joeblog

An awesome feature of Apple OS X is that when you push two keys by accident (say, when you’re flipping back and forth from app to app in Lite Switch for example), Apple decides to throw up their completely useless Front Row app for people who don’t have Apple TV.  The screen fades, it quits all music apps and takes forever to load and quit. Really great for when you’re under a tight deadline and trying to work.

Honestly. How much RAM and CPU does one need to open a 2GB layered Photoshop file and not have to wait 10 minutes to work on it? Just asking.

Adobe Flash CS4 is such a great improvement over CS3. A fine example is the improvement on the “import video” function.
Once your .flv is uploaded to your Flash Streaming Server (or whatever they’re calling it these days), you then import to the stage of your .fla and it imports all your metadata.

I’ve imported a 640×480 video file for this example. Once it’s done reading the metadata, it should place the correct sized video on the stage – just like CS3 used to.

And there you have it! A nice… er… 320×240 video that you have to go into properties and change to match the output of the .flv. Real good there, Adobe.

Don’t get me started as to what’s wrong with iTunes – the entire app needs a complete overhaul. Since this is a nitpicky, app complaint area, I will focus on consistent annoyances in the featured programs. This time, it’s meta-tagging. I love it when iTunes is trying to be “helpful” when trying to rename mp3s in the info window. In this case, if the lower-case has been used once, it will always try to enter that information, no matter what you do. You have to actually click beside each word’s first letter and make it caps to get the correct name. Brilliant. It’s almost as annoying as the myriad of Windows “Wizards” that merely get in the way of a decent user experience.

Ah, the internet. Where else can one find meaningless fun in a random, slogan generator?
My favorite word of choice to input? “Shit“. Every press of the button is a new classic, yet unusable, phrase for your company.

I really enjoy quitting everything I am working on, just to install something for Adobe Acrobat or Reader. I love it.