Yesterday I showed FileFormat’s ɹǝʇɹǝʌuoↃ uʍo◖-ǝpısd∩ ǝpoɔıu∩. Although the lowercase letters generally looked good, several of the uppercase letters and numerals were un­sat­is­fac­to­ry. Looking through the Unicode Table site, I came across the Fraser Lisu alphabet, which is un­for­tu­nate­ly not well supported in most fonts. The following renders in Hack and Source Code Pro in MacVim, but not in the Source Code Pro webfont from Google Fonts:

B: ꓭ u+A4ED  Lisu Letter Gha
D: ꓷ u+A4F7  Lisu Letter Oe
J: ꓩ u+A4E9  Lisu Letter Fa
K: ꓘ u+A4D8  Lisu Letter Kha
L: ꓶ u+A4F6  Lisu Letter Uh
R: ꓤ u+A4E4  Lisu Letter Za
T: ꓕ u+A4D5  Lisu Letter 

Unicode is so versatile that you can (more or less) invert the Latin alphabet:

ɐqɔpǝɟƃɥıɾʞʃɯuodbɹsʇnʌʍxʎz ∀𐐒Ↄ◖ƎℲ⅁HIſ⋊⅂WᴎOԀΌᴚS⊥∩ᴧMX⅄Z 012Ɛᔭ59Ɫ86
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ 0123456789
68Ɫ95ᔭƐ210 Z⅄XMᴧ∩⊥SᴚΌԀOᴎW⅂⋊ſIH⅁ℲƎ◖Ↄ𐐒∀ zʎxʍʌnʇsɹbdouɯʃʞɾıɥƃɟǝpɔqɐ

Obtained via the ɹǝʇɹǝʌuoↃ uʍo◖-ǝpısd∩ ǝpoɔıu∩. More at Unicode Upside-Down Mapping.

Update: more tomorrow.

Emma is once again at the Madrona Fiber Arts Festival in Tacoma. It’s a convention of knitters, crocheters, and prac­ti­tion­ers of other fiber arts, and Emma goes every year. She takes classes and hangs out with her fellow knitters. It’s always held over Valentine’s Day Weekend, so I tease her about preferring knitting to romantic dinners with me.

Recently married, Lord Peter Wimsey and the former Harriet Vane take up residence at their townhouse. When the beautiful wife of an ac­quain­tance is murdered, Peter becomes involved in the in­ves­ti­ga­tion. Meanwhile, Harriet is coming to terms with having "married up", after fending off Peter’s wooing for several years. Should she continue her career as a mystery novelist, now that she no longer needs the income, or do what is expected by some: have babies and give up writing. All of this is against the …continue.

I don’t watch much television. One of the few shows that I do watch is Myth­Busters, sadly now in its last season. I watched three old shows tonight, including one of my all-time favorites, making a lead balloon.

Taking on the adage "to go down like a lead balloon", Jamie and Adam set out to prove that it is possible to make a lead balloon fly. But it’s not easy.

After pro­to­typ­ing a couple of designs with aluminum foil, they move on to lead foil. Lead foil is very hard to obtain and it’s much weaker than aluminum foil. Jamie likens it to working with wet toilet paper, as it’s so easy to tear. They prove …continue.

I half-watched team sports twice today. We got up early to go to an Irish friend’s house, to eat a full Irish breakfast and watch rugby. I no longer detest rugby with the virulence that I had growing up, when I attended a rugby-playing school in Dublin from ages 7 to 18, but I’m still not interested in the game.

This afternoon, I went to a Chinese New Year’s party, which doubled as a Superbowl party. I trans­ferred my feelings about rugby to American football when I moved here. I have many problems with football culture: the worship of jocks, rape culture, homophobia, concussion. Even if all of those could be fixed, the …continue.

I assembled a couple of adjustable shelving units today. Trying to count the same number of in­den­ta­tions on all four legs for each level quickly grew tedious, and I realized that I needed to make a story stick. I cut a "stick" to the right length and then I was able to place the stick along the leg and instantly read where the next pair of snap rings should be placed. I mentioned this to Emma and she had never heard of story sticks.

Wood­work­ers have used story sticks for a long time to build furniture and to get re­pro­ducible results. Instead of writing down a mea­sure­ment on a sheet …continue.

I’ve driven Car2go a couple of times this week. On both occasions, while driving through downtown Seattle, the car announced that I was outside its home area. Presumably it tem­porar­i­ly lost a signal and thereby assumed that it was no longer in the home area. Given the car knew my position and direction just moments before, and that I was well inside the home area, any half-way decent algorithm would have concluded that it was physically impossible for me to be now outside the home area, and kept its mouth shut.

In this sequel to The Dead of Winter, a young lady called Victoria Dawes travels from England to Al­bu­querque to seek the aid of Cora Oglesby, the now-retired monster hunter. The women draw the attention of a Navajo skinwalker and a vampire, and they spend the book dueling each other. Under Cora’s sarcastic tough love tutelage, Miss Dawes grows from a sheltered Victorian lady into a semi-capable fighter.

The in­ter­ac­tion of the two main characters was fairly en­ter­tain­ing, not wholly pre­pos­ter­ous, and certainly passed the Bechdel test.

England, Spring 1940. The Phoney War is ending, millions have been evacuated from the cities to the coun­try­side, military bases have sprung up everywhere, and everything is topsy turvy. Lord Peter Wimsey and Bunter are abroad somewhere on a secret mission, while Lady Peter—the former Harriet Vane—minds a brood of children at their country house in Hert­ford­shire. A Land Girl is murdered in the village of Paggleham, and the local police su­per­in­ten­dent enlists Harriet’s aid in solving the murder.

A Pre­sump­tion of Death …continue.