The $999 MacBook fades away. It's been fun.

Over the past week, Apple released a full version upgrade to Mac OS, Mac OS 10.7 Lion. Roars, apparently. They also released new computers and an updated, Thunderbolt-enabled display. There are new Mac Minis, and a very impressive and aggressive update to the MacBook Air. Apple’s pretty proud  of themselves over it and they have a right to be.

“According to benchmark tests performed by Wired, the new 11-inch MacBook Airs increased their speed performance by 149% over last year’s model. Their tests put the 11-inch MacBook Air on par with last year’s 17-inch MacBook Pros.  The power behind this beautiful machine is incredible, especially when you consider that it’s 2.38lbs is nearly half that of my old 13-inch MacBook Pro…” – Cult of Mac, Sleek and Powerful, the New 11-Inch MacBook Air Will Blow You Away, Again

After a spate of rumors, simultaneously with releasing the new Macbook Airs, Apple did actually EOL and discontinue the MacBook. Not TOO much of a surprise. It’s consistent with the current ark of Apple’s relentless thinking different… and relentlessly forward. Still, It does raise the eyebrow a bit.

The once popular little white beasite got squeezed out between the impressive MacBook Air update at the same $999 entry price point, and sales have been fading. Laptop users have been also taking on the small up-sell to MacBook Pros with their better specs and performance. The writing was on the wall on this one.

Jim Dalrymple at The Loop gets some of Apple’s thinking with a Conversation With Apple Execs:

“Thunderbolt makes the MacBook Air a high performance citizen,” David Moody, Apple’s vice president of Hardware Product Marketing, told The Loop. It gives the Air more I/O options than it ever had before.”

With the release of the new MacBook Air came the demise of the white MacBook. Apple said it made sense after seeing the trends of its customers.

“One of the things we saw is that the MacBook Air was simply more popular than the MacBook,” said Moody. “It does more in half the weight and in half the volume.”

I am now wondering how long the Optical Drive on the MacBook Pro, or even the iMac  has to live… not to mention Firewire ports. But they’re gonna go, folks. Get used to the idea. Nice that the new Thunderbolt Display has all the ports, Gigabit Ethernet, Firewire 800, audio… to plug the Macbook Air into, but unless I need the display too, $999 is kind of pricey for a dock, however “ultimate” it might be.

And it’s still a glossy screen, but that’s a separate rant.

Along the same lines, the future of the Mac Pro lies hidden behind the walls of Culpertino, but professional users do seem to be sweating a bit. As seen by the Final Cut Pro X release, Apple’s attention is not necessarily focused on the needs of professional users in favor of the much larger and lucrative consumer and “prosumer” market.

[Update!] Since I wrote this I have learned a bit about what’s up with the Mac Pros. Intel is suffering a delay in releasing the Sandy Bridge E5 series Xeon CPU chips most likely to go into the next generation of the Mac Pros — not expecting to launch till 1st Quarter of 2012. So I wouldn’t expect new Mac Pros before next spring. My best guess suggests we’ll be seeing CPU bumps, more SSD options and likely reasonably, if not spectacular Graphic Card updates, and of course Thunderbolt Ports. I think the Optical Drives and Firewire Ports should last at least one more generation, unless Apple revises the case design and revisions the Mac Pro entirely. But your rumors are as good as mine. Essentially guessing based on Apple’s behavior.

It’s obvious that Apple is getting out of the pressing discs and boxed software biz as fast as possible in favor of an all-streaming all-download age. (and that’s your answer to the blu-ray question too, dream on ) I’m not pulling this out of thin air, check this: Macrumors: Apple Kills More Boxed Software In Favor of App Store.

Apple is headed for the (i)Cloud and taking you there whether you’re afraid of heights or not. And if you don’t have a broadband connection, Apple doesn’t want to know you. The Mac OS X 10,7 Lion release is 4GB and download only from the online Apple Store. But for that $29, they ditch millions of dollars in pressing discs and months of prep in packaging and moving them. (They are offering Lion on a USB stick in August at a bit of a “physical media tax”) If you’re using Tiger or plain Leopard, Apple doesn’t want to know you. Snow Leopard is required to access the Mac Store. Using an ancient Power PC machine? Apple really doesn’t want to know you. You don’t fit into Apple’s vision. You’re not one of the cool kids.

So stick a crowbar into your wallet. Get upgraded, get wired, and get with the program. The page is turning, folks.

Do try to keep up.

Click above for Large Image (900 x 600 px)

“Ook ook ack! Eeeeeek! OOOK!” [Trans: "My God, it's full of apps... " ]

I usually don’t repeat subjects, and I JUST reviewed the iPad2. But sometimes a marketing campaign can trod over the same raw nerve so many times before one has to spout off on it.

I don’t want to get off on a rant here but…

Apple’s overuse of the word “magical” when promoting the iPad just gets under my skin. Actually it annoys the poop out of me. Probably because it’s patently horseshit. It’s a piece of TECHNOLOGY, people, not the gorram Philosopher’s stone. We’re not a bunch of knuckle dragging homo habilis hominids howling and flinging rocks, sticks and poop at the frakkin’ monolith. Sometimes I wonder what Apple’s marketing people think of their audience. I do realize what they’re getting at, the idea of an information appliance so immediate and intuitive to use, that the actual interface disappears and you become immersed in just using the thing.

Yes, iPads are damn clever little machines. Actually, they’re right proper little slabs of electric crack, they’re so fun. Despite the absence of Flash, (and in all fairness, Flash ain’t working too well on competing Android tablets yet) I am still quite impressed with Apple’s technical (and marketing) achievement with the device. It is the user interface advances of iOS that does it, and beats down the scrambling competition. You just pick the thing up, you get it, and it just bloody works. Which if you’ve ever had to deal with computers for any length of time, Mac or PC, that feat alone is almost Nobel prize worthy. And seriously folks, this comparatively ancient Power Mac G5, with Gigabytes of RAM, an LCD display, Intuos tablet, internal RAID and Terabyte external drive is pretty frakkin’ Star Trek tech compared to the 48K Atari 800 I first mucked about with in the 80s…

And Yes, it’s been rightly proclaimed that Apple did not make iPads for Power users, guys like me, tho’ I still like the things. Nor did they build them for Tech Geeks, who heap piles of abuse on Apple for all the geeky thinks that the iPad is not, and trumpet the raw specs and “open” platform of the Android powered Competition. Geeky types actually seem to prefer their technology to be complex and challenging and glory in getting in there and tinkering and customizing their tech to their liking. But the general consensus out there is that the three significant players, the Samsung Galaxy Tab, the Motorola Xoom, and the still-in-the-pipe RIM Playbook, all have their issues. The majority of the rest are still so much vaporware or decidedly crappy knock offs..

But for the most part, everyday folk, and a surprising number of professional people (outside the computer tech fields), couldn’t care less about the deep specs or getting under the hood to tinker with the OS, or manually install pirate apps (or Pr0n). Like owning a fast Italian sports car, unless you’re, as the Top Gear lot might say, a “complete motorhead”, you don’t want to spend all day “mucking about under the bonnet.” You just want to get in and DRIVE. Drive FAST. And I might add, without the motor dropping out or needing to re-build the gearbox every random 2 to 200 miles.

My son quite rightfully points out that most people haven’t the faintest idea how a semiconducting transistor works. A lot of folks don’t even know what they are, nor need to. True enough. I’m something of a technologist, as necessary being a design professional in this digital age, and my knowledge of the physics and details semiconductor technology is sketchy. But I DO have an appropriate general knowledge of how my computer works, and I am well aware that’s it’s a piece of technology. I might not be able to build one from scratch, but I probably could assemble one. I certainly maintain the one I am writing this rant on.

The iPad is a piece of technology, advanced, arguably cutting edge, but still technology. All due respect to Arthur C Clarke’s famous axiom, “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” it’s not a magical black box. We’ve been out of the trees and caves for a while now, and can even use fire and tools. I’ll thank the people at Apple to consider that we’re grown-up’s and live in a technological society and stop insulting my intelligence. No one should expect to open up an iPad and find leprechauns and unicorns drawing on the back of the screen with rainbow crayons.

That’s just my opinion, and frak ‘em if they think I’m wrong.

OK, got that out of my system. I expect to have more constructive things to say next time. B4nz41.

Oh. Apologies to Stanley Kubrik and Apple, but hey…

Apple iPad2 - in Black and White. Thinner. Lighter. Faster. FaceTime. Smart Covers. 10 Hour Battery. Original Image: Apple

Been A little while, I’ve been working, and that’s a good thing if you’re a self-employed designer. I also broke my ankle back in August while camping, so been recovering. So blogging a slightly lower priority lately, but here I am again.

I had occasion to be out and about and took the opportunity to visit my local Apple store and take a look at the just released iPad2 for my local Apple User Group. Just like it’s predecessor, it’s a very appealing little slab of electric crack. It’s also a more appealing experience than the original iPad. Apparently, a lot of people think so too, since Apple seems to have sold close to a million of the things in the first weekend of availability, selling out at most locations.

When Apple released the original iPad, they were diving out into uncharted territory. As of last year, no one had gotten a tablet computer out there that captured the public imagination till they completely redesigned the interface. Their success with the iPhone, turning the smartphone market in it’s side, suggested they were on to something. But it wasn’t till the first year of iPad, that the realized that they had something quite amazing on their hands. People are doing things with the iPad that Apple never expected.

View Apple’s iPad: Year One Video

Let’s get to some specific impressions.

It’s definitely sleeker and lighter. The reduced weight make holding the tablet one-handed more comfortable while I manipulated the interface with the other. And the removal of the side wall into the rounded back makes the interface surface seem less like an object and even more like a window into the interface. It also, with a new dual-core processor, feels faster and more responsive. I recall playing with the Google Maps application, the original iPad had problem with pulling down the map data while changing views, locations, zooming in and out and scrolling maps. The iPad2 performed  all of the above seamlessly. Videos in both the YouTube and in Mobile Safari played smoothly and cleanly. For those of you who want to know, the iPad2 comes with 512mb of RAM compared to the original’s 256mb.

“My friends, I’m telling you: just that much improvement in thinness, weight and speed transforms the experience. We’re not talking about a laptop or a TV, where you don’t notice its thickness while in use. This is a tablet. You are almost always holding it. Thin and light are unbelievably important for comfort and the overall delight. So are rounded edges, which the first iPad didn’t have.”
- David Pogue, NY Times Personal Tech.

Graphics Performance is greatly improved. I did tick at a game or two, and they run quite snappily. However a “special demo version” of Disney’s TRON Legacy game failed to load beyond the intro screens. Perhaps a glitch, bit still disappointing. On the other hand, Zen Sketch was a smooth delight to this amateur calligrapher.

I also looked at the new cameras, front and back, introduced with the iPad2. As many other reviews noted, they’re the same cameras that are on the iPod Touch, and not as good as the ones on the iPhone. What up? In fact, the rear cam produces quite decent 720p video, which looks better than the still taken with the same sensor. I will admit that mucking around in Photo Booth IS fun. When I dropped in to the photos application – I am resisting the urge to use the lingo “app” – the sample photo albums in the demo unit could not POSSIBLY have been made with the iPads cameras. And I think that is largely the point. The cameras are not intended as serious photography tools, and I think that most iPad owners will likely already have a mid-level to high-end Digital Camera, DSLR,  or an iPhone or smartphone with a quite good camera to provide a photo source to hook up to the Camera Connection Kit. The cams are there to provide casual snapshots, to give the iPad “eyes” for interactive apps, create decent video for the well received mobile version of iMovie, and to enable FaceTime video chat and calls. However, I think it’s likely that they’ll improve the cameras on the next version of the iPad.

As a web designer, I did notice that there were a lot of places where Flash Video didn’t work in Mobile Safari, but it was not too objectionable. The larger media sites were streaming some form of h.263/HTML5 video, but smaller sites often had holes. Including places in some of my sites, where clients insisted on Flash content. A couple of my sites degraded to the non-flash versions gracefully, others had holes. I know I’ll be hitting Google and the books to see about this. For the moment, it just means more work for the likes of me if my clients want rich online media, and want it to work on the rapidly growing Mobile Web. Most notable, just about EVERY inline audio solution generally available, whether it’s javascript, JQuery, or plain HTML & CSS3, uses a Flash player.

However, the amazing Apps ecosystem in iOS (40,000 plus for the iPad alone) sets the iPad and iPhone (over 300,000 apps ) apart from their Android counterparts, and makes the Flash Question a bit less of a shortcoming.

The Smart Cover is very spiffy, and very clever. “…an iPad 2 wearing a Smart Cover is considerably thinner than a naked original iPad.” - John Gruber, Daring Fireball. The covers clings to the iPad2 magnetically, and almost automatically, folds back to make either a typing stand or stand up the screen to view media. When closed, it sleeps the pad, and the iPad wakes instantly when peeled back. Until the third party case makers catch up, the Smart Cover is also largely the only game in town. The Apple Store had no other cases for the iPad2 in the shop. But I am sure there will be a flood of cases, and other accessories swiftly flooding the market before very long.

The iPad2 comes in the same wi-fi and 3G configurations and price points as the original, with the addition of white models. I prefer the black – the white seems to diminish the screen, while the black feels somehow… deeper. Just an impression. The original iPad is still available from Apple at mild discounts, in addition to refurbished models. After selling out, shipments have been easing back out to the Apple Stores and other outlets. But the shipping times for the online store have stretched to 4-5 weeks as of March 20. One other thought, due to the disaster in Japan, Apple may have some problems with availability of the more high tech parts of the iPad that are manufactured in Japan. But that will largely depend on how Apple has organized their supply chain.

Should you buy one? If you’ve been waiting for this version for your first pad, dive in. It’s a very worthy device. If you have an original iPad, the upgrade may be too incremental to drop $500 to $830 for, unless there is some specific feature you’re jonesing for, or shortcoming the upgrade address that’s making you insane. But I am with many reviewers out there that feel that a device of this caliber ought to be useful for more than a year. So next year’s iPad3 will likely offer a more impressive upgrade. Depends on your needs and gadget lust. However, if your in a household that’s fighting over the thing. It’s a nice excuse to get a new one, and pass your old model along and get the kids to leave you alone. My wife often gives me the sad eye whenever I take the Macbook Pro out on a client call or presentation.

Other tablets? If Flash is a deal-breaker for you, then there are a few other choices. The New York Times has a decent outline of the contenders you might actually be able to buy. The rest of the hundred or so announced at CES are still vaporware. The current leading contender, the Motorola Xoom, is on the expensive side. But the emerging competition should serve to keep Apple to continue to improve the iPad.

Changes at The Apple Store

Since I was in an Apple Store, I noticed a couple of things. The front counter is gone. And in most of the store you can purchase Apple gear right on the sales floor from an Apple Associate. IOS and mobile computing are absolutely the stars on Apple’s stage now. Over half the store was iOS devices, iPads, iPhones, iPod Touch. Then most of the rest was MacBooks. Other than Apple hardware, all the third party gear, peripherals,  books and software is now consigned to one section of shelving in the very back. On the other side of the quite busy Genius Bar, was another rear section with an elite selection of iPod, iPhone and iPad accessories.

There were a few iMacs along the side towards the back, and just ONE lonely Mac Pro, neglected in a corner, and it was an entry-level Xeon machine, not a more powerful Westmere Mac Pro. So it kind of shows where Apple’s attention is focused with the mall-walking audience. Note the qualifier. But if I want to look at pro gear, I’d have to haul downtown to TekServe. Just saying. But there are reasons that Pro users are feeling neglected by Apple.

But with the opening and growth of the online Mac App Store, on the same lines as the App Store, Apple is definitely leaning towards an all-digital software experience. And I do admit, that less and less of my software is coming shrink-wrapped in boxes. But for peripherals, printers, hard drives and other gear, especially pro gear, it’s still nice to be able actually look things over before slapping down the credit card. But we won’t be doing much of it at Apple stores, except for Apple kit.

Further Reading

iPad at Apple
iPad2 Features

Tablets, Compared. NY Times Interactive Feature

For a more geeky and in-depth review:
John Gruber on the iPad @ Daring Fireball

A more “regular-person” audience impression:
Appeal of iPad 2 Is a Matter of Emotions
David Pogue, NY Times Personal Tech

An intruder has infiltrated the Samurai Art Director's castle....

In which we bring a Windows 7 laptop into a house with three Mac workstations.

As anyone who reads this blog is well aware, as a Creative Professional, I am a Mac user. Now I have to lead in with the total disclaimer straight off. I try not to take sides in the platform wars, and when people ask me about computers, I tell them to buy the machine that does the job you need to do at the time you need it. That will vary on the required tasks, if you’re an office drone, a designer, a gamer, or just surfing the web,  fetching your emails and hitting Facebook. I also tell people, “buy the heaviest iron you can afford and stuff with as much RAM and the biggest hard disk drives you can afford.”

But at the time I got into my career, and we’re talking 1980 B.C. (“Before Computers”) and when desktop publishing came on the scene, the Macintosh was a dominantly superior platform for graphics and design. The Mac generally sustained an advantage through the 90’s and into the early 2000s due to it’s Graphical User Interface (GUI) and ease of use. My forays into the Windows PC world, as I got introduced to web design and the pain of cross platform testing, did not impress me. Windows machines, particularly entry level and midrange boxes that were typical of the target markets I was designing sites for, were difficult and the Windows OS felt clunky, kludgy, and fraught with security issues that remain a concern to this day. But I did get reasonably familiar with the systems. Most folks don’t recall how awful the incompatibilities between the “Big Four” browsers of the late 90s – Explorer and Netscape on the Mac and PC were. It was just dreadful and an excruciating testing process.

Some years later, I was the Art Director for a small Art Collectors Magazine, and as the “Art Guy,” I was also drafted as de facto Webmaster, Network Administrator and Tech Support Roustabout for a mixed office of six Macs and Twelve PCs. Macs for Editorial and Art and PCs for everyone else, plus an aging HP server under a desk in a closet with a whopping (at the time) 40 GB Drive. Yes, we had to archive the magazine pages the day after it went to press to make room for the next issue. I won’t go into the horrifyingly random collection of  HP inkjets needing more than 15 different ink cartridges and stubbornly resisted any kind of color calibration. The good old days. We  had two brand new E-Machines boxes that ran the then-brand-new Windows ME. What a nightmare. Those two boxes seemed to suck SPAM, viruses, trojans, malware and spyware out of thin air, right though the hardware firewall (which I insisted we install) and the Enterprise version of Norton’s that seemed to protect the WIN 97 machines perfectly fine. Had to scrub them twice a day. It wasn’t till Windows XP that the OS seemed to me to settle down and be a useful platform for ordinary non-technical users. Sorry, for all my geek and nerd friends and colleagues, we’re talking to ordinary folks today. Security issues of course persist, and are not absent on the Mac, despite the mythology. Eternal vigilance the price of freedom and all that.

This was the background I brought to the table when my younger son signed up for a computer programming class at his high school. For this he would need to be running Visual Basic to do projects and homework. So instead of trying to shove Paralells or Boot Camp onto an already packed MacBook Pro, we decided to take the plunge for a mid range Window’s Laptop. One of my Technical contacts got me set up with a Dell rep and we were off. We ended up with a more up-range machine than we originally intended, a Vostro 3400 Laptop running a Core i5 processor and Windows 7. The better machine should have a longer service life before getting overrun by software upgrades. Windows 7 widely considered a superior OS and interface, especially compared with the harsh lessons of Windows Vista. And I could use it as a test platform for the web sites I designed.

We’ve had the machine in the house for a week getting used to the wee beasite. We’re glad we got the better box. The other active laptop in the house is a Macbook Pro, about two years old, running a Core 2 Duo chip. The two machines, running side by side, other than the speed of the browsers, feel about the same in speed and responsiveness. The aluminum unibody Macbook Pro feels the stouter build, while the dell has a lot of plastic. Multitouch trackpad gestures, new to Win 7 seem to work better on the Mac. Network and Net speed is identical, more to do with our local ethernet, wi-fi and Fiber Optic connection. Flash, love it or hate it, is definitely faster in Windows seven, but the Mac OS 10.user 5 interface itself seems faster than Win 7. But that may be because we’re more used to it. The fingerprint reader is a very slick touch on the Vostro. These are all VERY subjective observations, not timed tests, but end user experience will always be subjective anyway.

One big surprise, is that Windows 7 handles user accounts very differently. In the Mac OS, when you install an application, it goes into an Applications folder, and is available to all users unless specifically blocked by an Administrator. But the situation in the Windows machine is more complex. Programs may, or may not, be available to all users. If installed by a non-admin user, only that user can even see it, much less use it. And programs installed by Admin users, may… or may not… be usable or visible to other users. Some of them are, and some aren’t. Microsoft is pretty quiet on the subject. But I have seen the issue kicked about in tech support forums by frustrated users. Apparently it depends on the developer to build the accessibility into the installer. Oh boy. There do seem to be technical fixes, but they’re VERY technical, and frankly beyond most “civilian” end users ability or patience. Especially since the effectiveness of the workarounds seems to vary.

Windows XP emulation mode is particularly a walled garden. This is required for us as Visual Studio 4, the young man’s programming environment, is an XP Software Suite not compatible with Windows 7. For XP apps to be available to individual users, they have to be installed in the XP Virtual Machine, within XP, separately for each user. I would have expected a little more flexibility in a contemporary OS, but I can at least understand that the virtual machine would need to be entirely self-contained. Thankfully, its not a big deal for our small enterprise, on one else here will likely need to program in Visual Basic.

The other thing is that Windows 7’s approach to networking is rather parochial. Win 7 just wants to talk to other Win 7 machines. The three Macs are happy to talk to anyone who’s willing to play nice with Ethernet or IP. From the Mac G5 Tower where I am writing this, I can “see” the Win7 Vostro, and log into the Admin or my Studio user, but the Vostro can’t see me. Will be looking into this. Should be a solution, as ALL the machines, including the XBox, can see the network router. This is kind of important, as our one printer is attached to this Mac, and is network visible. But I have faith in geek power. There are mighty tech talents out there.

But so far so good. These are of course quirks and quibbles, and hardly the “f**k you” platform wars of the late 90s. Thank the Gods. Having a Windows machine in a household with three working macs doesn’t make us traitors. And using Macs doesn’t make us dorks. We’re all still users, aren’t we?

If the machines get along, I’m happy. The two Steves, Jobs and Ballmer, can shout it out if they want, just let us get our work done.

Vostro 3400 at Dell Small Business
Vostro 3400 Review

My Typical HALO:REACH experience. Photocomposite and Illustration: Kurt Griffirh. Source renderings: Bungie

This time around I am going to drift off my usual design focused view of the world of technology and creativity. Today I am going to talk about video games. Say what? Yes, this irascible and opinionated almost-an-old-timer is going to venture into a whole ‘nother geekdom. Not just the classic  stand-up and 8-bit arcade games that I grew up with, but the overheated world of console games. It may surprise some of you who read this blog to know, I don’t spend every waking moment behind this workstation. Well, I do spend rather a lot of my time here, both professionally and recreationally. Any design professional in the electronic age has also become by default a technologist. Computers are not only our working tools, but also our sources of information, research and resources. So I am here not only working, but studying, catching up with my mob on Facebook, reading webcomics, news–both tech and the rest of the world, and surfing for pleasure. Oh yeah, I also write a blog in my huge free time.There was also a recent thread on one of my Linkedin groups that heavily suggested that Design Pros cannot survive on print alone. We certainly can’t, other than Illustrators, work in traditional media and survive. Of course, if you draw or paint in physical media, your work will eventually be scanned and digitized for publication. I no longer even own a drafting table, (kind of miss it) and my T-square hangs in the closet.  But I am still working. The computer and the digital world is obviously here to stay, and evolving at breakneck speed.

But sometimes I actually DO get off the computer. I do a number of things out there in real life. And from time to time, I will even fire up my sons’ XBox and dive into some immersive amusement. The xBox wandered into the house due to some clever subterfuge of my two then teenage sons. My wife and I proclaimed that we would NOT subsidize a game console in our house. There were both financial and social considerations for our stand. So the two little monsters pooled their resources, and money doing odd jobs and chores and brought each other half an xBox 360 a few Christmas’s ago. I will not underestimate your gaming greed again, my young padawans. Still, they pay for their own games out of their own money. So I hold my piece and only bitch, and stash the controllers, when chores don’t get done. It’s still the family’s TV the thing is plugged into and MY fiber optic Internet service.

Along with the box, they went in with two of the larger hits of the period, Mass Effect, and HALO 3. The HALO series, developed by Bungie, is one of the most popular and considered one of the best FPS Game series of all time. FPS stands for First Person Shooter, a genre of game that came to people’s awareness probably with the venerable DOOM, and other classics such as Unreal Tournament and Duke Nukem.

I have to say that I rather like HALO very much. The “Halo” in question is a Ring-shaped space environment,  familiar to anyone who’s read any of Larry Niven’s Ringworld books. The scenario is a military science-fiction genre over-the-top space opera played out on an epic backdrop of an interstellar war with a multi-race alien axis called The Covenant, and a mutant plague of nazi bacteria cockroaches called The Flood. It’s frakking crazy, but done straight enough that you buy into the scenario. The world has been rich enough to spawn six games, a host of books, graphic novels, original anime releases, persistent rumors of a feature film, and a frankly awesome fan base that even produces their own videos, using the game’s own film recording features – a process known as Machinima. Say it “machine-ima” to get the basic idea. I kid you not. Check out machinima.com and Red vs Blue. More seriously crazy stuff, but fun and the fan love is obvious.

But the HALO world does not take itself so seriously to not stick it’s tongue in it’s cheek to give some nods to the fans over whole geekyness and space opera roots of it all. There is enough comic relief and geek appeal to take the edge off the violence and gravitas and keep the back of your brain aware, “yes, this is a game.” This is in marked contrast to the almost overstated gritty realism in the war-based titles like Call of Duty and Medal of Honor. I think the phrase I was groping for might just be, the games have just enough goofiness.

The Campaign part of the game is an achievement in and of itself. However the feature that has inspired the imagination and obsession of millions of gamers worldwide are the interactive online multiplayer modes. Multiplayer games operate on the XBoxLive service on Bungie’s servers, and there are literally hundred of thousands of players in thousands of games twenty four hours a day in ecstatic orgies of over-the-top cartoon carnage. Microsoft only recently forced the closing of the HALO 2 Multiplayer servers. But the HALO 3, HALO: ODST and HALO: REACH playlists are flourishing. There are both cooperative and competitive modes, but most of the obsession and bragging rights center around the team competition Slayer in it’s various flavors.

Concept Art for the HALO:REACH release. Art: Bungie

HALO:REACH, released in September of 2010, is the most recent iteration of the games, and expected to be Bungie’s final foray into the HALO world. The game scenario follows the Covenant Invasion and heroic defense and fall of the human colony planet Reach. This installment in the HALO saga takes the game to a high level of tuned gameplay and polish and brings the story line established in HALO: Combat Evolved, HALO 2, HALO 3 and HALO:ODST full circle. The Game scenario makes it pretty clear. The Campaign opens with cracked and ruined helmet left abandoned on a glassed-over landscape. The implication is clear, you’re going to die. The question remains, just how heroically? Turns out it’s a heck of a trip, through big damn hero time.

If you’re curious, two takes on the gaming world’s response to HALO:REACH turn up on the Escapist Magazine website. First are their more serious game reviews with video supplements, and the fast-talking and heavily opinionated — but seriously hilarious “Yahtzee” Croshaw’s Zero Punctuation cartoon editorials for a more, um, alternative viewpoint.

Now before any of you for a moment think any of this is trivial, the amount of money changing hands out there is formidable. Producing a hit game, on any console can cost as much or much more than a blockbuster film. Many of them are produced to cinema level standards of art direction and development. The credits on the HALO titles dwarf many films. New games usually drop at something like Sixty Dollars, so at four to five times the cost of a movie, it justifies some investment. A blockbuster game in the current age, can blow a major film’s revenue out of the water if it grabs players attention.

As a designer, I am a terrible graphics geek. I recall that I obsessed about the computer generated imagery in films like Tron and The Last Starfighter. On the computer side, gaming pushed desktop computers capability far harder than productivity applications. Remember that when computer geeks obsess over graphics cards, it’s not to run Photoshop or Roxio Media Creator, it’s to run games – and run them better and faster than the other frea– ah… gaming enthusiasts they are playing against.

When I fist set foot in Halo’s game world, I got killed a LOT. I was busy sightseeing. Seriously. The graphics love lavished on this game is jaw dropping. You suspend disbelief far beyond what the majority of crappy mainstream SF films could hope to achieve. Short of an immersive 3D virtual world, you are really there in the game environment. So I had a real bad tendency to get blown away by a Brute with a fuel rod cannon while I was geeking out over the scenery. But it’s still a lot of fun. The games sport difficulty levels ranging from easy, through normal, heroic and the brutally difficult legendary. The games are quite content to relentlessly kick your a55 till you figure out ways to muscle or finesse your way through.

Crazy-Ass action previewed in wallpaper art for HALO:REACH. Art: Bungie.

Now pardon me while I descend into a little l33t. That’s “leet” to you, like the back end of “elite”. A kind of patios developed by computer geeks and picked up by gamers and other digerati.

When it comes to the multiplayer experience on HALO, I am without apology, pretty much a n003.

That’s pronounced “nube” or “noob”, and it means “newbie” and often in a pejorative sense meaning “unskilled player.” I do know how to play the game, and I do have fun. But when it comes to playing with, and especially competing with, the vast mass of players, typically young males, it’s usually no contest. In multiplayer scenarios, I’ll have the least kills and least points in most games. My sons actually refuse to play with me anymore. Dud sucks. Dad’s a n00b.

But since I do actually work for a living, I’m not going to rack up the game hours. Remember spending the majority of my waking hours at this workstation actually producing things? Unlike my sons, I just don’t  spend enough time playing to really get sharp. And good luck at nearly fifty-one trying to match reflexes with the twitched out hyperactivity of a pack of thirteen year olds zonked out on Mountain Dew, Doritos and their own testosterone. No matter how much French Roast or Kenya AA I suck down, ain’t gonna happen. So consequently I get shot up, shot down, blown up, pummeled, headshot, plasmaed, grenaded, and generally massively pwned by kids young enough to be… well, my kids… quite a lot.

I do kind of wish there was a playlist for “Thirty-Five and Over Casual Gamers who work for a living”. It would be fun to round up a possie… um… Party and actually inflict major pwnage on a mob of my equally slow-moving and more thoughtful peers. But wishful thinking aside. The games are frakkin’ beautiful, and for SF adventure escapism, a LOT of fun.

The current Mac Pro update disappoints actual pro users. Image: Apple Computer

Apple recently released, after over a year in waiting, an update to their Mac Pro line of tower configuration computers. They introduced the Westmere line of the Xeon workstation processors and now a version with 12 computing cores is available. But for many Apple watchers, the update was a bit of a disappointment.

For openers, while Apple has been determinedly cutting edge on their new flagship mobile products, iPhones, iPads… were notably conservative on this update. New tech such as USB 3, Firewire 1600, Litghtbridge, or even established desirable standards as eSATA were skipped. Few expected Blu-Ray support, since Steve doesn’t like Blu-Ray. The video cards options offered by Apple are decent, but somewhat mediocre by contemporary standards. But all in all, commentary in the tech blogs has negative commentary edging out positive reviews. The general consensus seemed “meh,” with a lot of dissatisfaction centering on performance versus price issues compared to alternatives on the Windows and Linux side.

The machines are pricey.

“The upgraded desktop is available in three standard options: a quad-core 2.8GHz Intel Xeon “Nehalem” processor with 3GB of RAM for $2,499; an 8-core machine with two 2.4GHz quad-core Intel Xeon “Westmere” processors and 6GB of RAM for $3,499; or a 12-core system with two 2.66GHz 6-core Intel Xeon “Westmere” processors and 6GB of RAM for $4,999.” – Apple Insider

The pricing here is without display, so add anywhere from $799 to $1800 for Apple display. The upcoming 27” LCD display will be priced at $900 and replace both the existing 24” and 30” displays and will be glossy-only.

Much of the following is taken from my  grumpy comment at Engadget. I’ve taken the liberty of cleaning up some of the unpolished language and clarifying some remarks in this version.

First off, the disclaimers, I am a Design Pro, not an IT person, gamer or semi-pro geek tinkerer. So most if this is OPINION, not hyper scrutinized lists of facts. Bear with it. I am also not going to dis down anybody’s personal choice of hardware or OS preferences. Or debate fanboyism at any level. It’s been done already. To death. Seriously.

That said, as a Graphic and Web Designer, I’ve been a Mac user for many years. I’ll say that in the day, the Mac OS offered clear advantages over window and all non-graphical OSs. And also in the day Apple hardware also offered some unique qualities unavailable in the WinTel world. But that day is PASSED. The only reason anyone should chose Mac hardware or the Mac OS is personal preference.

When Apple was releasing G4 and G5 Towers, they were cutting edge machines at the absolute top end, and provided performance that was just not available at the desktop level elsewhere. But that is clearly no longer the case. Now that Macs and PCs are essentially the same guts under the hood, there are far less differentiating qualities. For the Mac Pro, while they may be shiny, spiffy, and fairly stout machines, they are NOT the ultimate computing machines Apple would have us believe. There are comparable workstation class machines available from HP, Levono, Acer, and even *gasp* … Dell at better price points. Yes, I looked. The current lineup just manages essential parity with Windows workstation-class machines out there, and offers downright mediocre graphics cards, which have become much more important components in modern computing.

It’s been pointed out by my geekier colleagues that more powerful configurations can of course be assembled from off the shelf components for leaner budgets if that’s your thing. Some of us do like to tinker in the garage. Some of us just want to say, “give me the keys, I’d rather drive.” It should go without saying, your mileage may vary.

Are the Mac Pros overpriced for the tech level offered? I may be a bit of an Apple loyalist and I still have to say, OH HELL YES. I will offer that the overall reliability, build quality and case design is superior, even if the internal components are decent but fairly standard. And yes, while Apple has evolved the case internals to a very refined level, it’s still a seven year old overall case design. It could absolutely use a refresh.

The galling point for us Design Pros, and I am talking about Publishing, Photography, Graphics and Web Design, is that Apple has tossed us to the curb YEARS ago to the tender mercies of Adobe. Go into an Apple store and good luck finding any serious pro gear, such as an tabloid size (11″ x 17″) printer or press quality scanner. Not for the likes of us. And we’ve been crying for a mid-range Mac for frakkin’ ages. The majority of us would probably be quite comfortable with the performance range of the 27″ i7 iMac in an expandable tower configuration. The price gap between the i7 iMac nicely appointed and the Base Mac Pro and Display is enough to buy a decent laptop and the Adobe CS5 upgrade. Which I might mention is a non-trivial sum. Adobe enjoys a near monopoly in the must-have graphics applications that design pros use such as Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Dreamweaver, Flash and Actobat, and charge us accordingly. The further fact that Apple has done away with all non-glossy screens except for the BTO MacBookPro, shows their disdain for Design pros over “oooohhh shiny,” which does look spiffier in the Apple Store lighting.

The present scene now is all about Apple’s current relentless pursuit of the “consuming” computer user… hence the iPods, iPhones, iPads and the like. I feel that Apple keeps the Mac Pro remains in the lineup merely to say that they have a high end machine for the very needful (climate modeling and 3D rendering anyone?) and quite affluent users. But the Mac Pro line is no longer the champion of the Apple universe, or does it seem to have much of Steve’s attention.

Since the current Adobe CS5 Applications requires an Intel multicore processor minimum, this will retire a LOT of still working G5 machines. As design has becomes a much more marginal profession in the current economy, I expect we’ll see a lot of “downgrade upgrades” to iMac, laptops and Windows machines as design pros look at their bottom lines and budgets.

I don’t think Steve will miss us much. We complain.

Links:
Mac Pro @ Apple
Engadget
Mac Rumors
Apple Insider
Adobe Creative Suite 5

Tweaking Bleeds in InDesign for the Tri-fold Cut Line. Yes, I'll explain...

For openers, I have been reminded that if I want to keep people’s attention with a blog, I actually have to POST, at least more regularly than I have been doing. The current occasion is the Hudson Valley Business Edge 2010 Conference, an event that I highly recommend if you’re in the region and work in a small to medium size business, especially as an Owner, Proprietor or Principal. The presenters are all very knowledgeable, and the content is presented in a very dense manner, in short, accessible sessions. Last year I presented on “When Do You Need a Design Pro?”, and hope to do so again on subjects graphic. But to the point, while I fairly recently posted back on June 7th, the one before was March 20th.

I have been busy, hence the lean posting. So this time around I’ll talk about a recent client experience.

This is a long term client that I have been working with for many years. I’ve built and rebuilt his website, will do it again soon. This time around I was updating his brochure. This is a fairly standard tri-fold brochure, a pretty common and useful staple of business marketing. This item is usually not a terrific chore if you have a focused client, and their graphic identity is already in place. Typically brochures are put together after logo design and identity projects are complete.  But what happens when your client is perhaps over focused

The short answer is: 63 design comps, seven candidate “final” versions. Three rounds of pre-press, PDFs and AAs. Hundreds of photo retouches and composites. 2.4 gigabytes of  data. And sent the press proofs back to press… twice. What on earth happened here?

I am not going to say what this project cost,  but it blew well past my initial estimate by several multiples. Suffice to say that the sum was either impressive or embarrassing, depending on which side of the checkbook you’re looking from. I accept installments. I am not railing against my client, who I actually think quite highly of, and is a stone cold expert , a top craftsman and designer in in the luxury fabrication market he makes his profession. But yes, the project was unusual in the scope, number and and detail of the multiple rounds of revisions.

I suspect some of the Design Pros out there might be wondering, when did I lose control of the Design Process? But I don’t think I did. I did keep him appraised that the meter was indeed running as the revisions mounted up, and tried to wave the yellow flag. I was working hourly, which most freelancers prefer, as it keeps us honest and clients only pay for work actually done. I do grok that most clients would rather have flat fees, to budget accurately. So I try to make my estimates and quotes reasonably accurate. But typically I expect to turn a brochure project around on 2-3 initial designs and 2-4 rounds of revisions and tweaks including proofreading. On a flat fee project, unless you detail revision charges, you can get killed here. This can become a nightmare on an open ended project like a web site were the design and production process is much more organic, and the final product can moprh a lot till the project is completed.

Of course, some say web sites are never actually finished, but that’s a separate rant.

But my client wanted, well, exactly what he wanted. After fine tuning many details of design and copy to create an extremely crisp and tight showcase for his products, it was on to the product photography.  It was critically important to him that his product photography be as close to perfect as humanly possible to image, process, color correct, clean, retouch and composite.

Most folk would confront the mounting hours and costs and get to a point where a project is “good enough” and sign off on it. After all, some details are so minute that most readers will not notice a lot of very tiny glitches. Obsessive revison is just not cost effective for the average small … or even moderately large business. Mind you, when Ferrari or Maseratti does a brochure, it’s a 16 page super glossy piece  with giant full bleed photos and tiny blocks of copy on stock just short of cardboard and every photo is glistening perfection. But when a single car costs more than my house, “price is no object” in selling them has a certain resonance.  A used car dealership will pour all that copy into a tri-fold with a stack of digicam photos one of their salesman took.

It’s all a matter of perceived value, versus the actual cost of the work.

So how much is enough?

Mind you, of the over 50 hours on the project, over half of it was spent in Photoshop doing photo work. This is in addition to the work the photographer did on most of the images as well. By the way, this was not Joe in the Mail Room with the boss’s pocket digicam; this is a very good pro photographer who’s work is very sharp. But every detail had to be perfect. But I did call him on cleaning up the color of a reflections on a detail no wider than four benday dots.  I also found myself nudging parallax errors picked up in a wide angle lens that I could not discern on a 20” monitor without a layer of guidelines.

To note the level of detail we persued, one tweak was both revising the cropping and placement of photos to account for the 1/16” of  additional trim (see image)  that some printers nick off the fold-in panel so that the borchure folds neatly.  (geek alert: not always the case, some printers use very slightly assymetrical folds to allow for a sightly narrower folk-in panel, depending on their machinery.) In most cases this would not a big deal, but there were details in the product photos that my client felt were critical to preserve, and worth the time and expense to address.  We also did some furher adjusting in the photos as well to allow for more bleed.

The Maserati web site. Crispy. Shiny...

A local area Used Car Dealer's web site - To the point.

To return to the car analogy. When Ferrari or Maseratti publish anything from brochures to bar napkins to their annual report, their entire brand and image rides on it, For that market, they make sure every bit of their marketing material measures up to the same lofty standards as their automobiles. For the Used Car Dealership, the owner’s image and reputation would be based on being a perceived as offering square deals and good value, especially considering he is selling products he was not involved in designing or producing. So very high end marketing materials might actually hurt, and cause the business to be perceived as overly expensive. Most Used Care Dealers want to been seen as trustworthy “regular guys”, literally “one of us.” You know, the folks who are not buying Ferraris or Maserattis.

Is all of this “apple polishing” worth it?

To my client, he expressed that it was. In fact he felt it was critical. At the level of his market and product, if the results of all this exacting refinement produce just ONE more customer for him, he will be ahead. In essence, he held me, the photographer and the printer to the same standard of demanding craftsmanship that he applies to his own work. And I’ll have to say that it’s very good work, among my very best this year.

Will that level of craftsmanship and exactitude be worth it for your project? I can only say that I approach every project with an open mind and a professional attitude, evaluating each project and then providing my best professional opinion on producing it. When a client has a clear idea of their needs and message, it makes my job a lot easier. Going high end on a job also raises my game to that higher level, and its often a pleasure to do really sharp work. Ideally, a project’s costs should match both the budget and the message. Some things might call for “fast and dirty” so long as things are neat and professional – and proofread, they’re ready to go. Other mission-critical projects might very well call for numerous and detailed review, revision, and tweaking to a high level of polish.

How far you want to go is entirely up to you.

Taking Print content to the Web

Yes, it’s been months since I’ve posted here. And haven’t been that active in my Live Journal or Facebook pages either. The Studio’s been busy, folks. And have been shoving a number of projects through the house.  And when you’re a self employed Creative Pro, paid bookable hours trumps blogging. I had been tempted to rant on about the evolving throwdown between Adobe vs Apple vs Google (sort of) vs Mircosoft, centering around the mobile market, web standards, web video, HTML5 and Flash. But the simmering war of words, with flaming fanboy camps tossing off on each side has grumped me out, and it can wait.

So I decided to talk about some of the under the hood tech that makes contemporary web sites work, with a bit of diversion about bringing print content online.  I’m going to pitch this to the web user and business reader, so my fellow web pros will probably be bored to tears. But for the rest of you, we’ll demonstrate the main idea of the marriage of HTML and CSS by taking a look “backstage” with a print and web design project called, Living in The Petri Dish.

The past few years, over the winter I have been designing and Art Directing an annual calendar for an Interfaith Sanctuary, and in the 2010 Edition of the Wheel of the Year Calendar, I wrote a short Editorial Article for their Earth Living/ Earth Spirit section, focusing on global environmental, sustainability and climate issues. I wrote Living in the Petri Dish under my “spiritual” name, referring my Native American (among others!) Ancestry.

The Print Version from the Institutional Calendar

PDF

In times gone by, the most direct way to get print content online was to post a PDF version of the document. This is quite straightforward in layout tools such as Adobe InDesign, with a powerful export PDF function. But many applications, including Microsoft Office now have similar capability. In Mac OS 10, any document that can be printed, can be output to a PDF file. And here is the PDF version of the article. which is the print version of the Calendar Page. Depending on your browser settings and capabilities, the file will open in a new window, or download to your local drive. While PDF files preserve the formatting and structure of the original print document, and does not require the recipient to have the creating application, graphics or fonts, it does have some limitations for the web.

Web Coding, Old and Modern.

The “Old School” method of laying out a web page involved rather intricate coding, and creating tables to arrange elements on the page, like a mosaic, which were not their intended purpose. In more contemporary coding, the HTML page contains the content, and it’s information structure. And the display and presentation information is contained in a separate CSS style sheet. CSS refers to Cascading Style Sheets, which is a powerful method for marking up how a page is displayed. The main advantage is that you can have a separate style sheet for every page in a site, or just one for ALL the pages in a site. Or individual style sheets for unique elements, such as the home page, and a general one for the site’s content. The HUGE advantage is that if you need to alter an aspect of the site’s visual design, I make the change in the style sheet, and the change will appear in the entire site, or every page that accesses that style sheet. This is a much more efficient approach than painstakingly re-coding every instance of the design element in every page individually!

I recently had occasion to demonstrate the capabilities of CSS for a user group, in this particular  case, I took the SAME page, and used three different Style Sheets to radically alter the layout and appearance of the page. So let’s build a web page version using XHTML and CSS. As the author, I have the original text of the article, and was able to quickly code it into a basic web page, and collect some relevant links.

Coding HTML and CSS

The text is organized into paragraphs and headers. And I divided the page into logical sections using “Div” tags. Otherwise there is no layout markup.

Original images for the "Petri Dish" article.

I also had the original images used for the article, so I sized them for the web at 72dpi, and we’re good to go.

Take a look at the “pure content” version of the page, without any CSS Styling.

it’s all there, but it’s sooooooo  1998, and kind of boring.  So lets build a CSS Style sheet and connect it to my HTML document.

This is where the magic happens...

The highlighted code is where the HTML page refers to the CSS style sheet file that tells the browser how to display the page.

The CSS that will style the Petri Dish article page.

A portion of the CSS file.  As you can see, I have started to define the look of the page. The overall typeface and size, background colors and the styling the headers. You can look at the full coding here, if you’re geeky and curious.

And the completed page now looks like this. Living in the Petri Dish.

As you can see, it’s much cleaner and feels more like a contemporary web page.

“Presto-Changeo”

But I am well aware that clients might want something different. So why not? I created another CSS document, and went back and changed just one line of the HTML to implement it.

<link href=”styles2.css” rel=”stylesheet” type=”text/css” />

I added some alternate graphics and the page takes on a radically different appearance.

Some clients might want a little more IMPACT… happy to make it “Pop”.

<link href=”styles3.css”…

I call this version “Hot Head Red”. It’s probably not the most tasteful design, but it was meant to show variation for the demo. Also for the sake of the demo, I added the navigation bar across the top to easily swap across the versions. Note that I’ve set the nav bar to pick up the link styling in the three versions.

Remember, no other code was changed in the HTML page other than the single line referring to the style sheet. Now there are a few caveats, older versions of some browsers have uneven support for CSS, most notably Internet Explorer Version 6 which handles CSS in a non-standard manner. But modern browsers support CSS very well. IN the near future, we’ll be seeing the deployment and support in browsers of HTML 5 and CSS3 which will bring additional enhanced capabilities and features.

Links

Living in the Petri Dish variations:
No Styles
BlueWhite Clean
GreenWorld
HotHeadRed
PDF of Print Version

Four Quarters Interfaith Sanctuary
Earth Living~Earth Spirit Complete Supplement (PDF)
Union of Concened Scientists
Rolling Stone: As the world Burns
Rolling Stone: The Climate Killlers
UCS: “It’s Cold and My Car is Buried in Snow. How Can Global Warming be Happening?”

Now this blog is powered by WordPress, WP hacks can tell from the very lightly modified default Kubrick page design. But one of the things I love about WP is that there is not only an abundant supply of themes, but also a HUGE zoo of plug-in to perform all manner of digital legerdemain. Since I have been manually posting notifications on FB about my Blog Posts here, I figured, with the rising popularity of Facebook, there was probably an app or plug-in that would allow Me to post notices to the page automatically. So after a bit of research, I’ve installed the  WordBook Plug-in on the blog. This was literally it’s test flight.

Alas was not to be. WoodBook does not work on Fan or Business FB Pages. See below for comments on keeping my personal and Pro/Biz bloggage separate. So I am trying another application, a bit more involved, but we’ll see if it works. It may have the virtue of earning the blog a little more exposure.

I am also looking at adding “Share on Facebook” functionality. Yes, there’s plug-in for that too. Which is probably the next thing I’ll be testing. If a “Share on Facebook” link turns up on my posts, I got it working. Of course there are equivalent tools for Twitter, but I am seriously dragging my feet about getting into that. I do have to spend some of my time actually working on client’s projects. Imagine that, so demanding. But the ability to buy groceries is a compelling argument for discipline.

The emergence of Social Media as an important Web trend for both individuals and businesses, due to it’s particular reach and ability to connect individuals TO businesses and organizations, means that Creative pros like myself have to pay increasing attention to an ever widening array of venues, and techniques for leveraging them. What makes this interesting is becoming a net.schizo. I have this blog for the Studio, where I can wax-on, wax-off on themes relating to my profession and related tech subjects. I have a personal Live journal since about 2003 or so… If you know it, you know who you are. My personal rantage. I’m on Facebook as me, but then have a Page for FRS. The twitter account… like 4 tweets (Ha!) is me, and I should make a separate one for the Studio… Keeping my personal and professional lives separate is an interesting exercise in information management. Not withstanding that as a self-employed creative pro, with a studio in my home, my professional life is pretty darn personal! But the overall approach is that I’ll refer to my professional live from my personal side, but I’ll be keeping the personal from the professional side.

That didn’t stop a client from trying to call Me at 7PM on a Friday, looking for a project and a quote. Not that I don’t work evenings and weekends, like many creatives and self-employed, that’s a choice, not an expectation. But seriously, WTF?

He can wait… till Monday.

Fantastic Realities Studio on Facebook
WordBook Plug-in
NetworkedBlogs

No Snow Days

This is going to be a pretty random post.

Deal with it. But I’ll try to say something of interest. In the interest of learning more about using the WordPress back end, I had to apply myself to digging under the hood in the tech realm of server file permissions. Look it up if you’re curious. The issue I had was getting the image upload feature to work properly. It errored out with folder permission problems. And all the more irritating, since another installation I did for a client was functioning perfectly. So… WTF?

A trip to the WordPress Codex and Docs and I got enough info to fire up my FTP app and massage the permissions on my web server and got it working. Hmmm… guess it should test it? What to upload?

So. The image above. Even though the “Snowmageddon” storm that clobbered the DC Area and Central Atlantic states spared the NYC Region and Hudson Valley, the “Snowpocalyse” storm and the record breaking “Snowricane” did catch up with us. Big Fun Deluxe. Clogged roads, Businesses closed, Events Canceled, and Snow Days at region schools. I, for one, am glad to see a little sun.

Relevant? Right. Right. Was getting to that. As a self-employed Creative Pro, my studio is in my home. So as long as I have power, heat, food, and a high speed internet connection. I can pretty much hole up and keep working. And I did. Also you can’t beat the commute. About 45 seconds from bedroom to the Studio downstairs. Maybe five minutes if I stop in the kitchen to get coffee. In nicer weather, about 30 paces to the pool. The Studio looks out the patio door, and when It’s nice I can open it up and let the breeze air this place out. Compare that to an hour and 45 min ride into the city when I was a corporate Art Director. If I had to stay late, the ride back was often longer.

Anyway, I had snapped a few clever images and tossed together a little “No Snow Days” Promo Card (maybe I’ll post a PDF for ya’s) that  I handed out  to one of my networking groups. So, brief flash of pro coolness.  Try THAT in Word.

So no complaints other than as a homeowner, I do see the energy bills and the downstairs gets colder then the upper floor were we get good sun. In a heat wave, that’s great, and a cooler environment in the summer is better for my machines. But in winter, not so much. Sweaters are good.

And uploading a shot about getting through the epic weather was probably more relevant than goofy stuff like this…

Go watch Caprica to see why this is funny.

Yeah, I’m a geek. But we creative sorts are allowed our eccentric vices. And I’ll be getting back under the hood of Bloogging, Facebook… and *cringe*… even Twitter. Mostly because my clients have an interest in the stampede to social media.

That’s it for this one, I do have billable work to do! Till next time!