Open Dyslexic

This covers two of my interests...

A friend directed me to this site which has an open source font for people with dyslexia to use to make it easier for them to read web pages.

Designed by Abelardo Gonzalez, it was created to increase readability for readers with dyslexia. "Letters have heavy weighted bottoms to add a kind of "gravity" to each letter, helping to keep your brain from rotating them around in ways that can make them look like other letters. Consistently weighted bottoms can also help reinforce the line of text. The unique shapes of each letter can help prevent flipping and swapping."

People with dyslexia (including my friend) say it means that they don't need to keep rereading a page.

You can download the font package here and there's also an app!

Special delivery

To be truthful the actual delivery wasn't so special (the less said about UPS and the grumpy guy that came to our house, the better) but what was in the box was a real treasure trove.

Some of the excitement contained within was...

• a microscope that magnifies 200x and connects to your computer (with some shenanigans relating to trying to insert one of those mini CD's into a disk drive of the sort that doesn't have a tray) - some AMAZING photos will follow
• a protective box for the geiger counter that my husband put together some time ago (a long-overdue post)
• a super-bright LED
• a teeny-tiny Wi-Fi device
• some screens and digital displays
• and some skill badges like this one  ------>

All of this excitement came from Adafuit - the most exciting online store, just full to bursting with inspiration and possibilities.




PS. Don't you think the packaging paper that they used instead of polystyrene peanuts is just great?

Digilympics! Tweet your team to success

I found this through the Adafruit blog and as it combines my love of Lego and the maker culture I just had to post it here.

Samuel Cox has designed a Twitter-powered Lego race where related tweets move the competing Lego figures. To support Tweet @UK_Digi (TeamGB), @US_Digi (USA), @CA_Digi (Canada) or @JP_Digi (Japan). South Africa is not represented, but it's still so inventive that I must participate.

Google's doodles

I love Google's doodles and today's image on the home page is in celebration of Amelia Earhart's birthday. For more Google doodles go here.