Short answer – Snow Leopard is proving to be the best OS X update in years. For the first time in longer than I can recall an Apple OS upgrade completed in less than an hour, did not break my existing applications and primary workflows, and actually nets positive in all significant areas (performance, usability, elegance).
That being said, not everything is hearts and flowers, but the negatives are third-party incompatibilities and not deal-breakers.
Line 6’s most awesome Pod Farm AudioUnit plug-in isn’t yet compatible. I’m back to using real mics and amps for now, but as most of my work is mixing/sequencing right now I’ve got some time to spare for this to resolve.
Xmarks bookmark sync (reasonably indispensible, but I know it’ll get ported quickly).
When creating a new event in iCal using the Exchange integration, it doesn’t always invite the room I’ve specified unless I drag the event to a new time, and then back to the correct one. Weird!
I’ve been offline in many ways for a while, and the Facebook post earlier in this blog explains part of the reason why. Things have been really busy at work the last few months, and social media has somewhat expanded to consume that part of my life that usually was spent blogging random and somewhat arcane thoughts.
That being said, it’s time for a change, partially motivated by the impending ‘migration’ of my Adobe blog to a new Movable Type framework. I’m not particularly happy with Movable Type in general, and much more comfortable with WordPress or Drupal, so although I already did merge in some of my old Adobe blog posts here a while back (just look for the ‘Adobe’ tag), I may be doing it officially soon, and dusting off this default template with one I’ve been puttering on for a little while now.
While I figure out how this will all shake out, I might very likely be temporarily distracted with this.
Pls don’t hold it against me.
I’ve been using this randomly on conference calls lately, too. Enjoy
I’ve been working pretty heavily since my paternity leave ran out exactly a month ago, and despite working from home a day or two a week since, can’t say that I’ve had nearly as much 1:1:1 time with Des and Devin as I did then. Given he was pretty much an adorable little red-haired lump of clay at that time, a lot’s changed since then.
And I’m basically writing this post in admiration for the work my wife’s put in since then. The reason it’s delayed is that I haven’t been able to see the fruits of her labor until now. Now sure, I’ve helped indirectly with most all of these items, but she’s the one that really put the hours in, and it’s very obvious now.
Vocabulary: although Devin’s got about 6 words he uses regularly now (Mom, Dad, Cat, Ball, Baby, and of course No), he’s got at least 25 signs that he uses even more frequently, and I’m only just starting to realize it. My friend Julie extolled the virtues of teaching babies sign language early, and although I was always on board philosophically, it’s one of those parental tasks that takes a LONG time to glean results. When Devin busted his first sign on me a couple months ago (Milk), it came out of the blue, but was absolutely, positively communication. Since then, he’s been springing out with a few new ones every week, and starting to put them together into ‘micro-sentences’ (i.e. more + food + please). The part that’s blowing me away right now is the fact that he’d been using many of his new signs for a while before we realized it. Fine motor skills and precision are not a 1-year old’s strong suit, so many of the signs he was taught came back to us in a slightly modified if not exaggerated form. However, now that he knows it’s an effective way to ‘talk’ with us, he makes sure to let us know when he’s telling us something and we’re not getting it. If Des wasn’t so consistent in always using signs for key words along with her verbal communication, I’m reasonably sure he wouldn’t be so overflowing in ’speech’ right now. It’s just plain awesome!
Fine Motor Skills: I’m pretty much the ‘read a story’ guy, and the ‘crawl around and chase each other’ guy. I made a comment to Des a few months back that I was wondering when he’d finally start using his stacking blocks and such, and she started setting two parts of the day aside (without me realizing it) to play with him in that regard. When she opens a bottle, she hands him the cap and lets him put it back on. When she needs something picked up from the floor, she asks him to please get it for her, and he’s all over it. I didn’t realize how well this was working until today, when he picked up a water bottle cap I dropped, got mad when I didn’t put it back on, and then proceeded to pick it back up from the end table and place it solidly on my water bottle. This is now manifesting itself with him actually cleaning up after himself, and placing toys back in the basket when he’s done playing. Again, amazing. The real-world tasks have apparently not just strengthened his motor skills, but his independence and responsibility, as he often now follows after US and picks things up that have been left behind.
I suppose I’m writing this as I feel a bit like an absent dad in parts of the process, but am now incredibly impressed with how well Des’ work and parenting has paid off while I’ve been bringing home the mortgage payment. The pivotal moment was today when he was making odd gestures at me and I had to be told that he was actually talking to me – in this particular case telling me about his stuffed bear, and I just thought he was scratching his chest.
Looks like I’ve got a lot of catching up to do, and appreciation to give. This really is a learning experience for everyone involved, and one I’m humbled daily to be a part of.
Hells yeah, OmniFocus for the iPhone will be location-aware by default, and should sync beautifully with OmniFocus back on the home office machine. Desktop OmniFocus is a masterpiece, but now it’s officially become legendary with a tightly-integrated parallel mobile version. What’s not to love?
It’s great to see innovative developers start to think about location-awareness with the newly announced iPhone 3G and not just on a superficial, fluffy level. Now if I’ve added a task to pick up more transmission fluid, I can see all the auto stores close to where I’m standing, and get a map/directions to them. It could theoretically know when I’m at home, and show me my home tasks specifically.
OmniGroup software tends to be a little on the spendy side, but I can attest that the attention to detail they put into each bit is worth every cent they charge. I was on the early betas of OmniFocus and it was amazing to see how quickly they iterated the software and with the care they did so- I can only imagine how slick it’ll be to finally carry my tasks with me on the iPhone and really use the hardware for it’s strengths, not just scan a basic list with a hacked OSX-to-touch quickie software port. Whatever it costs, I’ll be lining up at the App Store to get my copy of OmniFocus iPhone as soon as it hits the streets. W00t!
Today seems all about ownage. NPD market data for the console gaming industry was released for April, and it’s rather fascinating to slice up. Despite Microsoft’s skewed insistence that the Xbox 360 is “uniquely positioned” to “win the generation battle”, it was smacked down in NPD metrics by the Nintendo Wii (1st place), the Nintendo DS (2nd place) and the … get this … Sony PSP (Playstation Portable) making a strong third-place showing. That’s right – the 360 didn’t even pull the bronze medal this month.
Most of the problem is that Microsoft still seems to try and play number parity with the Wii and Playstation 3, yet was released almost a year before both. I can understand why they want to downplay the numbers, as it’s easy to get ahead with a 12-month headstart. However, the Wii is close to closing on the 360’s “lead”, so I’m not sure the Microsoft sandbagging is going to hold much longer.
Right-wing gasbag Kevin James gets his ass handed to him on Hardball by Chris Matthews. Wow. And over a pretty simple question for anyone who’s taken high school history, too. Note to James – might want to actually have facts to back up your yelling with, cause volume clearly does not equal brains.
Wow. Now I’d heard about these videos a month or two back when the Church of Scientology was trying to sue to have them brought down, but couldn’t really bring myself to watch them until now. The fact that The Church wasn’t able to use their formidable and consistent powers of overwhelming litigation to remove the videos is impressive on it’s own merits, but the reality of said videos is impressive in a very different, real and very frightening way. If you’ve ever wondered just how absolutely batshit-insane Tom Cruise really is (and if there’s legions of Scientologists behind him with similar delusions of grandeur, omniscience and self-importance), just check these out yourself.
An awesome evening, relatively free from congestion and crowds. Not what I expected going in, but exactly what I needed coming out. Nice. 2 hours ago
@raheelgauba - if you're using CS3, pretty much all of what I was showing were new features. A few came in CS4, but not all of them ;-) 4 hours ago
Gingerman bound, forging a new course for the evening #lemonstolemonade5 hours ago
Damn, what does a sponsor have to do to get into the party? Not sticking around anymore to find out. #cogaokefail5 hours ago
My 'official' contribution to SXSW'10 is now over- that was fun! Surprised so many people braved their hangovers to see us this morning :) 16 hours ago
