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Wednesday, February 27, 2002
In and out of InDesign and Quark
Now that I'm through with my brief examination of QuarkXPress 5, I've managed to get a chance to play around with Adobe InDesign 2. It takes 28 seconds to start up on my PowerBook, which alone makes me say 'no thanks.' The program itself is pretty nice; it opened my Quark documents perfectly (although I didn't try anything very complex) and all the tools worked as I expected them on the first try. Most actions seemed pretty snappy; I didn't notice anything that felt slow (aside from startup). Of course, not knowing all the keyboard shortcuts and not entirely grokking the way boxes work kept me from getting the full user experience. I haven't decided if I'll keep it around; aside from the transparency feature (which is fun) and snappy palettes, it doesn't have anything I really NEED that Quark can't give me. Plus it requres 50mb of RAM just to get going, versus 15mb for Quark 5. Blah.
Posted at 12:26 PM | Comments (0)
Yards and yards
Today is redecorating/refinishing/refixing day at work. Which means new paint and tile and curtains and upholstery and headaches. Perfect timing. I can go home from a big pile of mess at work to a big pile of mess at home. Whee.
Posted at 12:06 PM | Comments (0)
Monday, February 25, 2002
Our savior
His name is Phil and he works for Armagno Real Estate. Knock yourself out! Also, can I just add that it does my heart good to see that I don't need to add comments on my own site, I can just solicit them via other blogs. Whee.
Posted at 06:34 PM | Comments (0)
Scroll wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeel
So I got my hands on a copy of QuarkXPress 5. It's quite nice. The more I think about it, the more I admire Quark's slow upgrade cycle (despite my former protestations against it). At least my scroll wheel mouse DOES work with it now, and it uses OS 9 standard widgets -- so they've brought it up to spec with Mac GUI guidelines from about 1997! Whee. The new PDF functions eliminate a time consuming step for our ad production at work (saving me a good half hour every Monday and Thursday that could be better spent eating a scone and working on my weblog). And I can't find any bugs. On the downside, I have real stars in my eyes over InDesign's new transparency features, and Quark's redesigned Tool bar and Measurements palette are uglier than their forebears in 4.0... It's also still more trouble than necessary to work with colors. Plus hello, where are the snappy palettes? I hate palettes that don't snap together. Messy palettes are so wasteful. I need every damn pixel free that I can get.
Speaking of free damn pixels, I was just looking at the Photoshop 7 roundup on MacCentral. Can we please kill that stupid extra menu bar thing at the top of the screen? Between that and the dock, OS X users are going to be losing at least 10% of their screen on the horizontal while trying to edit images. Fuck that. I'm staying over here in my OS 9 sandbox for a little while longer.
Posted at 06:31 PM | Comments (0)
Sunday, February 24, 2002
Pad pics
As promised the other day, here are pics of our new pad. They suck, because we were in a hurry. Now all we have to do is name the two plaster ladies on the weird mirror in the parlor. The pic of the building in the middle is the view out the living room window; the second to last pic is our actual building; the last one is the view of the eastern end of our block. And that's my fella, Matty Stolen Kisses, in a few pics. He doesn't usually look like a Victorian orphan; it's just a trick of the light.
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Posted at 01:18 PM | Comments (0)
Saturday, February 23, 2002
Duct tape doubles
In the interest of making my life as surreal as possible, I spent the morning making one of these for a friend of mine. It was a VERY disturbing looking creature after we cut it off of her. The purpose, which might not be immediately apparent on first click, is to make a perfectly matched dress dummy for about fifteen bucks. I dunno anything about sewing (I'm just not that kind of homo) but it seemed like it would work really well.
Posted at 08:16 PM | Comments (0)
SHUDDER.
There is NO QUESTION that the most disturbing thing on television lately is the Climatique commercial. It gives me a wiggins in the WORST WAY.
Posted at 08:10 PM | Comments (0)
Boing!
I've weaned myself off MetaFilter almost completely -- I've only looked at it once this week. So much bile.
Instead, I've been reading BoingBoing. Bile-free; a "directory of wonderful things." I am in love.
[non-sequitor] I want a utility program that will run on my iPod and track which songs I actually listen to. A "top 20" as it were. I'd love to have a list of the "essentials" so I could start deleting the chaff. Whenever I just look at the playlists, it all starts to blur together and I can't really think about what things I like to listen to on the train or whatever.[/non-sequitor]
Good things this week: deciding on a JEWEL CASE REMOVAL plan. Yup, we're going to get rid of 1200 cases and pack all those CDs up into binders. We'll keep a small Ikea "Robin" shelf for ephemera, digipaks and new acquisitions. And our vinyl can stay on display. Tomorrow morning we'll hopefully get back into the new place. Fingers crossed for a photo gallery tomorrow afternoon.
np: Lush - Heavenly Nobodies. Hey! That last Lush album was actually kind of fun! Whodathunkit.
Posted at 01:17 AM | Comments (1)
Thursday, February 21, 2002
Walking 'round my room/on a wasted afternoon
A few weeks ago I scammed an iMic from work so I could make mp3s from some vinyl with my PowerBook. It irks me that Apple thought it would be a better design decision to include an on-board microphone in lieu of an audio-in port, but luckily the iMic works really well -- some genius software designer set up the Mac SoundManager so that even shareware programs from 1994 (like the recording program I had kicking around from a friend's old 540) can take advantage of new audio hardware with nary a peep of complaint.
I went through our LPs this weekend and picked out some choice items to get started with:
Au Pairs: Playing with a Different Sex LP
Aztec Camera: High Land, Hard Rain LP
Blueboy: If Wishes Were Horses 12"
Brilliant Corners, The: Growing Up Absurd 12"
Caterina Caselli: Casco d'Oro LP
Charlottes, The: Lovehappy LP
Charlottes, The: Things Come Apart LP
Chills, The: Submarine Bells LP
David Bowie: Heroes LP
Dolly Mixture: The Fireside EP 12"
Doris: Did You Give the World Some Love Today, Baby? LP
Fat Tulips: Nostalgia LP
Fat Tulips: Starfish LP
Game Theory: The Big Shot Chronicles LP
Go-Betweens, The: Cut It Out 12"
Go-Betweens, The: Tallulah LP
Grant McLennan: Watershed LP
Lilac Time: Self-titled LP (1988)
Moose: Honeybee LP
New Order: Power Corruption and Lies LP
Popguns, The: Someone You Love 12"
Primitives, The: Self-titled LP
Spearmint: A Week Away LP
V/A: Different for Domeheads, A Creation Compilation LP
V/A: Mutant Pop 78/79 Compilation LP
V/A: Wanna Buy a Bridge? Rough Trade compilation LP
Wednesday Week: Why 12"
Wire: 154 LP
Silly me, I thought I could get through all those in an afternoon! A whole day later and all I'd finished were the Primitives and the Brilliant Corners. I recorded the Au Pairs record too, but there was a horrifying 60hz hum (or whatever frequency it is) because the turntable ground had fallen out so I have to redo it.
I only bring this up because I'm playing "Crash" by the Primitives (a classic pop single if there ever was one) and it sounds so brilliant with just the tiniest hint of LP crackle and hissy-SSSSSS sounds. Delightful.
Now. To look through all those 7" singles. Crap. This enterprise could take months.
Posted at 12:27 AM | Comments (0)
Wednesday, February 20, 2002
KoC
Oh and I finally fixed the Kings of Convenience download link on my mp3 page. Yes, yes, yes, I'll upload something new soon. Pout.
Posted at 03:29 PM | Comments (0)
Having a wee / Rah for Gillian & Stephen
Cable modem dodgy. Grumpily packing stuff away in boxes. Cats having a wee in the bathtub. Boyfriend away at orchestra thing. Blah blah blah day. Looking up chocolate cake recipes: chocolate cakes make everything better!
Also, why didn't anyone ever tell me that the second Other Two record is actually kind of nice? Yes, they're not nearly as good as New Order (or Saint Etienne. or even Dubstar. Who they sound exactly like.), but there are some downright pleasant choons on the second half of the disc. Maybe I was just scared off by the terrifyingly over-the-top vocals on "You Can Fly" by that lady out of M People. Blech. I didn't listen to this very much after I bought it (on import, thank you very much), but it's keeping me company on the iPod right now and it's cheering me right up.
Posted at 03:19 PM | Comments (0)
Friday, February 15, 2002
Lesbo!
I can't believe I didn't know that Portia de Rossi (from Ally McBeal) is a lesbo! Why can't she be The Entertainment World's Lesbian Spokesperson instead of boring old Ellen Degeneres.
Posted at 03:15 PM | Comments (2)
Freemail
The freemail account I use from Wallpaper* Magazine is shutting down in two weeks. Fux0r. I don't really have time to deal with switching over all my eBay account stuff (etc) to a new email address. If only I had a personal assistant like Bubble from AbFab to handle junk like this for me! Actually, no, wait, scratch that. I need a personal assistant who is more like...Milo Ventimiglia. Crossed with Orlando Bloom. And he'd need mad Unix admin skills and he'd have to be good with a pool skimmer. Any applicants.
Posted at 12:04 AM | Comments (0)
Thursday, February 14, 2002
Our Lord Jesus Christ
Sigh. I just bought some dishes on eBay and I got the scariest letter from the seller confirming the purchase.
My wife and I run a small =
glassware business out of our garage during the summer that is a =
ministry for our LORD JESUS CHRIST. We =
are going to stop in Nyack next week to see some friends who are going =
to college and then going to Hamden to visit Margarets 90 year old aunt.
OK, fine, that's all well and good, knock yourselves out with the Jesus freakage. I guess I will have to live with the knowledge that my $10.50 is going to help them with their barn raising. But honestly, why on EARTH do they think I care that they are going to visit Margaret's 90 year old aunt?? Quite frankly, I now know more about this person's life than I do about my OWN parents'! Sigh.
Posted at 11:56 PM | Comments (0)
From the department of Legal Wrangling
Discovered this morning that our new apartment doesn't come with a fridge. Matty threatened our real estate agent; five minutes later, ta da! We have a nice new fridge.
And now, feeling flushed with that victory, I think I will have to sue the otherwise lovely David Swishcottage for rampant design infringement! Someone call my international copyright attorney! Stat!
