Farewell Steve Jobs
I have kind of hidden the way I felt about Steve Jobs’ death over the past couple weeks. But it’s been on my mind a lot. I didn’t know Steve Jobs and maybe it’s silly to have so much emotion or interest over somebody I never met. I mean I know all the stories about him being belligerent or cruel. And I know yet another article about him is just going to make people roll their eyes.
It’s just that I keep finding myself going back to all the writings and the videos that I’ve looked at over the years. My first computer was an Apple IIc. When my parents brought it home, I just about fainted. I do believe it was the best present they’ve ever shared with us. I think of how expensive it was and I know at the time my dad stretched his money to get one of the better ones from the shop. They got it for all of us and they chose a special combination of components. They put thought and effort and money into it and I deeply thank them and love my mom and dad for that. Back then computers were so new, most people didn’t really have the mindset that it would be obsolete in a few months. That wasn’t a notion. Computers were a new experience and you wanted to squeeze it for all it could do. You weren’t regretting or thinking of your next computer really. I wanted to dig in, figure it out. I saw them walk in with those boxes and I seized on them. I hooked it all up myself with all the confidence in the world at age 10 or whatever it was. My life would never be the same.
Around that time, I read an article in some magazine about Apple and Steve Jobs too. It was probably at the dentist’s office or maybe my parents’ Reader’s Digest. In that article it talked about the beginnings of Apple and while reading suddenly I was transported in that garage with Steve Jobs. Even though I was still a boy, I was suddenly feeling like that young entrepreneur. For the first time I saw this image in my mind of how new important things were invented and that stamped something onto me permanently.
After a short while, I learned how to use the word processor, I copied little BASIC programs I saw in pamphlets or library books. I played the little physics and history games, I programmed the turtle and played the hell out of the action games. My friend Eddie and I would play at his house and we shared all the games we had, whatever we could copy. I’d save up the $10 or $15 every couple weeks and buy new games. In seventh grade I went on a double-date to the mall. What would have been my first date, I was actually stood up, so while my friend and his date went to the cinema, I bought myself an awesome Karate game with my movie and popcorn money.
In working with my first computer, I became more technical about things over time. I started paying attention. I learned that when things don’t happen as you expect, to go back and see what you did. You look at the links in the chain of events. And making mistakes there’s no mess, just try again. I remember and appreciate the simplicity of the computer that I started off with and how I found it easy to learn these fundamentals that I use now everyday in my life and job. The same way I’d lie in bed going over how to solve a problem in a game, I do to this day just on different sets of challenges. I don’t take these tools for granted and I find myself feeling a bit sorry for others who don’t seem to have the ambition or interest to try new things and look problems right in the eye.
I thought as a little tribute to Steve and his company and their inventions, I would list a few of the many lessons I gained from that little computer my parents gave me. They’ve come a long way since that Apple IIc and so have I.
- Find the ways something works and go to the edge where the line is drawn, note the capabilities and faults
- Something failed? Repeat. If you can explain in words what’s happening, you can solve a problem.
- Look at all the pieces, and assume they will fit together somehow and just get started assembling.
- Try everything just for the fun of it. Luck and discovery are FUN!
- Press all the buttons at all the different times.
- Share something you learned right after with as many people as you can right now!
- Encourage other people to try new things by showing them your enthusiasm
- Experience for experience sake
- If you don’t like something, move on, but don’t expect to be getting away that easily
- Enjoy your obsessive focus, even when others misunderstand
- Get mad, huff and puff, and come back tomorrow, you will be better
I’m grateful for Steve and Steve starting Apple. When I learned about them, I had a new feeling of pride in inventiveness that I didn’t have before. I connected real people with the inventions that I loved. Before me, young men probably would have started their journeys on the stories of Ben Franklin or Edison and many great fictional characters. I truly did grow up with the story of Apple as my adventure began.
I’m almost ashamed to tell you this lest I ruin a good stream of thought, but for a really long time, I really couldn’t stand Apple products. I was mad because they were always getting media attention despite all these mistakes I could see, things that I would never let get by. I wanted to tell people, “No! Stop listening to the propaganda, look at this, why would anyone ever do this?” And I would point out something mundane but that mattered to me. I think of that and I am reminded that we all can embrace our preference and taste and our expression of that makes us unique. And it took me a while but I see in my work that an intense fixation and follow through is the only way certain things will be shaped as they must to meet your approval.
It’s quite nostalgic for me to think of Steve Jobs. Back then and now I can always imagine that when you have a massive undertaking that’s never been done before and is so scary and intimidating, it’s like Steve is speaking to me…”Mike, just take it into the garage. What seems impossible now to even understand, soon enough you’ll control, master and then refine.”
I’m also inspired once again by Steve Jobs. His genius and his flaws are coming clear and creating a connection for me again. It helps me forgive myself and others for our flaws and just continue. Intensity or abrasiveness doesn’t always mean what you think they mean. And I’m inspired by the real notion of impermanence. It’s one thing to hear from the Dalai Lama or in a book, but Steve was this hero that I didn’t really know I had until he was gone. And then I realized that’s exactly who he always has been. And as a hero, in some ways he was better than I even understood because he tells us we’re going to die and we better not waste our talents. And we better follow what we love. His new message to me is don’t let yourself be satisfied or dissatisfied for too long.
I suppose now Steve’s story is one I can pass onto my son. And just maybe I can forge that nostalgia of mine into a little inspiration for him. And happily, it’s Steve’s computer that enables my son to talk to his grandparents thousands of miles away across the oceans every single day. Our family computers are mainstays and that’s what Steve imagined long ago. He might not have been the only one, but he was one of the few who really pushed and built it into the culture even when he certainly must have had doubts about it. He must have been lost at some point in all the problems and complexity. But Steve and the team at Apple persisted. And then Steve was smart enough to usher in the era by inspiring all kinds of people. A great product still needs the right kind of charismatic leaders to show us the way, make us suddenly see the potential in something new and unfamiliar. The vision had to be planted everywhere. Steve did that.
So to close up this goodbye to Steve Jobs, I just wanted to say the reason I write this is that I believe we should take note that inspiration is as priceless as it is simple. And we need the simple to get through the most challenging times and inspiration to help us embrace the things we don’t completely understand.
October 25, 2011 at 2:17 am | computers, inspiration, nostalgia, philosophy | No comment
Concatenate cells in OpenOffice & LibreOffice
I have fairly simple needs when I do spreadsheets. Concatenation and Sums are about all I do. I’ve had trouble with concatenation before. What is concatenate? It’s when you have cells like “Mary” and “Watson” and you need to push the data in those cells together inside a separate cell to be “Mary Watson” combined. Why? I don’t know, maybe you’re doing a mail merge and putting “Dear ‘Mary Watson’ you owe us back debt. You need the space between her names for her to take you seriously.
Here’s how it’s done in OpenOffice.org and LibreOffice. You have the spreadsheet set up and you select the cell where you want to have the combined name. Either type the equal sign in the cell or click in the formula bar.
=CONCATENATE(D2;" ";E2)
Notice the two semi-colons right? This was always hanging me up. I kept getting Err508 or Err509 or something when I’d do this. Thankfully a little playing around worked. You want to know what else? LibreOffice can use commas instead of semi-colons in this formula, but OpenOffice cannot. Also there’s a shorter way to do this too. You don’t need the word CONCATENATE or the parentheses. And you can use & instead of semi-colons. Short and sweet.
=D2&" "&E2)
What else? Well just in case you haven’t done this, if you have a big spreadsheet, you can duplicate your formula where it will replicate itself properly and use the correct cell numbers. To do this, you just select the cell with the formula and click on the lower right square dot and drag downward as far as you need. Your formula will regenerate properly for the rows beneath it.
February 13, 2011 at 12:50 am | computers, learning | No comment
Yahoo! is not shutting down Delicious social bookmarking
Update: I knew I was rigth on this one. Not that I had actual facts, but just because of critical thinking. Delicious may live somewhere else. (Why not keep the same domain too!) A blog from the Delicious team confirms it will live, though the actual posting is down at the time of this writing.
* * *
No web service is certain. Del.icio.us, or Delicious.com has been around for years and is no exception. So you always take a risk in depending on the cloud, using a free service. And given what happens to Yahoo services like Geocities for example, we’ve been shown that web services from Yahoo can be vulnerable despite their longevity.
But Delicious should be more immune than a lot of other fly-by-night web services. It represents a very important informational center with a long history in web years. Not only that, but as boring as bookmarks might seem it also makes up a unique and usable social network. Using Delicious, I can gauge interest in a particular subject, participate in the promotion of something, and find things that I wouldn’t normally be exposed to. I can locate like-minded people and get a hell of a lot of entertainment from all this information.
I was understandably shocked at the articles about the “sunsetting” of Delicious and a screengrab of an internal presentation at Yahoo! that proves it. But here’s why I don’t think we have to worry.
We have entered the period where data visualization is JUST about to get a hell of a lot more interesting to a lot more people. Touch devices in the hands of millions, tablets and readers set to become mainstays, phones, large format screens. This is the age where reading data live and interactive is going to enhance people’s lives. There is NO slowdown. And let me quote Joshua Schachter, an original creator of Delicious, “Showing a user how popular his actions are is inevitably addictive.”
Ever since I watched this TED talk on Data Visualization by Hans Rosling I’ve understood how meaningful this is. Services and tools that can be used for trending in more animated ways are here and are coming.
A problem with delicious is that it can be misused and spammed. This hasn’t been much of an issue for most of us though. The popular feeds may contain uninteresting items, but they don’t make up the majority of bookmarks and things will be uninteresting whether they be spambot or deliberate human bookmarks so users expect anomalies and know how to ignore them. They also don’t infect the more specific or specialized tags so the more you need good specific data, the less you’ll see spammy residue.
Let me point to the main reason I’m not convinced of it’s closing Delicious. PR is a bitch. A user revolt on Yahoo is NOT what they need right now along with an impending layoff. They can call it a service that doesn’t align with their goals. But social bookmarking, whether they like it or not is a service people want and need. I personally have invested enough time to generate close to 8000 bookmarks of my own. The beauty of it is, even though many of my stored links have probably expired (from dead sites) there is an extraordinary amount of data in Delicious, and feeds are generated from every which way. The mining of that data is valuable, but only if the service remains current.
If people who use Delicious and Yahoo are stripped from their Delicious collection and the ability to use, track and follow the site, you’re going to see blowback in the form of cancelled Yahoo Mail accounts across the board. Delicious being a very “hackable” simple system and has gathered followers that respect that kind of software. Those same followers aren’t ones you want to cross. Because those same people blog, promote and above all, complain in all the right spaces.
Yahoo isn’t ready for the backlash. They aren’t prepared to lose their ass over a simple site. Time to man up, get the right people, lean and mean on the job creating the next generation of tools used to view and data mine all these wonderful resources. And then selling those tools to the tablet content creators, to the tablet owners, to the digital signage companies, making them offers they can’t refuse. That is how Delicious will continue, through exploiting it from the inside and outside. Because as long as the data remains for the majority of us to share easily and hack a little bit, how it’s sold and marketed doesn’t really affect us. After all, we chose to make these things public because we want this data to be seen and found.
December 17, 2010 at 5:32 am | computers, media, publishing, tools, webdev | No comment
The Apple iPad revealed. What now?
I was wrong on plenty of things regarding this tablet computer. Some of the things are disappointing, but I’m happy I’ve taken some time to digest it a bit, to listen to some arguments. I think Apple’s iPad is pretty darn cool. It *might* be something I’d buy, but I can’t say for sure just yet.
I’m going to start with this statement. I’m relieved that I now know what this is. The build-up was just ridiculous. But I think that the suspense was valuable because people put forth so many ideas, they may have even encouraged innovation by other organizations to meet needs.
I think the iPad will be a good computer for people of every age to read and learn. I think most media companies will like it because it encourages the consuming of their information, books, films, and audio. And it’s created to be hyper-convenient to purchase those materials via this mainstream channel.
People were hoping for more than the iPhone of course. And the lack of camera surprised some. I think I don’t mind it not having an onboard camera as long as a durable one can be connected. I think it might be better as a peripheral actually, then it could be pivoted to see the subject best for whatever use case, chatting or games.
One area that does bother me right now, but I hope for resolution is the lack of a dedicated drawing program. I thought for sure that one of the most important ways to justify the existence of a device like this is to throw down with designers. In a way, I think Apple owes the design community something like that because the design community supports them. People were mentioning they were surprised about a lack of stylus. I kind of agree, but I want it known that a stylus does exist that can work with these capacitive screens. How the device will handle a sharp input, I don’t know. And that’s too bad, because it’s a niche opportunity. But I think it’s something Apple probably wants other companies to handle, Adobe of course and smaller companies.
Sounds good right? Well yes but still I go back to this intended as a consuming device.
What else is missing? Well I said in my earlier posting that I expected the device to have a real operating system, not just the iPhone OS. Well I was wrong. And that means it doesn’t really have the ability to support programs and utilities outside approved app store apps. Will this matter to most people who can find useful programs in the 150,000 large app store? Nope, they’ll be fine. And in fact, for every lost hobbyist, there will be hundreds or thousands of users who are given more than they need at prices they don’t mind, in a closed platform they don’t mind.
The good news is, plenty of other devices predating and developed concurrently are going to work for hobbyists. And these will gain a lot from the iPad. The envelope must be pushed. And it’s happening in price, weight, battery life, user experience and more.
What’s hot? As much of a bugger it is for me to say, the app store is really hot. Because it is a market where a lot of people can get involved. Sure it’s closed off, but it’s not 150,000 strong by keeping people out. It’s quite open too. And somehow non-public apps will be made as this device and platform evolves if certain businesses want to take advantage.
What else is missing? I think a lot about the possibilities of a really strong voice recognition to complement a handwriting recognition where one could produce text to share these ideas almost as quickly as with a keyboard.
So after seeing the real thing, will I get it? I’m torn, I mean the price points certainly make it more fun, but given that the potential for the Android devices, the battery life potential of Pixel Qi screen tablets and Ebook Readers and it’s hard to part with the money if I don’t have a killer drawing program. And I want the It’s a good idea if one were to skip this device that they might keep an eye on the app store still. Because that’s where one might find exactly what they’re looking for.
It’s very exciting. A few years ago, there were plenty of devices that would fail and never return. One might think this wasn’t something people wanted and would go away before it reached a potential. You get the feeling now though that we are definitely inching towards the right version for most people in this form factor. It’s happening now and just like all other technologies, it will keep getting better. It will get to the point where you will see too many reasons to buy one. They present many opportunities for in-home control over networked devices, energy settings or other monitors and smart features.
February 5, 2010 at 7:07 am | computers, design, mac | No comment
Interesting possibilities in Photoshop CS5
I remember getting pretty excited the first time I saw the Seam Carving technology from a SIGGRAPH demonstration, which eventually made it’s way into Photoshop, The GIMP and Xara Xtreme. That seemed to happen quickly, and I’m certain because the code was made open to a certain extent. A custom app was built, a plugin for the Gimp was great. Xara and Photoshop integrated Seam carving really well. And it works. It’s actually one of my best new tools I can make use of probably once for every web project I do.
Now things are evolving even more with what may be upcoming features that will help with fixing and doctoring photos. I don’t find doctoring photos that enjoyable really. I love helping customers, but I wish most of this wasn’t necessary. That being the case, if you have to doctor a photo, it might as well be pretty easy to do.
Here is a video of Improved Seam Carving and PatchMatch, both of which were part of an Adobe/Princeton/University of Washington project. To my knowledge, nobody said explicitly this WILL be in Photoshop CS5. But it is shown operating in the Photoshop interface and take from it what you will. As an aside, I like this website I discovered. CS5.org. Despite it’s authoritative look, it appears not to be an Adobe site. Granted I could be wrong, but it’s showing Youtube Videos rather than using an Adobe player, and it’s showing a white paper using Scribd rather than an Acrobat-esque flash paper embedded PDF viewer. Still that doesn’t mean it’s not all great information.
Adobe does have a video from a few members of their user experience UX design team re-published on the CS5.org website. It features some discussion and examples of multi-touch and how they can leverage it for their graphics creation tools.
October 4, 2009 at 5:10 am | computers, design, graphics, media | No comment
Dropbox – the perfect computer utility
Ever get tired of sending attachments to people? You write the email, click “add attachment”, browse, find, upload, wait, AND, send. Blah, that’s annoying just to think about. I got tired of it a long time ago. That’s why I’ve been using this service called Dropbox for probably two years now, as soon as I heard of it. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it in this blog before, but anyway, you want to check it out and get it. It’s truly one of the best online services ever created. And it’s in both free and pay premium versions.
Simple instructions here, visit getdropbox.com and download their utility. It works on Windows, Mac and Linux. Install and it makes a networked folder in your computer that will sync up with the Dropbox server. Files dropped in there are automatically archived on the internet for you. Dropbox let’s you share 2 Gigabytes of files free, and you can pay a small fee for even more storage.
To share a file, move or copy it into your Dropbox public folder (create subfolders inside if you like) right-click and choose to Copy public link. Paste this link URL into your email and you can share the file with somebody without having to attach anything, (and without them needing to detach it.) Here’s an example of the public link you’d be pasting into your email:
http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/000000/foldername/filename.jpg
As a designer, it’s been a great tool to use because I can quickly update a file on my desktop and it re-synchronizes and my client can just revisit the original email I sent for the link. They will always be downloading the most recent file. Just remember if files are big you’ll watch them sync with the server, the little icon next to the file will indicate when it’s done synchronizing.
Dropbox also archives versions of files and let’s you revert to them. It’s not infinite versioning, but it’s an added bonus that can help you in case of an accident. If your PC goes down, you can also install dropbox on the new or refreshed pc and it will sync it back for you. Those files will only delete if you actually delete them from your folder. I also use it to share files between my PC and Mac, so no worries if I’m on or off my home network.
Just get it, and start taking advantage of this perfect utility’s exquisite convenience. Oh and if you had the idea that you might be able to share files over the internet with a second person, you can definitely do that, you could share your login with a person, (which works but might not be what Dropbox intended) or add users within the service as documented. The free service is great, the pay service is worth it.
September 29, 2009 at 11:19 pm | computers, design, gadgets, mac, tools | No comment
Apple finally gets a clue on memory cards
I’m happy to report, that Apple finally pulled their head out from underneath them by finally adding an SD card slot to some of its upcoming laptop line. Research revealed to them that their customers liked using digital cameras and didn’t like using the USB cable. What? People don’t like carrying a jumbled mess of cables in their bag?
Do me a big favor. Next time some fanboy Apple enthusiast says something like “Apple drives the industry” you will simply respond, “Yeah like that time they added an SD card slot 6 years after everyone else. Booyah!!!” And of course they will say “That’s because nobody wanted it…blah blah” and at that point they have already shown themselves to be a hairy charlatan.
Apple is brilliant though. Shameless self-promoters. Imagine if Campbell’s soup held big conferences every year where they said things like, “Hey we’re even more awesome because we finally added a pull tab to our cans since we’ve determined that’s where the industry is going to go and we are leading the way.” Meanwhile, the actual smart platform-agnostic critics with a crinkled brows say “Steve, sardine cans have had that style pull tab for 90 years now…” and of course those voices are drowned out by a bunch of blue-jean wearing black shirted sycophants. (Tee-hee I don’t even know what that word means I’m just trying to make my friends mad at this point. You hear me Matt and Susan?)
P.S. This post was written on a very flawed, nondescript, overpriced, feature-limited Mac that has not improved my lifestyle like the commercials said it would. In fact I’ve had just as many annoyances with it as I might expect with other computers. But it’s not all bad and kind of cool in it’s own way. In other words, it hasn’t solved all my problems, and introduced several new ones, which means it deserves very little fan-fare, certainly not the degree it has enjoyed.
P.P.S. Keep my rant in perspective. I’m just providing balance here because I’m being overwhelmed with too many flattering articles about Macs and iPod 3Gs’s today. Sometimes you have to introduce a little blowback and overstate the bad things. All in all, this is a good release for Apple. And I’ll give them a little more positive attention when the rest of the hardworking industry gets their credit when they release great stuff, which they do constantly and they don’t get the tickertape parade. Currently Apple enjoys an enormous mindshare that I feel it doesn’t deserve next to all the other innovators.
June 8, 2009 at 5:57 pm | computers, gadgets, mac | 1 comment
Name Your Price – Irradiated Software Gets It.
Being a computer power user, you often have subtle needs that can improve the navigating experience. After a lot of time spent in your default environment you think, “I wish I had a utility for that limitation.” or “Why didn’t they foresee this redundant nonsense while making the operating system?” For a long time, my biggest pet peeve with Mac OS X was that you couldn’t resize the app or folder windows without being forced to grab the little bottom-right corner triangle.
For custom resizes, this became a big nuisance, as it requires precision mousing. I’d often argue with people about the inferiority there, even commenting on earlier Mac OS window shade capability. Mac users simply didn’t identify with my problem. No searches yielded any programs. Was I really mostly alone on my window management hassles? Was I just too fidgety for changing my environment? Later, likely due to the surge in Mac purchases and migrations, seemingly enough people were annoyed by this because programs emerged addressing my exact problem.
The first program I found is called Zooom. It’s a commercial utility that allows you to grab or resize a window by holding down a set of keys. Doesn’t even require touching the edges. You can even grab windows from behind others. Despite some cool features, at the time I found it too pricey after evaluating the trial version. Also it didn’t operate properly on all programs. I thought that for a small task like this, there must be a script or freebie out there. Coming from Windows and Linux, hundreds of small single-serving apps like this are free.
One day, I was searching the depths of a web forum and somebody had mentioned a free program written by one guy, called Window Dragon. This program modified your system so all sides or corners of windows and programs were draggable much like Microsoft Windows and Linux. It had some quirks and was programmed for a previous version of OS X. I was too skeptical to try it despite being free. Something in the program description didn’t sit well with me and I felt my system modification might be detrimental somehow with other programs.
Eventually on a day I was really frustrated with the problem, I went back and purchased Zooom. It had updated to a new version and I believed it would work well. Zooom does what it advertises and some upgrades are free. Plus it can be kind of fun. But at $15.99 and the fact that it doesn’t work properly on multi-panel Adobe software (conflicting keys and jitters that I can’t really articulate verbally) I just didn’t feel my problem was fully solved. I phased it out of my workflow. Since I couldn’t depend on it for everything, I decided it almost isn’t worth initiating if I was getting mixed and unexpected results or annoyances.
A couple months ago, I found a little utility called TwoUp by a company called Irradiated Software. This program will pop your window instantly to take up the left, right, top or bottom half of your screen. No small adjustments, just quick reliable action. This is great for copying files from one folder to another, or seeing the contents of two webpages simultaneously. TwoUp is free. YES! After they programmed it, the company got a lot of requests for certain functionality. So they created a beefier version of TwoUp with added features and called it SizeUp. They listened to legitimate requests, kept the free version and asks that people pay for the better version. Many companies have this type of offering, but too many create the good version initially and strategically strip down the LE Lite Edition (Loser Edition). Going in that order, companies tend to take away too much and leave you feeling like, well, a loser.
What I’m very impressed with, and what prompted my comments here is the pricing strategy. I mentioned earlier that Zooom was $15.99. Not that expensive right? Obviously not since I did end up springing for it albeit reluctantly. That’s fine, but a power user often needs 4 or 8 utilities like these for easier computing. A few utilities priced at this level you are approaching the cost of the entire OS X operating system! And when you use little utilities for one thing, and not too often, the popular $19.99-29.99 pricing scheme just looks wrong. That’s why I was so pleased with Irradiated Software’s pricing of SizeUp. They use the pricing scheme called “Name Your Price.” They state that given the cost of sales / download / administration, they need to price it at minimum $1.26. You can own it for that price. They have a suggested price of $7.99 to match what they think it’s worth. And if this is the greatest sliced-bread utility you’ve ever used, you can go above that too and they will be thrilled.
I love this. Their suggested price is very reasonable. Clearly they get it. And they will sell more in volume than if it were $16 or more. Plus, it’s stupid not to buy it at $1.28 if you’ve had the trouble with windows like I have. Plus when you are in the middle of the transaction, you might begin to think, well I appreciate their efforts, so why not throw in a couple extra bucks because I want their continued progress. And certainly among good honest people, many wouldn’t feel right not paying the entire suggested price. Then of course you have the very generous folk pledging even more. There you go.
To wrap up, I don’t want to say that Zooom is bad or TwoUp/SizeUp is much better in all ways. I’m just expressing my appreciation for what I feel is clear, objective thinking and pricing. I think with the iPhone and the app store, there are a lot of people getting used to charging for, and paying for smaller yet useful utlities at lower prices. More might even buy just to try it. Just like you’d spend 75 cents on a video game just to pass the time. These are good tools and I’m glad they exist. See below for links for Mac and for a Windows alternative.
Irradiated Software, TwoUp
Irradiated Software, SizeUp
Zooom/2 by CodeRage
MaxTo for Windows (screen partitioner)
March 31, 2009 at 10:43 am | computers, tools, writing | 1 comment
Nice Primer Video on Digital Photography
A new favorite website of mine, Academic Earth is attempting to compile and make more efficient, the university open courseware sites video content. I was obviously interested in what kind of classes might be available in design and related computing. There is a category of computer science, but not design. Fortunately due to overlap, a few classes in my field are there to enjoy even though they don’t exactly hit the mark.
I think you’ll like this workshop on Digital Photography given by David J. Malan at Harvard University. It’s quite detailed, but not out of range of the novice. I appreciated some of the examples and analogies given. It’s nice to be clear on technical equipment and it’s limitations. Particularly, since cameras are products nearly all of us buy, we all benefit from knowing a little more before we buy.
Workshop – Digital Photos by David Malan via AcademicEarth.org
Dear Universities offering open courseware. Please add design, typography and more. It’s fun, and valuable and useful for so many people. I suppose it would involve a lot of screen capturing which might not be as easy as video production, however, that doesn’t mean it’s not viable or not worth the resources to try.
February 1, 2009 at 5:12 am | computers, gadgets, graphics, photography | No comment
Holiday Linux for Aunt Judy
Two posts ago, I attempted to lay out whether Linux could replace Windows sufficiently for most people. Some rewarding field work today proves it can and does happen. My Aunt was complaining about viruses again after we reinstalled XP less than a year ago. Imagine my surprise hearing of this. But it got me thinking about what I could do about it this time for a more permanent fix. Refreshing Windows is annoying for sure, but worse is the way people respond to their infected computers. They feel uncertain if they can properly use a computer, that maybe they caused the problem. Some feel guilty for wasting money on an lemon, even though their PC is probably fine.
Fortunately aunt Judy has a small set of needs for computing. Webmail and Internet searches and maybe the occasional letter document. She added pressure by surprising me with her dysfunctional printer that could only spit out blank pages. And we needed to give one more critical device a closer look. She hopes to one day see her grandkids on her new webcam before they graduate college.
I only had a disc of Ubuntu Studio 8.10 on hand that I had planned to eventually use at home. It would work fine, though it has too many programs Jude has no use for. Oh well. Either I could spend two hours removing stuff in the package manager or She could simply ignore some of the menu clutter. After a briefing, she assured me she didn’t have anything on the computer she was keeping so I went with an overwrite install on the hard drive. A nice clean slate. Cool!
Ubuntu Studio didn’t come with office, so I installed OO.org. Then I added MS Core fonts and Flash Player 10 for a better web experience. Of course the Ubuntu auto updates were dying to join the party so we let them in.
This “Studio” distribution of Linux is centered around media creation and it’s really beautiful. I loved the startup animation and login screen. The main menu bar and empty desktop are dead simple. I replaced the wallpaper with a fun 3D graphic I created last year and some nice big essential desktop icons. Then I reinstated some of their web favorites. Judy was pleased I didn’t delete Google and returned it to its proper location. Everything was going well, but I still had that feeling that I’d be abandoning them tonight and something they expected wouldn’t be there. I think they voted for Bush so maybe they’ll appreciate security and overlook any of the liberties I accidently might have taken away from them. ;>)
Next I installed the latest skype from a .deb installer file on skype’s homepage. The webcam and video test worked, but later we got an audio io error when I rang her from Skype at home. Add to that, her printer managed to still only spittle out blank pages. This makes me growl. Sure we haven’t lost anything that wasn’t disabled before, but I can’t stand loose ends.
What is great though? Once prolific virus code on Windows will wither and die trying to execute on Linux. Plus the addition of a hardware router (I can’t believe I missed this the last time.) helped us close the door on ancient history.
Now for the absolute best thing about today. Spending some fun time with Jude and Sammy chatting about everything. Family, politics, past Christmas’ and listening to old tape recordings of me, my sisters and my cousin Jen when we were 4-7 years old. I hope she had fun like I did. Judy apologized that it took six hours to do everything, but I could have been out of there in just two hours if I really wanted to just get it done. I loved introducing them to some of the fun stuff I do with computers such as discovering favorite music on Pandora.com web radio. They had no idea something like that existed. We also watched part of a feature film in full screen on Hulu.com and looked at all the free movies and TV shows Hulu has. It was a good test for Linux Flash player too. Judy’s old Dell was performing well and I think it might have long life ahead of it. I’m hoping now there are some new activities that will be enriching for them.
Next mission: Give Judy my old (yet very booming) Cambridge speakers so they have even better radio sound. And we WILL conquer the webcam and printer troubles eventually.
