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It's Monday again. How do I know this? Well, first of all, I'll be inebriated in just a few short hours. My liver's already quivering --quivering!-- with anticipation. Secondly, every Monday afternoon there's a little parade that marches past my office window. Far from being a celebration of my own glorious acts, it's actually a sad little group of about eight freeloaders protesting Hartz IV, the German social services reform bill.

I don't really know much about Hartz IV, having Googled it for the first time just a minute or two ago, and I don't really care what's in it. Often, I'll eschew informing myself about an issue and simply base my decision on who's marching against it. The bongo-beating, rhyme-chanting mouth-breathers that just limped past my office window have just made me a huge fan of Hartz IV, even if it reads like a Jonathan Swift treatise. Beat those bongos, slackers; I'm going shopping for fava beans.

Just a factoid for the stream:

In typesetting, you generally want to avoid leaving a line of a paragraph by itself on a page. When it's the first line, it's called a widow When it's the last line, it's called an orphan. In German, you called the first line a Cobbler's boy (Schusterjung), and the last line 'son of a whore' (Hurenkind).

Carry on.

[This is a book review I've written for next month's Die Neue Szene, the local scene-rag, in case anyone feels like reading it.]

€16.90
"Digital gestalten: Der Erste-Hilfe Kurs in Typo, Farbe und Layout" (Günter Schuler)
Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, 2005

In this compact volume, author Günter Schuler attempts to cover almost all aspects of modern electronic typographical design and layout. As the subtitle suggests, the book is arranged like a course on design basics, with long stretches of raw information about design and layout, culminating in a detailed example showing its application.

Starting with the evolution of movable type, and tracing the histories of various typefaces, we learn for what purposes many familiar fonts were originally developed, and by whom, and what it is about them that has kept them alive into the digital age. Next, we move on to how one goes about using them. The classic techniques of layout are covered, and are analogized to workflows of modern programs like InDesign and QuarkXPress. This is attractive to budding designers; learning the principles of layout, instead of the tools and tricks, allows the reader to apply this knowledge to any design process.

Unfortunately, Mr. Schuler wastes large portions of the book with endless lists of examples that contribute little to the reader’s experience. The lists of typefaces in the opening chapters, for example, are overwhelming, not to mention boring to page through. Also, many examples of bad design are subtly made, and not clearly marked, giving the reader an uncomfortable impression that the guy doesn’t know what he’s talking about, after all.

Despite the occasional glitches in writing style and organization, this book offers an excellent entry point into the world of professional design. It is brimming with the kind of information and concepts one needs to rise above the Web-monkeys and Photoshop-jockeys that saturate the field today.

Every now and then, me and the old lady sleep late, work up an appetite, then get up and enjoy a nice breakfast together. I'm happy to say that today was one of those days. Unfortunately, they don't have Waffle Houses over here, so your options are limited. It's either head over to the coffee shop for a $10 breakfast of yogurt and oak leaves, or do it yourself.

It just so happens that the old lady and me enjoy practicing the culinary arts, and brother, we produced. I'd like you all to meet someone very dear to me, the Small Southern Breakfast:

Let's see, what we got here?

• Hot coffee
• Fresh-squeezed orange juice
• Homemade biscuits au Rube
• One double-sized, spicy-hot Augsburg-style omelette
• Cheese grits (made with Gouda, which is surprisingly good, even for a cheese-grits purist like myself)
• Assorted cheeses (Gouda, swiss, emmentaler)
• Butter, honey, peach jelly, and red-pepper spreads
• Peanut butter, a rare commodity in these parts
• One hungry Rube
• One hungry Augie

Yuuuuuummmmmmm-mi!

Then came the nap, but I forgot to take pictures. Y'all over there living in the Land o' Plenty have no idea what a rare joy it is over here to stuff yourself like a peanut farmer before getting out of your pajamas.