SMICK.NET | Website of Mike Smick Graphics and Web Developer

My Free software tools list

It’s been a long time coming, but I’ve finally created my ultimate free software tools list.  Before it was a pathetic page, always a ghost of what it could be.  Now, since I’ve recently upgraded my computer setup, I’ve had a lot of time to refine a perfect setup.

Check out my Free Software Tools page. 

March 12, 2008 at 9:27 pm | computers, design, graphics | No comment

I bought two laptops today

My wife doesn’t know this yet, and she’ll probably punch me, but I bought two laptops today. This purchase was based on a long-term, well-thought-out impulse buy. So what’s up? Well I’ll tell you and maybe you’ll buy two laptops as well. But you don’t have much time to get this kind of laptop. Oh and it’s a $400 direct hit on the wallet.
One Laptop per Child

Over a year ago, I heard about an initiative called the “One Laptop Per Child” (OLPC) project created by a guy named Negroponte. His mission was to create a way to help educate children in 3rd world countries. He decided he could create a communications and learning device to do this. But he knew he’d have major challenges bringing this to fruition. A device would have to be electronic, but work with all the problems that poorer regions have. His idea became a laptop that would overcome as many of these difficulties. It would be low power and have a means to self power, with a hand or foot crank. It would be shock resistant, easy to use and a very open platform. His initiative grew to an organization and is working with governments to see about getting as many of these into schools as possible.

People, myself included have said that these countries need water and basic necessities, not computers. Not true. In fact, that kind of thinking is very one sided. You see, there are thousands or more villages that have school houses, they have systems in place where kids learn. But they can be given a great resource. I’m a bit concerned that this initiative will make the machines vulnerable to theft. This could be true, but it doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be tried.

The organization originally was only going to build the laptops and supply them in bulk. But they decided that the demand was so strong that it would be a great idea to allow western countries get them too. But with a limit. There is only a two-week window which the laptops can be bought. And the two that I bought, I only get one of them. The other is a donation to somebody. After reading about the laptop, it appears to be something I can use and may even solve a problem I’ve had lately with a project I’ll be releasing in the next couple months.

I like being as philathropic as I can, but I’m fairly selfish too. I’m of course writing off half of this purchase as a charitable donation. The other half will be written off under my company, as it’s a work related expense for special projects I’m doing. In particular as a communications device as well as the tablet stylus features I’ll need.

Some really cool features of this laptop:

There’s a lot more to it, and once there’s a hefty community here in the US, more things will be shared and configured among the techy and education crowd. Plus the world over using it will introduce more cool configurations and possibilities. If I can write articles from it in the car and on trips, it’s really valuable to me. It can also be a good platform to program learning games using flash for example. It might just be great to have in the living room to boot up and find out latest movie times.

If you want the best overview on this laptop, read David Pogue’s review in the New York Times and watch the embedded movie with the article.

This is a huge win of a purchase for me. I don’t know who’s going to get my 2nd laptop, but it’s an even bigger win for them. $400 is a lot of money and of course I won’t be eating for a few weeks. But how cool is it to contribute to a good cause, get a new gadget, change a few lives? It’s really cool damnit!

November 12, 2007 at 8:57 pm | computers, gadgets, learning, philosophy, tools | No comment

Lunch with Blender 3D user and teacher Tony Mullen (in Japan)

While coming back from our two-week train trip around Japan, Juri and I stopped in Shimokitazawa before heading back to Juri’s parents house. The reason we stopped? Before we left the states, I sent out a cold email to author and instructor Tony Mullen. He wrote an instructional book on my favorite free 3D software Blender. Like a lot of free and open source software, Blender has a large and strong community of users. The strength is based on bettering your skills and sharing knowledge. From this, I just knew that if my email reached Tony, and if he was free, he would likely agree to meet up for lunch. I knew this because I would do the same thing had the roles been reversed.

Lunch with Blender user and author Tony Mullen

Tony met us at the south exit of the train station at Shimokitazawa, a very hip little area of Tokyo. Despite the unfamiliarity, I had plenty of things to talk to him about. We walked down the road to a nice cafe and had lunch. I wasn’t really hungry as much as I was excited to talk. We talked about Blender and the community, about our experience with open source software. We talked about our own jobs and about Japan. I was surprised to hear that Tony teaches Blender as the main program in an Introduction to Computers class. This is the same kind of class where one might typically cover MS Word, Excel and email. His college is Tsuda University, a womens college in Japan. So his students, and those who form his after school blender club are all female! I’ve never actually seen a girl do any 3D graphics in my life, let alone college freshman girls in their first intro computer class modeling and animating characters.

While in Japan, I also read an article that Tony is starting another book on Blender, about particles and physics. Sound complicated? It’s basically how to animate things like falling stars or a character’s head of hair. Also handling how objects can crash together or blow apart. 3D is fairly complicated and any book on Blender is a welcome addition since it doesn’t have the nearly the books and products you can find for 3D Max, Maya, or Lightwave.

It felt great to speak and hear english for a couple hours for a change. Tony is a very intelligent guy and quite hilarious. You can tell he’s got the international street smarts. His sharp wit and humor exist on a higher level certainly because of his experience and learning. It was a pleasure to hang out that afternoon. Even Juri got a little shopping done in the district as well. I had hoped to ask Tony if he had any tips for me when I teach my six hour blender summer class in July. I didn’t really get to that point though. No problem, I have his book to look through and he signed my copy of it too. He said mine was the first one he signed.

Thanks Tony! Hope we keep in touch and meet up again!

In an unrelated note, I thought I would share with my readers what my $7.50 Green Tea shake from the cafe looked like. Don’t let the pic fool you. The glass was only about 4 1/2 inches tall. This food size / price issue is the hardest thing for me to get used to in Japan. But I will say the taste made up for it big time. Those are white chocolate chunks sprinkled on top of the ice cream with a small amount of sweet red beans.

June 15, 2007 at 2:52 am | 3D, Japan, computers, design, friends, graphics | 1 comment

A little change of scenery, my new Macbook Pro

I’ve been wanting a new computer for quite some time. My desktop has started to look ancient. In fact, all desktops are starting to look ancient. I appreciate all the work I can accomplish with them. I really appreciate the modular flexibility with home built systems. That’s why I’ve built my own, and friends’ computers for a few years now. Recently though I’m starting to tire of the cabling, the fans, the startup times, the heavy box. It’s like when you’re still driving the big Buick even though the world has changed to smart cars all around you.

Computers are expensive. And I didn’t go the cheap route with my recent purchase of the Macbook Pro. I did get a great deal because I acted quickly on a Craigslist ad. I probably saved 500 bucks off the retail price. You might ask why I didn’t go with Windows? I’m not too happy with Microsoft Windows right now. Vista just came out and sure it looks nice, but there are something like six versions of Vista all at different prices. From the lame loser edition up to Ultimate Kitchen sink variety. And I started thinking about how silly it is to have to even have to ponder all those compromises. Even the networking difference between XP Home and Pro is annoying. Apple wins in the simplicity area. If you get a Mac, you get OS X. And you’re getting the eye candy and the functionality that everyone gets for the same price. Also Intel Macs can run Windows XP, they can run Linux on the computer. So I see

I want something easy, dependable and fun. I had a big prejudice against Macs before, and truthfully, some things are still disappointing. But mostly the problems with them have faded. I still like the way the window panes behave in Windows and Linux a little better. And more utility-type programs are available for them. But some things on the Mac are just better. The fonts look great, the screen is pretty, the industrial aluminum is sleek and I don’t tire of it like I thought I would. The built in webcam and microphone is a must have. What is it missing? Mostly just a built-in card reader for digital camera pics would be the only thing coming to mind right now.

You get some pretty cool software with it too. I’d argue you get more with the Mac than with Windows, but that’s probably not true. You do get some real gems. iWeb is a webpage authoring program. It’s very well done. What does Windows give you? Hmm, notepad…what fun. The Mac has an outstanding comic book making program called Comic Life. I’ve used a lot of software and I can tell you that Comic Life is one of the slickest apps around. For what it does it’s at the top of its game. An old coworker remarked of mine said Comic Life looks like the programmers didn’t have a deadline when they made it, because they seemed to put their heart and soul into it. Another killer program, GarageBand, a music and MIDI program is like that too. You really get a lot with them and they are built in. Yay!

Despite my history of complaints to the contrary, I was able to set up my Mac with a lot of free software utilities that I was very happy to find. I still have to decide what to do about the Adobe CS3 Suite. I want it but whoa, it’s pricey. I’ll have to see what my options are for the Mac before I buy the full Adobe suite.

I thought I might share a few free programs I’m using on the Mac.

NeoOffice – totally free Office Suite (Port of OpenOffice.org)
Max Audio Convertor – Free GPL software converts to tons of audio formats
Bean – A simple Word Processor
Xee – image viewer (lets you view whole folders of pictures)
Gimp – Image Manipulator (Like Photoshop but much more annoying)
Inkscape – Free Vector Graphic program for high quality drawings
SnapNDrag – useful little screen capture utility
Instant Shot – an even better screen capture utility
Colloquy – IRC Chat client (helps me when I need answers from pros)
Adium – Regular mainstream chat client
The Unarchiver – unzipping program
NicePlayer – uses QuickTime but cleans and speeds things up
VLC Media Player – Plays tons of media video formats
HandBrake – DVD ripping program
FFMPEGX – utility does video conversions
Black Light – Does this reversal of white to black on your monitor to conserve energy (might help eyes too)
Process Wizard – a boring yet useful tool to let you know what your system is doing
Flip4Mac – Lets you play WMV Windows media videos
SketchUp – Great little 3D modeler for creating your dream home
Burn – CD Burn utility with expanded options
Jumpcut – multi-copy clipboard program (good for writing, gathering clips)
Google Earth – awesome mapping program
MAMP – I call this the pocket webserver
Celtx – Free Screenwriting application
Smultron – useful tabbed text editor
Blender – My favorite 3D program
ArtRage 2 Free – awesome painting program, like real oil paint
Audacity – another audio editor for cutting up audio clips
Firefox – Please tell me you’ve heard of this web browser.
Freemind – mindmapping program for planning virtually anything
MuCommander – Great FTP client for sending files.
Filezilla – FTP program I use on windows, now available for Mac (Yes!)
Fugu – Another FTP client (compare if you wish)
Renamer4Mac – Batch renaming software (for naming your thousands of pics)
Window Dragon – finally a utility that lets you size window panes from all sides
uApp – an uninstaller helper program
Tofu – triple pane (3 column) text viewer

To end this, if you are buying your next computer, consider a Mac. Mac OSX is easy, it’s sharp and it’s cheaper. Macs overall are shedding their more expensive image of the past. Most people worry about relearning a computer if they are leaving Windows. That may be true, but you do have a lot less to worry about in terms of stability issues. Plus, viruses are almost non-existent.

March 1, 2007 at 4:55 am | computers, mac, tools, webdev | 2 comments

Gutenberg rolls over in his grave

I just started a project for a coworker who got married last night. And before I tell you about it, there is a quote “we will always do more for others, than we will do for ourselves” which is so very, very true.

The project is: Me and Tracey Zoeller are combining the photos we took at a coworker Mike’s lovely little outdoor wedding and putting them into a printed hardcover book created through blurb.com. What a cool thing you can do and for under fifty bucks. Blurb gives you some decent software to put your book all together. We’re really excited to see what we can make. My friend Susan pointed me to an article on slate.com about some of the new online photo book creator services that were reviewed. I wanted to take a look at the review to make sure we were making the right choice.
My favorite quote from the article:

“All the Web sites promised that the books were easy to make. They lied. The simplest site required two hours of pointing and clicking. Some books took as long as four hours to create.”

Tragic isn’t it that the author had to endure such an ordeal? I mean really, how awful. You might compare it to the fate of Nelson Mandela, or Senator John McCain in Vietnam. Next you’ll be telling me that it’s going to take a full thirteen days to rebuild the World Trade center. She had to point AND even click for two hours to create her book. Reminds me of that really difficult day I had at my job recently. To complete a task, I literally had to get out of my own chair and walk down a flight of stairs. God I hope I don’t have to do anything like that ever again.

Being part of the publishing business, I know that books are rarely simple, but we must strive for efficiency and ease. There shouldn’t be any barriers to finishing your project quickly right? The other side is, I have no hope for future customers if people can no longer spend a few hours on a project, personal or not. Every video I’ve ever spent time with was a minimum of ten hours, personal or work. Even blogging this takes a couple minutes.

Perhaps the author would like to step back in time about fifteen years and see what it takes to put together a hardbacked, full color personalized photography book. About ten grand I’d say, with a minimum order of 500 copies. You have to draw it on layout paper, then take a cropper ruler and make the grease pen tick marks to every cropped image. And gasp, no world wide web. I’ve heard how the world is so advanced now that people from yesteryear couldn’t survive in this fast paced climate. I think it’s the other way around.

June 9, 2006 at 3:53 pm | computers, media, publishing, rants | No comment

My first real Linux experience – timesucking but cool

Well, it’s 4:30 am on Monday Morning. I haven’t slept yet, but I’ve tried to. I’m at my computer, obviously posting this little entry. This weekend, I finally had free time for something I’ve wanted to do for a while. I installed Ubuntu Linux onto my computer. Ubuntu is like Windows or Mac, it’s just another operating system. It’s quite different from what I can see. There are some huge benefits to using Linux over Windows. One is that almost everything about it is free. You don’t pay for software, except with a few special apps you might find on the internet. Linux is free, and hundreds of apps are included free too. And there are some really good applications I might add. Amazing really.

So I’m not going to complain about that, but I am going to complain about some of the things I’ve encountered. Basically installing software is done through a command line in the terminal. So you have to type in things like sudo apt-get install fooprogram and if that program exists, it will download and install automatically or be upgraded automatically from a repository of software apps. Of course getting to the point where you know how to do all this stuff, takes some playing around. In one sense, it’s easier than Windows, but in most everything it’s more difficult. For example, I’ve spent hours trying to figure out how to get a larger cursor on this thing. Apparently it’s not like Windows where you can just choose the “big” cursor theme in the display properties.

I even installed this program called big-cursor, but I can’t find it anywhere. Also there are little controls in the themes / cursors properties that should let me resize the cursor, but it doesn’t actually do anything. I guess it depends on the cursor theme I have currently running? None of this matters really, but I think cursor size should be an option under the Accessibility menu, and it’s not. In fact, the Accessibility menu is really skimpy, consisting of a text voice reader.
I installed Linux because I really wanted to try out this program called Rosegarden. It’s a full featured music program including midi sequencing and even notation. I wanted to make music and this is the only free program out there that does all these things. Guess what? I installed and played with Rosegarden, it’s very impressive. But because of some unknown missing piece or setting I can’t hear any of the notes in the timeline. I can see it playing back, but a sound font or volume switch is mute which I can’t find. Great program, doesn’t do me any good whatsoever at this point.
One thing I do like are the graphic apps. I was able to play around with the Gimp, which is like Photoshop. I’ve had several complaints about Gimp on Windows, mainly that the tool palettes are too easy to hide. This little problem doesn’t happen in Linux so far. It’s behaving just fine. Now I know why Linux people love the Gimp more than I have in the past. It works better here on linux. Also got Scribus, Inkscape, Krita and more. My setup is a desktop publishing workhorse now!
I’ve downloaded the latest firefox, with a little issue. Firefox comes installed by default, but the recent update had to be acquired through a little searching and some special code that I pasted into the terminal. Again, pretty annoying, but it works fine now. Extensions are working too. Firefox is a must have. It’s a web browser if you haven’t heard of it, but it’s very extensible and really is helpful for me as a web developer and heavy surfer.
So my experience with Ubuntu is that I’m impressed, but with the hours I’ve put in trying to customize, It’s pretty frustrating. However, despite Mac OSX being really easy to use I don’t know I could customize that anymore than this. Less in fact. I shouldn’t expect to know everything about a computer right from the beginning, especially an operating system designed to be for tinkerers. I will say that If I walked into a workplace and had to use Ubuntu, (already set up for me), I would be content. It beats Windows in so many of it’s offerings out of the box, and for general computing, email, chat, word processing, it’s a perfect choice.

Apologies to those of you reading this who couldn’t give a crap about computers. Unfortunately I’m obsessed with them, so I tend to have a lot to say about my experiences.

Bed time

May 15, 2006 at 6:04 am | computers, music | 1 comment

Typography Learning links

Found a course on typography today from looking at the Open Courseware finder. If you want to take a class on typography, check this out first, it’s full of resourses. In fact, all the links could be bottled up and saved and that would be most of the course anyway. Hmm, I think I’ll do that. See below. Oh yes and the course page: link

Typography Links

Also, a nice little Flash Course, Documentary Film Class, HTML Class, and How People Learn

December 20, 2005 at 10:38 pm | computers, design, training | No comment

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