If you’re using WordPress, you need to check this out.

(By the way, expect regular posting to resume.)

Well, I did get the mass e-mail from Dreamhost telling me about their billing snafu. Luckily, the charge and cancellation appear to have happened so quick they don’t even show up on my credit card. Meanwhile the friendly folk at Dreamhost are getting a lot of flak for trying to treat the situation with a little levity. In the meantime, it’s kinda cool to be part of this group affected by a snafu so big it’s stealing tech headlines away from Macworld!

Michael Douglas now voices the intro to NBC Nightly News. (See it here… scroll down to the Nightly News podcast.)

Now, Michael Douglas is a fine actor. But he is not a better announcer than the best announcers in the business. This is a typical devaulation of the talents of an entire craft. It’s the same bs they often pull on the awards shows.

In regards to this post, the kind people at Ask Metafilter tell me it’s Bookman Swash Italic, which unfortunately has never been available as a digital font. Alas.

This guy has posted to Youtube some great old Canadian TV commercials from the 1970s. Some of these are among my earliest memories of TV watching. Everything from beer…

to insurance (and a jingle that’s vivid in my mind)…

and of course, the Colonel!

Can anyone tell me what this font is?

Pocket protectors! This is going all over the internets. But I just wanted to point out how much I love these old logos! Especially the industrial types, the kind you might see in an old phone book… but would have had little interaction with as a consumer. Many of these pocket protectors were most likely used by sales reps, and internally within factories, etc.

Here’s a buncha WordPress themes. Debating switching to one of them.

Just a note as I watch the Emmys tonight, in HD. An impressive number of the commercials on the Fox broadcast are High-definition, which is great, and about time. Of the ones that aren’t, at least half are letterboxed anyway. So if you’re watching on a regular 4:3 screen, you see it letterboxed. And if you’re watching an HD channel on a 16:9 TV, you see it letterboxed on ALL FOUR SIDES. That is DUMB. DUMB DUMB DUMB. What POSSIBLE purpose does it serve to produce a commercial not in HD, but letterbox it anyway? Oh, I know, so it sorta looks like a movie, right? WRONG, DUMMY.

Some time ago I posted a link to the last WB cartoon, “Injun Trouble”. (That link’s dead, now, so don’t bother.) Matthew Hunter at Misce-Looney-Ous has posted it with a commentary… here it is:

What I wanted to say about this cartoon is that I don’t think it’s nearly as good as many animation people (whom I respect) think it is. But I guess my problem is, I never did “get” the kind of cartoon that’s just a bunch of unrelated gags, like many of the early toons did. I prefer a plot with a beginning, middle, and end, which is typically why I prefer the 1948-64 cartoons. They tend to have a story, instead of just being a lot of “blackout” gags.

(I also think Bob Clampett is overrated. Flame away.)