Archives for the month of: December, 2006
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Happy Holidays!

December 23, 06 //
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To every one of you that I’ve had the plea­sure of being friends with and enjoy­ing the good times of 2006, whether that be at an office party, SXSW or at the super­mar­ket, aisle 5, right in front of the crack­ers and cheese whiz, thank you. You mean a whole lot to me, espe­cially dur­ing this hol­i­day sea­son and I wouldn’t trade you for a pack of Big League chew.

It is my sin­cere hope that you all have a won­der­ful hol­i­day break and remem­ber to cher­ish the time spent with your fam­ily and friends. Here’s to 2007, that it will bring many oppor­tu­ni­ties and mem­o­ries that we will reflect upon for years to come.

Hello again, Mr. Whelchel

December 14, 06 //
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When I decided to recon­nect with my High School World Cul­tures teacher, Mr. Whelchel, there was mild con­tent­ment that what­ever he chose to do, either reply to my mes­sage or not, that after 8 years of devel­op­ing myself (since that time), I know had the oppor­tu­nity to express my grat­i­tude to some­one who left a impres­sion on my youth.

I never expected that he’d be on Myspace — of all places — and while at first it seemed strange to use a ser­vice that was orig­i­nally intended to net­work with friends and express one­self, that didn’t pre­vent from finally mak­ing con­tact after so many years.

My mes­sage was short and sweet, much like his response. Yet, I find that the older I get, the less I have to say, the better.

The fol­low­ing is my mes­sage to my for­mer World Cul­tures teacher, fol­lowed by his response which I believe is short, con­cise, and sweet in its prose:

My Mes­sage

Hey Mr. Whelchel,

It’s been 8 years, or close to it. Not sure if you remem­ber me and hey, that’s okay if you don’t con­sid­er­ing the vast amount of stu­dents you’ve taught over the years, but..

It’s Erik Sagen. I was in your class sev­eral years ago, loved it more than you’ll ever know (and that’s say­ing some­thing) and often reflect on the expe­ri­ence of high school.

My friend Adam and I worked on a class project wherein we com­bined the sound­track of Brave­heart with the graph­ics from a com­puter game (Doom) to tell the story of Napoleon Bona­parte. It was sub­mit­ted on a VHS tape and I believe we received an A, or better.

Let me know if you might remember.

Oth­er­wise, hey, I remem­ber being there and was ecsta­tic to find you on here.

Just wanted to know that you made an enor­mous impres­sion on me then.

Take care,
Erik

Whelchel’s Response

Yeah, I do remem­ber you. First of all, teach­ers are weird crea­tures. Think about it, we go to a place with hor­mone rav­aged teenagers all the while with some crazy idea that we can retard their think­ing into, well, think­ing. With all of this, we do tend to remem­ber most if not all of our students.

Thanks for the kind words, these are the fringe ben­e­fits of the job.

I am glad to see you doing well. I jumped into your page and noticed you are mak­ing a liv­ing off of your imag­i­na­tion. Great for you and I wish you all the luck in the world. The yel­low trans­former was cool.

I offer only one piece of advice; love your kids and enjoy them. They grow up way too fast. I have one in eigth grade already and he is seem­ingly a wastoid teenager (mom and dad aren’t cool anymore).

Have a great day and do what you gotta do, what ever the hell that means. ciao.

The Legacy of Matthew Carter

December 12, 06 //
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Matthew Carter [profile]Matthew Carter, born British but now resid­ing in the Boston area, is the cre­ative force behind many widely used fonts today includ­ing Ver­dana, Tahoma, Geor­gia, New Cen­tury School­book and Hel­vetica, to name a few.

punch cut­ting and even­tu­ally tran­si­tioned into using dig­i­tal meth­ods to cre­ate his fonts, a more expe­dited method than tra­di­tional processes.

In a pre­sen­ta­tion given to mem­bers of the AIGA (New York Chap­ter), Carter reflected on his many expe­ri­ences with devel­op­ing the fonts he’s so famously known for and revealed that many, if not all of his cre­ations, were inspired by actual type­faces from his­tor­i­cal architecture.

Accord­ing to Wikipedia, Matthew Carter “co-founded the Bit­stream type foundry in 1981, which he left in 1991 to form the Carter & Cone type foundry with Cherie Cone.”

Bit­stream, Inc. was a first of its kind, a com­pany formed solely for the pur­pose of the pro­duc­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion of dig­i­tal fonts and their respec­tive licenses. Unlike tra­di­tional type foundries, where the typog­ra­phers would sell wood and metal type­faces, Bit­stream dealed exclu­sively with dig­i­tal fonts.

If not for the hard work and impres­sive efforts of Matthew Carter, design­ers would be lim­ited as far as font selec­tion for print and web.

Whether he knows it or not, Matthew Carter has left behind a legacy that will con­tinue to thrive in future gen­er­a­tions, all because of his desires to pre­serve his­tor­i­cal typefaces.

The Mythology of Heroes

December 6, 06 //
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Heroes [stillframe]If you haven’t seen NBC’s Heroes, I’d sug­gest either Tivo’ing it or watch­ing it every Mon­day (9PM/EST). Next to Lost, it’s been one of the only shows in recent years that I’ve been so involved with — includ­ing hav­ing side con­ver­sa­tions with friends and fam­ily — and that’s due to a few fac­tors that make the show so engrossing.

Apart from the great act­ing, the writ­ing con­tin­ues to amaze me because the story is chock full of inter­est­ing twists, turns and free falls.

There are so many lay­ers and angles the writ­ers have cho­sen to explore and the story itself is rich in char­ac­ter explo­ration and inter­ac­tion. At it’s sur­face it seems like just a show about peo­ple with var­i­ous tal­ents and pow­ers, but if you look fur­ther you begin to unravel the puz­zle and mythol­ogy that is Heroes, which tran­scends the small screen in the form of an online comic and web blog.

Over the course of the first sea­son I’ve made some men­tal notes (mostly spoiler-free) and I’d like to share some of those with you. In turn, I invite you to share your own, as I know we all have our own thoughts and the­o­ries on where the story arch might lead and where it’ll con­tinue to go.

The­o­ries on Heroes

  • Bib­li­cal names used for some of the main char­ac­ters; Gabriel (arch angel), Mica, Eden and Peter.
  • Over­all story arch (so far) has a delib­er­ate sense of urgency and fore­shad­ow­ing: some plot points uncov­ered, ques­tions both answered and unanswered
  • Reminds me a bit of Steven King’s The Stand in that a group of peo­ple, who pre­vi­ously had no con­tact with each other, have come together for a greater purpose
  • The writ­ing is multi-faceted and intrigu­ing, much like Lost, and while it’s inten­tion­ally seri­al­ized it does seem more self-contained than Lost.
  • The char­ac­ters them­selves and their sto­ries are intrigu­ing because of the emo­tional state they share; urgency and for the most part a deep rooted nonac­cep­tance of their tal­ents, almost a resilient self-doubt.
  • Hiro (named appro­pri­ately) comes across as the glue hold­ing every­thing together. He seems to be the favorite for most view­ers and that’s because of his per­son­al­ity and will­ing­ness to work within the lim­i­ta­tions of his power.
  • Mr. Ben­nett (Claire’s father and code­named: HRG for Horned Rim Glasses) seems almost as if his align­ment is neu­tral. He’ll pro­tect those he cares for, but also obeys his supe­ri­ors’ wishes. The writ­ers have men­tioned that he is a but a cog in the big­ger wheel that is his employer and at the moment their true inten­tions and/or motives are still unclear
  • The Hait­ian, while mys­te­ri­ous and obey­ing of HRG’s com­mands, seems like he has his own motives beyond the scope of his employer


Now, what about your the­o­ries? If you have some, please share by com­ment­ing or send­ing me an email at erik(at)kartooner.com.

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