Saw this documentary about the Ancient Romans.
It’s impolite NOT to talk to strangers when you sit in a bathroom stall.
Should we follow that example? (“Hey, may I borrow your sponge, girl?”)
Not too sure…
14 hours ago
Ivo Vynckier - My So-Called Blog
@ivovynckier
Technical writer-web writer. Student of Steven Spielberg's movies. Author, developer and web master of 3 web sites.
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Any news on Jonathan Ross who murdered Renée Nicole Good in the street? Is he still hiding in a safehouse, protected by the Trump administration?
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The Donald keeps indulging Putin.
Larry Vaughn: “Amity, as you know, means friendship.”
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Last week, I discovered that my technical writing in the OCR domain crops up in a third book.
Karin Wagner, Professor of Art History at the University of Gothenburg (Sweden), has made extensive use of my two web sites on OCR (“Optical Character Recognition”) in her book “From ASCII Art to Comic Sans”, published by the MIT Press (2023).
And when you explore the use of typefaces in popular culture, the story of con man/cheque forger Frank Abagnale – the subject of Steven Spielberg’s movie “Catch Me If You Can” – becomes unavoidable. His antics in turn bring you to MICR (“Magnetic Ink Character Recognition”) (https://spielberg-ocr.com/MICR.html) and the specialized banking fonts E13B, OCR-A and OCR-B.
Another example of popular culture: Data 70, a full alphabetic version of E13B, was used liberally to suggest computerization. It became the lettering on spaceships in many sci-fi series in the seventies. Sydney Pollack used it in the title sequence of “Three Days of the Condor”, a spy thriller with Robert Redford.
Equally true: Arnold Spielberg, father of, was involved in the development of MICR. And Ronald Reagan was part of its promotion. Yes, THAT Ronald Reagan!
Some 11 pages of Chapter 3, “Machine Readable Typefaces in Popular Culture and Beyond”, are directly based on my web sites “Spielberg, Abagnale and OCR” (https://spielberg-ocr.com) and “How OCR Works” (https://how-ocr-works.com).
Another academic volume published in 2014 tells Abagnale’s story from the point of view of criminal law. I only know about that book because I granted a Professor of the Washington College of Law the right to reuse some photos of Frank Abagnale.
The third book to describe my work is “The IRIS Book” (https://pygargue-international.com/the-iris-book-3) by Pierre De Muelenaere, the former founder-CEO-president of I.R.I.S., the Belgian OCR company where I operated as technical writer for 15+ years.
I guess it all means that computer typefaces and their recognition remain endlessly fascinating. My personal experience? It’s an affliction you can’t shed once you got bitten by the bug…
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Funny coincidences! 1996: Uday Hussein, son of Saddam, became impotent when he was shot 17 times in an ambush by the Iraqi resistance.
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Instead of going back to Zoroaster, Iran can enjoy the separation of church and state (John Locke) for a while.
It’s called the Enlightenment. Science. Progress.
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Iranians followed the prophet Zoroaster before Islam was forced on them with violence.
Their god is called “Ahura Mazda”.
Mazda? I drove a Mazda 3 diesel as company car for 9 years but I never had an urge to pray to it.
And I never knowingly parked it towards Mecca.
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More film music written for Harrison Ford? Here’s Maurice Jarre’s electronic score for “Witness” (Peter Weir).
In this scene, Ford is called a “former carpenter”, which he was in real life before he became a full-time actor.
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The trailer of the IMAX documentary “Living in the Age of Airplanes” (Brian Terwilliger), narrated by Harrison Ford and with music by James Horner.
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Looking for a soundtrack of a Harrison Ford movie (avoiding the clichés “Star Wars” and “Indiana Jones”)?
My tips: “Regarding Henry” (Hans Zimmer), “Presumed Innocent” and “Airplanes” (James Horner).
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Somebody asked me why actors change their name. Isn’t it obvious?
Do you want Maurice Micklewhite to play Harry Palmer?
And the Oscar goes to… Thomas Mapother.
No, thanks!
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OK, we heard from Jeremy Corbyn, but what does George Galloway think?
(He visited Saddam Hussein in 1994. “Sir, I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability.”)
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Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is confirmed dead in the air strikes.
Know what the Iranians called him when he was president? Ahmatrumpejad. They’re equally nuts.
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Belgian special forces have seized an oil tanker of the Russian shadow fleet in the marginal North Sea.
(Belgium’s coastline is only 67 km. long.)
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Will Iran do better than Iraq?
Iraq lowered the legal age for girls to marry to 9 years. It was 18 years under Saddam.
Borat asked the right question: “You are retard?”
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The philosopher Michel Foucault was a typical left-wing French intellectual who kept defending ayatollah Khomeini.
And he was a homosexual who died of AIDS.
In Iran, he would have been executed.
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Many journalists and “intellectuals” in the West claim that the Iran Revolution of 1979 only went sour at a later stage.
That’s a complete lie.
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Arguable but reasonable assumption: when The Donald dies or is beaten - whichever comes first -, Americans will dance in the streets…
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Ayatollah Khamenei, the leader of the religion of peace, murdered 30,000 to 100,000 Iranians in two days.
Patriarch Kirill of the Orthodox Church blessed Russian missiles dropped on Ukrainian cities.
Nice work if you can get it!
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This man is also a victim of the Iranian Revolution.
Born in Mumbai, Salman Rushdie has dual citizenship in Great Britain and the United States.
He had nothing to do with Iran but they tried to kill him anyway. For years.
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The French government has some explaining to do.
(Other example: Jacques Chirac brought Yasser Arafat to France to die in a military hospital. His medical record is still classified.)
