colophon

arcanum

/ɑːrˈkeɪ.nəm/ · noun, plural arcana

1.n.a deep secret; a mystery.

2.n.knowledge held by the initiated; an alchemical secret.

3.n.a potent remedy; an elixir thought to confer a hidden power.

a short note on how this site was set. nothing essential — the kind of page one finds only by following a thread from inside a footer or a pdf.

typography

typeface: courier new, set throughout. monospaced by intent — the typewriter is the quiet cousin of the printing press.
case: lowercase, always. capitals reserved for what would deserve them in a letter.
numerals: tabular figures for column alignment. positions, z-scores, and prices all line up beneath each other without fuss.
measure: 780 pixels at most, wider on the resource dashboards to accommodate the charts.

ground: parchment — a warm off-white with a shade of dust to it.
accent: ember — a dry, deep rust. used sparingly: links, active nav, positive numbers, and a single dot when something wants emphasis.
rule: thin, low-contrast, semi-transparent black — for the hairlines that divide a page without announcing themselves.

drawing: hand-set svg, no chart library. every axis, tick, and label is placed in code — slow to build, cheap to re-run, and light to load.
weights: focal series at ink with a 1.8-to-2.5 stroke; supporting categories at ink-soft in thinner, dashed, or dotted lines. the eye goes where the ink goes.
bands: z-score bands are ink washes at progressively deeper alphas — ±1σ, ±2σ, ±3σ — rather than traffic-light reds and yellows.

futures curves: databento · cme globex historical.
cot positioning: cftc disaggregated commitments of traders, socrata endpoint, weekly.
export inspections: usda federal grain inspection service, weekly wa_gr101.
export sales: usda foreign agricultural service, weekly, through the fas open data api.
weather outlooks: noaa climate prediction center, 8-14 day temperature and precipitation maps.
equities, fx: yahoo finance via yfinance for end-of-day snapshots.

pipeline: a single python script reads trade spreadsheets, fetches the day's data, and renders static html. no databases, no client-side calls, no analytics.
deploy: rebuilt files are dropped into hostinger's file manager. deliberate, slow, and easy to roll back by hand.
cadence: the ledger pages are stamped at 4:15pm et, after the equity close. the resource dashboards refresh on demand.
privacy: no trackers, no cookies, no ads. the server logs what any static host logs; nothing leaves the page.

rowan calder-ash: writes campfire notebook and field notes from a small study on the eastern seaboard. correspondence: rowan@arcanumanalytica.com.

set manually, parchment over ink, typed by a human. last rebuilt 1 jun 2026.