Monthly Archives: August 2011

> The patent system is so broken that any bozo with money to spend can buy a portfolio of patents, do nothing with them, then sue a company that actually is creating value.

[Bill Snyder](http://www.infoworld.com/d/the-industry-standard/tech-jobs-vaporized-patent-war-goes-nuclear-170137)

Save the Galaxy: Kill Humans

I really want to be asked to be a part of one of these think tank speculative fiction / future-casting affairs where someone asks you a question like: *Would contact with extraterrestrials benefit or harm humanity?* Discuss. [Discovery has more on the results of one such exercise held at Penn State][1].

[1]: http://news.discovery.com/space/save-the-galaxy-destroy-humanity-110818.html

Designing a Book

I like knowing the outcome of things in which I am deeply involved. And so I am trying my hand at designing the basic layout for _Genius Loci_. What amazes me is how much I have forgotten: I paid off my graduate school debt working with Pagemaker, which is InDesign’s antecedent — Adobe having bought the application from Aldus, or acquired Aldus (like they would later acquire Macromedia).

Here are some useful links:

* [A Site about Nothing](http://www.asiteaboutnothing.net/c_indesign.html) has a nice page which gives the basics of getting type to sit on a baseline and capturing it with paragraph styles.