Author Archives: Hank

About Hank

I am H.M. Talbot, chief driveller, intrepid journalist and poet laureate of fantasticdrivel.com. You can call me Hank. I am a pseudonym.

give them something easy to hide

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I received this ad in an email the other day. I thought it was an odd way to pitch a product.

MacBook Air - easy to hide

an interesting selling point… ( . Y . )

I can understand “thin and light” being selling points. But “easy to hide”?

“Buy your kid a laptop he can easily hide!” I’m not in marketing, but I can’t see how that would appeal to many parents.

MacBook Air - easy to hide

just what they’ve been looking for… ( . Y . )

I was about an hour into this post when it finally occurred to me that maybe they were talking about hiding a gift until Christmas because you wanted it to be a surprise.

OK, now I get it. Most people, when they saw this ad, must think “What a relief! Every time I buy my kid a $1500 computer she finds it before Christmas!”

But it took me a long time to figure that out. I guess that’s why I’m not in marketing.

the hunt for pink october

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The Hunt for Pink October

Join the hunt.
Buy something pink.

disclaimer

If you’ve read fantasticdrivel at all (or even just perused the tag cloud), you’re probably well aware of my fondness for breasts. I think they’re great. Moreover, I really like women. Especially strong-willed, capable, intelligent women—like Lady Liberte, the unofficial mascot of fantasticdrivel.com. Therefore, I have no problem with National Breast Cancer Awareness Month: a month devoted to saving women and their breasts by raising awareness about breast cancer.

I’ll also add that, as a graphic designer and an advocate for a public awareness cause (Adams Place), I’m beyond impressed by what the Susan G. Komen Foundation et al have been able to accomplish in terms of branding (i.e. the pink ribbon).

I do feel, however, that sometimes companies go a little too far in trying to get a piece of the Pink October pie. I’m not talking about pinkwashing (yes, it’s a word; read more about it on wikipedia); I’ll give these folks the benefit of the doubt and assume that they are dedicated to the cause and not their own profit. Just because it’s for a good cause, that doesn’t make it a good idea. I think you’ll see what I mean by the time we get to pink pumpkins (below).

October is the pinkest month of the year, and it seems to be pinker each time it rolls around.

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how to irritate hank, by typecase

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this is not ok with me

Hopefully, dear reader, you no longer see this “webfonts by typecase” link in the lower right corner of your browser window. If you DO see it, I apologize and assure you the situation is temporary. If you don’t see it, there are two possible reasons: (1) shamed and humbled by my scathing complaint, typecase updated their addon and removed the annoying link; or (2) fueled by righteous fury and indignation, I uninstalled the typecase plugin. The latter reason is more likely, but I’ll give upthemes a chance to respond to my criticism.

I’m not actually sure anyone will read it, since I couldn’t post it in a forum. So I decided to post it here as well. I don’t know that anyone reads this blog either, so it still might go unread. But I’ll feel better knowing someone might accidentally stumble across it.

Here’s the text of the comment I sent to the upthemes people:

subject/question:

corner link for typecase v. 0.3.8

message:

I discovered typecase a few months ago and was very happy with the way it improved my blog.

I updated typecase a few minutes ago (to version 0.3.8) and was very UNHAPPY with the persistent link it put in the lower-right corner of my blog.

This bothers me for two reasons:

1) It’s distracting and intrusive. I’d be happy to include a credit in my footer, but a persistent floating link is not cool. It feels like an ad, except that it doesn’t go away…so it feels like adWARE.

2) It’s disingenuous. Even if I was ok with having a persistent floating link in the corner of my blog (which I’m not), I would rather it was a link to the Google web font project. That’s where the web fonts come from. Typecase makes it possible to easily incorporate them into wordpress, but the fonts aren’t “BY typecase.” The link makes it sound like I’m using fonts designed by typecase–which is not the case. In fact, as nearly as I can tell, ALL of the fonts in the typecase plugin come from Google web fonts.

My first course of action was to look at the plugin settings to see if I could turn off the link. I couldn’t find any such option.

Next I tried clicking on it to see if it would go away. It took me to the upthemes website, where I was instantly bombarded with a window asking me to sign up for an emailing list. At this point, I was pretty annoyed and decided I wanted to post something in the upthemes forums. Figuring I would need to enter this information anyway, I provided my name and email. This was followed by a notification that I had to confirm my email address. Fine. There was a link to proceed to the upthemes site. I clicked it. I was then given an error screen saying my email address was invalid. I had to close the tab to make the notice go away.

I then opened my email and clicked the confirmation link. Finally: I was at the upthemes site, ready to head to the forums. When I get there, I’m given a notice that forums are temporarily disabled.

So here I am, filling out this “sales or other inquiries” form. I’m pretty sure no human being will ever read this. If someone actually does, here’s what I hope you pass on to whoever set all this stuff up:

I liked your plugin, and was seriously considering upgrading to the “pro” version. The price was reasonable ($19), the plugin was easy to use, and it made my blog better. It seemed classy and legitimate.

Then you added an annoying floating link that I couldn’t get rid of, and implied authorship of fonts you didn’t design. You hit me up for my name and email as soon as I clicked the link, and hung my browser tab until I went and confirmed my email address. Only then could I reach your support forums, which are disabled. Instead of classy and legitimate, this stuff all feels classless and shady–like bait-and-switch adware kind of stuff.

I’ll keep using typecase for now, in hopes that you might get rid of the persistent floating link. If you don’t, however, I will definitely uninstall it and rework the formatting of my blog.

-Hank

(I added the link to Google web fonts for the repost here. It’s an extremely cool project. You should check it out.)

We’ll see what transpires.

this is me when I’m angry. typecase has made me angry.

the pandas are ready

Aside

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Finally, all of zw3 is in the updated format. I’ve even included these handy drop-down menus to make it easier to navigate through the zoo world content.

I’ll work on fixing other stuff soon. For now, if you haven’t read the zoo world series, I highly recommend you do.

progress

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So far, I’ve managed to update the zoo world series up through ZW3.02. The rest of Zoo World 3 is still a mess, but I’ll get it fixed soon. More updated content to come.