Monthly Archive for April, 2010

Charles Stross on Apple

Apr 30, '10  ·  3 Comments Tags: , .

Insightful commentary Apple’s strategy:

Apple are trying desperately to force the growth of a new ecosystem — one that rivals the 26-year-old Macintosh environment — to maturity in five years flat. That’s the time scale in which they expect the cloud computing revolution to flatten the existing PC industry. Unless they can turn themselves into an entirely different kind of corporation by 2015 Apple is doomed to the same irrelevance as the rest of the PC industry — interchangable suppliers of commodity equipment assembled on a shoestring budget with negligable profit. #

Ode to Icons

Apr 28, '10  ·  2 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

Since getting my new 27” iMonstrosity yesterday, I’ve been gawking at icons at 512×512 and bathed in their lavish detail and I just wanted to share a few of my favorites with you. You may already know them; but have you ever taken a closer look at them? Notice the subtle detail on the stem of the leaf of Coda, the minute detail of the paper in Thing’s icon and the way the abstract iconography of the leaves meet the realism of the yellow center of the Versions flower.

Things

Coda

Versions

Less is More

Apr 26, '10  ·  8 Comments Tags: , , , .

I love the engineers behind iPhone OS. They’re head, neck, shoulders and torso ahead of everyone else. It’s kind of scary in a way, as it probably shows just goes to show how far behind everything else is in contrast.

Not to pick on WordPress, I’ve just spent a good deal of time with it over the last few days, and it struck me again yesterday how, as I was testing a slew of role management plugins (argh, by the way), that I would activate a plugin, and subsequently not have the faintest clue where to look for any new UI inserted by it. Some put a single options page under Users, others inserted whole bundles of pages, some put them where I least expected it…

Contrasted with the iPhone, where when you install or update an app, from the phone itself, it will actually exit the app store and take you to the screen where the icon is, and show you that it’s being installed/updated. This usually takes 10 – 20 seconds, and you’re good to go; it’s right there ready for you.

It’s a small thing, and in the cases where you’d prefer to stay in the store it may be mildly annoying, but on a larger scale it means a lot less frustration and searching, even in a system as simple as the iPhone.

Very Symptomatic, I’d Say

Apr 26, '10  ·  9 Comments Tags: , , .

I could pull out a plethora of reasons why the media manager in WordPress needs to be the focus of the next major release after WordPress 3.0, but honestly, this particular issue seems to say everything there is to say on the subject.

Seriously now; did anyone even bother testing it? How long has it been like that?

I love WordPress; I actually really do, but you can’t just throw the first media manager that crosses your path into WordPress core and think that’s that… And I’m not just talking about this either. I’ve looked at the code; I’ve reverse-engineered the code. It’s not pretty, but more importantly, it’s symptomatic of a whole heap of problems in WordPress in general.

A Snow Leopard-esque release would do wonders; though I have to wonder if it won’t break the back of those who take it upon themselves to try it?

<3'ing CloudApp

Apr 24, '10  ·  6 Comments Tags: , , .

I think I’ve fallen in love with CloudApp. At first I didn’t really get it: “What does this do that DropBox doesn’t already cover?”. But now that I’ve had it running for a few days, it dawned on me that I’ve used it every day since then, several times a day in fact.

What is it? Well, essentially you install a small menubar icon on OS X (no Windows client yet), which ferries any files dropped upon it into the cloud and puts a hyperlink to that file into your clipboard.

Et voíla.

Yeah, sure, the same functionality exists with DropBox, but it has more steps, and let’s face it, that’s what separates the boys from the men, or rather, the software you use, and the software you use without thinking about it.

If you work a lot with other people online, or if you just like to share(/spam Twitter like me), you can set it up to automatically upload screenshots; which once you start remembering that functionality, suddenly starts coming in handy.

Add to that a wonderfully clear aesthetic throughout, which helps to construct an image of utter simplicity.

Drop, paste.

Slick.

Appease Eyjafjallajökull, Sacrifice Gizmodo

Apr 21, '10  ·  9 Comments Tags: , , .

Because I so enjoy the showmanship that Apple seems to have a market monopoly on these days, I’m always disappointed when upcoming products are ‘spoiled’ ahead of time. It’s part of the image that Apple has built for themselves; their secrecy isn’t merely a matter of protecting their ideas before they can act on them, it’s just as much a marketing tool and a narrative device.

But where spoiling the surprise is annoying and the spoiler acting like a retard about it, is regrettable. Wrecking a mans life on your propensity for more pageviews? That’s somewhere in the outer regions between ignorant, selfish, disingenuous and plain ol’, straight-up, head-on, praise-Satan, Temple-of-Doom-Kali-Ma, Evil.

The fact that that particular ‘article’, if you want to call it that, had all the hallmarks of wanting to walk in the shoes of the kinds of ‘in the moment’ pieces that more established and honorable publications carry with grace, only made it so much worse. What sickening tripe.

I hope Apple steps up and buries Gizmodo in more legal trouble than they ever dreamed of.

‘Journalistic integrity’, spell it bitch! I said spell it!

The Tortured Indecision

Apr 15, '10  ·  3 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

Having the entire day laid bare before me, my biggest problem seems to be where to begin? Talk about a luxury problem, huh?

It’s honestly not an easy thing to come to terms with.

On the one hand it makes sense to start working full time with something as soon as possible, to secure some funding for the lean times.

On the other hand, since I’ve got a handful of months funded, what better way to burn through them than on the things I’ve been daydreaming while I’ve been stuck in a 9 to 5?

And I’ve had a lot of those day dreams. I mean, a lot.

Continue reading ‘The Tortured Indecision’

Ronin

Apr 14, '10  ·  10 Comments Tags: , , , .

Yes, people of the planet Earth and outlying satellites, I am as a matter of fact a ‘free agent’, even if this blog seems as inactive as ever, which would be because I spend my days basking in the sun, reading long-overdue books and experimenting with various outlandish fruit combinations for smoothies that’ll blow your socks right off and send tears of joy rolling down your cheeks.

Alright, so I’ve started reading some books, the other stuff I’ve only dipped by toes into. But I’m working on it.

But a I am a free agent, having had the opportune fortune of ending my 6+ year stint at Io Interactive by being escorted out the door along with some 30 other people who for various reasons found themselves down and out in Copenhagen on the single most beautiful spring day in a decade or more.

No, I’m not entirely sure what happened. I don’t think any of us are, including friends and colleagues left behind, but considering that I’m the least experienced of the developers let go — most of them having 10 years or more behind them — I’m left to wonder on my own what the overriding idea was…

But, as is always the case, the bad memories fade and the good persist, and much as I’ll miss the excitement of working on large-scale games like the Kane & Lynch series — where I spent most of my time — I’ll miss my friends there infinitely more. The banter, the heated TF2 matches, the coffee trains and the overarching eagerness to prove our meddle and just create great games.

So hurray for Facebook, Twitter, blogs, mail and Skype. These things truly shine when you suddenly find yourself going it alone.

Lucky for me, I’ve had it in mind to quit for quite some time, having made several preparations for doing so, and this quite literally couldn’t have happened at a more opportune time. Add to that the timing of having spring making its way into Denmark and me getting to soar my oates on some of those vanity projects I’ve been wanting to do for years, while Io continues to pay me for a few months more…

Things could be a lot worse.

Beyond that, my plan is to hook up with friends of mine for a pretty cool project we’re all very excited about. After that I’ll go the way of the modern-day ronin: The Freelance Web Designer.

Hopefully, this also means I’ll be able to find the time to blog some more, not to mention bringing out the next version of K2 within a foreseeable future.

Oh yeah, and then Red Dead Redemption is coming up in May, so…

I’ll expound on my plans in the near future; for now I just need to get them more organized as well as learn this new routine of not having an office to go to for a little while, which is probably the hardest part about not being employed. It’s surprising how fast time flies when you’re just milling about the house.

Goodbye Io, and thanks for all the fishcake.