Adobe Photoshop turns 20

Posted on February 13, 2010 by Steve

Hard to believe this milestone. Personally, I always thought the infamous software made its debut in the late Eighties because of a memory I have from my time at Marquette. While I was taking a basic layout/design course, the lab had a poster on the wall showing all these cool modifications the program did to six people’s faces, namely putting colors and patterns on them, transforming them into masks. In 1989 this was very impressive after what computers did in Tron and the Dire Straits’ video. Somebody asked Professor Brill about our Mac Pluses having this software installed or getting it acquired. Her reply was something to the effect about about how cheap the Journalism department could be. I know that if we found a way to make it part of the basketball team’s budget we’d get it; 20 years later and academic/artistic matters still lose out to sports as the current UT row proves.

Today, Photoshop is practically joined at the hip with Macs. Seriously, I have yet to see a copy (legit or pirated) on a Windows-based PC let alone any graphic designer/artist worth a damn insisting on using a Dell, HP or Sony.

The Guardian published a great piece on the digital airbrush here. If the software were a guitar, then my skill level would be equal to playing scales and doing a great Pete Townshend windmill move.

I’m in the Adobe camp about not using Photoshop as a verb. The general laziness of people turning nouns into verbs makes my skin crawl. It’s right up there with the incorrect usage of “grow” and hyperbolized “impact” by America’s Business Caste.

Here’s a great showcase of disasters made with the Knoll Brothers’ creation. Even Stalin’s flunkies did a better job than Berlusconi’s stooges.

Posted in Science & Technology | Leave a comment

New car update

Posted on February 13, 2010 by Steve

It has been a relatively quiet week from me and my site. I blame the weather more than the current AHL season (the Stars will be on a five-game road trip after tonight). The weather? Austin has had it rather good compared to my friends out East but cold temperatures still make me sluggish, tired and unmotivated. I practically want to hibernate. It wouldn’t be a bad idea here; short bursts of sleeping for three to four days instead of a whole quarter because our climate recovers quickly.

I digress, what a shock.

As many of you know, we put down 500 clams on a new Honda Fit about a month ago. Our sales guy, a nice fellow named Sam, couldn’t find one that matched in the area, therefore we’re going through all the trouble to get it built at the factory…over in Japan. According to Same, the order was started on January 27 and the bulk of the downtime is having it shipped over. Cars are manufactured quickly which is the only good thing I can say about Henry Ford’s legacy. By now I think it’s on a cargo vessel traveling across the Pacific to be unloaded on to a train near Long Beach, CA (where most Asian goods are handled). From the train to some nearby stop, it will be on a truck to Round Rock. The whole process can take up to 45-90 days. We’re rooting for the latter. Somara is still going through the annoyance on getting the title on her truck to trade it in. I am juggling our finances to have a larger down payment ready on the day we sign all the papers to drive it off the lot. I don’t want to even think about the insurance changes.

We are getting pretty excited over this major purchase. Last night, the Stars’ deal of the night was a license-plate frame. Trivial? Yeah. However, we agreed on no bumper stickers on this car. The next acquisition will be a new iPod to reside in it, I think it can remain in the glove box (this compartment needs a new name, driving gauntlets haven’t been necessary once windshields were perfected by the Thirties). No more Austin radio! No gouging from XM-Sirius! We get to control the tunes. The passenger can check her/his iPhone for the traffic via Google Maps yet our commute to work is brief, less than 10 miles compared to the 25-plus most co-workers have.

This week though, my friend Bryant (who also channels the contrarians Maureen Dowd and Thomas Friedman) purchased a new VW GTI. It’s a type of Golf or Rabbit. Despite his litany over diesel, he went with the gas-driven, automatic model which I think he paid too much for. Firstly, any car in which the driver doesn’t do the shifting on is an automatic no matter how the Germans spin it. Secondly, it’s a hatchback with numerous extraneous features: seat warmers, leather interior, BlueTooth communication, etc. Lastly, my 13-year old Golf gets around the same mileage as the specifications on Bryant’s GTI state. I will concede the final criticism since my car’s mileage has deteriorated after Halloween (it has been around 24 mpg when 26.5 was the norm). His new car is nice to ride in yet I don’t plan on owning another VW unless I suddenly inherit deeper pockets. Our new Fit will be the better bargain in the long haul and I will even take a turn driving us to lunch with it!

Posted in News | Leave a comment

AHL shuffle in 2010-11 announced

Posted on February 11, 2010 by Steve

Last night’s hockey post was a bit brief and off-kilter thanks to the carb coma induced by Wings n’ More. I totally spaced on the upcoming changes in the league:

The Canes’ affiliate in Albany, NY is moving to Charlotte, SC and the Oilers’ in Springfield, MA is moving to Oklahoma City.

The first one doesn’t matter to me as it affects the Carolinas (a couple states the US can sell off to cover its debts) and no re-alignment will result. Seems it’s cheaper to lose money with two losing franchises in Charlotte’s new arena: the Bobcats and the Checkers formerly known as the River Rats.

The other one will make our division larger since logically OKC will be in the West with us, Houston, San Antonio, Milwaukee, Chicago, Rockford, IL; and Peoria, IL. SA’s Rampage will remain our rival due to their vicinity. However, I think all three Texas-based teams will razz on the relocated OKC team due to the cultural antagonism Texans inflict on this neighbor. There should also be a contest to rename the Falcons to something more appropriate for their upcoming home. My vote goes toward something along the lines of Oklahoma being home to numerous morons who deny the validity of Science: namely Senator Inhofe. The OKC Deniers, Flat Earthers or Bible Thumpers (home of Oral Roberts “University”) readily come to mind.

Next season should be interesting.

Posted in Hockey | Leave a comment

Прощание Vishy

Posted on February 10, 2010 by Steve

During last night’s loss to the Griffins, the guy who has the distinctive “Let’s go Stars!” shout tapped me on the shoulder and asked where Vishnevskiy was since I already told him about Wathier and Sawada being called up to Dallas. I had barely noticed shortly after the opening faceoff because I tend to start paying to the defensive pairings after a couple minutes. It certainly explained why Ludwig and Stafford were around over playing for the Steelheads up in Idaho.

Then the news came out. The Dallas management traded our scoring defenseman and only participant to the AHL All Star game to Atlanta for yet another goalie! If it weren’t Kari Lehtonen I would’ve been super irked. Instead I’m merely annoyed. Currently the Stars organization has a glut in the net: Turco, Auld, Krahn (injured for a while), Climie, Bachmann and Ford. I don’t follow Dallas enough to know what they lack as they fail to make the playoffs during Mike Modano’s final season. I have seen enough games of my local team to say with absolutely certainty they didn’t need to give up Vishy, a defenseman who scores more points than half the team’s forwards (24).

The worst part of the deal is that he will be assigned to the Chicago Wolves who will be in town this weekend. At least he doesn’t have to move out of his Riata apartment until Sunday.

I do wish him the best though. One negative thing about the Cold War’s end was Russia’s decline in hockey prowess. The so-called 20 years of Free Market reforms coupled with Putin’s raw, naked corruption gutted the nation’s ability to develop new talent to replace Russia’s aging superstars. Great players like Ovechkin and Malkin are now uncommon prospects compared to the days of the famous KLM line or Tretiak. Dallas let a diamond from the rough slip through for yet another Finnish goalie.

In Lehtonen’s defense, he is good. I saw him play for the Wolves over five years ago against the Rampage but on an off night. Chicago clobbered San Antonio’s team five to zip and Lehtonen defending against stops mostly from the top of the circle, nothing very close in range. Will he be a solid replacement for Turco, the Stars’ main goaltender after Crazy Eddie Belfour left? Who knows. I’m more concerned about the Hicks family’s financial statements.

Wrapping up…the Austin Stars 2-1 defeat was a bummer yet it wouldn’t be interesting if they won every evening I saw them. Ludwig provided the best goal though. He shot it from the circle, right through the goalie’s five hole. All the players on the ice were expecting a whistle. Those of us watching from our seats knew better as we watched the puck go through and slowly skid across the red line into the net. It must’ve traveled six inches to count. Somara got one clear picture of it happening.

Posted in Hockey | Leave a comment

Happy 11th birthday TJ

Posted on February 8, 2010 by Steve

Today was his 11th and it will certainly be memorable courtesy of the weather out East, makes me glad my birthday is in the Summer. However, it was his day so I hope he made the best of it with school being cancelled.

I’m confident his parents will make it up to him when DC is dug out from the couple feet of snow.

Posted in News | Leave a comment

RIP Dr. Geoffrey Burbidge

Posted on February 8, 2010 by Steve

In all my years of following Astronomy for 30 years, Dr. Burbidge’s name never came up despite his involvement in the theory about the universe starting out with simpler elements (hydrogen, helium and lithium) and through explosions (supernovas, gamma-ray bursts, etc), the more complex atoms developed, namely carbon and oxygen. Dr. Plait even stated this in his recent book Death from the Skies yet didn’t mention Burbidge either.

Ironically, Burbidge was a skeptic regarding the Big Bang Theory, the generally accepted model/theory on the universe’s creation I first learned in seventh grade and through Carl Sagan’s Cosmos (currently watching again through Netflix). He was a proponent of Hoyle’s Steady State Theory which says the universe is eternal with local big bangs happening every 20 billion years. This seems to contradict his simple-to-complex contribution I mentioned in the previous paragraph. I only have a rudimentary understanding of Physics but I have my doubts in Steady State thanks to Entropy being real and the last time I checked, current evidence states the universe my only be 12 billion years old courtesy of Hubble and Hawking.

Despite Burbidge’s disagreement with the majority on Cosmology, he continued to be a respected Scientist and contributed to expanding our understanding of the Universe. Meanwhile, I think his defense of Steady State will solve the personal dilemma I have with Entropy being completely ignored in D&D (Dark Sun being the exception).

Posted in Astronomy, Science & Technology | Leave a comment

Guide to “foreign” gestures

Posted on February 7, 2010 by Steve

I will have to try these out with my Japanese co-workers, see if they’re accurate or still used. Somewhere buried in the slew of boxes tucked away for Operation: Alexandria (soon to be happening again) is a book I bought on gestures around the world. I was most curious over such things because Doc scored a copy before he left for Japan in 1996.

The Guardian has another quartet for the Arabic world but it lacks one from my book, how to give “the finger” over there which isn’t too different from how we Westerners do it.

Posted in Factoids | Leave a comment

KMAG hits one million songs…

Posted on February 6, 2010 by Steve

…and no, I am not doing the whole Dr. Evil-Mike Myers bit with my pinky. The joke was rather tired by mid-Summer 1997.

This landmark, okay trivial, event finally happened at 3:15 AM on January 30, 2010. I didn’t bother since I was busy and I felt that five stories in one day was enough. Then my sore throat blossomed into the cold I’m shaking off. However, my stream had an uncanny prediction power by the song it chose.

“The Last Laugh” by Todd Snider

It’s not very well known in most circles but there’s a string of lyrics telling people “I told you I was sick” on a tombstone. Reminds me more of some elderly people who think they’ll be vindicated in death.

Sadly, I should’ve hit this milestone several days earlier. For some weird reason, QTSS  in 10.6 has this problem of the server saying it corrected the time which results in the stream stopping completely while the service carries on. Should I get the time, I need to submit the problem to the proper channels at Apple to investigate. Before you throw in your two cents, I already turned off the server’s ability to act as an NTP server.

So how long did it take to do this? Seven years, five months, 22 days, three hours and 56 minutes.

What’s the most played song? artist? whatever? I have little idea anymore. Maybe I can pique the interest of my friend Jeremy into helping me build a database to parse such information more efficiently than the past methods I used. The biggest obstacles are QTSS changing its logging patterns in 10.4, my hosting it on three different servers over the years and the major re-organization of the MP3’s locations sometime I cannot recall.

On to two million!

Posted in Music | Leave a comment

First cold of the year is almost over

Posted on February 6, 2010 by Steve

How I hate being ill because it really takes 7-10 days to truly recover and I don’t really feel like being put on disability should I require five or more. The bigger peeve is the amount of e-mail to sift through when I return, hoping I haven’t left any customer in the lurch (I prefer to deliver on as many promises as I can).

At least this stint of being sick was soothed by clearing out my Netflix streaming queue while I was awake. Getting re-acquainted with the hits of my pre-teen years: Excalibur (horrible dubbing on King Arthur), Used Cars, Caddyshack and 1941; plus some new ones I never got around to before: Penelope, Brother from Another Planet; and seeing how the second season ended for The League of Gentlemen, so far I think they overplayed their hand by doing a third when it appeared decisively concluded when the Local Shop was burned down by an ugly mob.

Staying home from work had a cost too. I had kick-ass seats to one of the two Austin Toros games at the Cedar Park Center. Couldn’t attend. Felt hoarse, achy and feverish. Besides, nothing spells “asking for trouble” like calling in sick to work, then going out to a public event and getting spotted by your boss or worse, a high-level executive!

I’m feeling over 85 percent but having to endure the fluid stages tempered by a morning does of Mucinex, blech! Just get ready for another burst of stories over the next couple days.

Posted in News | Leave a comment

Happy Birthday Lester, this time I got it right

Posted on January 31, 2010 by Steve

Originally, thanks to last week’s Malaise, I thought I had missed the correct date but I would still post because it would balance out, similar to averaging two numbers.

Doesn’t matter, I still want to wish my gaming sensei a great birthday with his family up there in Wisconsin.

If you’ve seen one of his recent posts, Lester has had the audacity to say Twilight series of books was better than Bram Stoker’s Dracula, a rather bold claim. Now before you get upset and demand his man card, hear me out. Lester is a huge fan/expert on monsters and horror. I don’t think he’d make such a call without good reasons, especially if Bram Stoker is as trying as Mary Shelley, then I completely agree. Over 15 years ago, I tried to read the original Frankenstein…ugh. A rare triumph of Hollywood doing a better job than the source material. As for the Twilight stuff, I’ll classify it with guacamole…I know I don’t have to try it to know I won’t like it. Ellroy and Coupland will remain my literature of choice.

Last time, I promised a funny anecdote regarding his four daughters since Jeremy mentioned this factoid about which ethnic group is most represented on Earth, Han Chinese (around 20 percent). I had heard such a thing long ago when we worked together at GDW (more like one of every four people is Chinese), stored it in my memory and waited for the right time to bring it up when Lester would usually ask us if we had any questions before he left for the evening. The other typesetter sprang the tired one about the usage of driveway for parking but I got him laughing over mine; “If every one in four people on the planet is Chinese, why are all your daughters White?” Later that evening, he asked his children the same question yet phrased it by saying “Maggi claims one of you should be Chinese based upon the makeup of the world.” This resulted in a reply of “Maggi is weird.”

Happy birthday again Lester! Try to make it down to Austin again.

Posted in News | Leave a comment

Now to await my jetpack

Posted on January 30, 2010 by Steve

The rumor sites could finally give it a rest last Wednesday, the iPad was announced, shown, demonstrated and I think it will be an awesome product. Admittedly, I work for Apple so there is an automatic bias but I was skeptical of the iPod’s eventual ubiquitous success when Jobs showed it off  nine years ago. The world already had MP3 players, including me with a Diamond Rio 150, why would anyone drop $400 ($487 in 2008) on a what was a portable hard drive. Apple did listen to this criticism amongst numerous others, refined the iPod, got the price down and forged it into the true successor of the Sony Walkman; the portable CD player never cut it.

Now there are doubters who love to point out how that Apple is late to the party on making a tablet/slate-based computer or, my favorite, a competitive netbook. For the latter, netbooks are crap in general. They are the Trabants of portables. For a little bit more money, people can have a real computer over a unitasker crafted from spare parts Dell, HP and the rest can’t unload. In the tablet realm, the iPad’s predecessors have failed to set the world on fire too. Pop quiz! When you go to Starbucks, how often is anyone using a tablet PC or better yet, a PDA? No sign of them at the hospital when Somara went in for surgery in 2008 and these things had been around for almost a decade. If she can refute my claim, I will gladly correct this.

To me, the iPad is the logical successor to the Newton, a product Apple launched too early because the rest of the world hadn’t caught up. Imagine how things would be different if the Internet and Wi-Fi were as omnipresent in 1993? The iPad is a second chance to solve the problem of providing a tool bigger than a cell phone while not being as unwieldy as a portable. Best of all, it reminds me of those cool clipboard-like devices shown on Star Trek. “Captain, I’m detecting iPad Detractors 20 meters from here. I suggest we set our phasers on Stunning, like our sweet Apple gear.”

Will I get one? Most likely. The new car is a more pressing concern this year but I think releasing the iPad to the public and developers will result in it only improving; see what people do that engineers didn’t predict which will lead to further refinements. It has a big head start courtesy of the Apps Store for the iPhone and more importantly, Apple controls the software and hardware, therefore it will function reliably unlike Windows with a Palm Pre.

Posted in Apple, Science & Technology | Leave a comment

RIP Howard Zinn

Posted on January 30, 2010 by Steve

Columnist Bob Herbert wrote a nice piece about him yesterday, I think he says many of the things our SCLM doesn’t have the brains nor spine to say about the man. Meanwhile it practically sent Michael Jackson out on a celestial barge on par with Ronald Reagan and Diana Spencer. We truly live in the Stupid Ages.

I’d rather not pontificate about the sorry state of things but rather the good things I learned from him. Unlike most people, I didn’t discover him through his most successful book A People’s History of the United States, I accidentally received a copy of Declarations of Independence from the literary critic at the Milwaukee Sentinel (definitely a paper which wouldn’t touch Zinn’s work with a ten-foot pole). Written around 1990, I don’t recollect the exact point of the book, meaning was it an autobiography, a history text or essays; I think it was the latter. It still had a solid narrative because I remember having trouble putting it down. He definitely struck a chord with me as Bush (the first) was beating the drums of war to “liberate” Kuwait from Iraq.

Throughout college, I was never very much with the Liberal camp. It was the Eighties so American GroupThink turned Liberal into a dirty word and Marquette was (still is) a Moderate-Conservative university. Besides, alleged college “liberals” tended to belong more to the Limo Liberal and LUG (Liberal Until Graduation) delegations along with others who mean well, yet haven’t thought it all the way through. Then there are the hanger-ons only looking for free weed and scoring with Neo-Hippie girls. These people are their own worst advertising on campus. I could never belong anyway for I disagreed on the whole South Africa issue. Zinn was more convincing than any tie-died doofus reeking of pachouli. He put his money where his mouth was more often; he was involved in the Civil Rights movement, protesting numerous wars and speaking out when he could’ve lost his position at Boston College. Being a WWII veteran also helped put a cork in the noise holes of the Chickenhawks I ended up working for at GDW. He was certainly someone who pointed out the more practical side to me.

As a historian, I feel the radical label was inaccurate. Anyone who has taken a college-level course on the subject will learn all about the dirty laundry of near mythical figures and events from primary school. Pointing out America’s foibles doesn’t mean he hated the country; he just believed that ignoring them or covering them up would lead the nation into making the same errors. Sometimes those points can be unsettling if you’re a fan of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Martin Luther King or Joseph Smith. One of his ideological descendants, James Loewen said it best (paraphrased), people get upset when they find out their heroes have feet of clay.

Posted in History | Leave a comment

I bet this killer will still have access to legal texts

Posted on January 30, 2010 by Steve

Recently, a prisoner in Wisconsin (of all places) lost his lawsuit claiming that a ban against playing D&D was a violation of his free speech rights. If you read the story, the part about concerns over him being the center of a gang due to the game was rich; never mind the umpteen other factors why gangs form: ethnicity is a huge one.

At first, I thought, “who cares!” after seeing the headline. These people are allowed legal counsel the rest of us can’t afford, shelter, food, healthcare, clothing, exercise equipment (so they can kill guards and each other more effectively), entertainment and sometimes, conjugal visits. Then I caught the part about why he’s in prison, murder. I’m not keen on convicted murderers getting anything nice to alleviate their boredom but the idiotic policy against the game is to laugh. Obviously the warden will not ban sports or porn because it will result in Attica II.

I propose a compromise. Let Singer have his D&D yet to make sure it remains punitive, he can only play Fourth Edition.

Posted in D & D | Leave a comment

“One of you is going to betray me.” 26:21 Alpma Paaus

Posted on January 30, 2010 by Steve

Over ten years ago, when The Phantom Menace came out there were all those Jesus was a Jedi jokes over Anakin’s improbable birth. This gentleman’s amusing shirt proposes the theory that Judas was a Jedi since we all know Vader dropped the Emperor (Palpatine) down the shaft.

For the theological scholars, the passage I borrowed is from the Book of Matthew, I just modified the (alleged) author’s name with the Jedi Name Generator.

Posted in Funny Ones | Leave a comment

Sorry if I was away…

Posted on January 30, 2010 by Steve

…it was a week of the Malaise for me; a bit of my Evil Twin returning, anxiety and overall fatigue. I guess it’s officially an election year if I’m feeling so terrible. I would say the weather taking an ugly, freezing turn contributed. Hopefully this will be the last cold snap of a Central Texas Winter. How blatantly my standards on the climate have changed. Over 15 years ago, I was living in the Midwest and a high temperature of 40 F/ 5 C would be balmy in January.

Despite the whiney, opening paragraph it was equally an exciting week in Austin which I filled with hockey (Stars continue to be a winning team) and NetFlix streaming of Cosmos (still impressive after 30 years).

Now be prepared for an RSS bombardment of stories and probably a theme change over the remainder of the weekend.

Oh yeah, I bailed on the Jeopardy audition. I was really tired and couldn’t focus Wednesday night. I also remembered how much I hated watching the show when my Grandmother hoarded the TV every late weekday afternoon.

Posted in News | Leave a comment