November 20

On the topic of...

Windows 7, I won't be reviewing it formally. It doesn't have enough support/drivers for me to get the full experience. I will make a note about it, but no formal review. I'll wait until the "official" beta to review Windows 7. Other than the whole coolness factor, Windows 7 is essentially useless right now, unable to even connect to the internet. CS4 I will review sometime soon.
Enough tech. Time to rant. First on my list is Gmail. Now don't get me wrong, I love Gmail. It's a whole lot better than AOL or MSN. I just don't like that Gmail introduced new "themes." Even though the themes are meant to be visually appealing, some of them remind me of the horrible layouts I see on MySpace. At least google hasn't allowed custom themes... yet. While Google may be masquerading the themes as a user enhancement, it's really just a sad appeal to get the MySpace kids.
Next on my list is MSN/Hotmail. I despise it. It's down like half the time (though this might have improved since July), the design is ugly (and reminds me of Vista...yuck), and it's completely unintuitive. The search feature is half-assed, and I have to wade through menus to do seemingly simple things like changing settings. I'm not even going to start on how it's poorly coded. Plus it's Microsoft, which earns it an insta-fail in my book.
Next on the Microsoft hate track are Zunes. You might know them as the poorly implemented, yucky iPod ripoffs. Their interface is butt-ugly (have you seen the font they use?!), and they have Wi-Fi, but no browser. Which kind of defeats the point of having Wi-Fi in the first place. Sure Microsoft says it's for track-sharing, but it's pretty hard to find another Zune user, so that feature's pointless. The Zunes are pretty ugly and bricklike themselves. No matter how much Microsoft updates the Zune, it's going to remain a failure.
Tomorrow some movie called Twilight comes out, and about half the kids in my school are going to cut class to go see it. Pathetic.

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November 18

Windows 7 and CS4

As of now, I have installed Windows 7 on my MacBook Pro, through Parallels. From my first impressions, it's quite similar to Vista. The ribbon interface is everywhere now. Wordpad and Paint both have the ribbon interface. Paint has anti-aliasing now, although that might not be a boon for pixel artists. I'm also seeing a lot of shines everywhere, and the new taskbar. I'm still having issues with drivers, but hopefully that'll be resolved soon. I'll write up a full review (with pictures) over the weekend, after I've had more time to try out Windows 7.
Adobe finally released their CS4 trials. So far I have Photoshop CS4 and Flash CS4, and my initial impressions are quite positive. I especially like Flash CS4's new UI. The properties box has been moved to the sidebar on the right of the screen, freeing up vertical space. The timeline has been moved to below the stage. This actually gives me more working room for the stage, which is especially good on 15" screen. The new inverse kinematics tool is fantastic, as is the motion editor. I haven't noticed any dramatic changes in Photoshop CS4, though.
Moving away from software/computers, time to rant about things. Lately I've noticed that people have been following the Twilight series like a religion. Half the people on Facebook now use Twilight quotes in all their statuses, which is pretty annoying. The craze has also been fueled by the upcoming Twilight movie. However, I still don't get why people obsess over it. It's just a book.

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November 17

Joy

Now is when I brag all about the new layout and bore you all with technical details that 90% of people don't care about. The new layout has:
  1. Easy on the eyes color scheme.
  2. Almost no images, meaning faster load times.
  3. No new-end technologies. Everything on this site was made using current CSS.
  4. Complete IE 6 compatibility. I'm still adding a nag bar because I personally hate IE.
  5. A completely different CMS. Chyrp is what I'm currently using. It's simpler for both the visitor and for the writer.
  6. A cleaner, less cluttered layout with more emphasis on typography than on design.
A known issue is in Opera (including 9.6). The little circles on sidebar rollovers appear under the text rather than next to it. Since it's a minor aesthetic issue and since Opera has a negligible market share, I'm going to leave it as it is. I've moved the contact form to its own contact page (which will be added a bit later). The footer will have my Flickr feed, some social links (MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.), and the copyright notice. The rest of the pages will be rewritten, and then the blogging can start again.

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