To Kill a Mocking eBird
Alternative title: How Tech Journalism is a Shithole of Hitcount Jerking Fuckwits.
Okay guys, that's it. I'm serious. You see the "journalistic" blogs filled with anti-Mac rubbish or Apple-doomsday articles? The ones that entice Apple fans to go and tell them how things actually are (in the real world, where the sun is blue)? Stop giving them hits. Yes, I know it's nerd-rage inducing but seriously. I'll make this clear: These people WANT you to go there and correct them. They want to be able to comment back going "Ho ho ho, lookit the Apple fanboys oh lawlz!" regardless of what you actually say.
THEY WANT YOUR ATTENTION.
Stop fucking giving it to them. If you want to hate them bald, do it on your own blog. With no link back. Do it in IRC, with no link back. But for God's sake, stop linking to them and letting them jerk off over how many hits their latest article on how Apple needs an open iPod or needs to license OS X or needs a $50 Mac or some shit gets.
Just don't fucking give them any attention.
Wednesday, 7 May (Permalink Suds: 1)
Oh Shit, Mystic Powers
Friday I begged the Gods of The Internets that Apple's iMac update would come the following tuesday (so I wouldn't have to sit on moneys resisting buying the out-dated ones). Next day, rumours had it they were coming Monday/Tuesday. Sadly the reports were just that they would have slightly faster processors and larger hard-drives. I looked to the skies and pleaded to the same Lords of Jiggawatts that Apple would update the graphics card too.
Today: iMac update. Better processors, more RAM and better graphics card for the 24". And not just better, actually pretty damn decent for mid-range gaming apparently.
I'm going to be sacrificing a chicken pie to them later in thanks.
I don't game hugely since my... Er... Addiction, mostly from being busy. But the thought that I'd get 90FPS in WoW, on high compared to 15-20FPS with everything low or off is.. Well.. It makes the inner kid all warm.
Gaming hooooo!
Monday, 28 April (Permalink Suds: 1)
Douches and Dirtbags
Haven't said much in a while. I've been generally busy or didn't have a lot to say. Since I'm getting a mini-reputation for grumpy ranting entries though I thought I would continue when something caught my eye this morning.
According to TUAW (who I don't actually read much, I think most of their articles are either inane or just dumb) MacUpdate added an 'Editor's Note' to the VMware download page to promote their bundle with a competitor. Right in the developer's text.
(Quick explanation for those not in the know: VMware and Parallels are both competing products that let you run Windows at almost native speed in it's own little window - or even Windows applications "inside" OS X as recent features have added.)
Of course, their comments are rife with the same mouth breathing bullshit eaters that cling to all these types of companies like MacUpdate and MacHeist. These are the same types of people that defended MacHeist after it was exposed that they had made up a load of bullshit about Macs getting hacked just for publicity. No. It's not okay for you to add promotions right in to the text publishers use to sell their applications. People fucking forget that it's God damn intrusive to add text to a developer's pitch.
I hate analogies but it's the equivalent of you talking to a sales person and having someone butt in to promote another person's product right there as the other person is talking and being paid to. Why doesn't MacUpdate just be done with it and make the page forward to their promotions one? This isn't the first time MacUpdate has been douches. A few years ago they took down the site for a holiday (Christmas I believe) and put up a fucking Christian splash page - which me and quite a few other people found offensive.
Worst of all you have the unwashed cunts that always defend these actions. "It's their site!" they cry. "They can do what they want!" Guess what. When you're hosting sales pitches (or just plain downloads) for thousands of developers, it isn't just their site. Imagine the whining if MySpace closed for a weekend and put up a Jewish front page.
MacUpdate is not a "Good Guy". The majority of good guy businesses are just wishful thinking by those with rose tinted glasses.
Saturday, 26 April (Permalink Suds: 1)
Ready? Set? No.
It's been three days since Flow has been released, enough time for people work out the hype from their systems, to finish shouting praise from the rooftops and let them actually do such a mundane thing as use it. And so today I gave it a whirl. I remember Flow as it was first previewed. It had interesting features and looked attractive and since that tentative glimpse it has steamed forth on the railroad of the almighty Beta. Powered by the united hype and anticipation of clingy users everywhere.
Quite a few months back, Flow's page turned from a modest preview to a very snazzy "Product" site. Full of the usual this and that reasons why it should be the reason for you to part with change from your wallet. It was lovely. I thought it was well presented, nicely written and had some nice touches.
Imagine my horror when I actually decided to download Flow and all this had become a bland, single page. I thought for a moment I'd actually reached an out-dated page somehow through Google - but no. Apparently this was indeed page. It even had a download link and everything. You know you've swung a miss, however, when someone who's actually familiar with your product closes the tab because he thinks he's found an old work in progress page.
Next up, the first launch. I must say I do like the Flow icon even if it tells me absolutely nothing about what the application does, or how it functions, or presents any real world analogy. Heck, it's pretty. Who cares. I typed in my FTP hoodickies and away I went on the exciting journey of file transfers! Wait, it won't save those details if I disconnect? Or give me an option to save them? Right.
However, it does slide the file list in to view. Wait, list? No column view? Oh, okay. The very first thing in this view that struck me was the rather large space with the ominous writing: "Nothing selected". As if the gods themselves were demanding that my cursor click something to prevent their wrath. Okay that's facetious, but why do I need to be told this? The default behavior should be to hide the information bar (Box? Pane?) whilst there is nothing selected and reveal itself when I actually do want to see it.
Now the horrifying part: I noticed the toolbar. Jesus Fuck.
Wait, let's back up. The pleasant site to Lord preserve us boring one. Apparently, Mr. Flow McFlow (I couldn't actually find a name in my two minutes trying to find one on the ExtendMac site) fired Adam Betts to use a different designer. Betts also does web design -- I've always rather enjoyed his style -- so I'm going to guess that he didn't like the idea of Mr. Flow using his things after they split up. Evidentially, whoever followed isn't a large fan of eye catching or keeping the viewer awake. A pigeon tells me this is also a reason for the appalling toolbar icons. I generally, as a rule of thumb, don't rip in to people that much. But if you are doing icon work for a pretty widely anticipated application you kind of actually, you know, try at least.
The Disconnect icon is sparkly, upper class shit. I'm actually amazed it can be as bad as it is. First of all it shares no style with any of the other buttons in Flow, nor with any other toolbar icons. I love the Milk look too, but it doesn't fit at all. The body of it tells me nothing about it's function and it's glyph is generic. It could mean cancel transfers. It could mean close a jonglehopper.
Of course I'm glossing over the most distressing things. It's a circle that's not even properly circular. It's not symmetrical. Hell, even the glyph is misaligned and has a staggeringly blurry cross. I'm shocked anyone that's used whatever they use for more than a day pumped it out.
And just using the Safari icon for View in Browser? Not redone, not restylized to fit in. Just literally grabbed the icon and resized? Seriously? From the huge time in beta testing, no-one would of questioned waiting... Oh, an hour for an actual well done one?
The depressingly funny part is, ExtendMac's own blog states there were nearly two thousand beta testers (Look at me! I'm so popular!), and not one of these said: Dude, look, that toolbar? Fuckbats man.
Not one? Or certainly not enough to slow the train to mediocreville.
At least the icon is pretty.
Sunday, 6 April (Permalink Suds: 3)
Filled My Heart With Rage
April fools sucks.
Fucking kids.
Fucking companies trying to look cool.
Fucking fuck shits.
Tuesday, 1 April (Permalink Suds: 1)
I Could Draw a Better Line
Not much going on today yet. But I thought I'd have another ranty sort of an entry. Whenever I move again I sure as hell aren't getting another BT internet line.
First of all, the line was advertised as "8Mb". Now, I know that the crafty fucks always put an "up to" in front of it, but when I ask for an eight megabit line I do not expect to get an ADSL line going through my fucking phone. If they can't provide a cable line -- like expected -- they should just tell me that and I'd of found someone else. My last Telewest/Virgin line could hit 1.5MB download speeds. I'm lucky if I break 250KB on this one.
Secondly, your routers are shit. My Telewest/Virgin one lasted me something like 3-4 years and even returned it when I moved because it was still in perfect working order. The first router I got from you died after a month. This new one just stops randomly making new connections at least once a week, making me restart it. The wireless range (which only has to go goddamn 15 or so feet, because I'm right above it) often dips from 4 bars to 2 for no reason.
Just use someone else's or get someone to manufacturer something that isn't going to break every fucking week. To put it in perspective, I used my Apple Airport for something like 2-3 years. It never once died or forced me to restart it.
It really pisses me off when I'm sat waiting for an email and suddenly -- oh it won't get anything from Gmail. Oh Safari won't resolve any pages. Oh, nothing will reconnect again. And then I have the bullshit that IRC/AIM won't reconnect me for some stupid reason until I turn the wireless off and on.
Companies: Making life harder for an extra £1.75, since the God damn start of time.
Monday, 31 March (Permalink Suds: 2)
One Small Step for Mac...
One giant leap for themekind.
There's been some wonderful OS X theme related news in this thread. A big jump towards someone finally making Leopard customizable. I had a bit of fun last night playing around to make the buttons look like Max Rudberg's Milk theme. Unfortunately for the moment it looks like Niqu-like themes are possible because we have no way of changing button glyphs or text colours.
In other news, non-Mac users are actually using the fact Safari 3.1 for Windows is using OS X's font rendered and not ClearType.
I don't often get on my high horse -- because my lemon pie is usually petting him and giving him sugar lumps -- but dear lord. This is why people can put up with shit user interfaces (Hello Aero). It's why I don't actually read Ars' discussions, because it's full of developer types.
Now, I love me the smart sort. Christoph is an amazing developer. The Transmission developer was cool to work with. The problem I have with most Windows or Linux developers (I apologize in advance for these broad statements) is that they have no taste. A lot seem to have this jealous view of user interface designers that they just aren't needed. Usability is just coded, not designed, apparently.
Look, ever wonder why Linux is widely unknown? Why no average Joe cares? Because it looks like Windows Light. It feels like an abused wife. Okay, you've left your previous partner but now... Why are you making this next one so like him? Is there some deep emotional trauma going on? He didn't really mean to blue-screen of death you baby.
God damn I'm skipping all over the place with my analogues today. I've only had one coffee, I'll blame that.
You don't have to copy Windows. You don't have to copy OS X. Do something different. Something new, something fresh. Stop being assholes to 'proper' designers -- not psuedo "well I kind of know Photoshop" guys. Big distros? Stop fucking cheaping out buying stock icons. It just makes you look bland.
Lastly, recognize that user interfaces are like fashion. No look is ever perfect and no look remains cool or fresh past the couple of year mark. No, I'm not saying every UI should dazzle and swoon users. Just be good looking, usable, made from competent graphics and out of the way when you need to work.
Vista is the guy in the sparkling costume trying to impress. OS X is the guy in the sharp grey suit now. Don't let Linux be the badly dressed guy in the corner that no-one asks to dance.
Tuesday, 25 March (Permalink Suds: 1)
I'm Not Zombie Obsessed.
I bought myself a tablet this week. I missed drawing and decided to take it back up -- in pixel form! It's swell, especially compared to the shitty one I got many years back. Which broke. And didn't work on OS X. Need to re-learn how to draw shit before assaulting the world with mangled things.
We had a power cut, oddly, as well tonight. I was half asleep and convinced that the zombies had finally begun their attack. My long studies of Zombie Survival Guide would pay off! Unfortunately, chopping and bludgeoning weren't needed (I didn't even need to solve a fireplace puzzle).
Still busy with works, I know, I know. I need to work on Leon and some freebies.
This has been a public service announcement from your local Zombie Patrol.
Thursday, 13 March (Permalink Suds: 2)
Title Longer Than Entry
Whoops, didn't mean to not post anything for a while. Busy with work at the moment. Where's my lemon pie at?
Short entry is short shorts!
Monday, 10 March (Permalink Suds: 2)
Poke, Nudge, Poke
Another quick entry, with a wallpaper today. Konata from Lucky Star.
Poke it, poke it, poke it, poke it, poke it, poke it, poke it, poke it, poke it, poke it, poke it, poke it, poke it.
Download Hey You Konata!: 1280x800, 1680x1050, 2560x1600
Saturday, 23 February (Permalink Suds: 2)
Floating Lemons
Quick entry. It's been a really tiring week and I'm glad it'll be over soon. Hopefully next week I'll find time to finish the new VS front and GUI pages and use them. Happy nineth month to my tangy lemon pie!
Polished black plastic, glass and glowing under-light indicators. Comes in four colours.
Download Float (3D) Dock iContainer (Resources)
Friday, 22 February (Permalink Suds: 5)
Idle Coffee Makes Work for Coffee Coffee
It's that time again! Busy week this week, I've got to look after my niece and two nephews for most of the week, which is damn tiring, and also work on a couple of pieces of work. I had a peek around and one thing I need to get sorted is Capture. I still find it amazing that something me and Chris did a few years back is still getting recommended by bloggers and websites in new articles. So I'm going to try and catch Chris and talk to him about updating it and everything - it'd be a shame to waste that work.
Need to find time to work on VS Goodies/About code. It was nice to see how easy it was to turn in to an MT4 template. I'm secretly hoping to get the new VS done by the end of the month. Would be really nice to finally have a proper site again for folks to see.
I don't think I've ever drunk as much coffee before.
Tuesday, 19 February (Permalink Suds: 1)
Glossing Over
I've been wondering about posting something like this for a while. Last night there was a rather rowdy argument on MTF concerning Gloss' latest release. I can understand both sides, I'd of liked to added something there but here will do too.
The problem some people have is that Gloss is now notorious for releasing icons every other day, and them generally not having high quality. There's no easily obtained solution for this. You can't stop him from releasing whatever he likes, because MTF does not have a bar of quality you must adhere to, in order to create a thread in the Releases forum. The most polite way is the old saying; if you've got nothing nice to say, don't say anything.
My own personal view is that Gloss doesn't spend enough time on each icon, by far. And doesn't seem to understand that if you're going to base a piece of your work heavily on someone else's, then you must at least tip your hat in that direction. Gloss isn't too capable of putting his thoughts across well (it seems obvious English is not his first language) but the jist I got was "I wanted to create this for me". And that's fine, for things you're not going to release publicly. He could copy Minium down to the last pixel happily, as long as he didn't publish it as his own work.
Advice to Gloss? Work on your stuff for more than what seems like a few hours. You might get excited about it, but you really need to work on details. Shading, shadows, textures. Everyone would be ecstatic if you released an awesome icon once a week, rather than four lesser ones.
Now, advice to MTF; you can go two ways. Either every original release is fair game, and shitting on a thread should give you either a temp ban or an infraction (see end). Or you moderate the Release forum and only "approved" quality threads are filtered through. The former antagonizes frequent visitors to an extent, the latter seems stuck up. You do have a third option for a Featured forum, where only approved designers may create threads and would reward frequent releasers, but that also has it's own obvious problems.
In the end, the drama from last night underlines one thing in my mind: Forums need a form of infractions or otherwise public hand-slapping. It's not enough to say people will be temporarily or permanently banned for being an asshole enough. The casual observer sees none of that going on, they don't know you gave him a shiner over PM, and so they'll keep complaining until you inform them.
A huge amount of rude, intolerable people would snap in to line if every time they wandered in to a thread and threw up they received a very public infraction. It might humble some of them in to a form of actual good posters. But for now the complete lack of any greyscale of punishments is doing harm. Black and white, banned or not, isn't going to cut it.
Friday, 15 February (Permalink Suds: 3)
Metallic Valentines
Two main things today. The first thing is; it's Valentine's Day! That means you're supposed to be all lovey and shit, swoon your girl and then waggle your eyebrows (that last one might just be me though).
A different style, it took me a few days on and off to get this done. Was fun to do, hope you enjoy it. Either way, I hope you have a nice day with that special somebody.
Download Drift Away Together: 1280x800, 1680x1050, 2560x1600
Next up I want to talk about Lutetium (collective groan). I've been working on eon for quite some time now, I actually started the folder icon back in november. Obviously I haven't made speedy work for lots of reasons. It didn't help that I changed how I do most of my icons and sizes nowadays, or that I wanted "proper" icons for each folder, meaning many hours.
So I sat down and thought about what to do, because I really do want to get this set done, out, and enjoyed. End result; redoing the folder icon. There are two reasons for this; the first is I want to separate Lutetium more from Minium. One of the first things Cary said to me when I showed him back in November was "Unless you out-Minium Minium, it's going to look very inspired by it." I didn't want the angle or similarities to loom over my head and make me paranoid about the whole set being too me-too-ish.
The second is the folder additions. Frankly they took a lot of time for each one. And when there's a heap to do, it makes it slow going. Now, some artists can do that; Take Lanham's Agua for example, I love that set, but a lot of the folder additions are quite simple. I'm quite certain if he'd been going for photo realism with the set, it would of taken a lot longer.
And so this is what the new folder looks like. You can see the angle is much more like classic Aqua folders and has more references -- with the seam -- to the old Lutetium theme. It still needs a few touch ups, but hopefully I'll have a few more previews to show you this weekend.
And here's the current what-if styles of the folders. I think I'll be going with the second or third for the first release (to actually get them out), and perhaps work on the first style. Rather like the previous additions, but simpler.
Hopefully you like it and it'll turn out to be more usable and help get eon out before '09. (Wink wink nudge nudge)
Thursday, 14 February (Permalink Suds: 8)
Choke a Bitch (or: How Today Sucks)
I fucking fail today.
- I decide, hey! Save monies by printing off magic cards to try them out. That's smarts.
- Printer is one of those shitty "Print from camera" dealies, so it doesn't have full USB port. So I can't hook it up to iMac (no cable).
- So I think, hey, I can transfer the card images to my camera, then print from camera!
- Camera doesn't support mounting as disk image, so can't transfer to it...
- So I think, hey, I'll buy a USB A-B cable from eBay!
- I buy it, notice the paypal address is still my old one... Cable gets shipped to old address.
And people really do wonder why the whole Apple "It just works" thing sells shit. I think Artie is going to have to choke a bitch before the day is out.
Edit: Huzzah the seller didn't send it until after my email, so it got sent to my new address!
Monday, 11 February (Permalink Suds: 1)
Bugger This!
Six hours ago I said that. I decided I might as well do the VS redesign myself. It's not too flashy, but I think it's pretty. It was even fun to learn a bit of CSS. I've finished the design and code for the front/home and think I'm going to spend the weekend sorting out the other pages seeing how they should flow.
Originally I was going to switch over to Chyrp, but after looking at the way it handles theming - well, it is a 1.x release - I decided "Fuck no". So here's a chance for me to update to MovableType 4, which apparently is a nice upgrade. The new "stand alone" pages that use your theme means I can make unique/non-blog entry content on important pages. I'm not totally sure when I'll be making the switch, if I can get the code finished by monday then template zapping it usually takes a day a most.
Along with all this I'm going to be overhauling the folders and uploaded stuff, organizing it properly and separating old content from the new. So expect things to break in the next two weeks.
On a separate note, I'm enjoying Protector, a pretty nice tower defense game.
Edit: Upgraded to MT4... That was... Painless (so far). Woo!
Saturday, 9 February (Permalink Suds: 0)
I'd Tap That
In a pretty bad mood, assholes down the road don't know how to shut the fuck up. My sleeping is pretty messed up too. Argh. Anyway, happier subjects, like lemon pies and geekery.
My current geeky but not-actually-spent-money-on is Magic the Gathering. With having quit WoW and given some of my old collected junk to one of my nephews, I don't have anything geeky to do. Which means excess geek juice, and you know what that means.
So after examining the colours I decided to go with black, although I might try out blue or red in the future. In those sorts of games, I don't play fair. I'm a cruel bastard. My first draft deck, excluding starter deck and stuff, is a discard deck. Megrim is going to cause damage every time you have to discard, and oh boy I've got lots of cards that do that. The main strategy would be to get my rats in play, have them die and bring them back, protecting my more valuable creatures. Mindslicer plus Abyssal Nocturnus would be a pretty harsh combo if you had seven cards in your hand (AN gets +2/+2 until end of turn when you discard a card.. Mindslicer makes both players discard they're whole hand. +14/+14, yum yum).
Although that isn't my ideal deck, there's a few I swapped out because they cost £15/$30 each, and I needed two of each. The deck above would still cost £60-80 though, which kind of made my wallet cry. Sticking with starter and a few boosters f'now I reckon!
Friday, 8 February (Permalink Suds: 1)
Ancient Lich Seeks New Thrills
A contentless post, to keep myself blogging! I installed and tried out Chyrp, it's a wonderfully light and simple blog/CMS system. I'm seriously thinking about moving VS over to it and working on reopening her. Basically making VS in to an expanded Soap Suds. I've been meaning to do something with the "main" site for a while.
Not much else, I've been doing some hopefully helpful stuff in order to get some more client work, trying out Twitterific 3.0.1 (feel free to follow me) and deciding what's for breakfast.
Friday, 8 February (Permalink Suds: 1)
I Said Dick, Hurr Hurr.
A bit tired of assholes stomping all over newbie folks over on MTF. Look, just because you don't like something or think it's not done well doesn't give you the right to waltz in to their thread and proclaim it as shit. This is not constructive criticism. This is called being a fecking asshole. Now, stating your dislikes ("Oh that border is too strong", "The perspective is off, should be like this...") is fine and reasonable. Got pointers to improve them? Even better.
Don't assume because you have an account it gives you license to walk in to first timer's threads, dick in hand and start jerking off.
Lastly, I tweaked a few things in the CSS and also neatened up the side part, because I felt it had far too much going on. Also added a little "Hire me" blerb, hint hint, nudge nudge. Comments open for this ranty sort. Whoops, I deleted last five comments by accident!
Update
Because I can't reply to the locked thread, I'll reply here.
Being new here (or first post) doesn't reflect ones Photoshop skills nor doesnt mean you have to lie to someone, just to keep the peace. If someone is brave enough to post an art of some sort here, he should be brave enough to recieve the critic.
Me and everyone else are not asking people like Gloaming to lie. There's a monumental difference between stating what you dislike about a piece of art and flat out saying 'Shit sucks' which is basically what people are doing.
Being an asshole is not being critical, it is in fact being an asshole.
Monday, 4 February (Permalink Suds: 6)
Up to Speed
Catching up on icons releases, nothing new if you've been lurking MTF.
Notes
Transmission (Second Gear) is for pre-1.0 versions, so ignore everything except the icons if you're using 1.0+. Yes the HTML is horrible.
Sunday, 3 February (Permalink
