Logical Expressions Blog

Better Books, Profitable Publishing

May 2007 Entries

The Tofu of Typefaces

Apparently, this year is the 50th anniversary of the font Helvetica. An article on the Slate site called:

The Helvetica Hegemony

discusses the history of Helvetica with an online slide show. It's sort of astonishing how many companies have used this typeface, even before the days when you could find it on every computer.

My favorite line is this one, which appears on the last slide:

"It's the tofu of typefaces: bland in itself but ready to absorb whatever flavors you add to it."

As a vegan graphic designer who has seen a lot of both tofu and Helvetica, I was seriously amused ;-)
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Dog Walker Feet

I just got back from two days of babysitting a dog boarding kennel. Now I have "dog walker feet."

Over the years, I have met quite a few professional dog walkers and they often complain that their feet hurt. That would be me today. Even with shoe inserts, my feet are sore. Walking many dogs 3 or 4 times per day is a lot more walking than you might think.

The end result is that I am tired and ready to enjoy the long holiday weekend. I have a lot of gardening to do though. I hope my feet hold out!
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On the Radio!

Although James and I had a radio show for a while, and I was a DJ in college, today I did my first radio call in as a promotion for one of our books.

I talked to Steve Dale about his article on "designer dogs" such as cockapoos and labradoodles. The article contends that shelters are a much better (not to mention less expensive) way to get these dog, which after all actually are simply mixed-breed mutts. In the article, he points out that he has a "King Daley Shepherd" named Ethel.

I like the idea of giving my shelter/rescue dogs fancy breed names. So hey, I have:
  • Leia the Lab-olly (labrador/border collie)
  • Leto, the Pyr-atriever (Great Pyrenees/retriever)
  • Cami,  the Aussie-moyed (Aussie Shepherd/Samoyed)
  • plus Tika who doesn't need a designer name because she is a purebred Golden Retriever. (Approximately, 25% of dogs that come into shelters are purebreds;  Tika was one of them.)

Anyway, I also got to give a plug for my book. So if you happen to be listening to pet radio and hear some woman from Idaho talk about a book called Happy Hound: Develop a Great Relationship With Your Adopted Dog or Puppy, yes, that was me ;-)

Morel Madness

We spent a lot of time picking morels. I wrote about it here:

Foraging Fun

They're gone now, but it was fun while it lasted!
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Great SEO Article

I just found a great article on search engine optimization (SEO):

8 Myths of Search Engine Optimization

He basically says what we've been saying for years. SEO is all about words. Everyone seems to want to turn search engine optimization into some mystical voo doo, but basically if you write a lot of good articles, and create sites with clean HTML code, in the end people will find your site when they do a search. Google never penalizes sites with good writing, clean code, and links coming in from other respectable sites. It's boring, old fashioned, and true.

However, sleezeball tactics like bogus meta tags, doorway pages, and link farms always end up being a bad idea in the long run. It almost invariably is some "get-rich-quick" marketer type who is pushing this type of drek.

All of our large content sites like Computor Companion, Logical Tips, Pet Tails, Sandpoint Insider, and Many Veggie Recipes continue to get visitors year in and year out because quality content never goes out of style. The sheer number of visitors who find our sites using search engines is ample proof that this "old fashioned" approach to SEO works quite well.

We're Back

Because of a server problem, our Web sites were down for a while. However, thanks to good backups, almost everything has been restored, including the LEI blog. This post is a test to see if our blog software is working correctly. Cross your fingers...

YAY! It works ;-)
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