A Shout-Out From Schott's

Never beyond a bit of shameless self promotion, the Riff's piece about banning the "man-" prefix got a kind mention at Schott's Vocab blog at the NYT.

Tip Box: Why Is My JPG Smurf Blue?

If you're a hardworking slinger of inker and pusher of pixels in this day and age, you may have had to rely on the handout art of others to make that blog post work. And, upon trying to open said jpeg, it may have opened with an unexpected blue cast to it.

I won't get into what causes it (because I don't know, except that it has to do with file size), but here's the quickest fix I've found:

1) Open the photo using Microsoft Office Picture Manager.

2) Go to the Picture drop-down menu, choose Compress Pictures (on mine it's the very last choice).

3) On the right-hand side, click the Web pages radio button (second from the bottom choice).

4) Just above the OK button, you should see an estimated file size, indicating it's been compressed from something ginormous to something less so. Click the OK button.

5) Save the file (I always choose "Save As" so the original file is preserved -- just as a safety precaution).

And there you have it. Your picture as pretty as a ... picture.

-- Adam

Font Fashion. Politics Edition

Former HP CEO Carly Fiorina uses the distinctive Futura light typeface in her "Carly" logo. HP's "one voice" branding strategy, circa 2008, was to exclusively use ... HP Futura light. Just thought it was interesting, that's all.
-- Adam
Carly Fiorina's Futura's so light, she's gotta wear shades (Los Angeles Times)

Facebook is a Vodka Cranberry, Twitter is Cocaine

Just stumbled across this hilarious comparison between Internet networking sites and various drugs, by Patrick Moberg. My favorite: "Myspace is huffing spray paint: Destroys any chance of looking credible. You will be perceived as having the mindset of a middle schooler, and probably do."
-- Adam

NSFW T-shirts from the 2010 Beard & Moustache Championships

I'm just back from a whirlwind 19 hours in Bend, Ore., where I was covering the first-ever nationwide beard and mustache championships, and among the local color that gathered for the event were folks decked out in all manner of follicularly focused T-shirts. Two of the not-safe-for-work variety appear at right. Note that these two people weren't at the vent together, mind you, but I'm sure if they met they'd find out they had a lot in common.
-- Adam
Photo credit: Copyright 2010 Adam Tschorn.

Mom and Pop Riff Star in Local Bank Ad