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I went for a late afternoon drive on random county and gravel roads to see what I could see. I found a few neat things, which I took pictures of.

Full gallery.

steve :: Jul.29.2005 :: Uncategorized :: 2 Comments »

I shamelessly copied a fourth video of the Towers going down. This one is from a new angle and shows the west building breaking in half and collapsing. It’s quite impressive.

“Towers implosion video #4″:http://steveblock.com/r/towers4.mov

steve :: Jul.25.2005 :: Uncategorized :: 2 Comments »

I put up a new gallery last night. It has some pictures from the road work on Welch and some of Towers before they were taken down.

Full gallery.

steve :: Jul.22.2005 :: Uncategorized :: 2 Comments »

Note: If you look through this post you’ll find 4 versions of the SGI Screen font. The original pcf.Z files (along with a fonts.dir and fonts.alias) that work great in XFree86 or XOrg. A bdf version of the medium font that works in X or the mac terminal emulator GLterm. A TTF version that I think only works on macs that can be used in Terminal.app, and a windows bitmap font version that though it is officially broken works extremely well in Windows XP (and probably 2000, 98, etc) in PuTTY or probably anywhere else you can use bitmap fonts.

I used to have a TrueType font called sgiscreen which I used as my main terminal font. It was broken in strange subtle ways, but mostly worked. I liked it a lot, and after some upgrade or another I lost it. Now you’d think the internet, being full of things as it is, would have a replacement, but none was to be found.

What I did find was the SGI font as pcf formatted X-Windows bitmaps. Now those are useful for somone running X, but I use my Mac most of the time (sans X) or Windows. In a fortunate coincidence, I had just switched to GLterm is my main terminal program rather than Terminal.app because GLterm was faster and has clickable links. GLterm uses bdf fonts, which are very basic text descriptions of bitmap fonts. A little searching and I was able to convert the pcf files to bdf files with very little trouble, and now I’m using the SGI font in my Mac OS terminal program.

For anyone else running GLterm, you can grab the bdf version of this fine font here. These should work for X as well, but a little searching would probably lead you to the original pcf files anyways. To install them you’ll have to place the bdf files inside the GLterm application bundle (GLterm.app/Contents/fonts/).

This was great and I’m happy, but I still use Windows and I wanted these fonts there as well. At first I thought about converting them to TrueType format, but there wasn’t any obvious easy way. Besides, these were well defined bitmap fonts, and TrueType is a scalable outline font format.

I decided to try to create a Windows raster font file (.fon format). I found an undocumented program that could convert the bdf files to working fon files, but it left me with one file for each size of the font. I knew that the fon format could handle multiple fonts in one file, so I embarked on a quest to figure out how to do it.

That was much, much harder than it seemed at first. There is a commercial program that can create the fon file I wanted straight from the bdf input files. I tried the demo and it was very nice, but the program cost $500. Too much for one font.

It was easy to use the open source program fontforge to open the bdf files and export them to the fnt format, which contains a single Windows bitmap font. It was not easy to turn those fnt files into one fon file though. There was compiling and linking and dll-ing and bullshit and 10 year old code that doesn’t work any more and other random crap. It took forever to find all the information I needed.

I finally figured it out and created the workflow and did the painstaking work of fixing all the stupid random hidden little problems that cropped up. I’ve now created a Windows bitmap font set that has every font size that was in the original bitmap set in a single file that you can download here.

I think the final result may not quite be a fon file by strict standards, but Windows XP imported the file and all its sizes perfectly. They look and work great in putty, and I have a workflow I can use to convert other fonts, if I ever feel the need.

Update: I found the old TTF font I had. It is the original bitmap fonts embedded in a TTF file. I think it only works on the Mac, but it perfect for Terminal.app. According to the info embedded into the file, Alex actually converted it a long time ago. Since tessier.com doesn’t really exist any more, I’m mirroring that font set too. Grab it here.

I’m making the original pcf files available here as well. I don’t want to lose this font again.

steve :: Jul.21.2005 :: Uncategorized :: 7 Comments »

Or, that’s all there is left of them. When I lived in the Towers dorms as an undergraduate there were four of them. This morning at 10:05 the north two buildings disappeared into a cloud of dust and a pile of rubble. Now there are only two left.

Two down, two to go.

I met my dad and Lisa S. on the hill at the back of the soccer fields east of the Towers at a quarter to 10. There was quite a crowd to see the Towers come down. Clearly the “there’s not much to see don’t bother coming” strategy of the police and administration didn’t work.

A few minutes after 10 they sounded a warning horn. There were a couple more horn blasts over the next minute, and I had my camera ready and waiting.

The first explosion was like a loud flashbang, and I could see flashes of light at the base of the buildings. Nothing moved though, and we wondered if something had gone wrong. Seconds later there was a series of extremely loud concussions and the Towers started moving down. I held the shutter release on my camera down until there was just a cloud of dust and I was out of film.

It was incredible.

The pictures I took were on Fujichrome Velvia, which I’ll take to Pyle on my way to work. I hope they turn out. If not, Joe said he would send us a copy of the video that he took.

It was quite an exciting morning.

_Update:_ Here are -three- four videos of the implosion, shamelessly stolen off of strangetalk.
“Towers Implosion 1″:http://steveblock.com/r/towers.avi
“Towers Implosion 2″:http://steveblock.com/r/towers2.avi
“Towers Implosion 3″:http://steveblock.com/r/towers3.mov
“Towers Implosion 4″:http://steveblock.com/r/towers4.mov

steve :: Jul.19.2005 :: Uncategorized :: 7 Comments »

I just put up some pictures taken with the Olympus XA I picked up a couple days ago. It’s definitely the smallest camera I’ve owned. It’s even smaller than Andy’s Rollei 35, and that’s something incredible for a 35mm camera.

Full gallery.

steve :: Jul.16.2005 :: Uncategorized :: 2 Comments »

I’ve put up two big photo galleries over the past couple days. The first is from the airstream interior demolition. It starts with some black and white pictures, and then moves into an old color roll. The pictures should be in chronological order in the gallery.

Full gallery.

The second is from the 4th of July weekend in Clear Lake with Ross’s family. This one starts with color photos and moves into black and white. They should be in chronological order as well.

Full gallery.

steve :: Jul.09.2005 :: Uncategorized :: 2 Comments »

I put up a nice set of photographs from Reiman Gardens. I don’t know when I took these, because the roll of film was one of many that I found when i was cleaning out my desk. What I do know is they look rather nice, and the Fuji film I was using captures very rich color.

Full gallery.

steve :: Jul.06.2005 :: Uncategorized :: 1 Comment »

I saw the Airstream for the first time last night.

Superficially it’s in pretty decent shape. There are only a few dents, most of them old, and a good chunk of the original equipment is still there. A closer look makes it obvious, though, that there is a lot of work to be done. We’re going to need to remove a large number of rivets to get some of the aluminum panels flattened out. The overhead cabinets need work as they’re not level and the veneer is peeling. The flooring needs to come up, too. I sense a perpetual weekend project.

The aluminum skin is interesting. It’s just a thin skin over the frame of the trailer, and it gives easily when you press against it. It’s dulled up now, but it looks like it’ll shine up quite nicely.

The Adventioneering Airstream page.

steve :: Jul.02.2005 :: Uncategorized :: 4 Comments »