Orange Crate Art

Tuesday, August 26, 2014

Tobias Frere-Jones’s blog

Tobias Frere-Jones’s eponymous blog is a thing of beauty. It is devoted, at least so far, to the beauty of things: banknotes, pennies, bus transfers, lottery tickets, signage, a gas bill, children’s alphabet letters, and typewriters. Dig Frere-Jones’s description of a bus transfer: “a rough slip of paper rattling and clanging with type.”

[If the name doesn’t ring a bell: Tobias Frere-Jones (Wikipedia).]

Monday, August 25, 2014

June Fine’s art

My wife Elaine has begun postings photographs of her mother’s artwork: June Fine’s Paintings and Drawings.

Twenty Questions

[Click for a larger, more welcoming view.]

I found this postcard between two books today. I’d forgotten I ever had it. I like the sentiment, which seems to me fitting for the start of a college semester.

This postcard has, however, an ulterior motive. It’s a piece of advertising. Can you guess what for? Welcome to what I suspect will be a pretty quick game of Twenty Questions. Leave your best questions in the comments. Play early, play often.

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August 26: My wife Elaine came closer in offline play: Alcohol? Yes. Clear? No. Brown? Yes. Bourbon? No. Scotch? Yes. But she couldn’t get the brand. Barnaby has the answer in the comments: it’s an advertisement for Johnnie Walker. Specifically, Black.

School days

What’s that? Syllabus week ? I never heard of the thing.

See also Oscar’s Portrait.

Sunday, August 24, 2014

The mystery of Hog Island

[Henry, August 24, 2014.]

Today’s Henry (which is always yesterday’s Henry, as the strip is in reruns) raises an urgent question: where are Henry and his unidentified comrade headed? They could be preparing to visit an island in Arizona, Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Florida, New York, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, Rhode Island, Virginia, or Wisconsin. Or an island in Australia, the Falklands, Guyana, or Honduras. Or a now-defunct Philadelphia neighborhood that was not an island. That last possibility might require a time machine, not a frying pan.

Henry is a city kid, surrounded by stores selling Novelties and Notions and Meats. So I cast a vote for the Bronx’s Hog Island, though I too have no idea how to get there.

Related reading
All OCA Henry posts (Pinboard)

[Arizona has islands? Yes. My choice for the best New York island aside from Manhattan: City Island.]

Saturday, August 23, 2014

µBlock for Google Chrome

µBlock is an ad-blocking extension for Chromium-based browsers. The extension’s developer Raymond Hill says that µBlock uses significantly fewer resources than AdBlock Plus. That’s certainly the case on my Mac. Your figurative mileage may vary.

To see what’s going on under the figurative hood and what resources an extension is using, use Chrome’s Task Manager, available from the Menu Bar (Window ➝ Task Manager) or from the hamburger menu (☰) to the right of the Address Bar. There’s no keyboard shortcut for getting to the Task Manager on a Mac, but you can be sneaky and create one.

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August 25: Another reason to like µBlock: I ran into a problem with whitelisting, e-mailed Raymond Hill last night, and this morning there was a new version of µBlock at GitHub, problem solved. Thank you, Raymond.

[The hamburger is also figurative. I’m my fambly’s IT guy, and I take on that role cheerfully.]

Friday, August 22, 2014

On zip

The zip-line has become a fairly routine element in first-week-of-school activities on American college campuses. At least one school has assured students that though its zip-line line may not be spectacular, it serves the institution’s purpose.

That purpose would appear to be Fun. And I have nothing against Fun. There shall be Fun. But the purpose of a college or university, as I understand it, is another matter.

If anyone had told me that my first week of college would include a ride on a zip-line, I would have thought they were on something. You know, the way people used to say it — on something.