Best Tool for the Job

gMail - Webmail Google Style

Google is doing webmail, called gmail as reported here.

Supposably there will be a 1gb storage limit... and other goodies programmed by the google gurus in their "spare time." I have a server and plenty of email addresses, but from the looks of it, this could become my web email address.

Baby Thoughts

While sitting at my computer desk watching my son play the keyboard-o-rama Elmo game, I started pondering what really must go through his head.

Is it possible to have complex thoughts without language? It must be; people who are born deaf and blind, like Helen Keller, obviously still have complex thoughts, but for lack of a better way of saying it, what's it like thinking them?

When I think, it seems like a little voice in my head actually saying what I'm thinking-- is that only when I'm consciously and deliberately thinking? There’s no way for me to know since I can’t tell what my thoughts are if they’re not conscious. Do people without language think only visually or emotionally? How do they perceive the world around them where things don’t have names?

Language has become such an integral part of who I am, I can’t imagine who I would be without it. Despite that, I'd really like to know--I think it could open up a new level of creativity. Imagine graphic design where your thoughts were automatically visual rather than words. Solving the problem of conveying complex ideas graphically would be second nature... of course, how would you know what you were supposed to be desiging unless someone told you?

Proof that Even Bill Gates Likes Macs

Ok, so I'm making a leap of logic, but here's how I arrived at that conclusion....
Corbis, a company owned by Bill Gates, is having a contest where the prizes are Apple Macintosh G5 computers.

Either Bill Gates runs this company in a very hands-off way and is not aware of the prizes, or he has placed his seal of approval on giving away the 22 Macs worth a total of almost $110,000. I'm guessing it's the latter; he's aware of it and that somewhere, deep down inside his heart, there's a special place for Macintoshes.

Things I Almost Posted About

I had a few things in mind that I was going to post about, here's what they were and why I'm not going to:

1. I'm not posting about Macromedia Flex, and how I am (or was) skeptical of it's success because of the price. Then I watched the presentation on Macromedia's site.... maybe bigger companies will see the value in spending $12,000 on something that can be mostly done in Flash MX 2004 as is. I'm not posting about Flex because I don't know enough about it yet; I need to read up a little more. Just like I (still) don't know enough about Central yet to say that I think it won't succeed (even though that's my gut feeling).

2. The Dock vs. the Taskbar. I'm not posting about that because I've frankly had enough Mac vs. PC for one day, and even moreso because I've not thought about it enough to bullet-proof my arguments.

3. The way desktops should be laid out to increase productivity. I'm not posting about that because my ideas are so brilliant that I've decided to sell them to
Xerox and become rich off them. Either that or because I haven't thought about it enough to verbalize my ideas. I'm not sure which it is.

4. How cool it is that Macromedia blogs and reads weblogs. It really shows they have a true interest in the satisfaction of their users. I'm not posting about that because too many others have said the same thing better than I can.

5. Finally, I'm not posting about all the great books and short stories I've been reading lately. Why? Because unfortunately due to other things (like work) I've read hardly anything lately. Things are going to change though, I can feel it.

Mac vs PC - The Definitive (?) List

This is purely personal, I'm not making any recommendations here, just my observations of what's good about each of the two after almost 6 months of using an Apple Macintosh G5 at work and a Dell Laptop at home. Some of it's based on cold hard facts, the rest is just my perceptions.

First off... advantages of PC's over Macs:
• Sepy Actionscript Editor They're porting it to OS X, not a big reason.
• Price, price (did I mention price)
• Office’s native platform Office just feels nicer on the PC to me... can't quite explain it.
• ActiveX controls (3cim, timecharge) Some of the companies I work for or do work for have web apps that require IE 5.5 or higher.
• Counterstrike... minesweeper... I'm not much of a gamer. Buying a mac would ensure things stay that way.
• Dreamweaver, Flash are just plain faster and easier to use on the PC.
• Filezilla and leech Ftp programs that take RBrowser and kick it all over the room.
• Way better IM programs Can iChat do desktop sharing? How about games? Ok.. so it does video and voice, but only with AIM, not MSN...
• Camtasia I'd miss Camtasia studio.
• Gospel link, LDS collectors library - These are programs that have large collections of books written by memebers of my church and, you guessed it, PC only. PAF is a family history program my church distrubutes and my family uses--again, PC only.
• Swift 3d This is more just for fun, but I really do like using Swift every once in awhile.
• IE 6 - for testing... blech. Personally, I can't stand IE, but everyone uses it so I have to keep it around somehow to test things.
• Taskbar. I like the taskbar better than the dock. Sorry... I just do.
• No fear that the next software pkg I need won’t run on Windows. Another one of those intangibles.
• Pocket PC support without buying any 3rd party software (and I like my iPaq). Now if Apple came out with a sub $500 handheld, I'd jump ship and get it in a heartbeat... I have no doubt it would be good.
• Better networking in my experience anyway.

Ok. That having been said, here are the advantages (in my mind) of the Mac over the PC.
• Expose - One of the things I miss the most when I'm not using a Mac.
• Apple (command) Key location. Whose idea was it anyway to put my left pinky through so much stress pressing ctrl? The command key on the mac makes so much more sense.
• Resell value - My laptop (1.13ghz Inspiron, all the goodies) is worth maybe $500 now. That's a pretty big drop from the $3000 I paid for it. On the other hand, a Powerbook from around the time I bought my laptop is worth a few hundred dollars more and it cost a few hundred dollars less new.
• iPhoto, iMovie, iDvd, iTunes, Garage Band - I really love the iLife suite. In fact, that's one of the big deciding factors for me. iTunes runs on the pc. I know. It just feels so much more at home on the mac though. Adobe Albums (for what it is) makes a lot more sense than iPhoto, but for some reason I still like iPhoto better--I think a lot of it is because it takes care of organizing all my photos automatically. I have to tell Albums where they are. iDvd and iMovie... more goodness I don't want to live without.
• Final Cut - Speaks for itself.
• Good looks - I'm a designer. My laptop is ugly. All Dells are ugly. Some gateways are okay, some Alienware computers are okay, but on the whole, Apple's just look better. That's important to me.
• Quicksilver - Woah... just wrote about this one the other day. This is one piece of software that I don't want to live without.
• Fink, X11 - Cool. I can run my linux stuff on my mac and do it easily. I don't even want to ever hear the words cygwin again. No. Stop.
• Responsiveness - I like being able to click the Flash, Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Illustrator, Word, Entourage, iChat, iPhoto, iTunes and whatever else I feel like clicking all at once and still browse the Internet while I'm waiting without major lag. I've never seen a PC that can handle that.
• MacJournal - Yet another piece of software I don't want to live without.
• Free SDK - There's probably one for Windows as well, but developing for the Mac seems so much more sexy and fun. I'm not really even a programmer, but using a mac makes me want to become one.

So that's my off the cuff list. I'm sure I'm forgetting things. Which way will I go for my next computer? I'm not sure, but at the moment... that G5 is looking really tempting.

Sub Pop. Good Stuff.

Lately pretty much every band on my playlist is from the label Sub Pop. What bands, you ask, are you listening to that are or were signed on Sub Pop? Ahh, here they are in order of current favoriteness.
1. The Shins. The Shins are hard to describe or compare to. Very, very creative and catchy tunes and lyrics. Try it. Go on, you know you want to.
2. Postal Service. I guess I am just bad at describing music, but Postal Service is electronic-indie-goodness. Composed of memebers of other bands (informative huh) they are very good.
3. Iron and Wine. Enough commentary. They're good. Do it.

Other good Sub Pop bands (if you're still lacking music) are Looper (gone from Sub Pop now), Sebadoh, Sunny Day Real Estate (no longer on Sub Pop... or together for that matter, Combustible Edison (fun lounge music while it lasted) and, well, Pinback isn't Sub Pop, but they're on my playlist too.

Enjoy.

Quicksilver

This will change the way you use OS X forever. Thanks What Do I Know.

Flash Drag and Drop Quiz

Flash is trying to make a programmer out of me. I took a Java class in college and really did not feel that I was cut out to program. Flash is starting to change my mind. While I've known Flash for several years, I hadn't really started learning Actionscript until about 3 months ago. This is my work-in-progress quiz. It's all actionscript--only one keyframe (several layers) in the whole movie. Note: I didn't design the thing... just programmed it.

I think that for someone who is naturally a very visual thinker, Flash is a great way to learn to program object oriented code. You can start off little by little and still get great results.

Farewell Firefox

Mozilla Firefox is, by far, my favorite browser on the PC, and I've used it (previously as Firebird) almost exclusively on my Mac at work for the last 5 months as well but alas, no more. I cannot figure out why, but it is several times slower than Safari on my 1.6 ghz G5. I can have the two browsers open side by side and Safair will have loaded a page with all it's graphics before Firefox finishes saying "Resolving Host." So, until something changes, farewell Firefox.

First Websites...

Remember when you created your first website? My brother-in-law who happens to be my wife's twin just created his (with a little help and server space from me) here: benreedjohnson.com. I especially recommend the family page where I gained some valuable insight into the childhood of my wife... aside from relating to me personally, it's funny. He's also started a weblog tonight... should be interesting.

Guitar and Video Games

Ok, so there was no guitar, but it's a great Sunny Day Real Estate (now the Fire Theft) song. Last night and tonight I spent a couple hours playing video games after a couple months of solid work from basically morning until bedtime. It was very, very theraputic. The game of choice? Halo for the PC, 1 vs. 1. I started playing with a bad headache last night and by the time I was done, I felt great! Video games do have a purpose after all...

Cash - Here to Stay

Saturday I heard a talk show host, rather unsuccessfully, trying to defend his position that a society where there was no cash, only credit cards would be used. I find the idea that this could happen interesting, but I really doubt it would ever happen for the following reasons:

1. Peer transactions. Yesterday I bought a couple bikes off some friends. Unless they had a credit card reader in their house, this transaction would have been much more difficult in a cashless society. How would kids pay for things? Can you imagine a 10 year old with a credit card?

2. Anonymity. People are skeptical of how much the government (or any organization) knows about them. There will always be a legal way to purchase things anonymously… at least there should always be a legal way.

3. Responsibility. Too many people dissociate real money with plastic. Cash is the only way many people actually realize they’re spending their money. Without cash, the amount of consumer debt would probably skyrocket (if that’s possible from how high it is already).

4. Tradition. All other reasons aside, I don’t ever see the day when people outgrow the natural desire to have cold hard cash. It makes you feel like what you worked for is real. It’s what people have done since the end of bartering and old habits die hard.

While technology has taken an obvious foothold in many areas of life and lots things are changing, don’t count on the day that cash will disappear for good.

Hardees - Lame as it Ever Was

I don't have anything personally against Hardees, but I really don't see how they are in business still... This whole plot to re-invent themselves with the giant burgers made of 100% angus is interesting, but if you can't even eat it without the bun falling a part or getting so soggy in mayo that the meat slips out into your lap, it kind of defeats the purpose.

Golden Plates

What are the golden plates of our time? A thousand years ago, if you wanted to make sure information was going to be around for your children's children's children, you took out your chisel and started hacking away on metal plates--preferably golden.

What are my options today? I have several thousand digital pictures, a digital journal, a weblog and pretty much every hour of work I've done for the last 5 years are all in digital format. From what I've read, I can expect a hard drive to last maybe 10 years, CD’s not much longer... what else is there? Are all my captured memories, all my work and all my writings going to be around for my grandkids? Should I stop using a computer and start learning how to etch metal?

Maybe I sound nostalgic, but really... how do you make sure something digital lasts longer than the medium it's on?

In Praise of Dreamweaver

Tonight I’ve spent the last couple hours converting a Photoshop image to HTML in Dreamweaver. I read a lot of places where Dreamweaver takes a lot of slack from those who only code in notepad, or who are anti-WYSIWYG editors; personally, I don't understand this. I started using Dreamweaver back at version 3, before I knew much of anything about HTML. Since then, I've never bought a single book on HTML or really sat down to dedicate myself to a couple hours of studying HTML, but I feel I know it as good as most and better than many.

Rather than keeping me away from the code, Dreamweaver has helped me learn it. I've almost always used it in the split view where you see both design and code (part out of curiosity, part out of necessity). Being able to see exactly what code is written for every thing I do has helped enormously. I'm a visual thinker, seeing a block of HTML highlighted when I select a table cell helps ingrain in my mind exactly what the code is supposed to look like.

I've gotten to the point now where I could feasibly write all the HTML that Dreamweaver writes for me without Dreamweaver, but why would I when I don't have to? I suppose there's the argument that it's more fun that way; and to a point, I'll agree--sometimes it is more fun. I find however, that when pressed with a deadline, fun is secondary and Dreamweaver helps me get it done faster. I have not had problems with Dreamweaver re-writing my code or re-formatting it (there are settings to control how much, if any, of that it does) and I've found that the HTML Dreamweaver writes is generally pretty clean.

Dreamweaver MX 2004 also does a pretty good job with supporting most aspects of CSS. For static sites (do people still make those ;)) the templating system in Dreamweaver is great. Site management is good for that as well (uploading to and from the server, version control etc.) For dynamic sites, I use Dreamweaver to get the basic HTML set and then apply the code.

On the PC, the interface is nothing short of brilliant. Macromedia has steadily improved the UI with each release and with MX 2004, space is utilized almost perfectly. On the Mac, it's a different story. It doesn't look bad on a Mac by any means, but you still have the floating panels and you don't get the tabs to quickly see what you have open & switch between documents.

Needless to say, I'm a fan. I think Macromedia has left very little room for improvement with Dreamweaver MX 2004.

St. Patricks Day Suggestion

Let's join together as Americans and do as our Constitution suggests--keep the separation of Church and State absolute. Just as some have attempted to do with removing prayer from school, God from the Pledge of Allegiance, the Boy Scouts from public places, shouldn't we also remove the Saint from Saint Patricks day?

It's obvious that this state supported holiday should be either removed from the calendar or completely stripped of meaning (that's to say Religion) in order to coincide with the true intentions of our founding fathers.

With that in mind, Happy Irish Green Day to you all!

Flash MX 2004 Projects are a Joke

Today we decided to use the new "Projects" feature in Flash MX 2004 Professional to manage a fairly large interactive piece we're doing at work. We started setting up the project in Flash after reading about the benefits of using Flash Projects to control versioning and make sure the files are in a central location. It didn't take us long to discover that Flash Projects have a ways to go before they are usable for the type of project we're doing.

Basically, the only thing we wanted to do was create a project that would keep track of several Flash files on the server and allow us to check them out, work on them locally, upload them automatically to the server when we checked them back in and then publish them based on our settings at one time. Simple enough, right? That's what we thought.

This is where Projects fall flat. If I create a file and add it to my project, anyone else who wants to use the same file has to manually add it to their project, there's no way for new files to be automatically added to all the participants project. This wouldn't be a problem with a 5 or 10 file project, but once it gets bigger than that, adding every file manually gets pretty tedious.

In addition, there's no easy way to have the same folder structure in the Flash Project as on the hard drive and/or the server--you have to manually create folders in Flash to manage that.

Those are the obstacles we could get around. The one that we really didn't like was the fact that the only way to add a file that you didn't create to your project was to use the Finder (mac) or Windows Explorer (PC) to browse to the server, download the file to your local hard drive, add it to the Flash Project in Flash then start using it. If you didn't do that, you could get the file from the server, but once you went to check it back in, Flash complained that it couldn't check it in because the file didn't exist on the local drive.

We didn't even get far enough to get into the publish profile settings... by that time, we'd had enough.

The solution? We set the entire project up as a Dreamweaver site. Everything works perfectly there, in addition, we can use Dreamweaver to edit text files, external ActionScript and XML files without opening up another application. If you're thinking about using Flash Projects to manage a large project, I'd suggest you wait until it matures a little. Right now, Dreamweaver seems to be the tool that will work for us.

The Gadget Cycle

It seems like every couple years, the gadget cycle starts up again. My cell phone, the Sony-Ericsson t68i has been replaced by a succesor (and I've decided just to cancel service all together), the digital camera-- a Sony DSC-S75 with it's 3.3 megapixel resolution is now begging to be replaced by a Canon Digital Rebel or something more powerful, my Panasonic PV DV-401 video camera which was once one of the smaller cameras in existance is also seeming pretty antiquated and even my fairly new h1915 iPaq PDA is starting to show it's age. On top of it all, my laptop, a Dell 1.13ghz Inspiron 8100 is now feeling pretty slow compared to computers that almost triple it's speed. Yes, I find myself at the end of one gadget cycle and wanting to begin another.

I think it would be cool if there was a plan you could get on that would always assure you to have the latest and greatest gadgets. You pay a certain amount each month and when a new model comes out (either that or at a set interval) you are automatically upgraded to the newer device when you send in your old one. It wouldn't be a lease--you'd own them so if you broke it or lost it, oh well, that's the end of that. I'm sure there'd be a market for this type of plan... anyone know of a company that does it already?

Two Years....

Max (my son) turned two today. We had a little celebration with some friends--he LOVED it. I just can't believe I'm a father... much less that I've been one for two years now. It really is great--despite the hard times and the times where I feel I just don't have enough patience, it is the most rewarding thing I've ever done. I love that kid!

Painting and Re-Painting

Today we (we meaning Jenny ;) painted our bathroom. Twice. It's almost impossible to tell what a room is going to look like as a new color before you paint it. Sometimes you just have to do it then find out what it looks like afterwards and hope for the best. Well, we found out pink isn't the best...

I think it would be great if painting companies let you submit pictures of your room as one color then returned a photoshopped the image showing the room as the new color. Of coure there are all kinds of problems inherent to that process, the biggest being that even if they did a perfect job you're still only looking at a tiny picture and not actually in the room, but it would make it a little easier.

After all is said and done, we're very happy with the new color and this old house continues to become more of a home to us.

Storyboarding Content Tool for Flash

Lately at work we've had some "issues" trying to figure the best way to get content from the hands of content developers (the people who write the tech manuals) to instructional specialists (the people who develop training or other courses) to the Flash programmers and Graphic Designers who are developing multimedia training pieces as the final product.

Currently, there are no existing tools (that I'm aware of) that allow you to "storyboard" content to hand over to a Flash (or Director or Authorware) programmer and have them be able to recognize what interactions need to take place and what content needs to go where.

Depending the size of the course we're developing, this can go from being a minor inconvenience to a show-stopper. There needs to be a way for the content to be organized and easily retrievable, but at the same time easy to input and provide some way of previewing what the final output might look like so the instructional specialists can get a better idea of what they're working on.

We've developed a tool in Microsoft Access which does basically what we need, but leaves much to be desired due to the inherent flaws in Access (trust me, there are lots of them). I'm interested in learning more about what other people are doing to solve this problem, or if there is a tool out there that had been fine tuned to this process.

Content Management Resources

A few useful links to sites that will help you decide on a Content Management System. I used these today at work.
· OSCOM - Open Source (free) content management information.

· CMS Review - "The mission of CMS REVIEW is to give you the resources you need to choose the best content management system for your organization."

· CMS Matrix - Allows you to view the features of, and compare, several top Knowledge Management systems.

· Cylogy - Cylogy is a company that specializes in CMS consulting. These are the people to pay if you're willing to pay big bucks for both a recommendation for a CMS and the CMS itself.

· CMSWire - CMS Wire provides commentary, news and product information on several content management systems.

· CMS Watch - CMS Watch is a site that provides analysis and reports about web content management solutions.

Most of these sites link to other, similar sites, so if you're in the process of researching content management, better create a new folder in your bookmarks.

Visiting

It seems like there is hardly any time for just sitting around and visiting anymore. With work, family and the Internet and everything else that seems to come up, it's a rare moment that I find time to relax and get to know someone better.

Tonight I had the opportunity do so and it was great. I met a guy about 55 years old, into Cadillacs. His wife recently broke her shoulder and was recovering. Nothing extraordinary, but it really felt good to just sit down and have some time to talk to someone without everything else getting in the way.

Try it sometime. It's nice.

And You Thought Your Job was Complex

You've probably never thought about how it would be to deliver papers, or the details of what goes into it. Today is your lucky day. I have a first hand account of exactly what goes into getting that paper on your doorstep each morning. This is an IM conversation I had with a friend who wishes to remain anonymous. I've taken the liberty of highlighting the especially good parts in purple. I'm (obviously) Marcus.

Paper Deliverer: I'm shooting for waking up at 1:30 to set up my inserts since they decided it would be funny to make me deliver 2 inserts on a single piece paper day
Paper Deliverer: tuesday is just ONE section that I have to worry about
Paper Deliverer: grab, fold, stuff...
Paper Deliverer: well I can fit 2 full size sections in the front seat of my truck...
Paper Deliverer: then it's (from door to center) grab, slide onto next stack closer to me, fold, stuff
Paper Deliverer: not hard enough to even think about...
Paper Deliverer: well with inserts, some are full size, some aren't, depends on the company advertising, and they're going to be thin (think one sheet of paper) so if there are 2, and one's a 3x5 booklet and the other's a slick sheet of card stock, then that'll make it 10x harder at least
Paper Deliverer: think grab from floor, grab from far side of seat, slide onto main sheet, fold, stuff
Paper Deliverer: usually it's step one) first delivery: **** dental's dumpster with ads...
Paper Deliverer: step 2) fold single piece paper
Paper Deliverer: but I'm going to try to put it all together to deliver everything that they want me to deliver
Paper Deliverer: since they're giving me like 2 bucks for it
Marcus: do you seriously dump the ads in the dumpster?
Paper Deliverer: 1 penny per insert I believe which at 2 pieces times 320, that's like 6 bucks
Paper Deliverer: whoopty doo
Paper Deliverer: and yeah, if they give me an ad on a tuesday, into the dumpster it flies
Paper Deliverer: unless it's easy to roll with the main sheet (on a single insert day)
Marcus: why? are tuesdays no-ad days?
Paper Deliverer: it's a single piece, I rest my hand on the stack and fold the top paper in half and in half and stuff it into a bag
Paper Deliverer: don't even have to think going down the road
Paper Deliverer: now think trying to gauge a single piece of card stock off
of a pile with the light off going down the road and grabbing one off the top
and then putting it on another one, and then putting both of those on top of
a newspaper and folding it into quarters and then putting it in a bag and then
chucking it out the winder, knowing that you have to be somewhere more important
at 7:00
Paper Deliverer: at least monday, wednesday-friday, while being 2 piece newspaper
days, are 2 FULL sections, easy to grab a single one off of the top
Marcus: heh... the minutia of delivering papers
Marcus: i would have never even thought about it
Paper Deliverer: oh I know, me neither
Marcus: can i use those quotes if i don't attribute them to you?
Marcus: ?
Paper Deliverer: and think, the newspaper carrier knows exactly what you drive,
where you park it every day, possibly which light you leave on, etc
Paper Deliverer: even though you don't get the paper
Paper Deliverer: brb, I smell a carbonization smell ((insert name here)'s cooking... )
Paper Deliverer: what do you do with someone who tells a bold faced lie and then acts like they don't know they're lying?
Marcus: depends on who they are

Thoughts on Eternity

Lately I have been thinking a lot about this life and its real purpose. Sometimes it seems that even though the purpose of this life is to test me to determine where I'll be for the rest of eternity, I spend a very little time doing the things that matter eternally.

This life on Earth is like the 6 months you spend dating someone before you decide you'll marry them and be with them for the rest of your life. It's like the moment you decide what you're going to major in and what the rest of your life's career will be, but instead of being for the rest of this life, it's for Eternity.

There's a Built to Spill song my wife pointed out to me that puts eternity into perspective:

every thousand years
this metal sphere
ten times the size of Jupiter
floats just a few yards past the earth
you climb on your roof
and take a swipe at it
with a single feather
hit it once every thousand years
`til you've worn it down
to the size of a pea
yeah I'd say that's a long time
but it's only half a blink
in the place you're gonna be

where you gonna be
where will you spend eternity
I'm gonna be perfect from now on

You can just imagine how he's feeling when he sings "I'm gonna be perfect from now on." It only makes sense to try. What else can we take with us after this life? The things that really matter are really pretty simple and apparent. It's just a matter of doing them.

Downloadable Internet Radio

In a previous entry, I mentioned Your Mac Life, an internet-only live radio talk show. At the time, I was contemplating the marketability of such an effort. Recently, I came across some others who have taken the concept and added a twist--one I really like.

Steven, at Acts of Volition, has produced and DJ'ed several 45 minute radio sessions available for download in mp3 format. For each one, he's taken a different theme and picked several songs that fit it. I think it's great--the shows are entertaining--much more entertaining and informative than having someone just recommend a few songs.

It looks like a couple other sites have done the same thing. Mathcaddy just came out with a show and there's a new site, LugRadio where four guys produce a downloadable talk show on open source software.

This type of entertainment--informative and fun at the same time--is almost destined to success. It's something that's not too hard to produce but could potentially generate a wide following. The only obstacles will be 1. bandwidth (at least for a lot of people), and 2. the RIAA or their equivalent in whatever country you might be. Personally, I feel that if it came down to the artists themselves, most would be in favor of this, but unfortunately in the backwards world that is corporate music, that is not the case.

Kudos to those of you producing radio in this format (Incidentally, what’s it called? iRadio?), keep up the good work and if you need bandwidth... well, maybe I can help.

Content Management System Information and Comparision Links

Content management systems are something that I am very interested in. By nature (or by lack of study, I can't figure out which) I am not a programmer, but I am however, a web developer and I have a very real need to present my clients (and myself) with an easy way to manage and store content online. Using static HTML for everything is not an option.

I've written previously about the CMS WebGUI, which I currently use for several websites and I'm very impressed with so far. WebGUI is due for the new, version 6.0, release sometime this or next week which will add several features, including making it 100% template driven--by far the most important feature for me, as a designer.

At work (I'm a defense contractor) SCORM compliance is a big deal. Tonight I disovered (via Seb's Open Research) Workforce Connections, a GPL 'ed CMS that is made to be SCORM compliant. I'm going to have to give this a test install. If it's easy to use, this could make life much better at work. It's based on Zope and runs on Linux with Apache.

Recently I also discovered CMS Matrix which is a site that, though sponsored by WebGUI, attempts to give an objective comparision of the different major content management systems avaiilable. It's a great resource.

Other good sites are OpenSourceCMS which lets you try the various content managment systems before you install them and CMS Info which keeps you up to date on the latest and greatest in CMS's.

Bill O'Reilley - Part II

Ok, not to beat a dead horse with the O'Reilley bashing, but today in the few minutes I had to listen to him I realized even more why I really don't like his radio show.

The way he presents views is completely condescending. I mentioned this before referring to the way he say's he's "looking out for you," but it's not only that. When he brings up an issue, rather than presenting facts or evidence or playing a sound clip or giving some history, he usually just tells his audience what they should think about it. I guess he assumes that all his loyal listeners will fall into place and take him for his word, and who knows, maybe they will, to me it's just plain ridiculous. This is not to say he never has guests or never presents facts, but even when he does, instead of presenting both sides, saying what side he's on and making his arguments for it (if you can call them that--see next paragraph) and leaving it at that, he has to tell you "this is the right way to think."

Another thing that bothers me is that you can never tell how he's going to react to something or what side he's going to be on. He says this is because he's an Independent (as if that were something to be proud of), but to me it seems to be because he has absolutely no moral base to any of his opinions and only picks a side because it seems to be better for him personally or for his ratings. I could be completely wrong about this, but he rarely ever stands up for anything on moral grounds, it's always for some other, seemingly contrived, reason like "traditions" or because it's best for the "little guy."

I am going to have to go find the transcripts to his show to back some of this up with actual quotes, but this is the impression I get every time I listen. It really makes me wonder how and why so many people like his show... or if they really do.

Hardware

Tonight I bought a 160gb hard drive from CompUSA (80 bucks after rebates for the next couple days) and attempted to install it. Isn't it funny how if you know how to use a computer for anything, ignorant people automatically assume you know how to do everything on computers? Well, I feel sorry for the ignorant person who asks me to help them with a hardware issue... especially if for some strange reason I agree to help them.

Let's just say tomorrow I'll be visiting a computer store buying a new wire--you know, the wide fat one, and not the wide flat one with 40 wires, it has to have 80. Soon, I'll also be reviewing Upgrading and Repairing PC's, a book whose content many have helped me avoid my present dilemna.

Book Review: Photoshop Compositing with John Lund

By John Lund and Pamela Pfiffner. Photoshop compositing starts off giving some interesting perspectives and ideas on how to build (including tips on taking the photos) maintain a library of photographs that could turn out invaluable in future compositing projects. The book talks about John Lund's work style, technique and computer setup, and has some interesting insight on what works for him and even on what he could do better if he was so inclined.

Once the book gets into the actual details of retouching, the real fun (and work) begins. Lund's attention to detail is spectacular. He notices everything, and in turn points out how to fix it. Don't expect to jump in and have a great composited image in an hour or two, his techniques are very precise, professional and more often than not, time consuming.

The final chapter goes through several images he created in the past and gives some useful insight on how they were created and what inspired them.

Most of the book is written in 3rd person, I'm guessing Pamela Pfiffner sat down and had some detailed interviews with Lund and wrote it from what she gathered. While this doesn't really detract from the content of the book, in my opinion, it doesn't flow as well as it might if it had been written in first person.

This book is geared toward the professional Photoshop user who has a decent amount experience and would like to avoid some trial and error and get straight to results in the area of compositing.

Book Review: The Photoshop CS Book for Digital Photographers

By Scott Kelby. The Photoshop CS Book for digital photographers is a great book. As a long-time user of Photoshop, I wasn't sure if there would be a whole lot of new material here, but I was happy to find the book is replete with techniques and tips that I would have never come up with on my own, as well as better ways of doing things that I had already been doing the "hard way."

Among the chapters I found useful were the chapters on color correction; which go into great detail on how to use and understand curves, including providing default settings that will get you started on the right foot. Towards the end of the book there are some great techniques on helping your photographs have that "stock photography look" -- depth of field effects, layer masking for collages and replicating photography filters.

The writing style is enjoyable, the steps are clearly laid out with screenshots and the full-color, intuitive layout of the book leaves little to be desired.

Not only will this book help you improve your Photoshop skills, it will help you have a better eye for what can be improved in your photographs. I often found that the techniques to correct photos were things I had never considered, not because they were difficult or obscure but, simply because I hadn’t noticed that my photos had the problems in the first place.

One thing to note is that if you own the previous version of this book, The Photoshop Book for Digital Photographers, the majority of the content is the same. There is a new section on the improved file browser and a few other new pieces, but it's not really worth it to get a new copy since a large portion of it is the same.

Book Review: Macromedia Flash MX 2004 Actionscript Training from the Source

By Derek Franklin/Jobe Makar. I've spent the last month and a half developing the interface and structure for a new, fairly large CD based training piece that is to be done in Flash. Flash MX 2004 Actionscript training from the Source, though not necessarily intended to be a reference guide, has been a great resource.

Each time I came upon an obstacle in my project and consulted the book, I was pleased to find that there was example code and an explanation that helped me solve the problem I faced. I was repeatedly surprised at the scope of the book--for every problem I encountered there was at least some coverage or direction in the book. I should note that I consider myself to be an expert Flash user, but only a beginner to intermediate Actionscript programmer.

The book is set up in several lessons (21) that are supposed to take about an hour each to complete. While I did not progress through the book lesson by lesson, I found that using the source files on the CD as well as the text of the book, I was able to extract the information I needed fairly easily.

I recommend this book to anyone with a basic knowledge of Flash who would like to become proficient in ActionScript and is willing to take some time to progress through the lessons.

A Few Good Lists

Every once in awhile, a few good lists are called for.
Tunes I've bought on iTunes Recently:
The Chimbley Sweep - The Decemberists
You Raise Me Up - Josh Groban
Fallen - Sarah McLachlan
A Sorta Fairytale - Tori Amos
Upward Over the Mountain - Iron & Wine
Pop Stars - Rooney
Float On - Modest Mouse

Reasons I'm thankful for our Election Process here in the US: (a.k.a. Countries I'm not up for Visiting Right Now)
1. Venezuela
2. Haiti
3. Iran

Most Clicked Program Icons (as of recent)
1. Firefox
2. Flash
3. Photoshop
4. jEdit
5. Dreamweaver

Things I feel like Buying
iPod Mini
External 120gb Firewire Hard drive
Nissan Murano
Alienware Desktop Compter (to replace my dinosaur)

Words/Phrases I'm Tired of Hearing
Vietnam (thank you John Kerry)
Homosexual 'Marriage' (thank you California)
Macromedia Central (thank you every-single-flash-blog on the Internet)
SCO (thank you SCO)

And... that's about all I have to say about that.

Designing Today

Looking back on my day today, I realize that my design process has changed a lot over the past few years. In the past, I spent about 75% of my time working with graphics in Photoshop, Illustrator or with animations in Flash and the other 25% of my time in Dreamweaver or Flash writing the HTML or ActionScript to get them to look decent in a browser.

Lately, things have changed. Today I spent pretty much the entire day at work in jEdit trying to hack out ActionScript to basically dynamically create the graphics in Flash that before I would have just drawn. At home I spent the evening learning (finally) some of the more advanced CSS techniques so my HTML could move towards being standards compliant. By the looks of it, being standards compliant is going to mean spending a lot more time in the code view of Dreamweaver.

Ahhh well, I can't say I don't enjoy writing code, but I do miss the simpler times of doing most of my work with the pen tool or photographs. In the end I think the change is worth it.