Microsoft (mostly) sucks. I know this because I have to use their products daily and they remind me of this. So they’re new , horribly named music player, Zune, will probably suck. Christ, it comes in turd brown:



BUT DAMN the homepage rocks.

Article on the safety concerns when humans deal with robots and how this will be changing as robots evolve.

Aldus Pagemaker was my first piece of software I really learned to use, back in the early ’90s. I was going to Catonsville Community College at the time and took a professor’s suggestion to volunteer at the student newspaper to heart. Pagemaker was the defacto page layout program at the time, though it was starting to lose ground to Quarkxpress (which today is losing ground to Indesign).

These days Pagemaker is no longer being developed, though it is being sold by Adobe. Mere mention of its name in prepress/print or design circles is likely to bring up bad memories and sheer terror. Not for me though. I always thought it was nice piece of software and have a soft spot for it. I first learned it back on version 4.2, which could only open one document at a time and could only rotate images in 90 degree angles. Unlike most other page apps, you didn’t have to draw a box before typing and bringing in a graphics and it didn’t require much learning. You could just pick it up and go. I continued using it for the early part of my career, working for the MTA and over at French Bray, but by the time of French Bray it was pretty universally hated and most of the Pagemaker jobs were dumped on me by the other techs ‘cause they didn’t know how to use it.

Much as I liked it though, it was unreliable. It had a tendency to crash at odd times, taking your document with it, its default settings made it too easy for novices to embed graphics in the file, which could cause huge files which caused no end of problems when it came to output time.

And yet… I still have a soft spot for it. It was the first piece of software I came to know inside and out, like the back of my hand. Back at CCC, working on the student newspaper was a lot of fun, banging out a newspaper while trying to make the world better college life drama swirled around us (ok maybe it started with us!). It was a good tool, well used, sometimes hated, occasionally missed and slowly disappearing behind me.

It’s amazing what walking away from the computer can do. Rather than work on my day off, I revisted some favorite short stories, went outside and played a bit of bocce with the kid and enjoyed the sun. Nothing like recharging.

Anyway, got a response to some questions I posted on Adobe’s Incopy forum and it’s not great news. Incopy is quite limited by design and assumes writers and editors are complete idiots when it comes to layout. Basically, the assignments from Indesign are handed out via the production people and the writers have a little flexibility with transforming graphics, but not much. The whole point of Incopy, I thought, was to give writers a more visual idea of how their stories will fit. Yet when creating a new document, you automatically get a .5 margin around your text area. Why? Who has that space in newspaper/magazine environment? Also, you can’t easily specify the depth of your stories in oh say, INCHES or another other such physical measurement, it’s all based on words, lines, columns or pages. Nice idea, but not practical for less than ideal environments.

And the huge glaring point in all this is that Indesign users can’t work on the same document at once. Yes, the writers and designer can work on the same document, or more than 1 writer and single designer can, but never more than one designer. And should the production department be assigning writers their stories? Isn’t that more and Editor in chief job? Yeah, the designer is probably getting the space or specs from a chief, but why keep the chief outta the loop?

The Live-edit work-flow sounds great, but it needs work. Quark 7 is supposed to have composition zones which can be worked on by anyone, so hopefully Adobe will crib from that idea.

I’ve been spending most of this week working with Indesign and figuring out Incopy, the word processor on steriods that intergrates with Indesign. It enables a more collaborative work-flow, one were writers and designers can work on the same document, but in their respective tasks: writers work on the copy while designers work on the layout.

But it’s new beast, a bit radical in the way it forces you to work, to the extent that it’s overwhelming and disorientating. And if me, the production manager, is confused, the less tech savvy writers will be really thrown for a loop.

Much of what I’ve learned over the past two days has been by trial and error and reading the online help (which you can’t easily print out!!!). I’ll have to get hold of the manual from the IT department, even if it’s just a PDF, ‘cause some of the concepts are really strange. There’s not much about it on the web, except for a series of articles over at Quark vs Indesign. There’s also a book about it, by some Adobe engineers. I’ll pick up today or tomorrow, but in the meantime, I’ll be doing a bit more trial and error tomorrow.

Having gotten use to the Internet radio features of iTunes, such as tracking listing, and the vast availability of stations with distinct genres, listening to the radio in my car is boring and lackluster. Hearing a track which I like (which is rare on commercial radio), but don’t know the name of, I’m left stranded and some what disoriented. I look down at the radio, thinking, “Where’s the title of the song and the artist?”. You’d think that would want to encourage people to buy the stuff by telling you who did it, but nope.

Just another nail in that coffin.

I use to think I lived on the technological edge and for a while I probably did.

Latley though, I realized I’m actually out in the suburbs. And that’s ok. Reading through all the many ways that people use the web (we won’t even get into phone tech) to try to relay or collect info is like going through quicksand, there’s so much and you get bogged down with it all. There’s RSS and newsreaders, flickr, bloglines, icerocket, comments, tracks, im, my space, livejournal, feedburner, technorati. If you recognize most of those names, you’ll realize that there’s a lot of crossover, but I have to wonder, is it really necessary. Sure it’s great to see so much neat stuff being done, but it’s overkill, really. Email still works if you need to reach someone, you know?


But all of it is a whole new way of interacting with people you never could have met before, so whole ways of communicating are being invented and not all of them will be around forever , let alone 2 years from now. As others have noted, a lot of it is based on networking, ie meeting people with similar likes and/or goals. Wouldn’t you like to meet all the other people who like that wierd little movie you love that no one else you know has heard of it? or least know where they are and what they’re into, so you can find more media?

Heh, this thing started off as bitching session, but it’s turning into a two minute love. Mostly because as overwhelming as it can seem sometimes, it can all be turned off, you know. Nobody said you HAD to leave on the edge, just visit when you feel like it. ‘Cause a lot of it is great.

What fascinates me about it is the speed of it all how it keeps getting faster. It’s never too much for the edge, things STILL seem slow. Reminds me of a regular test I do with any new, superfast computer that I can get my hands. I immediately open up Photoshop, set the dpi to something insane and try to do something simple, like draw a brush stroke. If that goes quickly enough ie as fast as I’m thinking, then I try something more complex and see how quickly I do that. and so and so until Photoshop begins to bog dow and I see that little progress bar, meaning I have to wait, meaning my mind is having to slow down for the world.

That’s where we’re moving with all this, even if we don’t realize it, even if there’s no set goal in mind. We want everything to go as fast as we can think it, from email, to voice, to searching for info, to creating new things, we want the outer world to go as fast as the inner world. Yeah, we may have been prey for lions and huddling in caves waiting for winter to pass, but screw all that, we’re going to make the world act on our terms.

Scientists in Taiwan say they have bred three pigs that glow in the dark.


— Glow in the dark animals. This’ll do wonders for shepherds. And yeah, my first question is, when can we do it humans? Because that could be a lot of fun, though racisim would rear its head: i.e. “Oh god, honey, theres greenies moving next door. There goes property values.”

Google now has music search at google.com/musicsearch. You can enter song tiles, artist, or album. Goggle tells you what album it came from or all the albums an artist to websites, artist photos, a link to various music starts. Damn useful.

Less is more still implies that more is better. or so says Jason from 37 signals.

He’s got a point-I got an iPod shuffle for my birthday, back in August, from the she’s-the-best wife. It’s nice, my first iPod, only $100 for the larger 1gb version, vey small. But not toosmall, you know? I have big hands, but the thing fits comforatble like in my mitts, long but has a thick width to it. Didn’t realize how important that was until I got a chance to play with the iPod nano, which is ultra thin and small, way too small for me. It feels like it could be easily lost, though the color screen is a nice feature. But one of the great things about the shuffle is that I don’t have look at it, in order to use. Whether it’s in my pocket or in my hand, it’s controls known and it’s easy to listen, fast forward, skip or turn up the volume on the thing. Yeah, the 1 gig size is small, but I knew I’d be getting a larger iPod and passing the shuffle down to kid, who is already lusting after it. She’s not that interested in a boyfriend, but she wants an iPod. That’s my kid.

What really brought home how handy the shuffle is was when I started sticking it my pocket when going out. It wasn’t to listen to music, but to grab or share any files I want with whomever I might come across. I almost want to put in on my keyring. Or in the car.