font to use for your website’s graphics seems like such a small concern, especially in the light of all the other parts of building a website. For business websites, the font concern can seem even less important–there are so many other choices to make, like hosting, bandwidth, site colors, etc., that seem much more pressing. But even if your content is wonderful, your images superb, and your networking beyond compare, your site will still suffer if its font choices look less than professional.

What do I mean by “less than professional” font choices? Anything that looks informal, more like printing or cursive handwriting than typed text–like the following:

informalfonts_example Comic Sans has gotten most of the bad press for being a rather overused and ill-advised font, but there are other fonts out there that are not good choices for business sites.

I’m not saying that these fonts are all-around bad–not at all! Tempus Sans ITC is one of my favorite fonts to use, for instance. But I use it for personal design and web projects only. It and other “handwriting” fonts give the right touch of personality and humanity to small personal sites; for a business website, however, it makes the business’ Web presence seem less polished and “finished”.

It’s like getting dressed for a job interview. If I went to an interview wearing my best blouse, but paired it with torn jeans, I wouldn’t be likely to get the job–torn jeans are more appropriate for casual events. The same goes for fonts; handwriting fonts are more appropriate for casual or personal webpages.

Look at the following example, using Kristen ITC for the top font and Palatino Linotype for the bottom font. With both fonts in similar sizes, styled with the same color and drop shadow, which font looks more professional and polished? Which site would you instinctively trust more to give you accurate information in a timely manner?
whichisprofessional

Fonts silently tell your visitors more about your content and your businesslike personality–for better or for worse. When you’re designing a page for a business, you want to make sure your website is putting its best foot forward, and fonts are a surprisingly important part of that. (This is one reason I’m looking at redesigning Crooked Glasses’ own look soon–I want to make sure I’m following my own advice!)

Saturday with the Spark

OneWord.com: Sixty Seconds of Writing a Day

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If you want a little writing challenge, or if you just feel like stretching your creativity muscle a little, then I have a suggestion: head over to OneWord.com.

What’s It All About?

OneWord.com is a unique sort of writing website. When you land on the page, it gives you some simple instructions:

“You’ll see one word at the top of the following screen. You have sixty seconds to write about it. Click ‘go’ and the page will load with the cursor in place. Don’t think. Just write.”

That’s the whole concept of oneword.com. You’re given a word and you just WRITE. Whatever comes to mind, however stupid it might sound to you, however many spelling or grammar mistakes you might make, however trite it might feel, you just WRITE for 1 minute about it.

60 Seconds is Not as Short as You Might Think

The time limit isn’t stressful, even for a person like me who hates being timed. In fact, I find that it forces me to toss aside me self-censorship filter and any other inhibitions that keep me from writing as freely as I wish to.

Depending on how much your Muse runs away with you, you can end up writing almost a paragraph in 60 seconds, or you may only have a few words to say. That’s the great thing about oneword.com; you don’t have to write a certain number of words. Just add your thoughts, write about whatever the “word of the day” makes you think of. It’s completely free-form, and freeing.

Once You’re Done, Submit Your Work!

The website times you, and at the end of 60 seconds, it offers you the option to post your writing with your name/nickname, email address, and website address. (Your email address stays private.)

You don’t have to submit your writing if you don’t want to; some days I just do the prompt without submitting, just as a little exercise. But if you do click “submit,” you’ll have an opportunity to read what others have posted about the “word of the day,” and that’s another treat in and of itself. We’ve got some great hidden writers out there, if this website is any indication!

A Real-Life Example

A few days ago, while I was preparing this post, the “word of the day” prompt was “living.” This is what I typed in as a response:

Living. Existing. Breathing. Moving forward, or at least pretending to. These days I don’t feel like I’m doing much of real living–-am I doing anything worthwhile? Heck, I’m not even making a living, but I’m still here. Maybe that means something, after all. Maybe it’s not completely useless.

Despite my mood of the day, my response had a slightly happier turn than I was expecting. And this 60-second drabble turned out a lot more poetic than has been usual for me these days. I got to tap into a writing vein I don’t get a lot of time to be in, these days, and it was fun! (Isn’t that what creative writing is supposed to be, anyway?)

Summary

Give your Muse a little boost with oneword.com’s bite-sized writing prompts. I promise you, it’ll be painless, and it might just get you out of a writing rut!

Friday around the Web

Would Anyone Notice No More Roe v. Wade?, Funny To-Do List, Lollipop, and Tip of My Tongue

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Opinion: No One Would Notice if Roe v. Wade Were Overturned
Would people notice if Roe v. Wade were overturned? HMM…

The To-Do List (funny)
I bet no one has ever really been asked why they want fries with that. That and more hilarious things to do, behind the click.

Lollipop
Awesome and highly-detailed virtual dollmaker game.

Tip of My Tongue
Can’t remember a word you need? Use this online word tool to find it–lots of ways to search for words, using partial search, possible letters, and word meaning.

Thursday in the Zone

Call to Action: Don’t Give Up on City of Heroes Yet!

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Recently on the CoHTitan forums, a very interesting post by a user named Mister Bison appeared, quoting a message from a French GM of NCSoft Customer Support.

This message, sent in response to a French player’s support ticket, seemed to indicate that all the account information for City of Heroes players has not been destroyed, and in fact cannot be destroyed. Customer Support also said in this message that “[they] don’t know yet what will become of the City of Heroes servers.”

The Meaning of This Mysterious Message

What does this mean for us long-suffering City of Heroes players? At first blush, this seems to mean that the City of Heroes servers have not been wiped clean, as we all feared would happen after Nov. 30th. And it also seems to mean that our personal CoH account information has not been deleted.

Many of the first repliers to this post believe, as I do, that this means NCSoft may still be amenable to selling off City of Heroes to another game company. Of course, another, more pessimistic, possibility still exists, as a few users have suggested–that the account information in question is the “master” NCSoft account, not the specific CoH account.

The Call to Action: Ask NCSoft for Information

Whatever the case, we need more information; if Paragon City has indeed not been razed to the ground, we need to know. Our next move as a community, then, is for as many players as possible to contact NCSoft Customer Support. We need to ask about the state of our City of Heroes account information.

Here are the mailing addresses and phone numbers for the various customer support centers, retrieved from NCSoft’s global page.

North America/
Europe

Japan

Taiwan

Thailand
Address: 6801 N. Capital of Texas Hwy, Bldg 1 Austin, TX 78731

Phone: (512) 225-6359

Address: Ebisu Business Tower 16F,1-19-19 Ebisu, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo 150-0013

Phone: +81-3-5793-2500

Address: 6F No,738 Chung-cheng Road, Chung-ho City, Taipei 235, Taiwan

Phone: +886-2-8024-3300

Address: 14Fl, 18 True Tower, Ratchadapiek Road, Huai Khwang, Bangkok 103 Thailand

Phone: +66-2-699-1474

When you contact them, be sure to ask specifically and politely about your City of Heroes account information. However we may still feel about NCSoft and their treatment of us as customers, we do need to ask carefully, if we want our game back. They hold the fragile keys to Paragon City in their hands, after all.

As I stated on my CoH Twitter account after Nov. 30th, “Paragon City is not burned to the ground; the lights have simply been turned off.” If we still want this game back, let us show NCSoft in the most civil and adult way possible–by submitting questions to them concerning our account information. Even if the information we get is not what we want to hear, at least we will know, and not be left to wonder!

Wednesday in the Word

Worldly Things Cannot Satisfy, but God Can

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Eccl 3:9-11
9 What do workers gain from their toil? 10 I have seen the burden God has laid on the human race. 11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.

In this passage, contained within the rather sobering and depressing early chapters of Ecclesiastes, we see the writer (who may or may not have been King Solomon) wonder about all the worldly “toil” we humans do. It all feels meaningless–a word repeated throughout the early chapters. What good is our work and its products when we won’t get to enjoy them forever?

The “burden” God has laid on the human race is simply mortality itself–we were made for eternity, as v. 11 states, but we only live a short time. We don’t get to enjoy the “beautiful” things, either of the natural world or of man’s world, for very long. And we don’t live long enough to “fathom what God has done from beginning to end,” either.

So what’s it all for? Where’s the meaning? Why are we even living? This cry for meaning is not only found in the Book of Ecclesiastes, but throughout the world; we all want to know what life is about. Thousands of books, dramas, poetry, art objects, and songs have been created about the meaning of life, especially looking for meaning through worldly things.

But, as the writer of Ecclesiastes has found out over time, trying to find life’s meaning through the quest for power, the pursuit of pleasure, the accumulation of money or friends, etc., is in itself meaningless and does not give any lasting joy. These are all worldly things, just as ephemeral as we are. But there is an eternal One who can bring meaning to our lives–God. Living for His glory, bringing comfort and strength to others in His name, and seeking to lead a moral and just life, brings a more global and eternal understanding of humanity. Being Christian, knowing we are saved by faith, knowing how short a time we have, makes us want to use that short time to share our blessings with others.

Tuesday on the Soapbox

Getting Fit the RIGHT Way, part 3: Feed Your Exercise

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Fitness is not achieved just through exercise; you also have to feed your changing body the types of fuel it needs.

This week I’m stepping on my own toes here, since I am a very picky eater and have a lot of difficulty eating what I “should” eat. I’ve often rebelled against the bland or nasty flavors that I discover in “healthy” food as opposed to unhealthy food…but I’ve noticed that when I do not provide my body with enough nutrients, I get tired faster, I hurt more, and I’m more likely to quit my exercise routine. I would guess that I’m not alone in that.

Eating “right” has become such a cliched phrase in our culture, and yet no one seems to know what it means anymore. What I have discovered is that you should plan your eating around your exercise and your daily routine, rather than the other way around. You’ll need different kinds and amounts of foods than you might be used to eating…and, as I discovered during my research for this post, there ARE tasty healthy foods you can eat to fuel your body!

Pre-Workout Snack: Light, Easy to Digest

Yes, you CAN eat before a workout without getting sick! I didn’t think it was possible until I tried some of the following ideas; I didn’t realize that my heavy food choices were the main culprit behind my waves of nausea during intense cardio exercises.

Small portions of lighter foods (which don’t take a lot of energy to digest) will kick into your bloodstream faster and provide you with more energy during a short workout. You’ll want to avoid foods that will kick your blood sugar up too high, though. Don’t do what I did one time and scarf a bunch of very sweet cookies before my workout; I ended up lightheaded 30 minutes into Zumba because my body’s insulin response to the cookies was so strong.

One caveat: if you’re going to work out for longer than an hour, you’re going to need foods that take just a little longer to digest, so you have some fuel left over for the long haul. Foods that have a little more protein, fat, and/or fiber (like beans, cheese, egg, etc.) are best bets, but still keep the portion small so you don’t end up with stomach cramps.

In general, a pre-workout snack, consumed about an hour before your workout, made up of fruits, whole-wheat bread/crackers, cheese, yogurt, eggs, or legumes (beans, lentils, etc.), will be good for you. Here are some specific snack ideas:

  • Bread with cheese or egg
  • Grapes and cottage cheese
  • Banana with almond butter
  • Whole-wheat bagel topped with jam
  • Half an avocado spread on toast
  • Black beans with brown rice
  • Multi-grain crackers or pretzels with hummus or cheese
  • Protein shake with fruit and oats
  • Small sweet potato with steamed broccoli in olive oil
  • A slice of whole-wheat bread with crunchy peanut butter
  • Apple with a handful of walnuts
  • Oatmeal with your favorite fruit added
  • Half a banana blended into half a cup of yogurt
  • Greek yogurt, with fruit if possible
  • Brown rice with chicken

During Your Workout: Just Water and Honey, Honey

You can take in food/drink during your workout? Sure, why not? If you find yourself in need of a little energy boost, it’s not a sin to munch or sip on a little something. It’s better than passing out in the gym!

Hydration is mainly the key here; since you lose a lot of fluid while working out, you need to replace what you’re sweating out. You want to avoid very sugary sports drinks, though, as they are little better than sodas.

Read the labels carefully on any sports drink you’re thinking about getting, and make sure that the drink will provide carbohydrates and sodium as well as fluid. The folks at WebMD suggest that a good sports drink has at least 14-15 grams of carbs in 8 ounces of fluid, and should also have 110 milligrams of sodium and 30 milligrams of potassium in 8 ounces of fluid.

Flavored water with very little sugar or other additives has also proven to be a good idea mid-workout, especially for people like me who hate the taste of plain water. This option is better for weight loss, whereas the sports drink is a better option for athletes.

As for actual foods to eat during a workout, some studies have shown that honey, especially darker honey, can provide not only a carb boost, but antioxidants and vitamins as well. A spoonful of honey might be just the thing when you’ve been going hard and need a little sustenance!

Post-Workout Foods: The Foods to Rebuild and Recover

After their hard work, your muscles need protein and carbohydrates to recover and repair themselves. It’s best to eat as soon as you finish your workout–giving your body immediate fuel helps it absorb more of the nutrients from your food, and it also stokes your metabolism, helping it burn more for a longer period of time.

You can generally eat the same kinds of foods after your workout as before your workout, but you can have a little larger portion post-workout to help keep your metabolism going. Here are some more food ideas:

  • Burrito made with 1/2 cup beans, 1/2 cup brown rice, 2 tbsp. guacamole, and a little salsa
  • Peanut butter and jelly sandwich on whole-wheat bread
  • Protein shake: 1/2 banana, scoop of protein powder, some almond milk, and some hemp seeds
  • 8-ounce glass of chocolate milk (or plain milk)–I’m not kidding!
  • Salad with 1/2 cup roasted chickpeas, light olive oil and vinegar
  • Banana with peanut butter
  • A cup of sauteed/steamed vegetables with a half cup of tofu
  • Tart cherry juice (helps with sore muscles)
  • A cup of quinoa, mixed with a cup of black berries and 1/4 cup pecans
  • 2 slices of multi-grain bread, spread with raw peanut butter and agave nectar

Other Real-World Nutrition Hints from My Experience

  • I find that trying to drink very cold water during my workout leads to chest pains–the chill of the water shocks my working muscles and leads to not-happy time. To combat this, I set my water bottle outside the fridge for about an hour before my workout.
  • Sometimes I get really nauseated during my workouts, especially if we’re doing very intense cardio work. If this happens to you, don’t be ashamed to step back completely from your workout for a few seconds and take a few sips of water; I’ve tried this and it helps me a lot.
  • One of my favorite post-workout meals is a small serving of fettuccini alfredo; I ate this one evening because it was leftovers from lunch, and I noticed I felt much more energized and didn’t crave all the sugary stuff in the cupboards. (I admit, this is a calorie-laden snack, but it did the job of restoring protein and carbs!)
  • Pre-workout, I enjoy eating either a cheese stick (usually the low-moisture part-skim mozzarella kind) or a slice of bread spread with peanut butter. I had chosen this because it was lighter and was made up of some of my favorite food–funny that these two snacks appeared in similar forms in my research for this post!

For Further Reading

I couldn’t have written this post without the information included on the following pages. Check them out for even more nutrition-linked fitness info!

WebMD: What to Eat Before, During, and After Exercise
USNews: Best Workout Foods: What to Eat Before a Workout
Shape.com: Best Foods to Eat Before and After Your Workout
FitSugar: Bad Weight-Loss Technique: Exercising on an Empty Stomach
EatingWell: The Best Fitness Foods: What to eat before, during, and after a workout
SportsMedicine @ About.com: What to Eat Before Exercise
Bonus: USNews: 8 Foods to Help You Lose Weight

Next Week: Starting Slow

Want results from your workout quick and easy? Unfortunately, your body doesn’t work that way. We’ll see the importance of getting in shape gradually in the next installment of “Getting Fit the RIGHT Way!”

Monday in the HTMLab

Stop Coding This Right Now, part 4: “Click Here!” Link Descriptions

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The first 3 installments of this series have been about bad user interface design, namely nonsense navigation, horizontal scrollbars, and autoplaying music. But today, I’ll discuss another Internet annoyance: nondescriptive links, also known as “click here!” links.

Why “Click Here!” is Useless (and Downright Dangerous) Link Text

It’s deceptively easy to just write “Click here!” in our text links, or in the alt text of our image links. It requires no thought, and it seems like good attention-getting text. That should be a good thing, right?

Let me give you an example. If both of the following links went to a Paypal donation page, which of these would you be more likely to click on, as a user?

If you’re like most users, you might be attracted toward the flashing “click here!!!!” link, but you’d be more likely to click on the “donate” link.

“Click here!” harms our website’s concept, in two ways:

  • It does not describe what the user is about to click on, at all
  • It looks suspiciously like ad text, or even spyware-generated text

It’s important that our websites be easy to use and made of genuine content. But nondescriptive link text works against both those goals. Not only does the user have to guess what to click on to find desired information, but he or she doesn’t even know whether the link is real content or just a hook for an ad. Too many times, ad companies (and ads that download spyware) use “Click Here!!!” to get attention. Modern users are wise to that trick, and will avoid such links like the plague.

The Ideal: Short but Descriptive Link Text

As with most content, you do want to keep link text brief, so that users can simply skim your site to see whether you’ve got the information they want and need. But brief text can still be descriptive, like the examples below:
  • “About” instead of “About This Site” or “About Me”
  • “Follow” as the alt text for your Twitter image, instead of “Please follow me on Twitter”
  • “[Name of a site]” instead of “Visit http://wwww.[name of a site].com”
  • The Web-classic “FAQ” instead of “Frequently Asked Questions”

It’s all about shortening the description to a couple of words, but using words that still make it clear what the page is about. That’s all your user wants–and, if you think about it, that’s all we want out of websites when we use the Internet ourselves!

Saturday with the Spark

Composing Music with Sound Matrix

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For composers, musicians, and music enthusiasts, then the Sound Matrix Flash game could be your new favorite Internet toy. I’ve definitely wasted more than my share of time goofing around with it! 😀

How to Use Sound Matrix


When you load up the game, you are greeted with the above blank gray grid on a black background.


Clicking any gray square on the grid turns it white; the white square will produce a tone every so often. In the above example, this white square produces a B natural approximately every 3-4 seconds, and the little white square lights up when “struck,” such that the whole grid sparkles with it. Very pretty! 😀


For those who might be interested, I came up with the complete musical scale that Sound Matrix can produce. (The uppermost squares produce the highest tones; the lowermost squares produce the lowest.) While this may not look like the most diverse scale, it can actually create quite a variation of tunes!

As for actually composing tunes, clicking squares that are an equal horizontal distance apart will give you a “beat,” which will loop every few seconds. That’s pretty much all you need to know–the rest is just experimentation, play, and happy accidents! 🙂

A Few of My Sound Matrix Compositions

These are a few little tunes I came up with while musing and playing; I had a ton more saved, but I lost them in the Great Hard Drive Crash of 2011. :/ But where those came from, there are plenty more 🙂 The following screenshots kind of serve as “sheet music” for Sound Matrix:


“Celebration in A Major”


“An E-Z Groove”


“Latin Dance in B Minor”


“Triplets in E”


“Fast Club Jam in B Minor”

Friday around the Web

I Was Trying to Describe You, Rejection Letter, BlackWyrmDesigns, and Can-Do Updos

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I was trying to describe you…
Aww, this is sweet. A little quirky, a little odd, but definitely sweet. 🙂

The Ultimate Rejection Letter
When you get rejected, what do you do? Why, reject the rejection letter, of course! xD

BlackWyrmDesigns on Etsy
As the website says: “Geeky and goth soap, jewelry, bookplates, and more!”

The Can-Do Updo
Photos and tutorials of pretty (and easy) hair updos.

Thursday in the Zone

Virtual City Playground

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Did you love SimCity and/or other games like it? Ever wanted to REALLY run your dream virtual city instead of just building it and watching it go? Then Virtual City Playground might be just the game you’re looking for!

I recently discovered this free game for the iPhone (though it’s also available through iPad, Google Play, Mac, Kindle, and what looks like a Web game in the future), and I’ve become pretty addicted to it already. It’s got all the road-building, city-planning fun of my old favorite SimCity, except it’s a little more involved and detailed–which is definitely a good thing!

Basic Gameplay


Image credit: geardiary.com

Instead of building huge zones like SimCity has you build, Virtual City Playground has you build actual buildings, like houses, factories, shopping malls, monuments, etc. Building roads and buildings takes energy, though, and you start out with a set amount of Energy Points. When you’ve run out of energy, you’ll have to wait a few minutes for your Energy to regenerate (takes about 4 minutes to get 1 point back).

Constructing roads functions about the same as it does in other city-building games–you lay out the roads bit by bit with your mouse/fingertip. In this game, though, you’ve got to make sure you have a road leading to your building before you build it. And if you find out you’ve placed a building wrong, don’t worry; buildings can be moved around easily, and it only costs 1 Energy to do so.

The main part of the game is building factories (a few at a time) and linking them together with delivery trucks, so that they can use each other’s raw materials to make products–that realism is one of the coolest things about this game. You also need to build houses so that people can come live in your city. Route a few dumpster trucks around to take care of garbage, set up a public transport system with some Buses and Bus Stations, and you’ve got a city in no time!

As you level up in the game through building, routing roads, and upgrading buildings, you’ll get access to more types of factories and buildings. Keep track of the game’s various City Goals to accomplish, which will appear on the left side of the game window. You’ll have some long-term goals (like building very expensive monuments) and some short-term goals (like shipping so many products to the Shopping Mall, or transporting so many passengers to public places). Be prepared for your city to grow very very fast once you start completing goals!

The Difference Between City Coins and Invest Points

You start out with a set number of City Coins to help build your city, buy trucks and buses, etc.; you also start out with a few Invest Points. Invest Points are specialized rewards which can be bought with real money, or can be earned through accomplishing certain game goals.

Invest Points can be tempting to use, especially if you want a goal finished RIGHT NOW, but don’t give in. Instead, save up Invest Points for really important things, like buying more city territory and leveling out the land (because you can’t build anything on hills).

Two of the best ways I’ve found to gain Invest Points:

  • Log into the game every day; you’ll get an Invest Point every day until you’ve logged in for 5 consecutive days…and on the fifth day, you’ll be rewarded with 5 more Invest Points!
  • Link your Facebook account so that you can post “goal completed!” announcements–some of these completion announcements reward you with yet another Invest Point when you post to Facebook. Look for the Invest Points icon beside the Facebook “Post” button on the “Goal Completed” announcement to see whether posting is worth your while.

Side Note: Your Citizens’ Happiness and the Environment


Image Credit: apprecap.wordpress.com

Aside from your regular city-building concerns, the game also tracks your citizens’ Happiness score and Environment score. After playing this game for a while, I would recommend you not worry too much about your Environment and Happiness scores at first–I’m currently around Lv 23 and am just now starting to see numerical scores without a negative sign out front. LOL!

Happiness and Environment scores do not detract much at all from your gameplay; they are just informational, though some City Goals do give you rewards for having at or above a particular level of Happiness, etc.

Summary

This game is great for gamers like me who play long-term achievement games; I find this to be a very rewarding, relaxing game to play, and it allows me to exercise my creativity at city planning, too. Check it out and see how your own dream city can grow!