Blogger Updates - Fonts, Tina Delgado Is Alive Audio, and Snail Mail

Observant regular readers might have noticed I'm using a new font for the posts.  Blogspot now offers a lot more fonts for bloggers to play with.  I tend to like a more informal font and people have complained that the old font was too small.  Bloggers, you can find them on your dashboard at Design → Template Designer → Advanced.

I'll probably experiment with this to see if there's a better permanent font.  One of the problems is that you seem to have to pick a font for all posts.  I understand that gives the blog a level of consistency, but more flexibility would be nice.  I could, for instance, leave the old posts in the old font and then use the new font into the future. You can't go back to the old posts to compare because they've all been changed.  Or I could use a unique font occasionally if it were appropriate for a particular post.    It's like buying a new car and the history of all your old cars has been changed too. Same with the colors.  It seems to be all or nothing.  (Though you can set different fonts and colors for different parts of the blog as you can see in the second column, left in image above - page text, background, links, etc.)

[UPDATE 4pm - If this font stuff interests you, be sure to read Dean's comment below before you start playing around.]
[UPDATE Feb. 4 pm - You're right Dean, CGinWI, Anon-lurker, and Kathy.  It was starting to get to me as well and I've change it (cherry cream soda) back to Georgia, but I made it 13 instead of 12 because 12 seemed too small.   I learned from all the font lessons you sent me that I should go with a more common one (that's available on more computers) and let the words, not the font, do the talking.  I learned a lot and I would also recommend Anon-lurker's referenced site to the list too, which also gets into accessibility a bit, meaning for those who have more trouble seeing the words than most people do.   And it had this to say about Georgia:

Georgia

Georgia is like the other web fonts discussed so far in that it is wider than similar fonts meant for print design. Unlike the other web fonts, though, Georgia is a serif font, more along the lines of Times New Roman.

Georgia is somewhat easier on the eyes than Times New Roman, although high resolution screens with font smoothing technology also display Times New Roman quite well. One advantage of using Georgia is that it is not the default text of the browser. It is easier for users to see that the designer has applied some style to the font when fonts other than the default font are specified. Georgia ends up looking slightly more artistic than Times New Roman, though CSSIt's time we take back Times New Roman on the Web - external link on mezzoblue.com.) styling can certainly breathe new life into Times New Roman too. (See, for example the article It's time we take back Times New Roman on the Web - external link on mezzoblue.com.)]

Tina Delgado Update

When I monitor sitemeter to see how people get here and where they go, I'm reminded of old posts.  Sometimes I have to look it up to remember what it's even about.  And sometimes I realize I need to do an update.  Should I make a new post too to alert people of the update?  Usually, probably not. 


For instance, I continue to get people googling, "Tina Delgado is Alive, Alive."  When I did a post on the LA radio soundscape of the past (Oct. 2009), I couldn't find an audio.  But I decided to check again today and found a 90 sec YouTube piece that will allow people to hear that, back then ubiquitous, proclamation.  Here's a link to the updated Tina Delgado post.  It's at the end of the video/audio that you get the real deal.

Snail Mail

Also, I did a post on the impending death of the post office recently.  Today on Talk of the Nation they had a discussion of the art of snail mail.  So I'm adding a link to that post.