Despite being primarily an advertising company, which tries to monetise you in every way possible, Google has gotten into the good books of typophiles by making some really beautiful fonts available for free (do the fonts have any embedded advertising codes?). In a world disfigured by Comic Sans and Arial, fonts like Lato, Lora, Roboto etc. provide immeasurable relief to the eyes of typophiles! Lato will become an Arial at some point I guess, but not for a few more years. WordPress.com websites seem to support many of these fonts seamlessly: hence the visual upgrade for this blog too.
The Master of them all…
He [Knuth] was deeply disappointed when saw the typesetting from Addison-Wesley for the second edition of volume 2, because in 1973 Addison-Wesley had replaced its mechanical typesetting technology with computerized typesetting that did not reproduce the high quality of the original printings of volumes 1-3.
Consequently, in 1977 Knuth began developing a new typesetting system to enable high quality computerized typesetting, in particular for TAOCP. This system was announced in his 1978 American Mathematical Society Gibbs Lecture entitled “Mathematical Typography” and published in the Bulletin (New Series) of the American Mathematical Society, volume 1, 1979, pp. 337-372. Knuth had two goals for his system:
(1) achieving the finest quality printed documents
(2) creating a system that would be archival in the sense that it was independent of changes in printing technology to the maximum extent possible.
Knuth’s system, developed with help from Stanford students and colleagues, had three primary components: the TeX typesetting engine, the METAFONT font design system, and the Computer Modern set of type fonts [4]. Combined, these revolutionized digital typesetting. Knuth made his code publicly available, and it has been widely adapted by commercial typesetting systems.
Knuth put hooks in his TeX engine so that others could make additions, with the condition that any resulting system be give a different name. That produced a vibrant, worldwide community of users and developers for TeX and related systems like LaTeX, ConTeXt, LuaTeX. Knuth’s TeX was an early success story for the free and open-source software movement.
Special thanks to Knuth for the Computer Modern typeface; every article written in TeX looks professional and beautiful, thanks to this font. Especially in the ages when Times New Roman was the default font in Microsoft Word!
For those tired of Computer Modern, Palatino is another beautiful font.
Thank you, Microsoft too!
Microsoft has also scaled heights in the last decade with their typesetting: undoubtedly, Segoe UI (and the mobile version) is beautiful. Calibri, Cambria, Constantia, Consolas are all nice in their own way — any day better than Arial and company — and are thankfully the default fonts in Office since the last 9 years!
My Favourite Google Fonts
Droid Sans | Droid Sans Mono | Droid Serif | Inconsolata | Lato | Noto Sans | Noto Serif | Open Sans | Open Sans Condensed | Roboto | Source Sans Pro
Cricket typography
Every World Cup and major ICC event comes with a nice upgrade of the interface for display of score panels, scorecards etc. I thought the fonts used in the recent World T20 were rather nice, but the current IPL fonts are an abomination (more so than IPL itself? :j)
The fonts appear to be a hideous Monospaced font, the stereotype of the 2030s science fiction fonts as conceived by 1990s designers! Not to mention, the ugly batsman on strike indicators that keep blinking (wow, sci-fi FTW!) To catch a glimpse of these fonts, head over to Match 2 – a slashed zero too!
Ah, IPL has indeed fixed the monospace font at least: see IPL Match 8 Video — but the blinking marker remains!
It’s been a while since I blogged, but I thought it important to share information on some very interesting NGOs/charities I’ve come across [recently]. I understand the India has a huge number of NGOs (read a debate about the legitimacy of some of these NGOs a while back!), and it’s rather difficult to find good NGOs/charities on a regular basis. I do get badgered by enthusiastic management trainees from the popular NGOs once in a while, and I often turn them away since I like to donate to more obscure and upcoming charities rather than established ones (I also suspect they have more ‘overheads’, like paying the salaries for the MTs!).
I must emphasise that is very important for each one of us to give; we all have [one or more of] a roof over our head, good clothes to wear, and the luxury of a bike/car and smartphones, tablets and laptops. Let’s try to help others educate themselves, lead a healthy life and sustain themselves in changing and challenging circumstances. I think there’s an adage that 1/6th of one’s salary must be spent in ‘good deeds’; assuming that the taxes we pay are part of this, I am sure we can still part with a few thousands every year to help the needy. I also think that many of us are happy to donate, but aren’t aware of the best charities. All of us can’t become Bill and Melinda Gates (दाता लक्षेषु जायते), but I think a little help here and there can go make a big difference to at least a few people!
I think we all have causes we’d really like to support (mine are usually health, education, food, culture), so it’s good to share the word and let people know. I even toyed with the idea of a social portal for sharing, rating and ranking NGOs, but here goes my first effort. Here’s a list of NGOs which I have donated to in the past and I firmly believe to be sincere and doing good work, in their chosen sphere (I hope to have a dedicated post about each of them, and hope to update the links below):
Deepam Trust (email; no webpage as far as I know for this Deepam trust)
National Trust Niramaya: A Health Insurance Scheme for the welfare of Persons with Autism, Cerebral Palsy, Mental Retardation and Multiple Disabilities (web)
Uday Foundation for Congenital Defects and Rare Blood Groups (web)
Vishakha Hari mentioned in one of her discourses on पञ्चरत्न वैभवम् that this great kriti actually contains a 100 names of Lord Rama. One can only marvel at Tyagaraja’s genius and the grace bestowed upon him by Lord Rama!
I must acknowledge http://sahityam.net/wiki/Jagadanandakaraka and all the contributors there for help in discerning the different names in the Kriti, through the translations and word-splittings.
It’s been a while since I have blogged, but I just had to write about this new-found obsession of mine, with Jagadanandakaraka. I keep humming it all the time these days, despite my scanty knowledge of Carnatic music. I have always been a fan of Nata ragam, but Jagadanandakaraka is not just about music. It is about Sri Rama, Sri Tyagaraja and much more than even Srimati Vishakha Hariji had so beautifully put forth, in her discourse on the Pancharatna Kritis.
(You can find the notation for Jagadanandakaraka here.)
Over the last couple of days, I have been so fascinated by the commentary I heard, that I found it too difficult to resist blogging on it.
Some quick highlights from the discourse:
Sadkavihridalaya: Story of Tulasidas, and how Lord Kasi Viswanatha instructed him to write in pradesha Hindi bhasha, rather thank Samskritam.
Pada-vijita-mauni-sapa: Whole of Balakandam in one charanam
Purahara-Sarojabhava-Keshavadirupa : Vishakha narrated a lovely story about a goldsmith from Pandarpur, who was a great Shiva bhakta, but would not even utter the name of Panduranga and how Panduranga so beautifully opened his eyes!
One can recite the whole of Jagadanandakaraka as ashtottara namavaLi! (I am trying to get the right count; I am certain there are close to a 100 namas!)
Obviously, Maharshi Valmiki was not satiated just by writing Srimad Ramayanam, he had to ‘sing’ it again in various verses as Tyagaraja, for the benefit of one and all!
“A nanotechnologist has created the world’s smallest and most plentiful smiley, a tiny face measuring a few billionths of a metre across assembled from strands of DNA. Dr Paul Rothemund at the California Institute of Technology can make 50 billion smileys, each a thousand times smaller than the diameter of a human hair, with his technique.”
Ref: Paul W. K. Rothemund (2006) “Folding DNA to create nanoscale shapes and patterns”, Nature440:297-302 (16 March 2006) doi:10.1038/nature04586
, 
and what not, all written in these blogs…
