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Typhoon Purple

Oct 21, ’10 1:31 PM

Last night the sky over Garapan filled with dusty purple clouds that washed the streets with a paintbox hue unlike anything I’ve ever seen. It was as if the air itself had grabbed hold of one end of the spectrum and squeezed out this royal shade.

backstage at a sunset

This strange sky is thanks to a very large weather system, Typhoon Juan (A.K.A. Typhoon Megi). It passed us by but rolled right over the Philippines and now it’s grinding toward Southern China. Thankfully here on Saipan we saw only a little eddy thrown off by the main storm. We had dark skies yesterday, some rain, a little thunder and lightning, and these magical purple clouds.

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A Laulau Dive

Oct 17, ’10 11:36 PM

Peter and I took our weekly adventure underwater this Sunday with a delightful trip to Laulau Beach. It gets it’s name from the rough dirt road you have to bounce down to get to it, laolao being the Chamorro word meaning to shake.

The dive was beautiful. Every time I get in the water I’m surprised how warm it is. The water at Laulau is 90° F, and knee-deep for the first 25 feet or so straight out from shore. This shelf drops off into about 10 or 15 feet of water, where we splashed in and followed a well secured rope line out through some reef structures and into a great dive.

I’d love to know the name of the quarter sized matte black swimmers studded with neon sapphires or the posh red-spined coral eater whose tail looks like a brush dipped in bright yellow paint, but we saw a whole school of Naso lituratus, one of maybe three fish species I can identify and my favorite to spot. Peter spotted a large Green sea turtle (the endangered Chelonia mydas) and we got to swim along side it for a few inspiring minutes. These animals have an extraordinarily graceful attitude and style, they seem to fly effortlessly over the sea floor. Very beautiful.

This video is fairly representative of our dive, though we didn’t see a huge school of fish. Also we’re not a Japanese woman.

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Closet Cooking

Oct 16, ’10 2:35 AM

This is my kitchen. Here in Saipan having a comfortably cool home is expensive so cooking outside makes sense. It’s fun too.

Anytime between 5–10 PM the air around the apartment complex is filled with the sweet smell of steamed fresh veggies or fried fish and sesame oil. As people make their dinners you’ll catch sight of them ducking back inside for an extra splash of something.

Everyone has a slightly different style from what I can tell. My neighbor has a little plastic caddy she brings out so everything is at hand. A woman across the parking lot comes out with everything she needs in the wok already and just plops it on the little stove top.

I learned how wise their ways are through trial and error. I broke a soy sauce bottle, spilled quantities of oil on the ground, and tipped a tray of broccoli and peppers before settling on a my method for dinner making. Nothing fancy. I put a dollop of oil in the pan before I bring it outside. I cut all my veggies up inside on my kitchen table and trot them out as needed. My stir-fry sauce I mix up in a little jar and bring out right when I need it. The results are delicious!

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What Makes HF&J So Great

Oct 13, ’10 8:45 PM

A tour of the level of detail that goes into Hoefler & Frere-Jones’ fonts.

In the middle of Gotham, our family of 66 sans serifs, there is a hushed but surprising moment: a fraction whose numerator has a serif. So important was this detail that we decided to offer it as an option for all the other fractions, a decision that ultimately required more than 400 new drawings. Why?

As you’ll read below, it’s something that we added because we felt it mattered. Even if it helped only a small number of designers solve a subtle and esoteric problem, we couldn’t rest knowing that an unsettling typographic moment might otherwise lie in wait. We’ve always believed that a good typeface is the product of thousands of decisions like these, so we invite you to join us on a behind-the-scenes look at some of the invisible details that go into every font from H&FJ.

Aspirational.

From Kottke.org

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