The Blog of Bert Jones

This morning I was awake a little after 6 a.m. (It didn’t help that I slept until 5 p.m. the day before and then went back to bed around midnight.)

But I didn’t want to get outta bed. The rest of the house wasn’t awake (Amy and the girls were out at Girl Scout Camp). So I would be bored with no activity going on in the house.

So, I decided to watch a movie in bed, but I wasn’t sure what. I had fallen asleep to Jeff Dunham’s “Arguing with Myself” movie, so I fired that up and fin­ished what I missed. But, that only killed about 20 min­utes. So I decided to watch a Doc­u­men­tary that I hadn’t gotten around to watch: “Helvetica”.

Yes, you heard me…Helvetica. A doc­u­men­tary about a Typo­graphic legend.

I was very glad I watched it.

I was so glad, that I even posted on Face­book, com­ments about it:

You know your a Design geek when your actu­ally watching a doc­u­men­tary about a font at 7am.

Being a “fontie”, I guess I’m not sur­prised that I am just engrossed in this movie called “Helvetica”

Ha! They pegged me! One guy just said: “my girl­friend remem­bers a place by what it’s near, I remember a place by the font it used or how it has bad letter spacing” (I do that to Amy all the time: “ewww their using comic sans”)

Ha! The designer who made one of the font I use for my free­lance busi­ness was in the movie…I like him! I picked a good type­face!! (Note: it was the designer of the font ITC Officina, one of my favorites)

Who knew there were such argu­ments for and against Helvetica…

When I first became a designer, I didn’t care for Hel­vetica. At that time (around the late 90’s), I was used to Apple having the default system font “Hel­vetica” and Microsoft having its badly done knock-off “Arial”. (You see their dif­fer­ences here)

As I grew as a designer a little, I learned that many designers over the years have used Hel­vetica for so many things that it was per­va­sive in our society. So why would I want to use it in my own cre­ative flair? It also wasn’t “my” type of font. Most sans serif fonts weren’t my cup of tea.

(Even now, I see both sides of the argu­ment for and against Hel­vetica. Its been used so much that society is so used to it, but it is such a per­fectly designed font, that its hard to create some­thing better.)

But it wasn’t until I worked at Alpha­Graphics with my distant-brother-in-law Aaron (a great designer) and later my best-friend Kellie (another great designer, writer, illus­trator and pho­tog­ra­pher!) that I really started to appre­ciate the sim­plicity and read­ability of Hel­vetica and other Sans Serif fonts.

You see, we had so much work coming through that print shop, from so many dif­ferent “cough” designers, (a.k.a., sec­re­taries) that I was exposed to so many “bad” dime-a-dozen fonts out there. When a design piece that came in that was designed by a “real” designer, or a client let Aaron or Kellie “go to town” for a print job, that was when I got to expe­ri­ence real Typog­raphy. And it was beautiful.

I trea­sure the time I was able to spend with Aaron and Kellie learning the craft. I like to think of it as my own appren­tice­ship. That time cemented my deci­sion to become a designer.

Years later here I am in school doing just that. Cementing myself with a full on degree saying I know what I already know.

But watching this movie not only made me realize what a great font hel­vetica is, but I real­ized some­thing else…I still have a lot to learn.

I see these other designers, and their talk of mod­ernism and futurism, and even thought I just studied those last year. I couldn’t tell you a damn thing about them and can recall only smidges of how they affected the art world.

I look at some of these designers (and other designers/photographers I know; like Aaron, Kellie, Jim, Saundra, Brett and so many others) and I think to myself, “Will I ever be that good?” “Where do I start to gain skills like that?” “How would I ever come up with such a fan­tastic design like that!?”

For the ease of online classes (I wouldn’t be able to really go to col­lege without doing them 100% online), I start to wonder if I am really ben­e­fiting from them. Classes are only 5.5 weeks long, instead of an entire semester. Am I really learning what I need to know in that short time?

I’m thankful that I decided to not sell back my school books, so that I can go back and re-read what I missed, but is that enough? Should I be doing more, and if so, where do I start? I can think of Net­working with more designers, reading more, exposing myself to more cul­ture (I don’t get nearly as much as I should)…but what else?

I look back and I look for­ward and I still have a lot to learn, and a long, long way to go. But I am ready to learn, and I look for­ward to it.

Today was my wife’s and I 11^th anniver­sary. We had decided we were going to just go out to eat.

Ini­tially, we were going to go to the Flame restau­rant in Roseville, but decided it may be too busy and decided to try the Chi­anti Grill in Roseville instead. It’s a bit more upscale.

We made reser­va­tions for 7:15 and arrived there at 6:58 p.m. They had us at a table before 7:15. We ordered some drinks and told our waiter to take his time, as we were dining without our four chil­dren and were in no hurry. We wanted to enjoy our dinner.

The drinks were ter­rible. Amy ordered the Pome­granate Mar­tini and she said it was way to strong. After just one sip, she could feel a “fire­ball” in her stomach, and her cheeks were already flushed. I ordered a Pome­granate Lemonade Cock­tail, and it had a funny taste (didn’t taste like lemonade at all) and after awhile, I realize the funny taste was very sim­ilar to that taste you get when you spray bug spray on and forget and lick your “bug sprayed” finger. I couldn’t finish it. He removed the charge from the receipt for my drink, but Amy opted to try hers mixed with a sprite. She said it still was nasty.

We ordered a starter of their Spinach, Arti­choke and Parmesan Ramekin (Spinach and Arti­choke dip). That was deli­cious. Not very cheesy, but very creamy (Amy said it was more on the spinach side).

Amy ordered the Fet­tuc­cine Alfredo with Chicken & Fresh Veg­eta­bles and I ordered the Spinach Ravioli, but I couldn’t decide on the choice of sauce (it came with an option between two). The server sug­gested I try both, and that they would just split it down the middle. So I did. I had pesto-gorgonzola cream sauce on one side and Mari­nara della Nonna on the other.

Amy loved her dish. She said it was very good. And I liked both my sauces, although the pesto-gorgonzola cream sauce was more of a favorite. the ravi­olis were large, I had to cut them in half to eat them and I got about 6–7 on the plate. They also came with the house salad, and bread. Their ranch dressing was very creamy and very good. The bread was deli­cious! We kept dunking it in the ranch dressing or our sauces.

We then fin­ished off with dessert. We were not pre­pared. They brought a tray for us to choose and the tray had this ENORMOUS slice of choco­late layer cake, HUGE lay­ered Carrot Cake, Huge Lay­ered Lemon Tart cake, good sized tiramisu, crème brûlée, Cheese cake or a small choco­late lava cake with ice cream. We set­tled on the Lemon Tart and Amy only wanted one bite, as she was full. But she couldn’t help her­self, it was so good, she ate half of it with me. During our dessert, she was watching the win­dows and com­mented that there was a lot of light­ning and a lot of cops dri­ving by.

About this time, the wind out­side started to pick up and you couldn’t even really see the patio, the wind was making the rain look like snow flur­ries. My dad was tex­ting, and calling, Charmin was calling and tex­ting, Kelly was calling and Katie was tex­ting.  Amy was trying to field all of these on her phone while I checked the weather on my phone.  Amy went to use the restroom and see if she could get a better signal and qui­eter space while I waited for the check.

She came back (I was waiting to get my credit card back..I had the signed check, just needed my card) and she had these big eyes. She had gotten a phone call from her mom telling her about the storm and the lights had went out for a couple sec­onds in the bathroom.

People ask me why I am always “hooked in” and have my phone out and check it all the time, and this is why. All night I felt it going off. But I ignored it, because we were on our anniver­sary date and I wanted her to have my full atten­tion (I wasn’t wor­ried about the kids, cause they would have called her phone…which they did). But if I would have checked my phone I would have gotten the Weather.com App alerting me to “SEEK SHELTER NOW” (for Circle Pines AND Roseville).

We turned and looked behind us where this gigantic wall of WINDOWS was and could just see the wind and the water and how dark and nasty it was. I pulled out my phone, saw the alerts. So we just sat at the table. We were offi­cially stuck. We couldn’t go home cause someone told us there was a funnel cloud out there and that it was really bad and to stay were we are. We couldn’t leave the restau­rant and go any­where else, cause the rain was coming down so hard and it was really bad.

So we sat there looking at my phone. Our server said that they had the weather on at the bar. So we moved over there to watch the news. That when we saw that the funnel cloud was at Snelling and Laurpentur.…which was two stop lights away from where we were…nice.  I talked with some other people who were stuck at the bar watching the weather while Amy kept her eyes glued to the TV screen and peri­od­i­cally nudged me when the weath­erman talked about Roseville and/or Circle Pines.

After almost an hour of sit­ting at the bar, Amy texted my dad to see how it was looking by home.  He said it was pretty much done and just raining now.

When it started to look bear­able and not windy out­side, we ran to the car. Just before we got to the car (a few steps) it just dumped on us. We got inside and the radio was telling us that a Flash Flood warning was for the Roseville Area until 3 am. Amy turned to me and said, “I am not staying here until 3 in the morning”.

SO, that was our very nice dinner and exciting evening.

The wife was lis­tening to some older toons that she had recently heard, and so today, we sat and down­loaded some older stuff from the 90’s, when we were in school. So below is the playlist that we could come up with, but we know we are missing a bunch…so, we need your help…for those that grew up in the 90’s, what are we missing that was way over played back in the day? Leave your thoughts in the com­ment sec­tion below. Thank you in advance!

The Iconic Lynda Carter

So, if you know me, you know I love my Wonder Woman!

I am not sure if my infat­u­a­tion started with the Comic or the TV Show, but either way it started when I was very young.

I still remember that I would gather every Sat­urday at noon to watch Channel 9 for the TV Show.

I could care­less about Batman, didn’t really watch any Superman. But any­thing with Wonder Woman in it, I watched religiously!

I even remember my mom taking me to a ComicCon in the Twin Cities (even though I vaguely remember it, nor did I know what it was.) All I remember was stop­ping to view any­thing Wonder Woman. I think I walked away with two but­tons and a T-Shirt.

So for me, Wonder Woman has been iconic in my life. I have col­lec­tables, all the TV Shows, and more. I even have my kids hooked on the WW as well.

But with all things great, people feel the need to change it. DC is revamping her look:

http://dcu.blog.dccomics.com/2010/06/30/j-michael-straczynski-on-wonder-woman%E2%80%99s-new-costume/

And I feel it’s crap. As a designer, I under­stand the impor­tance of change and fresh­ening up a look over time. You need to so that you can gain read­er­ship that you lose over the years. But this.…

An “Urban” Wonder Woman is not who she is. You can’t just re-write his­tory with a simple “time­line” switch, just so that you can give her a new outfit and a new story. She is an amazon princess. At her core, that is who she is, not to men­tion a one-time god­dess. You can’t just wipe that away and make her a street rat. I feel that is belit­tling who she is at her core, and to me, takes away the grace that she has had as a character.

This has been my frus­tra­tion with DC comics lately. I have been an avid sub­scriber for years for the WW line. Lately I have felt like I have been missing gaps in the story line, or that they take a direc­tion, then just switch gears to a new story, without fin­ishing the first one. I have felt so lost.

And it bugs me to no end when they con­tinue the story in other comics, like the JLA. So I sub­scribed to that one…and then she isn’t even in it any­more. GRRR.

Speaking of JLA, how are they going to adress that now? Is she going to be in the JLA? This time­line thing would affect most of their story arcs, not just hers. What about the Teen Titans, Troia is her “sister” and one-time Wonder Girl in the Teen Titans, and what about the cur­rent Wonder Girl…how did Wonder Woman befriend her and get her to be WG and into the Teen Titans?

I don’t like it. But I espe­cially don’t like the costume…

They tried doing this before and it didn’t last either. Matter of fact, this new look, looks vageuly familiar to what they tried before. Look at these photos:

A New Wonder Woman.

A New Look/New Story

A New Costume

Now, if you look at the first photo, I want you to notice a few things: The min­i­mize belt, the jacket with stars on it. The Black tights, the gloves, the straps over the shoul­ders and the boots.

Now if you look at the last photo (or the one below, last ver­sion on the right), what do you see? Notice the min­imal belt, the jacket with the stars on it, the black tights, (gloves, even though not shown here, were in the comic), the straps you can’t see, but the exact same type of straps were shown in the comic and the boots…plain black.

If it didn’t work then, it ain’t going to work now. My only hope in all this is where the writer says this:

d) find some way to straighten out the time­line and rec­on­cile what was to what is.

That at least gives them a way to revert back, if the fan base screams loud enough. Which I hope we do.

One of my favorite art­works of Wonder Woman hangs in my office, its a drawing that DC did when William Moultan Marsden, cre­ator of Wonder Woman, passed away. It shows all the vari­a­tions of Wonder Woman over the years, and the var­ious Wonder Girls and Troia (Donna Troy…not to be con­fused with Deanna Troi from Star Trek).

So, I leave you with a gallery of some of my Favorite shots of Wonder Woman (and a recap of the images above)…who knows what comes next.

Dear Road Con­struc­tion Workers,

First, I would like to thank you for hard work on the 35W cor­ridor. Once this is com­plete, I know that I will have a very nice looking freeway, with no holes (well, at least until after next winter.)

But, I am befud­dled by some­thing, that I have seen recently; not only on 35W, but on other freeways.

May I ask why you have me merge to once side of the road, just to directo me to the other side?

For instance, just yes­terday I was dri­ving down 35W. This par­tic­ular part had three lans of traffic. I came across a sign, and cones that had me merge to the right lane because “The Left 2 Lanes are Closed.”

But once I go near where the actual road con­struc­tion as hap­pening, you had me move all the way over to the left most lane, becuase actu­ally “The Right 2 Lanes are Closed.”

Why wouldn’t you have just had me stay in my left lane and inform us that “The Right 2 Lanes are Closed.” Instead of having us merge back and forth?

Was this your sneaky way of making us Min­nesotans prac­tice merging and using our blinkers? If that is the case, than I am not so befud­dled and applaud your sneak­i­ness at addressing one of my other pet peeves.

Sin­cerely,

The Blue MiniVan

Tonight at work we got to go on a field trip!

We’re moving to the next building over, next month, and we finally got to go over and see where we will be sit­ting and stuff.

I asked my man­ager if she thought it felt like she was the teacher of a bunch of Kinder­gard­ners. We were exploring, joking and just having a fun time.

We’re the only ones that will be there on 3^rd shift in the whole building, so some parts were dark. So it was fun trying to not get lost in the dark areas (I used my iPhone as a flashlight).

It was so much fun to just get out and not do “work” for a little bit.

I must admit that I work with a great group of people that get along well with each other.

The iPhone 4

Amy has needed a new phone for a few months. She has had my first iPhone (the iPhone 3G) since I upgraded to the 3Gs last year. So her phone is two years old.

Since the begin­ning of the year (maybe ear­lier) its has been giving her prob­lems. The touch Screen doesn’t always acti­vate for her, she’ll miss a call cause it never rings, or vibrates; and a host of other issues.

So we were going to upgrade her, but we knew a new one was spec­u­lated for this year, so I told her to wait. So she has been waiting.

So when the release date was announced, we decided that we would go pick one up. There was no line for the 3Gs last year when we strolled in around 10am, so I didn’t think it would be a big deal. Boy was I wrong. (If you follow along with the map, I am num­bering spots I talk about)

Rosedale Mall (Click to embiggen!)

Amy drove me to work, so she could pick me up and we could go to Rosedale to pick up a phone (I work near Rosedale, and I don’t think she quite trusted me to make sure to upgrade her phone and not mine.…)

We arrived at 6:40 am, and there was already a line out­side of the mall entrance near The Apple Store. But it didn’t seem bad and I wasn’t sure how it looked inside. So we got in line (1).

They start herding us into the mall and escorting us where to go. They broke us into two lines. Reserved and Non-Reserved. I tried reserving one for a week, with no luck. (I heard from some people who reserved online, got a con­fir­ma­tion screen, but no email…)

They put reserved on one side of the hall in the entrance and use on the oth­er­side (2). I leaned over and told Amy it felt like we were the uncool kids sit­ting across from the cool kids.

They then took us around the corner and parked us in the actual non-reserved line. (3). We were near the end, and not too many people came after us (about 40?) . People came and went all day behind us, but we were near the end. They offered water, bagels, and coffee throughout the morning.

Looking toward the Reserved Line from spot (3)

Mean­while the reserved line got to go in the shorter line (the blue line) which started near The Apple Store, moved towards Macy’s then looped back toward The Apple Store. This line moved fairly steady all day.

We slowly shuf­fled around, some­what steadily and got to (4) at about 9:15, when Amy had to leave for her appoint­ment. From this spot, I spotted a high school mate, Liz, taking photos of the line from the upper level. We chatted on and off through Face­book all day.

Some guy tried to cut in line behind me at this spot, by striking up a con­ver­sa­tion and asking me which line was which. I kind of rudely told him where every­thing was and he went on his way.

At around (5) Amy checked in to see if I had moved past “Tren. D. Home” store (which we joked I would still be at when she was done with her appoint­ment). I was…This was bout 11:30. The See’s Choco­late kiosk opened and the lady came around with free sam­ples, which was nice.

Around (6) is when the line stopped. Spec­u­la­tion was that AT&Ts acti­va­tion servers were slowing down as more Time Zone’s came online and more stores opened. So for about an hour or so, nothing happened.They also informed us that the 16GB were all gone, and only 32GB were left. Amy also called and let me know she wasn’t coming back. (She had plans to take the kids to her Uncle’s Cabin for the day and everyone was waiting for her). But she arranged for my dad to pick me up when I was done.

By this time my feet were killing me (I wore the wrong shoes) and my back was so sore. As we neared pil­lars, the 3-seater benches were hot com­modi­ties, people would spin them around the pillar to be closer to their spot in line. I tried to sit when I could. With my weight, I can’t just sit on the floor, I need some­thing lean against. So I would lean against a pillar when I could. Three times I almost pulled a muscle in my foot. Like when you over extend your jaw when you yawn, and you pull a muscle…that same feeling.

Then the line slowely picked up. The Apple Store Guy’s kept coming out and making updates, talking with us and trying to keep everyone in good spirits.

By (7), we were going on 6 1/2 hours! We were all friendly with each other in line, would hold each others spot for bath­room breaks, and a few people would even make drink runs “on them”. We joked about the line and the people, chatted about our lives. We even had “mile markers” in the Reserved Line so we could keep tabs on their progress. There was a guy dressed all in black with Red Shoes, so we joked we were on “Red Shoe Watch” and would watch his progress in line. At this point too, The Apple Store guys came around with carts full of Green Mill Pizza and pop. What a gesture!

Also, we found an Apple Guy that we nick­named “Buz­zkill” as he was the real­istic downer of the group. He came in and told our sec­tion that “some­where in here, is where we will prob­ably run out”. But we were all committed.

So they started taking our infor­ma­tion and put us on a Pri­ority list, so that when they get another order, we get first dibs. (He was even using an cool app on an iPod Touch built just for this!).

Fourth from the Door.

So we waited for another two hours, and by the time I got be the fourth from the door (8), they came out told us that they were sold out.

We were all stunned. All we had known for the past 8 hours was standing in line. I had just told the guys that I felt like we were all family! The Gay guy behind me agreed and asked whose house he was going to for Christmas. So we just stood their. I thought the little Asian Lady, who was three in front of me, and the VERY NEXT person in line to get a phone, was gonna pass out! We were all so shocked and crest fallen, that we didn’t move. We were all waiting for them to tell us their were kid­ding, or for someone to make the first move. The Gay guy went bal­listic, he was so mad.

So, I stum­bled away with my really sore back, my sore legs and feet and found the nearest empty bench, and sat, called my dad and waited…I was tempted to do some therapy shop­ping, but my feet hurt too much to move.

But, in the end, I was glad I did it. I have never waited in line before like that. Not for tickets, not for any­thing. So I was glad for the experience.

And, Amy treating me extra spe­cial today for all my hard work, is very nice too!

I have cre­ated a new tutorial!

This tuto­rial talks about using His­tor­grams (and sat­u­ra­tion) in Memory Man­ager and Sto­ry­Book Cre­ator Plus to adjust your photos expo­sure and color. Enjoy!

His­togram Fea­ture in MM3

Lately I have been watching a little TV, laying in bed, before sleeping for the day.

This morning, after Amy left to take Courtney to school, I hear Riley come thumpin through the house and he opens my bed­room door, with that look on his face of “where’s my mom!”.

I told him before he could even say any­thing, “Mommy went to take Bear to school, she’lll be right back”.

I fig­ured he would then shut the door and go to grandma’s room, like usual, but what I was watching on the TV must have caught his eye (Smal­l­ville) and he climbed up into my bed and shim­mied to the tiny space in front of me on the edge of the bed (TV is on my side).

I scooted back a little to make more room for him and he snug­gled in. I put my arm around him, (I think I felt him inter­nally sigh), and we watched the show until Amy came home and in the room.

She asked him (sounding all sur­prised), “My Riley is awake, what are you doin? Are you watching TV with daddy? What are you watching?” and he paused and I whis­pered “smal­l­ville” and he blurts out, “yeah! Smallville”.

And he stayed there until Amy men­tioned Tod­dler Tuesday, and he was off like the flash.

The snuggle time was great while it lasted. Its not often he snug­gles in with me, like he used to when he was a baby*. So I take it when I can.

I love all my snugglers.

*Foot­note: When he was a baby, Amy would sneak him into the crook of my arm, while I was asleep and he would take his naps with me during the day.

My wife and our best friend Katie are par­tic­i­pating in a walk for the Courage Center.

Details below:

I’m par­tic­i­pating in the 2010 No Name-Deli Express 5K Your Way!

Hi!

In Honor of Kassie Harms I have cre­ated “Team Kassie” to par­tic­i­pate in the 5K fundraiser for the Courage Center. The Courage Center has always been an impor­tant charity to me. They have been a great resource for mem­bers of my family my whole life and I am so happy to have this chance to par­tic­i­pate to help raise funds for them. Kassie is cur­rently a res­i­dent of Courage Center in Golden Valley. What she has over come with the help of her ther­a­pists is amazing! You can read her story here: http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/kassieharms

Please help me by spon­soring my team in this event! Any little amount will help! If you would like to join the team and walk with us that day please visit our team’s web­site http://5KYourWay.kintera.org/teamkassie

Thank You!
Katie Montour

Keep fighting Kassie, Never Give Up!! Please Pray for Kassie!!

Follow This Link to visit my per­sonal web page and help me in my efforts to sup­port Courage Center

******************************************************************************
Some email sys­tems do not sup­port the use of links and there­fore this link may not appear to work. If so, copy and paste the fol­lowing into your browser:
http://5KYourWay.kintera.org/katiemontour?faf=1&e=3389429622
******************************************************************************