LinkArtist Multimedia Blog

I am in 2 minds at the moment. Part of me realises that I have been blogging for 5 years, and that it would be a shame to get rid of it. The other part of me thinks that unless I devote some decent time to it, I can’t see why I should keep this blog going.

As many of you may know, I have taken over The Spin Starts Here and turned it into a forum. I have also created a site called The Mother Load and am writing there pretty frequently. Then, I have my business, LinkArtist, which is in desperate need of a redesign.

And it makes me wonder what the future of this site is. Between all three areas, I have a pretty decent amount of web space to vent my spleen, and I am thinking that I might retire this blog. I will keep the domain and will redirect it to LinkArtist (which I hope to incorporate more into) and, I don’t know — I guess I am just a bit over committed.

I think that maybe I should move onward and upward — and if you want to follow, you are more than welcome to!

I am going to think about it for a little while longer — things are just so hectic that I cannot maintain my own blog (which is likely to just become copy & paste jobs from my other sites anyway).

Thoughts?

I bought Vista the other day purely on impulse. I was in Dick Smith looking for a mouse for Mina’s computer (shut up — yes, she has her own computer) and the pretty display and $180 pricetag beckoned with new shininess. I nursed it for a few days before finally installing it, and I have to say, I am actually very pleasantly surprised.

I know that the Slashdot and Whirlpool geeks will talk about performance issues and the driver and compatibility issues that are inevitable with a brand new OS - but these guys are also anti-Microsoft, Linux lovers, who, despite making a very good operating system cannot make things pretty or usable to save their lives. Yes. There, I said it. Geeks cannot design for shit.

I also have to say that I have often been drawn to OSX and a pretty G5 Mac lately, what with all the widgets and the dock and the pretty window effects and, well, the ability of Apple to design an interface doesn’t really need to be mentioned here because we all know that Windows users are not worthy of a person in cargo pants that can afford a $15,000 PC.

Until now.

I guess when you have a long and laboured history with Microsoft, and you have read all the “meh” reviews on the usual geek sites, it is no wonder that I was skeptical. And when I first installed Vista, I had a problem with my RAID Controller and Firefox. The RAID Controller problem was my own — Vista was looking for drivers for a piece of hardware that I had forgotten was in there-and-I-swear-that-all-I-did-last-time-was-just-put-mainboard-driver-disk-in… in short, it was my own fault. The only drivers I had to actually install were my printer drivers. More on hardware in a minute though.

I do have to say that my initial thoughts about my impulse-purchased Vista Upgrade came to fruition when I went to open the box. I couldn’t work out how to open the bloody thing, and I remember uttering under my breath that I hope Vista is more user friendly than the damn packaging. It was kinda a nice experience though, being my first legitimate copy of Windows since….Windows 98. Yes, bad Téa… but it certainly made me feel all self righteous and legal I have to say. I put the disk in and I was greeted with something very pretty. Noice.

Installation was piss easy. Just make sure you have everything plugged in and off you go. Wait about half an hour and its done.

The funny thing about this whole experience was that when I actually loaded Vista for the first time, I actually did say “Wow”. Either my brain is hardwired to clever advertising campaigns or this is actually a very nice OS. And as much as it pains me to say it about a Microsoft product - it is most certainly the latter.

And the funny thing is, that you can see all the funny things that Microsoft have so obviously ripped off, like the tabbed browsing in IE7, the Window Effects and the…umm… Gadgets (no, I did NOT say Widgets. I said GADGETS! hee!), but they have actually implemented them in a way that you can actually forgive them for a moment for being the soulless copycat cunts that they are.

I am impressed by how Vista has handled all my hardware. It even recognised my graphics tablet right off the bat and my $18 Strathfield webcam. The only thing I needed to actually install was my Canon printer, and that was a breeze.
I am also impressed with the way that multimedia has been handled by Vista. We have a Wireless Media Player that streams my torrented TV sho-err I mean “home movies” to our big screen TV, and it has handled all of these things pretty seamlessly. After downloading Windows Media Player 11 and hating it, I can now see the bigger picture and it most definitely fits with the whole Vista experience.
I had to turn off the User Protection stuff because it was driving me bonkers and broke Firefox (yes Shandar love, I WORKED IT OUT AND CAN FIX YOUR PC! Aren’t I a genius?), but when I disabled that, MSN Messenger (of all things) decided it didn’t want to play. At the time of writing I have not put my Adobe Creative Suite or Macromedia Suite on it - but I don’t envisage any major problems.

So is it worth the upgrade? I will actually say yes with a BUT. The BUT being that you need to be confident that you have enough RAM and Processing Power to make it all pretty-like. I won’t really know how it compares to XP performance wise until I have loaded it with all the crap that normally slows my PC down (Photoshop, Flash, Video Editing, Music software etc…). I haven’t benchmarked it, haven’t looked under the hood, but boy, is it slick.

I know that in the Open Source fanboi world it doesn’t count for much (which is why Linux will never be mainstream), but for someone like me, who can easily stare at a screen for 16 hours a day, aesthetics and usability DO MATTER. And Vista has this.

Besides, its shiny. Its new. Its an opportunity for me to dodge work and play around. And who can complain about that?

For those people that have been having trouble with accessing this site using Internet Explorer, I apologise. It didn’t like my plugin for the absolutely beautiful Flash headings that I had installed, so thanks a-fucking-lot Microsoft.

Anyway, if you’ve been using IE, welcome back. Sure, IE6 sucks, but IE7 has to be better, right? Because its got, like TABBED BROWSING and everyfink! No. IE still sucks arse and if you can, get Firefox.

But, alas, after many attempts to repair the problem and still keep my beloved Flash titles, no can do. Remember what I gave up for you as you read my blog and I hope you appreciate it. Because now the headlines look ugly

Ah well.

Welcome back nonetheless.

I apologise for this bit of ultra-nerd gushing, but I can barely contain my excitement.

I may be a little late to jump on the bandwagon, but I have recently discovered a great little (well not so little, actually extremely powerful) development application called Ruby on Rails.

It is open source, it is extremely powerful, and can create complex web applications easily and can turn months of development into weeks, maybe even days, depending on what you want to do with it.

I have been going through the Lynda.com (another fantabulous site that is well worth the $25US a month subscription) tutorials on Ruby on Rails development and I have to say — this is the sort of thing that is making the new web so exciting for developers. I am currently more of a PHP and Actionscript/Flash developer, but I think I might try and start incorporating Ruby on Rails a bit more. I cannot rave about this enough. These development frameworks really are on the cutting edge, and I cannot wait to see where it takes us.

I might even start experimenting with some web apps in the future… in fact I think ROR may be the exact thing I am looking for for my LinkArtistCMS. Very, very exciting.

Mina has pretty much unlimited access to the internet, where she plays on things like ABC Kids, Disney and EverythingGirl.com.

I was walking by her on the computer and she said”

“Mum, I am great at the DOT COMS”

heh.

Next up: Hitting your head with a hammer causes a sore head.

Read the article here

Extract:

CHICAGO - Magazine headlines entice teenage girls with promises: “Get the body you want” and “Hit your dream weight now!” But a new study suggests reading articles about diet and weight loss could have unhealthy consequences later.

Teenage girls who frequently read magazine articles about dieting were more likely five years later to practice extreme weight-loss measures such as vomiting than girls who never read such articles, the University of Minnesota study found.

This site allows you to generate your own “cassette” - (I think I vaguely remember those…)

Here’s one I made by Mina (Miss Da Mina) and Jules (DJ Droolz)

hmmm…more fun…

My very first liner note credit. Mang!

Hopefully the firstof many as my business is growing quicker than I could’ve anticipated…

On ya Dixie Chicks. I am not a big fan of Country — but I really like this song. Check it out.

1. It’s amazing how many people will email a celebrity asking them out, thinking they actually have a chance - or that they are the first person to have thought of it. It’s similarly interesting how many said people send a CV and picture, like they are applying for a job.

2. It’s funny how many people write personal replies to automatic emails. They must think that there is someone personally welcoming them to their email list or something. Maybe we have a team of monkeys. The number of “thanks, you too” emails I get is rather funny.

3. Free shit and liner note kudos is kewl.

4. Working in PJs is cool.