My job is in computer graphics, design and also involves some programming. For the past couple years, there's been a recurring theme to conversations about what I do which has gradually grown to become something that really bothers me.
Basically it comes down to this--what will I have to show for my work 20 or 30 years down the road? It's pretty safe to say that none of the websites I've created will be online anymore, it's doubtful if the CD-ROM based training will exist or even function on future computers, the community of almost 1000 people I’ve brought together will probably be gone (though hopefully many of the friendships will remain) and most of the other projects I have worked on will be entirely irrelevant since they all deal heavily with very ephemeral ideas and products.
It could be argued that the type of work I do is the building blocks of the Internet (in whatever form it ends up being) of the future, and that that is a tangible enough result of my work. Really though, the Internet itself is such a big intangible that I don't count it as something I’ll be able to look back on and feel like it’s something I accomplished.
I’d like to be able to physically touch something—hold in my hand and say “I made this.” I want to be able to have something to hand down to my kids from when I was younger. I don’t feel the need to change history or to alter the course of science, but I do feel the need to get my hands dirty—make something, have something to show for all the thousands of hours I spend trying to make a living.
Where else will you find at least 8 thrift stores within a 4 mile radius? How about 20 quick cash stores? Newport News, Virginia. The one and only. I love this town...
I'm currently trying to set up a Flash Socket Server so I can experiment with some more interactive, live updating applications. I've found two free XML socket servers so far - Enhydra (a general purpose, open source socket server written in Java) and Oregano (an xml socket server geared specifically towards Flash, also in Java and open source) and I've also found this XML resource for general XML / Flash questions.
The journey has just begun. If you have examples of Flash apps using an XML socket server or resources, I'd be interested...
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.