Tinkerer's Journey

I absolutely loathe having to sort out font-related details when it comes to websites because, unless your browser is fairly modern and supports CSS3, odds are, you're limited to those fonts that exist natively on your machine, likely as part of the OS ecosystem. The obvious problem with this plan is that most fonts, even those most people are familiar with, are proprietary. If they exist somewhere among the various Windows iterations, for examples, you'll likely not find those fonts on Mac OS X or on a Linux machine.

For website designers this poses a special problem. Either we still to those common fonts most people have and thus create sites that don't really differentiate (yay for Verdana, perhaps, but what if I actually like Papyrus, for example). Either toss creativity out the window in that regard, or live with the knowledge that to the vast majority of your readers, your site doesn't look like it does to you.

CSS3 does away with this, sort of it, by introducing web fonts, but site stats currently indicate that most of this site's visitors (and also for gameondenver) show up using a browser not capable of handing CSS3. Back to the drawing board, I guess.

Personally, I tend to stay away from controversy.

If anyone's ever been to scienceblogs.com, it's an all right kind of place. The science is obviously good, coming as it does from the brains of people who deal with the topics they discuss daily, either as researchers or teachers. Being good at the workings of the world comes with the territory, I suppose.

Their current brand of controversy, and moral outrage is not exactly uncommon there, centers around a sponsored blog by PepsiCo, which the owners of the site somehow managed to mis-represent as something other than what it is, a walking advertisement. To a slew of well-educated folks who have, to some extent, written under the auspices of "we're doing this because we can" the idea that someone might be pulling a fast one over them hasn't exactly gone down well.

I am less interested in the controversy itself. Humans are, by nature, passionate about those topics they care about, and morals play a big part in how people behave. So, that part comes as no surprise. What boggles my mind was that these adults, people who have seen how the world operates (at least in Academia) would be surprised as Seed's actions. Outraged and angry, perhaps, but surprised...

Today's world is one filled with advertising that takes many forms, shapes, and sizes. Most people can recognize the obvious varieties, like billboards and blinking ads on most web pages, because we're trained (unintentionally, perhaps) to know that some links are ads and won't get us the results we desire. Other types are less obvious--bloggers paid to write positive content about products, often without disclosure of their motivations, or ads sees within popular games, perhaps even quizzes that somehow shed positive light on whatever product is being advertised. Whole websites may even be dedicated to this task, and like somewhat more familiar infomercials, they may be nothing but one giant ad.

Obviously, I doubt that this was the goal of the Seed Media Group when dealing with PepsiCo, but the concept is not a new one by any means of the imagination. Ads bring profit, through views which eventually trickle down to clicks, and toward real purchases. So, surprise at this one blog in a sea of millions, all aimed at one goal, and especially on a site like scienceblogs, which would have likely focused discussion anyway, is unwarranted.

Anger, on the other hand, that I don't know about. Spend enough time in any forum and you'll find someone who passionately likes some topic and defends it at all costs. Defending one's right to be be a journalist, to write what amounts to media, and to expect fair dealings with ones hosts...are perhaps valid. There's certainly a grain of truth to the concept.