Designmudd Ramblings on mostly Web Design & Development - Print too.

I bought the macbook (black) maybe 2 months ago with the idea of using it for all my email, calendar, contacts, and for “emergency work” while i’m not in the office. The idea was that if Im in the office, my desktop is better because the cinema display is huge and keyboard is easier to man etc. BUT, then you start to get all comfortable on one machine.. so I began using the macbook pretty exclusively, launching all of creative suite, downloading new apps, etc. I pretty much pushed the keyboard on the G5 directly under the monitor as if never to be used again. I’ll tell you what though… you can’t work on these things. I still need the cheesegrater.

Why can’t you design on a macbook? Because. Not because of the screen, keys, not even because of memory or speed… well sort of. The reason you can’t is because of the intel chip inside. The Emulation is just really painful. The macbook with intel chip is fast, the catch is you really need to be working in universal apps if you want to keep the swearing down to a minimum. Not only are the emulated apps slow, the entire system freezes up or crawls when you’ve got emulated apps running. 1 app is doable, but beyong that forget about it. ..And I’m one of those people that absolutely cannot launch one app at a time.. I jump around like an animal. I need to be able to launch photoshop, acrobat and dreamweaver simoultaneuosly - is that really so much to ask for? or Photoshop, illustrator and word.

So who are we waiting on to make macbook exclusive? Well.. adobe is the big one, I need Creative Suite, and I need Macromedia Studio (assuming they keep it, at least dreamweaver). Microsoft Office … I have entourage running all day long, i think that kills my little blackie. I actually like word’s notebook view and spend alot of time there

So for now, i think it’s safe to say, design on an intel macbook is damn near impossible …. there’s just too much waiting around until they universalize these apps. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure it will all be fast and good when they do… I run Bias Peak on here without a hitch to alter large audio files. I’ve putzed around with other universals like the adobe lightroom beta which has to be demanding on the cpu… it ran perfect. It’s the emulation, it sucks and I’ve experienced it firsthand. So my advice to my fellow designers is, stay at your desk, keep grating that cheese until adobe and microsoft say you no longer have to.

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I’m starting a list of position titles for Web Design/Development, or Graphic Design in general. If you’ve got something to add to the list, please comment. Thanks, you’re the breast

And yes, I’m putting in the photographers, writers, editors, and so on. Anyone who belongs in a firm.

Level 1
• Partner
• President
• Principal

Level 2
• Art Director
• Chief Designer
• Chief Programmer
• Creative Director
• Director of Marketing

Level 3+
• Copy Editor
• Designer
• Graphic Designer
• Editor
• Information Architect
• Internet Application Specialist
• Interactive Designer
• Interactive Developer
• Interface Designer
• New Media Designer
• Multimedia Designer
• Production Assistant
• Production Artist
• Programmer
• Photographer
• Usability Engineer
• User Interface Designer
• Web Master
• Visual Designer
• Web Designer
• Web Developer
• Writer

Fun Names
• Pixel Pusher

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Wanna see some funny ones?

Funny T-Shirt(s)

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My brother-in-law went on a trip home (Croatia) and took some shots. I felt the need to photoshop them, make them more dramatic. Here’s what I came up with.

croatia pictures

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.mac account auto-renewed - This caught me by surprise - I didn’t need it. If you’ve got a .mac account but don’t plan on renewing, make sure to log into the account and turn off the auto-renew button. Luckily Apple gives you a refund before 30 days but I thought I’d give the heads up to the many millions of people who read this site. ;D

If you’ve auto renewed accidentally and are looking to cancel, you can go here a simply fill out the short form.
Dotmac Support Form.

(UPDATE) Got my refund as promised. Pretty quickly too. Apple Still Rocks.

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WWDC was today and apple announced they will be dumping IBM chips for Intel. IBM’s roadmap was looking grim and so here we are. Do I care? Not really, the OS is what get’s me. Do I think this is a good move for Apple? Yes, I think this is a move that will increase it’s market share for a variety of reasons (but i’m too frigin tired to sit here and make bullet lists). A few funny things about the conference…

1) Apple has been secretly working on an x86 version of osX for 5 Years!
2) The Demo computer at the conference was actually running on an intel Processor

Ah, anyway… it will be another bumpy transition for most… but if I remember moving to OSX myself correctly, it wasn’t all that bad. I have to wonder how the poor little printshops will react to this news. Also noteworthy, although Windows won’t be supported on the mac x86, it will be doable. We’re talking about a machine that runs both platforms natively, that’s pretty hot.

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Has anyone ever seen this? How weird.

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So I had to 1) upgrade my WordPress and 2) turn on the feature that only allows registered users to comment. I apologize to the very few people who do actually comment, but those spams… man - what a pain to go through and delete every one by hand. Again sorry, please comment though so it looks like i have friends.

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That was a scam too - unbelievable! Well not really, more of a misprint and cancelation on the sellers part. I ended getting myself a Digital Rebel XT (350d) for $800 (it retails at $999). Still a great camera, though not a 20d. It’ll get the job done, the Digital Rebel’s Image Quality between the 2 is close if not the same. The added features go deeper such as faster frame rates and such. Anyway, i’m happy and just glad it’s all behind me.

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It wasn’t nice & it wasn’t easy. I was trying to find a 20d at a good bargain on Amazon.com - Instead I bumped into the nasty Amazon 20D scam. Along the way, I ordered more than 10 cameras from more than 10 different sellers. Each and everyone canceled the amazon order & contact me offline via e-mail requesting my shipping info to complete the detail. Here’s how it went down… I would get a cancelation e-mail from “amazon”. The e-mail would explain that the seller has gone over the finiancial limit for the month and another means of payment would complete the transaction. The requested payment method was Western Union Wire Transfer.

Wire Transfer? I didn’t think much of it at first, the “amazon” e-mails looked legit. At closer inspection, they’re phony, and the only way you could tell was by looking at the e-mails long headers which show you where the e-mail was sent from. I looked and sure enough, these e-mails were not coming from the same smtp.amazon.com that every other amazon e-mail comes from. These were fake e-mails trying to get me to wire transfer money to some dude in Romania so that he could walk off with my money and send me nothing. Disgusting, i know. Did I mention that these cameras (20d’s which retail at over $1,500) were priced in the $365-500 range. I was hopeful, very hopeful that I could actually snag one at this price, but wire transfer was out of the question.

So I placed one order after another - through amazon - If the order got canceled, I tried again with another seller. In all, I placed easily more than 10 orders, all getting canceled. A few times after the cancelation I would get the offline email from the seller requesting my info, I eventually noticed alot of these sellers were the same person. In all I had more than $3500 pending transactions in my bank account. I just kept trying though.

I got one! I found a real seller, got the camera (with the crappy kit lens) for $500. It was a disturbing experience, but hey, got a good deal. Hopefully this thing is “like new” as advertised once it shows up at my door, but I went through amazon, and if it’s not as advertisied i’ll get the a-z guarentee. I’m thinking this one person selling at $500 had to be influenced by the fraud prices he saw on all the other cameras.

Man, disgusting experience. Beware of theoldseller@yahoo.com - He’s full of shit, and that’s the moral of my story.

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You have come to an empty space. I’ve written nothiing yet which is why I’m using you as my topic to fill up the space. I suggest you visit often because I could be talking about you in future posts.

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