Sparklines make me happy. :)
So, I really need to redesign this blog. Especially the header. ~sigh~ In fact, I need to redesign all my blogs. The sidebars are way too long and cluttered, and so I’m thinking about putting most of the information down at the bottom. We’ll see. What I really need right now is more time and fewer projects. :)
At the moment I’m putting together some romanized Thai hymnbooks for the MTC, by downloading the sheet music from LDS.org, printing to PDF, opening the PDFs in Photoshop to increase contrast (via Levels) and clear out the existing text (with the eraser), importing them into InDesign, and laying the new text over them. It’s working out fairly well so far except that there’s a light grey background behind the imported PDF. I’ve tried to get rid of it but no-can-do. Considering the hashed state of the existing hymnbooks, though, it won’t really matter.
I miss design. I need to do more. One project I’m itching to start is a reader’s edition of the Book of Mormon, using the Project Gutenberg text (which is a pre-1923 edition, but I’m not sure yet which particular one). It’ll be typeset like a real book, like the first edition (or any narrative work), with normal paragraphs, no verse markers, etc. I spent ten minutes this morning going through my roommate’s facsimile first edition and marking down the paragraphs in one of my 1981 copies. The first chapter (in the first edition) is comprised of 1 Nephi 1–6, for example, which I found rather interesting.
Contemplating this project has reminded me of the summer of 2002, when I digitized and then re-typeset Henry Sweet’s An Icelandic Primer. It was a heck of a lot of work, but man, it was fun.
You know, programming is fun and all, but this — design, texts, etc. — is what I like most. Remind me not to start any more big programming projects, eh. :) I can’t wait till I’m done with Beyond so I can spend the bulk of my time on stuff like this.
[tags]sparklines, Thai, MTC, Book of Mormon, Old Icelandic, Project Gutenberg[/tags]