Category Archives: News

Things, Goings On, and Stuff I write

Dear Camera Part III

Dear Coolpix Camera,
How was your stay at the repair center? I know you’re nearing completion and you’ll soon be ready to come home. I can’t wait to see you and be able to use the new external flash as well as take great pictures of Abby. Although you’ll miss Christmas this year, I do know that you’ll enjoy the overall trip to California since you haven’t been there before [to my knowledge]. I really hope that you can get here in time for New Years so I can take pictures of Abby asleep on someone’s shoulders while we party like its 1599.

Glad you’ll be home soon. Wish you were here.

Randy

Christopher Lee

I just became aware that Christopher Lee, now known for Lord of the Rings’ White Wizard turn Nasty Guy, and Star Wars Episode II bad guy was actually ‘The Mummy’ in 1958! This guy has been doing movies for a long time!

That’s quite a career and if my career lasts that long I’m not going to be developing web sites in 40 years because the web will be the past, but maybe I’ll be designing ties. And I suspect that blogs will be, um, part of stories I tell my grand-kids.

“When I was your age we used to have this thing called the Internet.”

“Yeah, yeah Grandpa, we’ve heard that story before. Come play Virtual Wolfenstein 4D.”

High of…

So tomorrow it’s supposed to be 23 degrees. Hope, that would be warm. Actually, the forecast is for it to be a high of 3 degrees. A low of -6. Of course all of that is Fahrenheit. Which reminds me of a Ray Bradbury book in which these guys are all driving around in beetles and then they’re burning books and then this one gal is watching TV and then the alarm goes off and the coffee maker turns on and then the toast pops out of the toaster oven and then you discover that it wasn’t a dream, everyone’s dead but the automation keeps going. Or something like that.

The Blend

I predict that 2005 will contain more blending as is already obvious by some cutting edge designers as linked to below (though the designs may change if you’re reading this from the archives – email me if things have changed when you’re reading this and linking through).

Your Total Site – blends the shadow down into what could be any length content – good design choice because you get to lose your concern over how long the article is, or the length of columns.

Firewheel Design – a small blend is employed near the menu to help visually draw your eyes from the menu into the content of the page. Also, a hatched blend is employed where the lovely background pattern runs into the orange gradient.

Silver Point – This site really grabbed me and I think it may be one of my favorites of the year. I really liked the rounded corners with the padded dotted outline for the mission statement.

The thing about the blend is that it is so subtle, but effective at drawing your eyes past distinct elements without killing the distinction of the elements that are blending. It’s smart design and something I hope to employ in the next rendition of this site.

A Funny Little Email

I got an email from a friend this morning that started like this:

Randy-
I really have to tell you how I found your website. I heard a story on the radio this morning about man-breasts. I have to admit that this morning I searched for man breasts, and I found your website…

It went on to ask questions about my family and such but it does crack me up the way the internet can bring people together… for the freakiest reasons 🙂

Can I get Two?

If you look closely at the picture of the display on this page you’ll notice several things: it’s kind of dark and hard to see what’s going on. The other thing you’ll note is that the display is three (3) ‘monitors’ wide. This is the bombdest display and I’d seen pictures of it somewhere else and then lost track of them. So, here it is, the coolest display I’ve seen for a computer. Imagine playing a first person game where you’re surrounded completely without a break for multi-monitor games.

On a business level, think about having Word, Excel and FireFox open at the same time (if you think I was actually going to say Internet Explorer you must be crazy), all within view and being able to drag and drop between applications even easier than you can with multiple monitors.

Thirdly, think about how expensive it would be to buy this. It makes the Mac wide displays look small.

Technology Vs. the Lawyers

So the music industry is slowly warming to digital content distribution (MP3’s, WMA’s, and “live” concerts with Ashlee Simpson). However, the Movie industry is now cycling in about 5 or more years late. They’ve got their lawyers out en force working on suing the peer-to-peer (P2P) networks. What is so amazing is that companies like Microsoft have developed digital rights management software and Tivo uses some similar controls to limit what or how things can be recorded. However, people can get things recorded digitally all sorts of other ways. Limiting the P2P networks seems to be short sighted and it really isn’t going to stop them. Sharers will jump to other networks or other methods.

This kind of reminds me of the Boston Tea Party: the colonists didn’t like getting caught for smuggling – and when the Brits closed in, they went off and of course you know what happened next: they polluted the ocean and the environmentalists in Britain revolted to let the United States get formed to help save the fish.

I don’t know where I was going with that, but there you go!

Bye-Bye, Baby

So today I sent in my Nikon camera to the factory to be fixed. The speed flash stopped working so I had to send it in for repair. I took it down to my local FedEx-Kinko’s where they’re reportedly going to ship it. I paid extra big money to have it wrapped carefully, shipped in a box 6 times it’s size full of peanuts and carried by ballerinas on their tip-toes. I also paid to have the guy behind the counter breathe as well as talk to other customers. In fact, the whole experience felt like FedEx was billing me for my time in their store. There’s something magical about that extreme form of capitalism called ‘Shipping – Copying – Printing.’ It makes you feel like a useless slave bound to their rules. Therefore, I’m going to start RandyEx where I’ll ship copies of your printings for 3000X profit and become independently wealthy after only 7 weeks on my new diet plan.

I hope my camera comes back OK.