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Whoops I’ve done it again
July 30th, 2010 | No Comments »Ya, I have. It’s been so manic around here, between getting Lab-Gear orders out the door, Mountain Cycle work and taking on a new place to move in to, that I have not posted anything here for a while… a week or more.
On the fires right now are the 2011 site for Mountain Cycle.com, which I have to say is looking super sharp, the 2011 site for Lab-Gear, that draws on the current site and simplifies it while giving it a nice overall polish, and several client sites, new and just finished. Sitting in customs as I type is an entire batch of Mountain Cycle samples hot off the floor in Taiwan – a whole wad of good stuff including the new carbon hardtail we have got underway.
There’s several new Lab-Gear products, shot and ready to go but will wait for the new site now and we have to pack everything up over August and move it to the other side of the city. To top it off, we have a case of the three day cold floating around, so it’s been more fun that a clown could take.
I promise I’ll be back over the next week with a few new things I’ve been working on.
A question of imagination
July 22nd, 2010 | No Comments »Mr Seymour raises some very interesting points and there are things I have touched on in my more feeble way over the years of blogging here. I feel and to a large degree, have no doubt that imagination in the 21st Century would have to be at an all time low. Certainly in the things I enjoy, look at and am inspired by, I see a increasing degree of ‘sameness’. As Seymour touches on in this snippet, the technology is now outstripping the imagination of those using it. As a designer and a hack ‘creative’, I find this to be a sombering thought.
In this wee bit he touches on applications that suck, email being one. He could not be more right and for the most part, even the best email app blows incredible sized chunks when it comes to being an inspiring piece of design. In a way this little bit has inspired me to mention a few apps I have moved over to on the Mac quite recently that seem to try and tackle this issue of imagination lagging behind technology and offers a nice little addition to that bit I did on my fave iPod Touch apps.
If you run a PC, I’m sorry this post is not for you. I’ll let you continue on in your pseudo Mac OS environment called Windows… 8? 
If you run a Mac, then I don’t have to tell you that you do so because the interface is just so easy. There’s no fuss you can use it as simply or as complexly as you want to. I have found over the past year as I have become busier and busier, I am tapping into more and more of the features built into the Mac OS that makes my time spent in front of it simpler. What amazes me though is how so many applications continue on in their old school ways and while the base OS continues to rocket ahead, the applications that run on it somehow lag behind.
Recently, as some of the applications I have been using for years have started to need to be upgraded, I have been looking for alternative options that do the same thing but in a more thought out and cleaner manner. These have rapidly become some of my fave applications on the Mac because using them is so seamless…
If you do a lot of web stuff you will have your fave editor. Many use Dreamweaver as I used to for many years, but simply put it’s stuck in the stone age. Coda is a ‘holistic’ editor for the Mac that does everything you want and then a whole lot more – in one window. Once set up a ‘site’, you can create, edit and upload/download the code of any site you manage in….. one single window pane. It’s so easy you have to ask yourself why can’t everything be this smooth? There’s all sorts of built in nice stuff too, such as code guides
Perhaps my fave little feature of Coda is the site selection window that actually shows you the live home page of each site you manage. This feature seems trivial but when you have a lot of sites and want to find one without trolling through a long list, this live time visual menu is so very sweet.
If you just need an ftp program to upload and download from servers, the crew at Panic also make ‘Transmit’. Like Coda it’s Mac based and takes full advantage of the OSX native architecture. At its base is a clean and simple ftp program but the extras, such as creating ‘hot discs’ of any site (or directory within that sit on your desktop and menu bar site access, put it so far ahead in terms of ease of use of any ftp application I have used to date it’s not funny.
Transmit’s packed with features and I’m still learning what it can do.
I did a write up of Pixelmator here, after I first started using it. I still stand by what I said and Pixelmator is working its way through replacing all of my everyday imaging work.
Nope, don’t use it. That will soon end though as I am jacked of anything Microsoft. We have a copy on another machine but I have not fondled it properly yet. Regardless, from initial impressions it works a whole lot better than anything Mr. Gates’ crew have been able to come up with in terms of being actually good to use. That’s enough of a reason right there.
A day of confirmation
July 15th, 2010 | No Comments »After a long wait, today we got back an answer from Australia’s Ausindustry, the peak government body set up to help develop and grow business in this country.
We expected no better, only because I know for fact that government bodies here have a habit of handing out cash to con men, charlatans, minorities and projects that never had the chance to go anywhere. Maybe they like a tall tale? Who knows. This has been a bone of contention with me for many years and today is the day that confirms what I have always thought, after I read through the list of applications that received wads of cash to do (for many) what they should be able to do without holding out their hands. Fuck knows we have.
We are very proud to do what we do in Australia. The people we work with to do it too are very proud. What’s more all know we are in the minority, in a country that seems determined to think that it can get by selling either dirt or its limited services to the world; it has yet to figure out that it can’t. I also know that we (as in the collective we) do what we do in spite of the so called government, not with its aid.
A set back? No. I honestly never expected anything when we put in the application, because I (quite rightly it seems) already predicted the types of applications they’d be sucked in by (and they were). In some ways it’s only more fuel on the fire. Pissed off? Sure.
The economy of crap
July 14th, 2010 | No Comments »I have to say I am a prudent shopper…. I just don’t buy stuff! Seriously though, I like to take the time to research what I buy and make sure that I am buying from an informed standpoint. So the in the back of my mind, a little “I told you so” keeps on playing on infinite loop.
Recently we had the very odd experience of having to spend money. Something about receiving gift vouchers last Christmas, a lot of them, and then something about the retailer in question going tits up. Through a bit of persistence I managed to cash in the vouchers on a 12th hour situation, so ended up spending a Saturday morning walking through a store trying to find things to buy. It was very strange indeed.
So we ended up with a new TV, which we didn’t need but actually really like now, as well as a coffee machine and bean grinder. After going around and around, those were the only three things we could think of spending the ‘money’ on and it’s the last two choices that are the source of some angst. (more…)
And now for something totally different
July 12th, 2010 | No Comments »No matter how much you dig what you do, and no matter the amount of enthusiasm you maintain, if you work in the creative fields, you need a blow off valve.
If you have been an irregular visitor to these parts, you’ll know that it’s something I have struggled with on and off for the past few years. My creative outlets come in fits and spurts but over the past six or so months there has been next to nothing, as the daily jobs just suck up spare time like there’s no tomorrow; which when it comes to doing something just to relax seems to be the case.
Last week I launched www.playforest.com, a domain I had been sitting on for some time as I pondered just what to do with it – the original idea was just not manageable right now. Finally after much thinking about it, I decided it’s going to be my play site, where I use next to no words and just post doodles and drawings. Just because it’s there does not mean I’ll actually be rampant with it, as if just by ‘being’ it causes me to suddenly become a prolific doodling fiend, but it’s existence requires some justification.
Anyways, I hope to start doing something with it soon, as several years of concepts about an idea start to actually come together. I just have to find that thing called time, though I know damn well that you can only find it if you allow yourself…