Archive for August, 2007
Gmail Video and Thoughts on Gmail
Aug 30th
Google just released their Gmail compilation video to YouTube, and… well… it’s cool! It really is. Not only because the video is fun, not only because it’s refreshing to see a company that looks like it might be fun and not just a bunch of hair old white men who are only concerned with the bottom line, but also because it fascinates me. It fascinates me that a product can inspire such loyalty that makes its users so fiercely dedicated to it.
I am blindly loyal to Mac OS X and Gmail. The both of them are huge inspirations to me; they make me productive, I enjoy using them, they work with me and for me rather than as an abrasive but necessary intermediary (like Citrix) or flat out against me (Microsoft Word!) Gmail is so great and so empowering that random people are willing to take time to make ads for it.
I wish I could be that happy with, partnered with, and loyal to all vendors I patronize. Now, that’s delivering a product.
HEY YOU GUYS!!!!
Aug 27th
As a very young kid, there were four shows I remember watching very frequently that most in my generation will recall: Sesame Street, Mr. Rogers Neighborhood, The Electric Company, and 3-2-1 Contact.
Of these shows, I recall bits and pieces of skits and songs. Some are a little more familiar with the retro crowd: The Bloodhound Gang, the sillohuettes speaking to each other, Lily Tomlin as Edith Ann sitting in a giant rocking chair, and even Spider-Man shorts tucked into the science bits. But there are two songs that really stood out for whatever reason, and they have been stuck in my head for about 25 years.
I spent quite a bit of time searching for them online, but to no avail. I never was able to find them …until last night. I randomly decide to check them out again. Lo and behold, I foudn them both within minutes. God bless YouTube. So here are two songs that made enough of an impression when I was about 5 to stick in my head for 26 years. Enjoy.
Here is “Punctuation”
And here is “T-I-O-N tion tion tion tion”
I Switched to Safari 3
Aug 26th
I really did not expect to ever post something like this, but it’s true: I switched to Safari 3.
I love Camino, really I do. But recently, its limitations have been bothering me. I prefer my tabs in a very specific order and often I have several tabs open. If ever I close a tab by mistake, I cannot get that same order without doing tons of work or re-launching. Safari 3 draggable tabs.
One of the things that used to bother me about Safari was that there was no “New Tab” button available for the toolbar. There is now. It’s also got great keychain integration, private browing, the original embedded RSS, true Aqua widgets, resizable text boxes, easy PDF integration, and it’s super-fast.
Camino doesn’t support Ad-Block, but rather, stylesheet-based filtering. Safari does that too, by default, and it’s even easier to use than it is in Camino. Safari doesn’t have any Flash problems and once you add “Safari Stand” and enable the debug menu, you have a perfect drop in replacement.
My biggest complaint about Camino was the lack of development tools. It doesn’t have a Javascript debugger (ChimericalConsole never worked me for), doesn’t have a decent source viewer, doesn’t have many third party hacks to add functionality – it’s a browser for users, not developers. Without XUL, it’s tough to add features easily. And that made it tough to use for me. When I did any serious work, I’d always switch to Opera or, more recently, Safari 3. Safari 3’s Inspector is just awesome.
So… for now, I am Opera on Windows and Safari on Mac. My browser requirements are more demanding than most. I have felt for some time that Opera and Firefox on Mac just “feel” wrong, they don’t fit. So we’ll see how the Safari experiment goes.
iLife ‘08 First Impressions
Aug 10th
Yesterday, being a loyal Mac user, I rushed out and got iLife ‘08. iLife ‘08 was billed as a huge update. I was very excited. I got a chance to play with some of the apps, and here is my first impression.
iPhoto: Features Galore
iPhoto and iTunes have always been the two core apps for me on the Mac, since I use both loyally. iTunes is no longer billed as part of iLife, but iPhoto received a huge makeover for version 7, so I was especially excited for this application.
Lo and behold, iPhoto ‘08 is worth the price of admission. This version includes some really neat features, some advanced photo editing I was pleased to use. The addition of “events” was a very welcome feature. iPhoto attempts to “autosplit” events when it first loads and the auto-split mostly sucks. So my advice is add your entire library into one “misc” event (which can take several seconds) and then pull out the ones you want elsewhere. Moving from one event to another is painful. You can join and split very easily, but moving a nonsequential photo into a previous event is still a multi-step process (split, split, “all”, merge).
The “skimming” feature is one of the coolest, most unique things I’ve seen in some time. It’s surprisingly easy to use, very impressive to onlookers, and actually pretty useful. iPhoto 08 is a great step forward and I am very happy with it thus far. Just one warning: it will warn you every time you move photos from one event to another. Leave the warning. After 2 hours of work, I accidentally remerged ALL photos into one event, and had to repeat the entire process. Yuck!
iWeb ‘08: Incremental at Best
iWeb ‘08 is a garbage upgrade. I really thought that based on Steve Jobs’ keynote we were going to see something special. Unfortunately, it’s mostly the same iWeb with a few weird features. Adding HTML snippets is great, but adding a Google Map or Google Adsense is too specialized and most people don’t put Adsense on their personal sites anyway (snicker!). The export to a “personal domain” took me to mac.com and told me that my .Mac trial had ended. I haven’t done too much research, but does this mean your domain must be hosted at mac.com? I don’t know why I can’t export to an FTP server. The other “features” added are nonsense. There are still major problems: no way to style the navigation, no CSS, no “apply style to all pages” and no “convert to web friendly fonts.” iWeb templates can be VERY image heavy, and that would be a nice touch.
Rounding it Out
I haven’t had a chance to play with iMovie or iDVD yet, but I’ll be visiting them shortly. Garageband Magic looks kinda cool; I only played with it for a few minutes, but it’s a nice front to an otherwise intimidating application.
Some Suggestions for iLife
I am very upset that the “web galleries” cannot be exported to a folder the way iWeb can. I just paid $79 for a photo manager, and one of its coolest features is unavailable without buying your “still a ripoff” .Mac plan for $99 annually. By the way, Google charges me $20 a year, and I use their web apps about 100 times as much as i would use .Mac.
We really need “iVideo.” I recognize that both iPhoto and iTunes can manage video clips, but I prefer to keep my videos away from my massive music collection and out of my photos.
iWeb needs a major overhaul to include some basic features. The ability to manipulate the navigation menu is critical, without it, it’s just for silly personal sites and not much more. While it’s very easy, the two year old and now free “SiteStudio” makes it easier to create websites even faster, writes with stylesheets, and can FTP to my personal site. Here’s my equasion: Adobe Pagemaker is to iWeb as Microsoft Word is to X. That’s what you’re missing – X, a simple tool for simple lightweight website creation.
Overall
If you’re using iPhoto heavily, I think iLife is worth it. It’s really great to get small-step upgrades to your other apps too, even if they are minor like iWeb’s. If you are only a casual iLife user, definitely wait until you get a new Mac. There is nothing so groundbreaking that it’s a must have, and the old apps are still perfectly capable of getting the job done properly. I suppose we’ll have to wait until Leopard and the inevitable round of ‘08 .1 updates to see how well they can make this thing work, but for now, at only $79, it’s a solid upgrade well worth the comparably low price for people who use iLife with regularity.
Bourne Ultimatum is the Best Movie of the Summer
Aug 7th
This weekend, Jenn indulged me by seeing The Bourne Ultimatum despite the fact that she really wants to see Hairspray. I was very excited, and after a summer of crappy three-quels (Spider-Man, Shrek, and I’d include Pirates even though I kinda liked it), this one was poised to rock. I loved the first two and I really dig this new “real spy” genre.
And rock it did. Bourne is the baddest hero in the last two decades, ahead of Thomas Crown, Daniel Craig’s James Bond, and even Christian Bale’s Batman. There were scenes in this movie where my heart felt like it was going to explode. It was totally action-packed and relentless.
I am really tired of script writers, directors, and producers glossing over aspects of their script. For $100 million dollars, you should be able to get 1 IT guy to read your script and tell you if something is implausible. My complaint with Die Hard 4 was that the “virus” that blew up computers had no basis in reality. At least in the Matrix Trinity used a real hack so that nit-picky geeks were appeased when they screen-captured their DVDs.
There are very few things in the Bourne series that are flat out implausible. Sure, there are several “Wow, that was lucky” moments, but I never felt I had to suspend disbelief. And Bourne is just incredible. The character is a machine, and his dialogue, his actions, his brains, his skill… it’s all exciting to watch.
So, summer 2007 looks like this so far: (1) The Bourne Ultimatum, (2) Knocked Up, (3) Harry Potter.
Six Movies That Are Supposed To Be Funny… But Aren’t
Aug 1st
Scary Movie 3
From (at least part of the) team that brought you Airplane comes a new stinker that still riffs off other movies but instead draws on recycled crap like poking fun of Michael Jackson. This movie couldn’t have been dumber if they tried. There is nothing witty, nothing funny, and nothing original about Scary Movie 3, in which they parody – if it can be called that – Signs, The Ring, 8 Mile, to name a few. Skip this one – see parts 1, 2, and 4.
Talladega Nights
“#1 NASCAR driver Ricky Bobby stays atop the heap thanks to a pact with his best friend and teammate, Cal Naughton, Jr. But when a French Formula One driver, makes his way up the ladder, Ricky Bobby’s talent and devotion are put to the test.” That’s about as much of my brain as I care to devote to Talladega Nights, which is about as dumb as a movie can get. Despite hoardes of devout twenty-somethings spouting off the lines to this film like a classic Family Guy episode, there is no actual comedy here, just ridiculousness trying to pass as comedy. The whole “Dear sweet baby Jesus” thing was never funny and still isn’t. I find Will Ferrell both funny and entertaining, but in this film, he’s neither.
Ace Ventura: Pet Detective
I’ll probably take some heat for this one, but Ace Ventura was just not very funny to me. The only comedy in the film was watching Jim Carrey’s crazy plastic face contort. I actually find Jim Carrey to be a very entertaining person and I was really blown away by Eternal Sunset of the Spotless Mind, but his earlier comedy like this and its eponymous sequel pandered to the lowest chuckles in its teenage target crowd.
Waterboy
I have to admit I’ve never made it entirely through this film in one sitting. But be fair: it’s only because it sucks so bad. Let me get this straight: we’re supposed to laugh at Adam Sandler acting like a retard for an hour forty straight? Sucked. Let’s not forget about Rob Schneider. This guy is actually funny – or at least, used to be – and is so unfunny he could make a clown cry.
Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan
Borat, although the hardcore call it a two hour laughfest, is one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen. I am a huge Ali G fan – I’ve seen pretty much every episode of the HBO show and laughed hysterically through most of them. I have literally fallen out of my chair laughing at Sacha Baron Cohen’s characters. Then why did they release this piece of shit? Borat was, since its inception, about parody – putting people in uncomfortable positions and/or exposing their true, crazy beliefs. Then why have a movie where only about 10% is donated to that success formula and the rest to a stupid subplot, replete with bad acting, a drifting story, and a fat, hairy Russian’s asshole in your face? While some will call this a classic, I will call it what it actually is: shit. I pray – literally pray – that Cohen doesn’t eff up Bruno like he did Borat. Bruno is fantastic.
Epic Movie
This 2007 film played off the success of Scary Movie, Date Movie, and other satire flicks by working off the material Lord of the Rings, Pirates of the Caribbean, Chronicles of Narnia, Nacho Libre, X-Men, Superman and a slew of other action flicks provided. Unfortuntely, this movie was so boring I had to resort to slicing my eyes open with the edge of my Twizzler bag to stay awake. This movie doesn’t suck, it’s just so unfunny and boring you may find yourself on the edge of a psychotic break. Fo reals. Epic Movie contains fewer that 5 laughs, and those are:
1. Laughing at yourself for buying a ticket
2. Laughing at the actors for demeaning themselves so
3. Laughing at the writers for thinking this was going to be funny
4. Laughing at the fact that you are still watching the movie
Do yourself a favor, and instead of watching this movie on Friday, kill yourself. It’s easier.