Ooooo… Scary
Posted on October 23, 2007 Posted by John Scalzi 29 Comments
Yeah, I fiddled with the background to make it Halloweeny. Sue me, I’m a sap this way. Also, for those of you with PCs, the header will look better if you have the “Chiller” font, which you can get here. If you Mac folks can suggest a suitable “spooky” font for that flavor of computer, by all means let me know and I’ll specify it in the style sheet.
Those of you in the RSS feeds, move along, nothing to see here.
(in my best Monty Burns voice) Excellent.
I’m not sure if they’re really that scary, but both Lucinda Blackletter and Blackmoor LET are a bit more atmospheric… and came standard on my MacBook.
Glad you’re liking WordPress – I’ve been quite happy with it myself, though I have about 1/1000th of your traffic on a good day. Good to know it can handle larger loads just as well.
…And now it’s time to get back to work, even though I’d really rather just sit here checking blogs…
make it Halloweeny.
hehehe — you said “weeny”
(yeah, I need some sleep. That’s the limit of my wit today. Stick around, maybe I’ll work my way up to toilet humor.)
Ooooo… Arial-ly
Maybe it’s scary in Linux.
I like the way “Whatever” disappears when you mouse over it.
I downloaded the font but am still seeing it all Arialian-like. Tried it in both IE and Firefox. *pokes the CSS*
Amanda:
Give it a couple of minutes. I have the pages on a five minute cache in order to lessen the load on the data base. Once it reloads you should be able to see it (assuming you installed the font correctly).
John, the css/stylesheet is one element of your blog that would not be cached (except locally by ones browser), so anyone not seeing the Chiller font used in the header will want to look at obstacle B (font installation issue).
You don’t impress me with your actual knowledge of the issue, Kaf! You don’t!
Whatever…
(is secretly impressed)
Well, not too secretly….
Of course it’s secret! It’s in parenthesis!
Well, I haven’t gotten manually installed truetype fonts to work quite right in Linux, so don’t be too impressed.
For now I must remain spooked by Arial. Unless someone wants to secretly impress me with their Linux/Ubuntu knowledge…
Oh that right. I forgot that I have the secret parenthesis-decoder extension installed on my Firefox. Doh!
hugh, shhh. Let’s not tell everyone about that extension.
I found some great (tentacle porn) stuff on the Internet today!
thank goodness for that secret encrypting parenthesis thing I learned on the Whatever, otherwise folks might know I’m a throbbing tentacled pornographic pony kinda guy
(Ahem)
Here’s my issue (well, one of them):
Windows TrueType fonts work just fine in OS X. Drop ’em in a Library Font folder, or turn ’em on with a font manager, and go to town. I can print this very same above-linked “Chiller” from InDesign to a laser printer and convert it to outlines in Illustrator. Boom, there it is.
But it will not show up here. Not in Safari. Not in Firefox. Mac brothers and sisters: wtf? I wanna see the spooky, too.
“I’m an ink-on-paper man, dammit, not a web developer.”
/deforest kelley
kaf: I thought it would be easy to tell you how to install the font because I’m used to doing it in Kubuntu, where it is easy. Turns out it is easy in Ubuntu, but I had to look it up in Ubuntu Hacks (Oxer, Rankin & Childers, 2006–useful book, worth getting).
1) Download a TrueType font and put it somewhere handy, like your desktop;
2) Use “Ctrl-L” to open a location box;
3) Type “fonts:///”;
4) Drag and drop the font into the fonts folder.
I think that will register in Firefox after you restart Firefox.
Hope that helps; it certainly helps me to actually have an idea how to answer a question–my Kubuntu has been a sad Kubuntu ever since I tried to upgrade to 7.10 Sunday. Now I’m having fun trying to salvage my precious files that I can only access through Gollum-like stealth, cunning and deceit.
*resists the urge to draw a pony with forking tentacles coming from its … regions*
Thanks A Eric.
As I noted my problem is one of getting things to work “quite right.” After following the several methods I’ve located for manually installing fonts (yours at least cuts out some steps from one of them), most applications in Ubuntu appear to have no problems. It’s just Firefox that’s being the stumbling block, which is irksome!
Saw the note about the new background. Saw background was same as yesterday. Hit shift-refresh. Saw new background. Pumpkins!
I laugh at your scoffing of those of us who read you via RSS. I clicked in, if only to rib you about it!
I must already have the font installed.
I too like the fact that it disappears when you hover over it with the mouse. It would probably be better the other way around, but then you’d knever know where to hover/click at. :-p
There are some fun, free comic-style fonts at http://www.blambot.com (along with non-free ones).
This month’s new freebie is called ‘You Murderer’. Another freebie is called ‘Feast of Flesh’.
They have a non-free symbol font called ‘BRAAAINS’…
(somewhat off-topic, but curiosity finally got the better of me and I had to Google “tentacle porn”…jinkies…lucky for me, no one can read this…)
After reading these replies I’m glad I already had the Chiller font installed on my machine. The effect is … no. I’m not going to say it. (Chilling–there, I said it in secret).
PS: I may have to sue now, though, because you’ve stolen my background idea. Although maybe I’d better not, because I might have ganked my punkin from flickr… Should I have said that in parenthesis?
Syd:
(hahahahahahahahahahahah! ROFLMAO!)
Installed it at work and at home, so I must be an odd one, because I’m still seeing the title in all it’s Arial goodness.
Oh well. :) I’ve always been one of the odd ones.