Changes to the Journal and More AI

by

In today’s Journal

* Quotes of the Day
* Changes to the Journal
* More AI Stuff
* Of Interest

Quotes of the Day

“All fungi are edible. Some fungi are only edible once.” Terry Pratchett

“There are plenty of valuable (that is, profitable) use cases for this tech [AI] but faking human creativity ain’t it.” Felix Torres

Changes to the Journal

Owing in part to a pair of brief discussions recently with a couple of other folks, I’ve changed the appearance of the Journal.

One discussion had to do with serif vs. sans serif fonts. In the latter, it’s all but impossible to distinguish between an uppercase I and a lowercase l.

For anyone who doesn’t know, the idea behind serif fonts is that the serifs—the little tics at the bottoms and tops of the risers )on letters that have risers)—direct the reader’s eye from one letter to the next and so on, enhancing the flow of the reading experience.

The other discussion was more generally about readability. The two discussions combined to start me thinking about fonts, font styles, font sizes, weights, etc.

The most notable change to the Journal is the body font itself. I was using Open Sans but I wanted to change to a serif font. Initially I considered one system font and probably 25 Google fonts.

I dropped some fonts from consideration immediately, usually owing either to the appearance of the lower-case e (in some fonts like Times New Roman it can easily be confused with a lower-case c), whether the comma was easily differentiated from the period, the size of the serifs, and so on.

In the end, the finalists in alphabetical order were Droid Serif, Noto Serif, Old Standard TT, Sanchez, and Source Serif Pro. Going back and forth from one to another and comparing the various attributes I mentioned above, soon the list narrowed to include only Noto Serif and Droid Serif, which to me looked identical, and Source Serif Pro, which to me just looked a bit “cleaner.”

So Source Serif Pro it is, at least for now. For those who want to know, when your browser is set to 100%, the body font size on the Journal is 20, the font weight is 500, the line height is 1.4, and the paragraph margin is .8 em.

For headings, I’m also using Source Serif Pro with a font weight of 600 and then different sizes for H1 through H3: 30, 26, and 22. If I could figure out how to upload the font Kymer-Awon SC to my website, I would probably use it for the headers. It’s the graceful font that forms the letters in the current header of the site.

How about you? Do you give thought to the font or fonts you use on your website(s)? If you don’t, I suggest you start. After all, it is far more important to you that the reader can read and understand your blog posts than it is to the reader.

More AI Stuff

Although I would be perfectly fine if all content-generating AI programs and algorithms suddenly fell out of existence, I am aware some folks actually enjoy using AI and/or considering its possible uses.

Either way, I did find this article interesting and thought you might too: See “Chat GPT detector by ZeroGPT: detect OpenAI text” at https://www.thepassivevoice.com/chat-gpt-detector-by-zerogpt-detect-openai-text/. The Passive Guy has included a link at the end of the article so you may run and play as you will.

Talk with you again soon.

Of Interest

See “Shock collars could keep elephants out of conflict with humans” at https://www.newscientist.com/article/2361283-shock-collars-could-keep-elephants-out-of-conflict-with-humans/. Anyone else see how very deeply wrong this is?

See “The new science of happiness: Simple, research-backed ways to boost your well-being” at https://www.sciencefocus.com/news/new-science-of-happiness/. Soma. I read somewhere that Soma works too.

See “What’s In A Name?” at https://killzoneblog.com/2023/02/whats-in-a-name-2.html. A bit of silly fluff.

The Numbers

The Journal…………………………………… 630 words

Writing of Wes Crowley: Deputy US Marshal 2 (WCG9SF4)

Day 1…… 3231 words. Total words to date…… 3231
Day 2…… 2990 words. Total words to date…… 6221
Day 3…… 1805 words. Total words to date…… 8026
Day 4…… 2025 words. Total words to date…… 10051

Total fiction words for February……… 5951
Total fiction words for 2023………… 52824
Total nonfiction words for February… 20680
Total nonfiction words for the year…… 41030
Total words for the year (fiction and this blog)…… 93854

Calendar Year 2023 Novels to Date…………………… 1
Calendar Year 2023 Novellas to Date……………… 0
Calendar Year 2023 Short Stories to Date… 0
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………………………………… 72
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)………………………………… 8
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)………………… 217
Short story collections……………………………………………… 31

Disclaimer: Because It Makes Sense, I preach trusting your characters to tell the story that they, not you, are living. Duh. See My Best Advice for Fiction Writers at https://hestanbrough.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/My-Best-Advice-for-Fiction-Writers.pdf.

3 thoughts on “Changes to the Journal and More AI”

  1. I don’t have a website yet, but yes, I consider how to use fonts on my computer. I use scrivener and I set Crimson text to deafult font. I usually export my texts with EB Garamond. I like those fonts. While I had Adobe I used Minion Pro, too. Now I don’t.
    As for AI it could be good for fun, but I couldn’t even consider that I would use it for monetary purpose or to have my novels written by it. Just would took away the fun part.
    Not to mention the whole internet thing takes away too much time from my writings. The scientists even say with too much internet people got problems with focus. I notice it with myself, at the very least.
    Greetings

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