Dealing with replacing my wife’s totaled car is a full time job.
My wife and son were in a car accident last week and her car was pretty much destroyed. Liz and Ryan were fine, but a tree impaled their car, going through the headlight, engine and stopping between the headrests.
She just got a notification from her iPhone reminding her where she “parked” her car.
So even though I don’t work on the athletics side of things at the University of South Carolina, it’s going to be a fun couple of weeks celebrating Dawn Staley and these amazing Gamecocks.
National champs! Great game, Gamecocks!
📷 Micro.Blog April Photo Challenge #7: Wellbeing. A view from my back deck. Breeze blowing. Birds chirping. A little lizard running along the deck rail. Taking time to relax.
Anyone have recommendations for fountain pen friendly notecards?
📷 Micro.Blog April Photo Challenge #6: Windy. Steady breeze at Ryan’s lacrosse game this afternoon.
New women’s basketball fans who’ve been following Caitlin Clark are about to discover that undefeated, #1 South Carolina has flown under the radar this season because they don’t have one star player, they have nine. Will be a great game on Sunday. Looking forward to it. 🏀
📷 Micro.Blog April Photo Challenge #5: Serene. Calming green tea, after a Gamecock victory. On to the championship.
📷 Micro.Blog April Photo Challenge #4: Foliage. The Horseshoe at the University of South Carolina.
Remember when you had to manually set the RAM limits on old versions of the Mac? Microsoft may be bringing it back for Edge.
📷 Micro.Blog April Photo Challenge #3: Card. Ace of Spades.
Panera closed an old location near us and built a brand new building. We ate at the new location tonight. It’s nice, but is significantly smaller, has kiosks for ordering, a drive thru, pick up area and outdoor seating. It seems like a post-COVID design, with less emphasis on being a community space and more focus on ordering ahead and picking up to-go orders.
📷 Micro.Blog April Photo Challenge #2: Flowers. My wife’s amazing new sunflower tattoo, by Carly at Ophidian Tattoo in Columbia, SC.
📷 Micro.Blog April Photo Challenge #1: Toy. A vintage Micro Machine. Tiny, but with tons of detail.
Is it just me or are people and companies extra April Foolsy this year? Sigh
I just added another retro tech shirt on Cotton Bureau: 1.2 MB: The 5.25 in floppy disk.
Inherent. Indestructible. Permanent.
Almost 100 years ago, in the middle of the Industrial Revolution, typographer Eric Gill 1 wrote “An Essay on Typography” and addressed the tension between art and industrialization:
“But tho’ industrialism has now won an almost complete victory, the handicrafts are not killed, & they cannot be quite killed because they meet an inherent, indestructible, permanent need in human nature.”
I’ve been thinking about this as the internet fills with AI-generated garbage and popular social media sites are monetized by hate.
Inherent. Indestructible. Permanent.
While Eric Gill never imagined the internet, I think his statement applies just as much to our modern world as it did in the Industrial Revolution. Much of the internet might become cheaply-produced, AI-generated, SEO-approved content, but people all over the world who care about creativity and writing will still produce great work and share it.
I’m probably being naive, but I’m still hopeful that the human need for creativity will overwhelm the capitalistic urge to industrialize content.
Bob Wertz is a creative director, type designer, Ph.D. student and researcher living in Columbia, South Carolina.
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Eric Gill was insightful about human nature, but was, himself, an awful human. ↩︎
I’m not sure how I feel about the Canva acquiring Affinity. They were both battling Adobe, but their products are very different.
Was changing the battery in my wife’s Buick Envision and couldn’t figure out how to release a box on top of the battery. Finally watched a YouTube video and figured out where the hidden latch was. Another win for YouTube how-to. Battery replaced.
The Dunkin’ Donuts near our house is closed for remodeling. While it does look a little dated, the real reason for the remodel is trying to accommodate the massive volume of DoorDash and other delivery services that flood the location with orders. The physical space needs to be renovated to accommodate a cultural shift toward delivery services.
Spending my evening sitting on the back deck with a glass of bourbon, grilling hamburgers and writing. It’s a little bit cool, but I can’t complain. 🥃🍔💻
Our local minor league team, the Columbia Fireflies announced an alternate identity… the Carolina Grits. This is in addition to their La Copa de la Diversión look, the Chicharrones de Columbia. One alternate is fun… two might be overkill. Minor league teams will do anything to sell merch, though.
After all the upsets yesterday, I was surprised to see my ESPN bracket is in good shape. My entire Elite 8 is intact, I’m at 96.1% among the ESPN brackets and first in my office pool. Not too bad for someone that didn’t watch a lot of men’s basketball this season. 🏀
Liz and I walked a couple miles in the park behind our house. Everything is starting to turn green. The birds are out in force. And the pollen. Springtime in South Carolina.
