teh stream

teh stream

Moving back to tumblr

There are many things I want to say, but usually those things are in response to current events and internet hoopla. Tumblr seems much better suited for the commentary-style "blogging" I'm interested in.

You can find and follow me on tumblr here.

Pixelmator Playtime

I purchased Pixelmator back in 2011 during one of their early promotional sales. It's taken me this long to actually sit down and see what it has to offer. (Note that I've been using Photoshop for over 15 years, so it has been extremely easy to just glance at the Pixelmator icon and think "I'll try you next time.") Well, now that I've tried it, I have made the decision to keep using it whenever I can. The feature set is outstanding for a $30 piece of software. It's also very user-friendly from a Photoshop user's perspective—almost every function and keyboard shortcut I tried worked the same as it does in Photoshop. Hell, it even lets you open up layered PSD files! As far as I'm concerned, if you have a Mac and want an image editor, this is the app you need to look at first.

Here is the result of my first trial run. I just took an old black-n-white drawing I did back in college and started fooling around.

A Truly Inspiring Independence Day

I've been seeing myself slowly become more and more annoyed with American politics. Congress is in full gridlock—we can't even get common-sense legislation to the floor to be voted on. Our legislative government is essentially worthless. Well, a couple months ago I randomly came across a movement called "Mayday PAC". I read the plan, dug into the story behind the movement, and after listening to Lawrence Lessig's book The USA is Lesterland, decided I would join the cause. It's the first political contribution I've ever made.

Long story short, it looked like there was no way in hell we were going to make our final goal of $5 million by today's deadline. We hadn't even reached $4 million by this morning.

Well…

…and I haven't felt this optimistic about America in years.

Happy Independence Day.

New ††† album is finally available!

A mix of old and new songs from one of Chino Moreno's brilliant side projects. The album is softer and more ethereal than anything in the Deftones realm, although songs like This is a Trick and Bi†ches Brew still get my head going.

New iMac

I've got my new iMac just about set up. I went for the higher end 21.5" model with the 256GB SSD. It's replacing a seven-year-old 2006 original white 24" iMac that is actually still functioning just fine. I just couldn't take being two full OS releases behind and watching more and more software become incompatible. Apple's iApps were the straw that broke the camel's back. (I do want to give props to Apple for keeping their machines viable for so long, though.)

The screen is smaller, but due to the higher pixel density I'm really only losing 180 pixels vertically. I don't mind because I figure the native 1080p resolution of the screen will work better for Airplay anyway. (Not that I had Airplay on my 24" iMac ...yet another thing it was too old to handle.) I can't wait to test the new one out with my AppleTV.

I went ahead and decided to ignore Apple's Migration Assistant this time. You have no idea how nice that piece of software is until you start transferring things the old-fashioned way—ugh. The main reason I decided to start fresh was because I wanted to use multiple accounts this time instead of just one. With all of the social customization in Mavericks, it's really feels necessary. The kiddos are getting into computers and would love their own accounts, and my wife has always been a digital hoarder. It'll be nice being able to hang out in a nice clean/zen space going forward! Clutter out of sight, clutter out of mind!

Favorite thing so far... the SSD. Holy hell did Apple really pump up the speed with these latest Macs. When I was looking for my first SSD I remember the speed of the high-end drives being around 250MB/s ....now the high-end SATA III drives are around 500-550MB/s. I was hoping Apple's implementation was going to end up in that range too. Needless to say, when I saw write speeds over 650MB/s and read speeds over 700MB/s pop up, I did a double-take. Hot damn!



Least favorite thing so far... my dumbass decision to go for the wireless keyboard. This nubby little bastard is killing me. The eff'd up fn key location is really cramping my control+[x] shortcuts and I never realized how much I use the other delete and arrow keys. (Yeah, I know about fn+delete. It's just lame.) I'm also upset about the loss of the two easy-access USB ports. The only nice thing will be the fact that I won't be getting my daily dose of electro-shock therapy. Apple's wired keyboards eat static electricity like nobody's business. I imagine that's a healthy meal for a USB port.

All in all, I'm happy as can be. *knocking on wood* It feels great being back in tomorrow-land. I just hope this iMac will be as hassle-free as the last.

Thanks for the great Xmas gift honey. ;)

Well, it's 2014

I just noticed I didn't post a damn thing in 2013. We'll just consider that penance for my dead-wrong prediction about the iPhone 5 screen in 2012. Anywho, I hope 2014 brings me a little more inspiration and a few more people to argue with. Happy new year either way!