What the Font!

Ever find yourself staring at a beautiful font but had no idea how to get it? All the major brands have their own typefaces which define their "Identity and brand" as designers put it. I was making an ad for an "Education Times" competition on Brandpotion when it first occurred to me. Is their a way to know what typeface theses guys use? I found "What the font!" on myfonts.com,and it works as amazingly as it is named!

Here's an example:

Step 1: Get the text. Here's the iconic Nokia typeface. Along with the portrait of two people joining hands, this logo has stood out as one of the most prominent logos and is universally recognized as well. For the nitty gritty on it goto http://www.famouslogos.org/nokia-logo This is a great resource for typographers too.

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Step 2 : Crop out everything except the text. The image I used is already clean... there was this little watermark at the bottom, which I cropped out with ACDSee. For newbies even Paint will suffice.

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Step 3 : Goto new.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/ or click here. Upload the cropped file.

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Step 4: The scanning algorithm will now try to ID the characters and list them out individually. You can correct the software if it goes wrong or enter a blank where no characters are suppoed to be displayed. and click continue.
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Ste5 5: Ta daa! A list of similar fonts is displayed. Some are free and some paid but the plus is you already have a name. Another google search and it shouldn't be too hard getting the font. In this case there is a slight mismatch between the scanned "K" and the one from the results. The rest look fine.

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For graphic artists or typographers or anyone looking to do some shady favor to a friend(not recommended), this tool is a blessing.

Comm. error

'Mag'nify

Barring a doctorate degree in science, a job at a research facility and a general penchant for being a 'dic'tator, there are a couple of things I have in common with Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory. Comics, and trains.

I touched on trains in my last post. Rummaging through my cupboard yesterday I found a whole bunch of dusty old comic books and magazines, inspiring my next "booky" blog post!

It all started with Chandamama. Not by definition a comic but the pictures were enough to incite interst in us kids. That scary illustration of vikram and vetal is still very fresh in my mind.

Then came Tinkle

I was in class 6 I think when I got hold of my first copy of Tinkle. I never looked back.... I still have piles of Digests, Double Digests and bi weekly issues lying around. Credit to late Anant Pai for giving us something to grow on when our english reading was still too nascent. I've held on to them inspite of Dad's insistence to sell them off.

It had all the great comings.... humor, a bit of mystery, a page or two of science and "it happened to me", a carefully selected section of interesting encounters.

Rise of X-men

As with everything else western, international comics took a while coming but pretty much blew Tinkle out of the water. But with much bolder themes and the more than occasional questionable illustration, it got little or no attention from Schools and libraries.
I bought a lot of stand alone issues ranging from Powerpuff Girls to Avengers but mostly X-men. Tin Tin and Asterix were also a major drag then and I managed to read them all from our School library. Owning one was out of the question due to their absurd prices. Enough about comics.


Now Mags...

Sometime in 1994, Dad bought this amazing photography magazine which, without doubt, is what got me into photography. Long before i knew how to load film rolls on a camera or fool around with apertures and speeds, this book served as the geek-feast for me....I knew nothing of the array of terms it used... AF illuminators, viewfinders, pentaprisms but I sat glued, flipping through the pages in fascinated glee.



More than 15 years on, it is still just as interesting. Hell, I can see some of my Minolta lenses on it! Pictured above attached to the 9Xi is my 50mm Prime lens!


Chip and Digit. I have a collection so big I can make good moolah selling them off on Abids. But then again....

Why would I? Unlike Sheldon who preserves all his books hoping to get them signed by Stan Lee, I intend to donate them to some rural School.

So what came of all this? I am not sure...but I can safely say this: No amount of TV or "GK study" can make up for what one learns from media like this. Advice to anyone who hates reading- Start with a magazine with lots of pictures. And no cosmopolitan or Stardust. That just kills the purpose.

Have informative books lying around? Don't send them to "raddiwalas", they'll end up getting used for "bhel".

There are thousands of underprivileged children out there. Donate to a school and help make a difference.

Thrifty QWERTY

GSMArena acknowledges:

"Normally, phones like the X2-01 stay under our review radar as they rarely excite much interest in our readers. However, the Nokia X2-01 is special. Its Daily Interest rating has hit 35% at the time of writing this. That’s an impressive number for a low-end handset – it equals the daily interest rating of the Google Nexus S and the Motorola DEFY combined"

Razzu managed to get himself one of these after years of frustration typing on T9 and going wary of using sub 2k phones. Now since iOS or android was never an option(for now), I pointed him to this cheap marvel.

Please note this phone was released almost an year ago and there are numerous trusted reviews on this device. This post is an attempt to "review", from my point of view, some noteworthy features in as less text as possible using mostly pictures(and a grainy video soon!)


Some features

Woah!
Quad-band GSM/EDGE connectivity
2.4" 256K-color display
Series 40 UI, 6th edition
Stereo FM radio with RDS
Bluetooth 2.1 (with EDR)
Standard microUSB port
microSD card slot
3.5mm audio jack- Good audio quality
PRICE!

Bleh!
No Wifi/3G(just wishing)
Crap camera
No USB charging


From afar, this phone can be easily mistaken for the costlier Nokia business phones. Only when held in hand does it really come down to earth: a fairly light plastic chassis and creaking sounds here and there.

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The size is just right for use with one or two hands. The buttons give good tactile feedback and I especially like that huge recessed center button on the D-pad. BB users will probably laugh now.

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The back is smooth and bare save for the camera(duh!). With a 0.3mp pixel count this camera is as good as none.

Nokia could've skipped it altogether(In any case it was a smart decision, it's selling like hot cakes)

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The battery is a standard BL-5C, it's so popular chinese vendors are supplying stuff with the same or similar batteries.

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The conveniently located 3.5mm socket is a blessing. The music player complements third party earphones quite well with it's decent music playback, but the supplied ones aren't that bad either.

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The device may be too "light" for some. If you feel the weight of a phone should be substantial for a good "feel", this is not for you.

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The QWERTY keyboard takes a little time getting used to.

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The operating system is a tweaked Series 40. Quite intuitive and fairly easy to navigate. The now standard Opera mini does a good job of rendering pages and the sweet horizontal orientation of the screen makes for a good browsing experience(as long as the GPRS is kind- WiFi is long shot for a phone at this price )

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Conclusion

A very good phone for the price. A no brainer for easy texting or browsing - on a budget.

Weakend