Notices

Notices for 16th September 2026

Wed, 16 Sep 2026 23:59:00 GMT

Experimentation

Testing a custom font for the first time, not for the typography per se, but because web fonts bypass the horrible hinting system that plagues Windows! CSS doesn’t seem to have a “draw font nicely” option, so the only alternative is to find something vaguely close to Helvetica that isn’t hinted. I’m not settled on Inter, but it will suffice for now. The next problem is that using font-feature-settings: "cv01", "ss03", "cv10" to improve the typography (let alone the need for tighter tracking with Inter) causes weird problems for other fonts that support OpenType: I never realised that Arial has a variety of alternative letter forms quietly waiting to be unlocked.

CSS needs a way to scope all the font and text settings to only the specified font, and disallow them to be inherited anywhere that a different typeface is used, because whatever that site feature is, it doesn’t want the OpenType customisation and other adjustments needed to pretend that the font you really wanted actually exists.

Of course, hardware compositing is incompatible with sub-pixel anti-aliasing, so only by having hardware acceleration disabled is there any hope of getting really nice type on Lo-DPI.

Dark mode support is improved; various mistakes had persisted because I don’t use dark mode except for testing. These changes include adding dark mode support to the Mindcontemplation sub-site, something long overlooked (although it and the Fragmentary Glimpses of Eternity sub-site were included in the upgrade to vector graphics back in 2019).

The blue link colour has been retuned in dark mode for readability but blue is hard to see on black (raising the question of why completely illegible blue-on-black is part of so many Linux syntax highlight schemes, and suggesting that most people see blue a lot brighter), so the contrast will never be ideal. (That or the developers of Linux text editors are even more sadomasochistic than the rest of the Linux ecosphere.)

Subtle colouration is applied to heading levels to gently indicate when you are changing heading level, without too much visual disruption, and without going too formal and numbering them. This is still an experiment.

External links used to be signalled with a suffix icon, a feature which has long been disabled. As a further experiment, external links are now shown in a different colour, of which there are few to choose between. Red suggests broken links to anyone familiar with wikis. Blue is already used. Green is the site theme colour and suggests the exact opposite of what is intended. Yellow wouldn’t be readable in light mode. Magenta and purple suggest visited links (old Web default). Orange is currently selected but this is subject to change.

Other tweaks include de-emphasised link underlines (and a balanced uniform underline distance), and less recently, subtle improvements to table presentation.

The general design remains as it has been for the last 23 years, but more refined. Like polishing a turd.

Notices for 25th March 2026

Wed, 25 Mar 2026 23:59:00 GMT

Star Trek afficionados will remember the TNG episode “Remember Me”, where the crew of the Enterprise slowly vanish, as though they never existed. Reality is starting to take this form.

While waiting for the last slivers of progress with the UK power industry (if indeed they are still on this side of the warp bubble), I’ve spent a bit of time adding material to the operating system design notes section. I don’t expect to be taken seriously and I don’t expect to accomplish anything, but it’s good to get more ideas documented publicly instead of having them merely crawling around inside my skull.

Notices for 13th March 2025

Thu, 13 Mar 2025 23:59:00 GMT

When I started the pylons section of the site in summer 2022, with the intention of documenting all of the UK’s electricity pylon (transmission tower) types, I genuinely believed that I would not get far before progress came to an end. Instead, I have been doubly surprised: by how much further this has progressed than expected (with help from many people) and just how many tower types this island nation has dreamt up. It feels like Jon Bruford’s “tower bible” only scratched the surface of what is out there, with many types not known even to enthusiasts. The UK electricity pylon series page is already around 50 pages long, covering (depending how you count them) 54 different tower series (suites/families), 52 of which having at least one illustration, many extensively covered.

2025 has so far proved fruitful, with suggestions of more yet to come.

A challenge to the UK power industry: let’s see how far we can get to 100% completeness before the end of the year. That includes all the 33 and 66 kV towers, of which so little is known, and of which there are so many types: estimated to be at least 30 lower-voltage tower series.

At least two major organisations in the industry did or do use this site as a visual reference, so the more comprehensive we can make it, the better for everyone.

Notices for 26th August 2023

Sat, 26 Aug 2023 23:59:00 GMT

Having gone live on Tuesday 26th August 2003, this site is now 20 years old, and I find that I have little to say. For extended periods it was as good as dead, but it’s come back to life in the last few years, first with the massive expansion of the keyboards section and more recently the power section that was introduced on the 26th of July last year. It’s still a lonely pursuit, and maybe it will die again in a while when I run out of pylon material to process.

I am not sure that human society, the climate or my own life will hold up long enough for the site to reach the 30-year mark. There are no provisions to ensure that the site will outlive me, but I am not so sure that this actually matters.

Notices for 2nd June 2023

Fri, 02 Jun 2023 23:59:00 GMT

In another act of madness, I chose to take it upon myself to document British electricity pylons (steel lattice high voltage transmission towers). The scope of this project is far more limited than that of documenting computer keyboards, not least because there is far less information available to work from, and it has reached the point of diminishing returns. However, in less than a year it has still grown to become much more than I was anticipating, especially with the help of pylon veterans Ian McAulay and Jon Bruford. To those among us who find these structures fascinating, there is bound to be something of interest to all of you. I am not an engineer, so it’s not a hugely in-depth treatment of the subject, but hopefully it will make a little piece of life a little less mysterious.