Fontsy that!

Recently, I posted about problems with Windows typesetting the vowel חוֹלָם:

Now, Firefox (and IE) were rendering the Hebrew University's online תנ״ך correctly, and it occurred to me to experiment a little: I tried turning the styling off in Firefox, and lo and behold, the problem reappeared.

So I tried experimenting with fonts in Word, and discovered that with a judicious choice of font, the problem went away, or almost completely at least. Now all I've got to do is decide which of the vaguely-traditional looking fonts I should go for:

FrankRuehl is very traditional, but it's actually rather hard on the eyes compared to the default font at the bottom (which illustrates the problem rather than the solution.) Maybe I'll go with Narkisim. It's not so traditional, but beggars can't be choosers...

Of badly designed parks

There's a little park around the corner from me. As you go in, you pass park benches facing the street through tennis courts. Why on earth are they all facing that way? If I wanted to look at the street, I'd have stayed at home. Further into the park there are more benches, facing in various directions—but every single one of them in the shade of trees. This is fair enough in high summer, but now it's February, the grass is too muddy to sit on, and, despite being wrapped up in jumper and coat, I need to be in the sunshine if I want to spend time in the park.

I spent an hour in the park today, reading; and had to spend the whole time standing up. There was one bench which would have emerged into full sunshine if I'd stayed another hour, until four o'clock; but I didn't have the patience; I wanted to sit down.