http://www.tgfoo.com/index.php/site/index/ The random musings of me. en timhill@tgfoo.com Copyright 2009 2009-09-02T22:47:34+00:00 http://www.tgfoo.com/index.php/site/dear_comic_sans_i_hate_you/ http://www.tgfoo.com/index.php/site/dear_comic_sans_i_hate_you/#When:22:47:34Z I was looking over some documents created by a co-worker for several processes that my group had, as I will need to do them if the need arises this weekend. I started reading the document when I got the sudden urge to repeatedly poke myself in the eye with the nearest pointed object I could find. Thankfully I manged to fend off my left hand, which was equipped with a pen on my desk, long enough check the font on the document. My suspicions were confirmed: Comic Sans. I had to act. I had to act fast. Many options ran through my head. I could fire off an angry email. I could cause a scene in my office, to let everyone know of my displeasure. I could go Chuck Norris on my monitor. That’ll teach it for subjecting my eyes to such filth. I even considered allowing my left hand to deliver sweet, sweet release to my eyes with it’s pen. Then I had a brilliant idea. An idea so bold and inspiring that it could send shock waves through out the system. I changed the font. To Arial to be more specific. I would have changed it to Helvetica or better yet, Helvetica Neue, but sadly most of the Window’s newbs don’t have it installed on there system. Crisis averted. Yes, yes you should thank me. P.S. - Yes, I realized I fail masterfully in the quest to post everyday at the end of August. Eh… Design 2009-09-02T22:47:34+00:00 http://www.tgfoo.com/index.php/site/i_enjoy_shooting_things/ http://www.tgfoo.com/index.php/site/i_enjoy_shooting_things/#When:04:11:05Z Today I shot a gun. I had never shot a gun before in my life. I have to say, it was quite fun. Below is the results of my first ever shot. Note the accuracy. Moral of the story: Don’t mess with me. I’m dangerous. P.S. Technically this counts for Saturday even though it is 12:16 here… Though my Expression Engine settings are kinda messed up, so it’ll probably say this was posted at 10:43 or something. Edit: Damn, 11:11… so close, but not really. Life, the Universe and Everyting else. 2009-08-30T04:11:05+00:00 http://www.tgfoo.com/index.php/site/snow_leopard_quick_first_impressions/ http://www.tgfoo.com/index.php/site/snow_leopard_quick_first_impressions/#When:03:34:57Z I picked up Snow Leopard today at my local Apple store. It was fairly crowded, but then, it always is. Just installed in on a new hard drive in an external case a bit ago. The installation took roughly an hour, but another 30 minutes or so to import settings and files over from with the migration assistant. Finally finished everything, fired it up and… well, it’s pretty much exactly the same as Leopard. A couple small tweaks that I noticed, the best was the improvements in how stacks are handled in the dock. Currently though, I have more negative things to say about it then positive. Well, just two negative things really. One is Apple’s fault and the other isn’t. First, Quicktime 10 looks awesome. I love the interface overhaul they gave it, which makes it such a shame that it’s a complete piece of crap. Installing Perian at least got back .avi and .flv support, but no support for my .mkv files (how am I supposed to watch my soft subbed anime?!) nor can it play back .wmv files, even after installed Flip4Mac. Thankfully this issue is a non issue since you can install Quicktime 7. Good problem solved. Bigger problem? Driver support. I can’t install the drivers for my 8 button mouse (damn you Logitech), which makes it just a 2 button wheeled mouse with a lot of pretty but utterly useless extra buttons. Tomorrow I plan on installing Adobe Creative Suite 3… Hopefully I don’t run into any major problems. Photoshop is supposed to work, with a few minor problems, but no word on the rest of the suite. Photoshop is the only one I use regularly anyways, since Coda pimp smacked Dreamweaver and made it his bitch. Funny, I never new Coda was a male until just now. I’m also hopefully that the rest of my software and games installations go smoothly Anyways, for now I’ve gone back to my Leopard install. It’s stable with all of my software and I can use all of the buttons on my mouse. Reviews, Technology, Apple 2009-08-29T03:34:57+00:00 http://www.tgfoo.com/index.php/site/my_day_time_saviors_podcasts_and_audio_books/ http://www.tgfoo.com/index.php/site/my_day_time_saviors_podcasts_and_audio_books/#When:22:49:38Z I’ve recently been listening to a lot of podcasts at work. I don’t know what spurred me on to do this, perhaps I got tired of music. Well, not so much tired of music, but I just have been looking for something different. Podcasts have filled this need very well, and have the added benefit of keeping me greatly entertained, up to date on news and current events, and they help pass the time faster. The podcasts that I’ve been listening to mainly are technology podcasts. Leo Laporte has quickly become one of my favorite personalities and I’ve been listening to This Week in Tech (TWiT), MacBreak Weekly, This Week in Google (TWiG), and Tech Guy regularly for the last few weeks. Laporte also turned me on to Audible.com, which is a subscription audio books service. I try to read, but I always fail to finish a book in any decent amount of time. This way I can listen to books at home, two and from work, or at work. Not quite the same as reading, I sometimes find myself re-listening to sections when I’m not paying enough attention while I’m working. However, it’s still better than the alternative which is me not reading at all. Another podcast I’ve really been enjoying is Adam Carolla’s podcast. He always has some guest on, often times a celebrity of some sorts. It’s amazing how many people he knows. If you are a fan of Adam Carolla, as I have been since his Loveline days, then you will love his podcast. Between those and my iPod and last.fm I’m always sure to have something good to listen to while I toil, and waste, away at work. Life, the Universe and Everyting else., Music 2009-08-27T22:49:38+00:00 http://www.tgfoo.com/index.php/site/damn_you_adobe_and_a_blogging_commitment/ http://www.tgfoo.com/index.php/site/damn_you_adobe_and_a_blogging_commitment/#When:01:25:02Z Two things for this post; first, I’m going to attempt to post something on this blog everyday for the rest of the month. Not sure exactly what I’m going to post about, but it’s going to be something, whether it’s a nice full length post or a paragraph or two. So, having got that out of the way, let me start my first of 6 straight days posting with some Adobe hate. Adobe has announced that it will not support it’s CS3 line on the soon to be released OSX 10.6 Snow Leopard. This is news is rather disappointing to me, since the first thing I had planned on doing when I came home on Friday night was to install SL on my Macbook Pro… which like many Adobe Mac users still has CS3 install on it since I don’t see a good enough reason to drop the cash for CS4, especially when CS5 will probably be coming in the next year. I for one don’t think this is a very good way for Adobe to treat its customers. From what I’ve seen through my interactions with other Adobe users, many others have yet to upgrade to CS4 as well. Most feel as I do, that the new added features of CS4 aren’t worth cost. Now, having said that, I have CS4 installed on my computer at work, I like it, and if I had the extra cash I’d upgrade. Unfortunately, I don’t. So instead I will install 10.6 as planned, cross my fingers and pray everything still runs well and without any major hiccups. That and keep a bootable backup of my 10.5 install just incase anything goes haywire… Life, the Universe and Everyting else., Technology, Apple 2009-08-27T01:25:02+00:00 http://www.tgfoo.com/index.php/site/district_9_is_going_to_be_so_awesome/ http://www.tgfoo.com/index.php/site/district_9_is_going_to_be_so_awesome/#When:16:37:23Z Here is the original short film Alive In Joburg: God I want to see this movie… Movies 2009-08-05T16:37:23+00:00 http://www.tgfoo.com/index.php/site/logic_studio_2_and_final_cut_studio_3_ppc_support_dropped/ http://www.tgfoo.com/index.php/site/logic_studio_2_and_final_cut_studio_3_ppc_support_dropped/#When:22:21:09Z While on a visit to one of my favorite Apple blogs, The Unofficial Apple Weblog (Tuaw), trying to find out more about a possible Mac tablet through Verizon rumor, I discovered that new versions of my favorite music and video production software had been released. I was rather surprised by this discovery as the time frame it took for Logic 7 to get an update to 8 was several years. I immediately visited the Apple website to check out the new features for Logic 9. Here are some of the new features in Logic Pro 9 (woot video!). I think the one that I like the most is the selective track import. Sadly, there still isn’t a good freeze function that will off-load samples from RAM. It also looks like most of the new features were geared towards audio editing features, though I am curious to see if things like the new Flex Tool will allow you to do cool things with midi data as well. While I’m not convinced that this is worth the $200 bucks for the type of stuff I do, which is mostly using soft-synths and samples, I would still probably pick this upgrade up when I had a chance to play around with the Flex tool and to try out all of the new guitar amp sims it comes with. However, in order for me to do this I’d first need to buy a new Mac Pro as the new Logic and Final Cut only run on Intel processors. Unfortunately that excludes me and my trusty and dependable G5 and my Macbook Pro and it’s 2 gigs of RAM isn’t really up to the task of handling a decently loaded song in Logic. Music, Technology, Apple, Software 2009-07-23T22:21:09+00:00 http://www.tgfoo.com/index.php/site/itunes_8.2.1_and_the_palm_pre/ http://www.tgfoo.com/index.php/site/itunes_8.2.1_and_the_palm_pre/#When:21:02:20Z With the new iTunes 8.2.1 update the (very unofficial) ability to sync the Palm Pre with iTunes is now broken. I don’t think this move really surprised any. As always, this move has brought out all of the Apple fanboys and all of the Apple haters (who in my opinion are worse that the Apple fanboys… and far more numerous) so they can get together debate flame each other on forums, discussion boards and article/blog comments through the wide and vast internets. For those of you who don’t really know me (basically all of you), I am a huge fan of Apple products. Not so big of a fan of Apple the company at times though. I have a love/hate relationship with Steve Jobs; if I ever met him I’d probably punch him in the face… and then give him a big hug. At first I was hoping Apple would continue to allow the Pre to sync with iTunes. The more I thought about it, however, the more I realized that Apple probably should do it. Let’s not kid ourselves, Apple is a hardware company. Sure they make a lot of kickass software, have by far the world’s largest online music store (and the awesome app store associated with it), and make my OS X, but I still feel that all of this is done to push sales of apple hardware. OS X and all of the software is made so you can have an awesome experience… while using your Mac. iTunes, the music store and the app store are there so you can download and manage cool content… for your iPod and iPhone. Allow a competitor’s product, specifically one that is probably one of the bigger threats to the iPhone, is just bad for business. And it’s not like Palm is the poor victim in all of this. The only reason the Pre was able to sync with iTunes was because of a hack that fool iTunes into thinking the Pre was an iPod. iTunes offers a free API that allows you to access it’s database and pull it’s information into your own software. RIM built their own software for Blackberries that does this. Rather than take the time and effort to invest in proper software that would enhance their user’s experience they just decided to piggy back into iTunes. I’m curious to see what Palm does in response to this. Hopefully they’ll do things properly and make an awesome music management program of their own. I was very interested in the Pre when it was first announced, and it still looks like a very cool device. However, without good software supporting it (an app store with lots of quality apps and a media/app manager) I don’t think they’ll come close to being a true rival for Apple and the iPhone. Technology, Apple, Software 2009-07-17T21:02:20+00:00 http://www.tgfoo.com/index.php/site/so_neglectful/ http://www.tgfoo.com/index.php/site/so_neglectful/#When:01:10:12Z I still remember this blog exists. I always think about writing something. I never feel like I have anything interesting or insightful to say. I usually don’t have any good tips that will help better people. I rarely have any interesting anecdotes that anyone who wasn’t there would find worth the read. Hell, I don’t even have anything witty or amusing to say about current events or random topics which lend themselves to be made fun of. At least, none that I think any one would be interested in reading. I’ve been trying to work through that, also trying to finish up some projects that need finishing that I’ve been stalled on either because I’m: a) Lazy. b) Not willing to take a chance and fail at what I need to do, even though I know a failure will ultimately help me get better. c) A combination of the two. I’ll try to post more regularly for the imaginary people who would actually read things (they’re all probably in my head). Just watch, I promise. Life, the Universe and Everyting else. 2009-07-07T01:10:12+00:00 http://www.tgfoo.com/index.php/site/penguins_win_lord_stanleys_cup/ http://www.tgfoo.com/index.php/site/penguins_win_lord_stanleys_cup/#When:17:19:46Z In what has to be one of the most depressing moments of my life, Cindy… er, Sidney Crosby hoisted the cup over his head in celebration of Pittsburgh’s 2-1 win over Detroit in game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals. I was with some friends watching in horror as Pen after Pen paraded around the ice, taunting me with their victory. Now Pittsburgh has the NFL champions AND the NHL champions. On a brighter note, the Hershey Bears won the Calder Cup, so at least there is something to be happy about. Congrats Pittsburgh and Hershey, and there is always next season. Hockey 2009-06-13T17:19:46+00:00