csilverman

@csilverman@mastodon.social

Designer, artist, iPhone Notes limit pusher. I know the difference between a "font" and a "typeface", but I'm not obnoxious about it.

A note: while I CW the occasional political post, I don't typically CW things like faces or food. My art is weird, often includes eyes/faces/masks, and can be (I'm told) eerie.

Profile pic: a white pixel rendering of a small computer with a sad face, set on on a black background (Susan Kare's immortal "Sad Mac" icon).

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

csilverman, to art

csilverman,

@subraumpixel Yeah, the colors are definitely off. I'd been uploading images via Pixelfed's web interface, and the server-side processing is doing something to the colors; they've always been a little washed out.

Pixelfed doesn't have a native iOS app yet, but last night, I test-posted an image using Tusker, a Mastodon app that Pixelfed recommends. The image looked fine, so I'll use that for Pixelfed from now on.

csilverman, to art

csilverman, to art

csilverman,

@nurahiyon_dyl We already know the moon landing was faked with AI, someone did a whole TikTok video about it

heavyboots, to apple
@heavyboots@mastodon.social avatar

Argh, this is driving me crazy.

Does anyone out there remember the specifics of the Apple engineer that got fired when he got caught trying to hide an image of Britney Spears in some Macintosh ROM? I think I probably read about it in a MacWeek article, but it seems to have sunk beneath the waves where even search engines can't find it anymore…

EDIT: Maybe it was Paula Abdul? At any rate, some singer he was obsessed with!

#apple #macintosh #EasterEgg #RetroComputing

csilverman,

@dillera @heavyboots Reminds me a little of how someone—well, a couple of someones, apparently—hid the Olivia de Berardinis "Zebra Lady" painting in the About box of the first run of MacPaint 2.0.

I recall hearing about some fireworks when upper management learned of this (and that image was removed pretty quickly, so not a lot of shipped MacPaint versions actually had it) but I don't know if anyone actually got fired over it.

csilverman, to art

stroughtonsmith, to random
@stroughtonsmith@mastodon.social avatar

I see this, I see PencilKit content version v3 getting watercolor physics, texture brushes, and gradient fills 👀

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/pencilkit/pkcontentversion/version3

csilverman,

@stroughtonsmith this would be a game-changer for me, similar to when they added the crayon tool.

It would be very cool to see Apple shift Notes—or Freeform—into recognized art apps. (Notes always has been, but those capabilities haven't been paid much notice so far.)

csilverman, to art

kiwa, to random
@kiwa@bitbang.social avatar

I'm not gonna spam post pdas today don't worry lol

here is my favorite pda phone, the Kyocera 7135, it runs Palm OS, it has a small tiny LCD that displays info like numbers or notifications, like a pager cool!

A small long thin LCD screen

csilverman,

@kiwa I would be delighted if you spam-posted PDAs.

csilverman, to random

Curious to see how people interpret this pattern. Is the switch on or off?

(I would have done a poll, but apparently you can't have an image and a poll in the same post.)

csilverman,

@tjcrowdertech I considered that. The thing I've noticed a lot on here, though, is that when replies get boosted, a lot of people seem to miss the post they're replying to.

Also, I'm getting a lot of really good comments. If people just voted on a binary "on" or "off", the results wouldn't reflect things like "on, but I'm only 51% sure about that", or "off, for [reason]". That additional context is more interesting to me than just the basic state they think the control is in.

ashley, to random
@ashley@digipres.club avatar

Celebrate Earth Day by unsubscribing from every company trying to get you to buy their shit in honor of Earth Day

csilverman,

@ashley "at ExxonMobil, we're working every day to make a healthier, more sustainable planet. This Earth Day, stop by any participating location for a FREE oil change..."

ambivalena, to random Swedish
@ambivalena@mastodon.nu avatar

Morning Fedinauts & Tootlings 🥱

A blue monday?

csilverman,

@ambivalena I love your early-morning photos so much.

Being a morning person doesn't come easily to me, but that pre-sunrise-but-no-longer-night point is a lovely time of day. Wish I experienced it more.

csilverman, to art

csilverman,

@libredove Thanks :-) I think the hands were the trickiest part.

mwichary, to random
@mwichary@mastodon.online avatar

What would you consider as the most recognizable bitmap fonts in tech history?

I’m imagining stuff like:

  • the arcade/Atari font
  • Chicago (Mac, then iPod)
  • VCR/video equipment fonts
  • Minecraft font
  • IBM PC fonts (MDA, VGA, stuff like that)
  • perhaps System font from Windows 3.x
  • Commodore 64, just because of the sheer popularity of the machine

What am I missing?

image/png
image/png
image/png

csilverman,

@mwichary I feel like there's a standard low-res bitmap typeface that I've seen used in a number of places, from the TI-83 calculators to Daktronics electronic road signs. Someone recreated it here: https://www.dafont.com/ti-83-plus-large.font

Could be wrong, but I know I've seen this anonymous typeface in a range of different circumstances. Might be an industry standard of some sort; would love to know more about this, but I don't know what it's called.

csilverman,

@psu_13 @mwichary yeah, the VT-100 typeface is up there with my picks. I'd recognize it anywhere. My first computer was a DEC Rainbow, so the first text I ever saw on a computer screen was that VT-100 typography.

(My Terminal theme is orange VT-100 on a black screen; full circle, 38 years later.)

csilverman,

@mwichary That's it! Yeah, I see that typeface on pretty much any small screen that needs to display upper- and lowercase letters. Even considering the limited number of letter designs in those circumstances, I always had a sense it was one specific typeface; very cool to finally know the source.

csilverman,

@mwichary whoa. Did not know this. Have you seen any of the Mullard letters in the wild? Sounds like this was used primarily in Europe, in the 80s, but that wasn't more than a minute of research on my part: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mullard_SAA5050

I honestly think the Mullard characters are better. The squished y and q on the Hitachi set have always looked wrong to me; not sure why they did it that way, since the Mullard design seems like the more obvious solution.

Very cool discovery.

csilverman,

@mwichary (ah—the Mullard letters are 9px high, vs 7px on the Hitachi letters, so they have room for actual descenders. Missed that. I still think that q looks weird though.)

gedeonm, to random
@gedeonm@mastodon.social avatar

So you write a company to get tech support for a feature you hope exists. Tech support responds promptly and informs you such a feature does not in fact exist. Then later you get a request asking you to rate the support you got.

Do you give them ★★★★★ because they answered your question quickly and clearly or ★☆☆☆☆ because they didn’t actually help resolve your problem/request? Or perhaps something in between?

csilverman,

@macmanx @gedeonm Same. Five stars. Tech support's job is to solve problems that can be solved. If the product doesn't do X, X can't be solved in these circumstances.

I also, this being America, assume 100% of the time that someone's income, healthcare—perhaps for a serious condition—and family integrity depend to some degree on what rating I give them. I don't normally give less than five unless they really screw up (rude, useless info, some obvious lapse of responsibility).

csilverman, to art

csilverman, to art

csilverman, to art

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