Interesting post about improving web typography. I got totally sidetracked when the author mentioned frequency distribution of letters in the English language:

aaaaaaaabbcccddddeeeeeeeeeeeeeffgghhhhhhiiiiiiijkllll

mmnnnnnnnooooooooppqrrrrrrsssssstttttttttuuuvwxyyz

That got me thinking about Scrabble, and how the ‘x' always seems overvalued, and the ‘v' undervalued. Compare the breakdown: 

          a b c d e  f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z

English : 8 2 3 4 13 2 2 6 7 1 1 4 2 7 8 2 1 6 6 9 3 1 1 1 2 1

Scrabble: 9 2 2 4 12 2 3 2 9 1 1 4 2 6 8 2 1 6 4 6 4 2 2 1 2 1

Which means the letter distribution is pretty right - amazingly it has never been changed nor needed to be adjusted since invented by Alfred Butts in 1938, who famously did things like hand counting the letter distribution on the front page of the New York Times to work out the numbers. ‘H' is about the only really wonky one.

Next look at the points per letter:

         a b c d e  f g h i j k l m n o p q  r s t u v w x y z

Tiles  : 9 2 2 4 12 2 3 2 9 1 1 4 2 6 8 2 1  6 4 6 4 2 2 1 2 1

Points : 1 3 3 2 1  2 2 4 1 8 5 1 3 1 1 3 10 1 1 1 1 4 4 8 4 10

Again, it’s all pretty spot on - more points for the scarcer letters and those hard to use. But given their similar scarcity, ‘x' being worth 8 when ‘v' is only worth 4 seems slightly wrong. Especially when “ox” or “ex” or “xi” on a two way triple letter can be win you the game, whereas using a ‘v' is tricky and not rewarded accordingly.

(via Tim Bray)

New and interesting Comic/Graphic Art festival Graphic coming up 7-8 August at the Opera House, featuring Neil Gaiman and Kevin Smith amongst others.

But where’s Cahill-Kewell-Neill-Schwarzer?!

Jack White, cows, and a Coke bottle. Wouldn’t have sounded nearly as good with a Pepsi.

Appalling. It’s a long time since I’ve seen such an incompetent film - a friend compared it to Pirates III and that’s about right. Terrible terrible dialogue, woeful scripting, hideous continuity and story leaps, no heart and not even any exploding horses. Compare the utter lack of spark between Jake and Gemma with the real chemistry between Russ and Cate and weep. And what was with Jake’s cockney accent? How did he go from Brokeback to this mess?

Avoid at all costs.

Cory Doctorow has written For the Win, a novel based around gold farming of all things, and released it under a Creative Commons Licence:

It’s financially sensible in that all of this stuff just amounts to publicity, and the more publicity there is the greater the likelihood that the book while rise to the attention of a potential customer. Obscurity, not piracy, is the biggest problem writers face. In the 21st century, if you are not making art with the intention of it being copied, you are not making contemporary art.

Google updates with “World Cup” search results & scores with their footer.

The lesson for secondary dialogue (e.g. “There’s something out there waiting for us, and it ain’t no man. We’re all gonna die.”) in games - don’t make it too real:

I was told to rewrite the lines where anyone expressed a strong desire not to die. It was “sadistic” to kill people who directly asked you not to kill them. This sort of sadism is exactly the stuff that gets us a red flag from the ESRB. I felt pretty bad about this - I had written sadistic material! - before I thought about it. The thinking was, it wasn’t sadistic to create elaborate torture sequences as a heavily marketed feature; it was sadistic for the people being tortured to death to raise objections. It was sadistic to suggest that the individuals you killed had resembled human beings, that they were afraid to die.

Beautiful exchange between Stephen Colbert & Vampire Weekend on the vexed subject of the oxford comma.

I really wanted to like this album from Danish DJ/producer Trentemøller, having anticipated it since his last album in 2006. Alas, whilst it’s good, it’s not great. A bit too approachable, not deep enough, and the vocal content is a bit… nothing. So instead - buy The Last Resort, which is stunningly good. Brilliantly detailed production, full of foreboding and wonder, and still sounds totally current. Play it loud.