I’ve been asked to pass on the following:
As you may or may not know, the House of Sharing International Outreach Team has recently regrouped under the name, Women’s Global Solidarty Action Network. Our new expanded goals include focusing on issues of sexual slavery, trafficking women and the “comfort women” issue. This Saturday (June 9th), we will be hosting a workshop under the title “U.S. Military Camptown Prostitution in Korea: 1945-Present”. The workshop will be given by Professor Nah Young Lee.
To get to the center, take line 4 to the Sungshin Women’s University Entrance (성신여자대학교입구) stop. Go out exit 4 and a building with a traditional Korean roof (hanok) will be in front of you. Go into the building and up to the second floor. Please note the center is very close to exit 4, and not on the University’s campus.
For more information, email womens.global.solidarity@gmail.com, visit the Facebook event page, or contact Shannon at 010-4534-1553.
The Grand Narrative 
Hello,
I just want to say that the font you’ve been using on your site after the layout change is completely unreadable on a CRT monitor with ClearType disabled :/
LikeLike
Well, naturally I want you to be able to read the blog(!), but other than going back to the old theme, I’m really not sure what I can do about that sorry. I could change the font I guess, but then I’d be very surprised that that was a problem with this specific font anyway, as it’s a pretty uncluttered one as fonts go, and I’ve also deliberately increased the size to make it easier to read.
Anybody else having any problems, and/or have any suggestions?
p.s. Yes, I realize the irony of people with readability problems possibly not being able to read this!
LikeLike
I’m 100% sure that it’s the font because everything looks fine if I override it in Firefox with Arial or any other “standard” font.
The problem will all these ClearType fonts is that they may look perfectly fine on an LCD screen but are blurred on a CRT. The font size doesn’t really matter. It’s the problem of the font itself :(
LikeLike
By “fine” I mean that although they still look “whitish” at least they are readable.
LikeLike
A screen shot:
LikeLike
After “Arialising”
LikeLike
Okay, I defer to your greater expertise – I didn’t even know what ClearType was until you commented!
I’ve switched the font to “Skolar” instead. How does that look?
LikeLike
Unfortunately it doesn’t seem to make any difference… but I’ve briefly checked the CSS and this seems to be the reason:
These two lines seem to override other settings and removing them makes the site readable. It still doesn’t look perfect (some fonts are still whitish as if they were semi-transparent) but at least reading isn’t an eye torture. I’ve checked those fonts (Abel, Dosis) and they are clearly ClearType fonts. Both of them look terrible on my screen :(
I’m now looking on the site on my desktop (CRT) and on a tablet (LCD) so I can clearly see how differently these fonts are displayed depending on a type of screen.
LikeLike
I meant these lines:
link rel=’stylesheet’ id=’ideation-Abel-css’ href=’http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Abel%3A400%2C700&ver=20120521′ type=’text/css’ media=’all’
link rel=’stylesheet’ id=’ideation-dosis-css’ href=’http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Dosis%3A400%2C700&ver=20120521′ type=’text/css’ media=’all’
LikeLike
Sorry that didn’t help. Any suggestions for what I can do? In, particular, seeing as you know CSS so well (I know absolutely nothing about it sorry), is there something I can do to get rid of those two lines? If so, please give me something to copy and paste into the CSS Editor! :D (And I promise to bone up about CSS over the vacation)
LikeLike
Two more screen shots:
1. ClearType turned on:
2. ClearType turned off:
LikeLike
I’m also no expert on CSS ;) I just know some basics. I’ll try to check it and write here later again if I manage to come up with something.
What I found interesting is that I’ve just opened your site in SRWare Iron (a Chromium based browser) and it seems that the browser automatically enables ClearType for ClearType fonts. Unfortunately the two other browsers I use (Opera and Firefox) don’t do it :/
LikeLike
James:
Not sure why you made the big change up (thought it was some kind of mistake at first). I used to look at the front page and see everything I needed to see to get to the whole story and read or skip as needed. Now I see titles only and I have to click each one to see whether I want to read it or not. It sort of made the whole thing less user friendly and more user annoying.
Sorry. Don’t like it. I’ll still come by to read, but I’ll be more annoyed while doing it.
LikeLike
Plus, in Chrome on Windows XP, the font looks all clumpy and weird. All the letters with slanted parts (W, N, Y, k, etc.) look like they are bold…
LikeLike
Sorry Scott, but what can I say? I’m sorry that you don’t like the new theme, and that having just the titles on the homepage isn’t suited to your own reading style. But I disagree that it’s less user-friendly and more annoying. Quite the opposite: with the old theme, people with the same reading style as yourself would have had to scroll down what were sometimes very lengthy posts to get to the next one to decide to read or skip it, and besides which you’d have had to click to go onto the next page pretty soon anyway, as I only ever had 3-5 posts on a page at a time. So, although of course you would know better than me which reading method you prefer, and we can agree to disagree, to me personally all that actually sounds like more hassle than simply clicking the back button on your browser and clicking on a new post title.
Also, even if you’re just an infrequent reader, say visiting once every two weeks, at the very most there’s only going to be 6 new post titles to check out on the homepage anyway.
And, seeing as I’m here, let me explain one of the HUGE benefits of the new theme to sell you on it: it makes everything I’ve written much easier to access. As I type this, I have 559 posts on the blog. How to find them all? I can only highlight so many of them in what used to be a much longer sidebar on the right (and which, alas, only appears on the homepage at the moment; I’m working on that). Other than that though, with the previous theme the only option was to scroll through posts 1 by 1 via archives or categories, which could be very time-consuming; even just wanting to see posts from the last couple of months would have involved going through tens of thousands of words. But now with the new theme, you’ve already got access to posts going back to January with less scrolling than it would take to get through a 3000 word post of mine. That some readers may occasionally be disappointed with what they find in a link, and wish they hadn’t clicked on it, is really a very small price to pay for that! :D
Sorry that I’m going on a bit here by the way! It’s just that, well, only by typing this am I belatedly realizing the huge benefits of the new theme myself. I’m selling it to myself as it were…
Anyway, I acknowledge that some users are having difficulties with fonts, and again I’m sorry – I just don’t know what to do about that, especially when font readability seems so dependent on operating systems, hardware, browsers, and screen resolutions. Having said that, I do (just) see the problem on Google Chrome (and Windows XP) you mean, but crucially it’s only on the small font in the right sidebar, not the text in the main post. If that’s also the case for you, then it’s only a very minor problem really.
LikeLike
Thanks for the prompt reply. I am sure I will get used to the new look, you aren’t the first blog to change the way it presents its data in the last 10 years. Adapt or die and all that.
And it may be easier to read on mobile devices (I haven’t checked it out on the iPhone yet) as there is not so much screen poking going on to get to the next post.
Also, don’t take my critique as anything against the content. You can do as much of that as you want (the more the better, actually).
Keep up the good work.
LikeLike
No, thanks yourself – WordPress.com gives bloggers soooo little information about their readers, and no possibility of getting more information by installing, say, Google Analytics (we’re not allowed javascript on our blogs), that we’re left completely in the dark about how people use our blogs. Also, usually only other bloggers tend to be interested in such blogging-related stuff, and to divulge it in comments. So, although, alas, we still completely disagreed about the new theme(!), I appreciate you getting me to think of things from readers’ perspective more.
LikeLike
I just checked and the iPhone version of this site is one of the best I have seen. Clean, good titles, and a paragraph for each story to whet your appetite. I will be reading your site exclusively on my iPhone and iPad from now on.
LikeLike
Thanks again, and I’m glad to hear it. I forgot to mention above that when I chose the new theme, I also clicked on the option to optimize it for mobile viewing, which I didn’t bother with when I was using the old theme. Presumably, that explains it.
LikeLike
great site. thank you for your effort.
just one problem. i have a chinese phone made in 2004 and the fonts are bad. please change your website!!!
LikeLike
Sorry, but you are joking right? I mean, I ‘ve done what I can for k2mini and her CRT monitor, but I draw the line at making changes for readers with hardware that predates Youtube! :D
LikeLike
OK, Checking it on Safari on a Mac and it looks nice here.
I guess it is just an XP font problem. Hopefully more and more of them will die off and then you won’t have this problem.
LikeLike
James,
I’m with Scott–like the new format better on the iPhone, but nowhere near as much as the old one on my laptop, though I can certainly appreciate why it works better for you as the creator of the blog. It’s your blog in the end, so do what you want, but feedback is probably good. There really is alsofor me a big difference depending on the medium I use for access
LikeLike
Thanks for understanding, and sorry for not getting back to you much earlier!
LikeLike
So, many bloggers informed about this event but nobody went and returned with information about what took place?
LikeLike
Sorry for not replying earlier tbonetylr, but I was a bit confused by your surprise: it’s not like bloggers are paid reporters or anything, so it’s to be expected that they can’t go to every event they mention on their blogs.
But anyway, Hello Korea! did go, and you can read her report on it here.
LikeLike
: In order to turn off Clear Type Font Display, you can follow these intosucritns :1. Click Start button2. Go to Control Panel3. Open DISPLAY icon.4. Go to APPEARNCE tab.5. Click on EFFECTS button.6. Choose STANDARD under USE THE FOLLOWING METHOD TO SMOOTH EDGES OF SCREEN FONTS.7. Click on OK.I’m sure it will help you in fixing up the problem.
LikeLike
@Kerley
If you turn off ClearType all text will look blurred and whitish. If you turn it on then the website looks OK but you shouldn’t do if if you use a CRT monitor. This is what the problem here was. Now I just use SRWare Iron (a Google Chrome clone) which renders fonts differently and makes them readable even when ClearType is switched off!
LikeLike