What I Hated the Least Today 210/365: Fonts Redux

More Mara-approved fonts

After another night of fiddling with fonts—because that’s the most crucial part of a site, right?—I might have the winners. My current candidates to be deployed at my site (not this one, another one, and rest assured, even of less interest than this one) are two unbearably cute fonts. Cute like me. How professional (not).

I ditched my original idea of using web safe fonts—it’s not like it’s necessary anyway—and explored Google fonts. Not explored, researched is the word. As I said, I spent a whole night on it.  So, unless I change my mind (again), my choice for headings is the Karma font (I love-hate the name) and for paragraphs it’s Crimson Text (reminds me of Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, which is ridiculous, as the letter was scarlet, not crimson).

This WordPress-hosted site doesn’t seem very happy with me trying to implement other fonts than those offered in the Customiser—I suspect I can’t even do that and I’m not going to try harder because what’s the point (not much or nothing)—so if you’re a fellow font fanatic, follow this link to check out Mara-approved Google fonts.

What I Hated the Least Today 209/365: Fonts

Messy cascading notes

I’ve been working on one web site for a week now and so far it’s not only not finished, but it’s not even getting anywhere near. As the sample of my notes in the snap above indicates, I’m heavily overthinking the thing. It’s a self-hosted WordPress site, which means I’m able to modify the CSS files and the PHP templates (the latter with utmost caution, as usually the formula is: me + PHP = white screen of death).

I spent the whole night just changing font sizes. That’s what the notes above were for – as I only have one screen to work with, I take some of my notes in longhand on a piece of paper to be able to refer to them without switching tabs and splitting screens too much. I hated the result of my night’s work.

However, I figured out what I hated about it the most. It was the Verdana font I picked for headings and navigation links. It gave the site a tabloid look (it’s not intended to be a tabloid). Too big and too bold. I chose the classic Times New Roman for paragraphs, which gave the site a rough draft feel in turn (it’s not intended to be a rough draft either).

So, ultimately, what I hate the least about the whole business is that I now know what the chief source of my disgust with the site is. It’s the fonts. Currently I’m considering the classic sans serif Helvetica for headings and my favourite serif font, Georgia, for paragraphs. I’m writing it down here lest I can’t remember it when I wake up.

Also, as part of my Code a Day project of learning a code a day, I’m now at lessons on text and fonts and it’s all kinds of awesome. Though I can’t imagine who would want to use text shadows – unless as a parody of 1990s sites – and for my purpose, I don’t think I’ll ever want to change the direction of text to make it go from right to left either. Well, good to know I could if I would.

What I Hated the Least Today 208/365: Blogging

Survival kit

Long time no see – a week since my last post, which is probably my record so far. What I hate the least today is therefore me managing to sneak in this little blogling (a diminutive for a blog post).

To give this little post more substance, I present in the featured image my collection of painkillers. I’m experimenting with various combinations of those these days. Sadly, so far nothing works.

A week to go until my doctor’s appointment, and I seriously hope she’ll prescribe me some Vicodin or something. Dr House style. I wouldn’t mind, I like House.

If House were my doctor, he’d probably diagnose me with a rare immunity against painkillers. I’ll keep you posted about what my not-House doctor diagnoses me with (if with anything indeed).

What I Hated the Least Today 207/365: Proud (Not Really)

Not really proud

I’ve sort of finished the W3Schools HTML tutorial. It took me three times longer than I had expected. Anyway, I tried the quiz on the same site to test myself, and I didn’t score full points. Therefore, I’m not proud of myself really.

I wonder if the note “You can be proud of yourself!” that appears after completing the quiz shows in the same wording no matter what one’s score is, but I can’t be bothered to retake, score poorly and see for myself.

So now it’s the CSS tutorial time. It’s high time too, as I’ve been using CSS forever without knowing entirely what I’m doing. While I’m not really proud of myself for having finally finished with HTML, I’m glad it’s done. Let’s cascade now.

Changing Seasons 7/12

In response to Cardinal Guzman’s Changing Seasons challenge.

I hardly go out these days for various boring reasons. I however did go to a cemetery — to see what my next stop will be and to pay a social visit to deceased relatives. I figure a graveyard is as good a place as any to record changing seasons, hence graveyard photos follow below.

To balance it out with something less morbid, there are sunrises, sunsets, clouds and rain as observed from my flat. For the next month’s instalment of this challenge, I challenge myself to present a set of photos all taken without me setting foot out of the flat.