Weird Typography News

I've agreed to try to design a font.

For a proposed Vietnamese alphabet.

It happened on Omniglot.com's Facebook group. The original designer wants the Vietnamese language to end its dependence upon the Latin alphabet for various reasons of his own, and while I don't expect this to become a widespread thing if I manage to build it to his liking, I want the practice with TypeTool 3. It's been too long since I last worked with it.

Any and all positive vibes sent my way for this project are definitely welcome.

Anniversaries in Space Exploration: Spirit Landing Plus 10!

Mike Norton reminded me over on Facebook that we have an anniversary to celebrate in space exploration today: the tenth anniversary of the landing of the rover Spirit on Mars!

Spirit was expected to last six months before shutting down. But as of today, it's still operational. Here's a virtual salute to the team that built that rover (far better than anyone knew, to our continued joy!) and everyone who's worked with it in the years since then!

The Twelve-Day Barnett Flash-Fiction Challenge

It's been fun to watch the Twelve Days of Fast Fiction play out over at Lee Barnett's "Budgie's Perch" weblog.

To sum up the premise: Twelve personages of note, some august, some intentionally not, set down challenges for Lee to meet in writing as many pieces of "fast fiction": four-word titles, and a word specifically chosen by each author for Lee to include in a story that should run no more, and no less than 200 words.

Lee met everyone's challenge during this particular Twelve Days of Fast Fiction, and the results are now available for purchase as an E-Book in several formats. I would recommend you all - if you haven't already done so or made arrangements for the days ahead - to make that purchase for your entertainment.

I would further recommend that you pick up Lee's other published works. There's two collections that have seen print at last count, and you can still get Volume Two in hardcopy or e-format from Amazon, your choice. If you want Volume One - or prefer to get Volume Two from the author - again, you still can. E-mail Lee directly - budgie(at)hypotheticals.co.uk - and tell him what e-format you prefer, ePub or Kindle.

More on the published doings of other friends in due course...