Kris Bowser

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More useful online typography tools

These web and typography tools have been useful to me of late:

Type-scale.com allows you generate proportionally-sized headings and body text created using a modular scale. Especially useful paired with fontjoy.com to quickly generate some type pairings, and then turn them into a usable hierarchy.

Poopy.life creates free, temporary WordPress installs to test the aforementioned type pairings in a live web environment. Since I’m voice typing, this originally came out as “live bat environment.” SO MUCH COOLER.

Trumpipsum.net generates Trump-flavored (ew, yikes) placeholder text, for use with the aforementioned type pairings in the live bat environment.

Because bats use their echolocation to find crunchy-tasty letterforms.

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More on skipping dessert

No. I don’t want dessert (an open letter).

How to Politely Pass on Dessert

I found both of these articles after I wrote “Are you sure you don’t want any?” Both the author and commenters on “How to Politely Pass on Dessert” are apparently much more considerate than I am–I hadn’t been thinking of this situation as a difficult one, just an annoying one. I expect others to accept a no-frills “no, thank you” as an answer. Not only do I not owe anyone an explanation, I’ve learned that it’s worse to give one–people try to counter your reasons, which is annoying when you have more than one reason, or just want to pass on dessert without telling someone your entire life story, dessert preferences, and digestive health. The article does have some good tips for people who aren’t quite as socially obtuse and uncompromising as I am.

The open letter spoke to me a lot more. I ended up focusing my own piece on the social aspects of one particular question, but a lot of what he wrote echoes parts that I took out of mine. In short: I’m picky about food, and I’m just not going to bother eating something unhealthy if I don’t truly love it.

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Listening to… New Order

I’m obsessed with this version of “I Told You So,” and how bleak and inexorable it is.

It’s re-sparked my high school-era obsession with New Order, although without the fixation on minutiae like the fact that the version of “Sub-culture” on Low-life has a hyphen, while the one on Substance doesn’t.

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Desky desk plant

Around this time of year, my partner always likes to show off the new plants in his garden on Facebook. Well, here is a desk plant that I have managed to keep alive for four months. I wish someone had told me earlier that you can just water plants when their soil gets dry, and not worry about twice per week or once a day or any other kind of schedule.

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I’m experimenting with microblogging here on my own site rather than on one of the social media platforms. I’m using a combination of categories, post formats, the Parabola theme’s presentation page, and the Recent Posts Extended Widget to have microblog posts mingled with my regular posts, while keeping the spotlight on the regular posts. You know, because I put a lot of work into them. :)

More on this soon, probably in a regular, non-micro blog post.

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