Fontographer finally updated for Mac OS X. Wow. That only took... well, a lot of years.
Includes "native support for Mac OS X, support for the Euro character, updated encodings, copy-paste compatibility with new Illustrator and Freehand versions, numerous bug fixes." But still only works with Type 1 or TrueType fonts. Why not use the newer TypeTool or FontLab?
I used Fontographer to create two custom fonts many years ago. One based on my handwriting (sort of) called Straylight Hand and Deco Organica. Click the images to download.

Benjamin Krain. Nice stuff.

Meg and I took a Thai cooking class this weekend at Sawatdee in downtown Minneapolis and this was definitely (besides our pregnancy of course) a high-point event in my recent life (which says what about my life?). It was so much fun!
The owner of Sawatdee, Supenn, was our instructor and her friend from St. Cloud came in to assist. Supenn was very good, funny and caring and generous. Her friend (dang, I cannot recall his name, Sura I think) was similar and I think we all enjoyed his energy (he kept reminding us "I am not the cook, just friend" but he's a good cook, too). We learned about the Thai flavors, ingredients (galanga, lemongrass, chiles, etc), health benefits, and then we started making fresh and fried spring rolls! Also on the menu: Holy Basil Chicken, Fried Rice and Tom Yum soup. I got to assist Supenn in the fried rice making in front of the class -- and I got a round of applause for my performance. Sweet! Plus we got to eat all the things we made and it was delicious.
The most fun, however, was after the class when Sura offered to take any of us to United Noodles (Asian grocery) to show us which things are best in the market! It was like an elementary school field trip, a whole group of us following our guide through the aisles, asking questions, exploring strange and fascinating new items. The owner or manager even came up and greeted us. Definitely worth while and Sura did it all gratis, just for fun. Like I said, we all enjoyed his energy, generousity and knowledge. We bought giant bags of rice, lemongrass, rice paper, fish sauce and more and we'll definitely go back. A well-organized very clean environment.
If you like Thai food, you should find time to take this class!

Is Hurra Torpedo a humorous mock-rockumentary or just a sad reality? Check out The Crushing Blow to follow them on tour!

Huge thanks to everybody who was able to attend the afternoon screening of my Zombie Pub Crawl during the Minnesota Stories showing at the City Pages Get Real documentary film festival today!
The few dozen people in attendance seemed to enjoy the entire program but I was greatly disappointed to not get to chat with everyone afterwards - the projectionist went incognito and left us in the dark (literally) for many minutes afterwards and people just ended up leaving the theater. Still, despite my fears of visual quality and sound fidelity, I thought the movie looked and sounded very nice up on the big screen at The Lagoon Theater! Something I could get used to, for sure.
Special thanks to Chuck Olsen for including my piece, the zombie pub crawl crew, my mom for attending (she drove up from southern Minnesota!), my pals Chris and Bill, and, of course, my lovely wife Meghan who has been the most supportive fan club a guy could ever want.
So what's next?!

Ok, kids, this Thursday, November 10th, at 2:30pm in the afternoon at the Lagoon Cinema, catch a big-screen viewing of my Zombie Pub Crawl documentary during the Minnesota Stories segment of the City Pages Get Real documentary film festival! Get there early as it is a free show and I've heard many people express their intention of attending. I'll be there so say Hi, ask questions, and have fun with locally made cinema!

My new web photo gallery template (BlancoWS) for iView MediaPro is now available on the iView site. I built this template for widescreen images, but it works great with normal pictures as well and has a couple of nice cool features (I think). The version is the beta 0.9 version of the template so check back in a week or two for the final release version and better sample galleries! Feedback is appreciated.

In 1978 Claude Lelouch made a 9-minute film racing through Paris in a Ferrari at breakneck speeds: running through red lights, going the wrong direction at times and nearly swiping birds, people and other vehicles. His friend, the driver, was a Formula 1 racer. The resulting film got Claude arrested. You should watch it now. You need an adrenaline rush. You look pale. Are you eating enough?

so, those of you who know me understand that I don't drink alcohol all that often and I think one of the main reasons (besides not really liking the taste of beer) is that I'm hyper-aware of how my body feels and reacts to things at any given moment in a day and having the knowledge or high-level awareness (or whatever you want to call it) of the depressant and relinquishing-of-control effect of alcohol really unsettles me. I tend to desire complete control over my body at all times and not having it tends to make me a bit freaked out. I think this is the main reason I don't drink. not because I don't like the flavor or the effect, but because I am not fully in control of my self. yet I tend to protest against structure... and yet I love the taste of sambuca... analysis?