Tag Archives: lessons

JRK as YSL

Many people are familiar with:

Less people are familiar with:

Lessons learned from this effort:
* The YSL letters are not part of a font. It is a straight up logo.

* Making letters from letter pieces, because there is no font, is hard!

* Imputing letter design from a limited alphabet (e.g., there is no K and no example of what the R’s curve would be as a big letter in the full YSL logo) is harder!

* The layout isn’t the only that matters for this design. The letters matter, which is why my version is much less powerful (the “R” is problematic).

* Making the letters look like they interlock is critical. YSL works nicely because of the “S”. I used letter shadowing–hiding part of the “K” behind the “R”–to force a similar effect. I should have had the bottom of the “J” appear in front of the “R”.

Actually Improve Your Sleeping

I have had trouble sleeping since at least highschool, with good nights of sleep happening rarely and only under certain not-always-reproducible conditions. Both I and friends regularly hunted for and read advice on how to improve your sleep, but nothing helped (not to my surprise, given the superficiality of the media analysis). Within the past few months, though, three easy changes have made excellent nights of sleep the norm.

(1) Falling asleep: To fall asleep easier, black out your room. No lights. Seriously, none. (also, an aspirin before bed time helps)

(2) Staying asleep: Buy a new bed. People and journalists–two different groups, natch–generally do not recommend you buy a new bed, because people don’t like to hear expensive solutions. But if you can’t sleep, you need a new bed. Mine cost a fortune, and I don’t regret it for a second.

(3) Waking up nicely: To ensure you feel good after falling asleep easily and staying asleep, switch out your annoying audible alarm clock and buy an alarm that wakes you up using light. It works. It rocks. It’s a life changer. Note that its effectiveness is significantly hampered if you don’t follow suggestion (1).

Things I Learned This Week

Among the things I learned this week:
* V/A – Ruff Ryders, Volume 1 is an album that has held up surprisingly well. Let’s be careful and not confuse me for a Ruff Ryder fan. (Courtesy: Ruff Ryders)

* Painting a house is even worse than I expected, but I know it will be worth it in the end. (Courtesy: Personal experience)

* Popping one’s collar was the original style for polo shirts. (Courtesy: Valet.)

* “Retirement job” is a common phrase–Google has about 500k results–that people speak without hesitation. Its existence is both surprising and a reflection of the economy and people’s engagement with the economy. (Courtesy: CF)