In the next couple of days I will provide some hints and tips on how to set up a versatile, yet well performing system with the focus on what memory guzzlers to avoid. And how to safe some money along the way by avoiding the expensive brands.

If you hit Ctrl+Shift+Esc as an administrator on your Windows machine the task manager pops up. If you switch to the Processes-tab and more than two dozen (which already is plenty) entries show up it means your computer could do better. If you order the list now by memory usage and there are more than two processes above 10.000 K then your computer could do *way* better.

If you don’t really know what processes to kick and what to better keep just do a quick Google search on the name of the process in question and shortly you can tell whether Windows needs it to survive or BonziBuddy needs it to submit your credit card details its master, for example.

In a perfect world…

If you enjoy the luxury of having multiple machines for multiple applications in your Manhattan townhouse you are best off. A machine solely for image editing, one for 3d and rendering, another for word processing and accounting, a media-PC for music, films and games and a fat server for your backups is probably the best solution. But that’s expensive. So what if you are like me and only have one machine that has to run everything, from watching BluRay movies, editing and archiving video footage and photos to playing games and rendering? The answer is simple: Choose your applications wisely. Over the following days starting today at 6pm (GMT+1) I’ll cover hardware drivers, burning applications, media players and security. Stay tuned, dear reader!

I don’t now what’s all about this Zodiac thing but although Arthur Leigh Allen is long dead now it is still fascinating how everything floating around the Zodiac case creates a vortex of mania that sucks up all the people getting involved with it.

San Francisco Chronicle Author Paul Avery who was writing about the case became an alcoholic, Inspector David Toschi who spent about a decade on the frustrating case got bleeding ulcers. Cartoonist and writer Robert Graysmith poured all his soul into his two books he was writing from the early 1970′s until 2003 about the Zodiac, rather than into his family and hence wrecked two marriages.

And me? I’ve read Graysmith’s books during the summer, still haven’t quite finished on Zodiac Unmasked. I have always been insomniac but the last few days I was haunted by the abnormal characters of Zodiac’s handwriting that wanted me to be assembled in a font. I couldn’t escape, I had to finish it in order to regain some inner peace. I’ve even paid for hi-res scans of most of the Zodiac letters as a reference because I had to learn Zodiac’s handwriting and “synthesize” some characters myself. I hope that you don’t notice the ones I faked… but on the other hand: Emulating the handwriting of an insane mass murderer is kinda disturbing. I don’t dare writing about the nightmares I had from reading all the nasty things in the letters! Anyway if you like the font, a little donation would be appreciated.

The Font

Click here for a the complete character map and enjoy the ligatures!

All English characters plus numbers are part of the font, as well as the most common punctuation characters and some special characters.

The font is OpenType and can be used on both Macintosh and Windows ¹ based operating systems. Actually I strongly recommend using the font in an environment that supports OpenType such as Adobe InDesign or Adobe Illustrator rather than Word or some crap like that.

The font has loads of ligatures for nearly all the double consonants and numbers, small words and features context sensitive character substitution under the hood so that it looks more like natural handwriting than like repeating glyphs all over. If you don’t really understand what I was raving about: Don’t worry: Just write and watch how the glyphs in your text flip for best results — as long as OpenType features are activated. I just love scripting fonts!

For the Zodiac logo type (+).

An Example

Or click the thumbnail icon to this post on the top of the page for a comparison.

Donation & Download

The font is donation ware. So if you want to say a little “thanks” by donating money that would be really nice. Thank in advance!

	Click the Image to download the Zodiac OpenType Font

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 Austria License.

The Font

First, please see the character chart of the available characters in this font. More than the last time.

All cyan marked characters are hand drawn by me because I couldn’t find a good representation of it in any of the Zodiac’s letters. So I had to draw them in his style from what I knew. I just hope that this won’t bother Bob Graysmith ¹. I did study all of Zodiac’s letters and ways of writing similar glyphs so I hope they blend in well with the rest of the font.

When dealing with scripts and handwritings in terms of font creation there are some things you want to avoid as a font designer such as repeating characters in double consonants, that’s why I added some self-made ligatures for the following cases:

• Because Zodiac started many of his letters by “This is the Zodiac speaking” the Th is very important. And it is a ligature. Also in my font
• ee, ff, ll, mm, nn, oo, oo, rr, ss, tt and zz but also // look silly when they consist of two exact glyphs, that’s why I added variations.
• Further there are ligatures for ra and af, just stumbled across them.
• Two common words are also a single glyph: of and is.
• You might want use the font for printing also email addresses or links, that’s why I’ve added an @, // and http as single glyphs for a better impression
• Type (+) for the Zodiac logo.

That’s why I chose OpenType rather than TrueType in the first place.

An Example

Or click the thumbnail icon to this post on the top of the page for a comparison.

Donation & Download

The font is donation ware. So if you want to say a little “thanks” by donating money that would be really nice. Thank in advance!

	Click the Image to download the Zanity OpenType Font

Zipher TrueType font

It wasn’t as easy as anticipated but still I managed to transport Zodiac’s thorough way of writing into the font which has all symbols used by Zodiac in his letter to Toschi on November 8, 1969. If you click the image you’ll see the mapping of the keys which is optimized for English/American keyboard layouts.

The very generous and very meticulous Mr. Richard Smith informed me of a missing character: The P with the filled counter in row 5, column 14 as well as in row 12, column 15 I mistook for a badly reproduced generic P when making the font and thus omitting it. It’s now mapped to the semicolon (;) so you won’t have to look very far away from your P key on your keyboard. In addition I cleaned all the outlines and adjusted some other details resulting in a better font with a smaller file-size.

 
See this chart for reference on the symbols.

Usage of the Zodiac Cipher Font

When typing lower case you mostly get the normal letters (except for the Q), when typing upper case you’ll get the alternative version of the letter, e.g. a backwards R or an upside down T. If you’re looking for the flag symbols use the numerals, also with caps for different symbols.

• You’ll get the small Zodiac logo by typing Z
• The big Zodiac logo which he used as signature is the &
• Type ! for the solid circle.
• The single time when Zodiac corrected one symbol (row 6, column 12) can also be reproduced hitting ]
• EDIT: The P with the filled counter can by reached via the semicolon.

Donation & Download

The font is donation ware. So if you want to say a little “thanks” by donating money that would be really nice. Thank in advance!

Patrons of the Promenade Blog so far:

• Mr. Richard Smith

	Click the Image to download the Zipher TrueType Font

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 Austria License.