Notebook

I just installed iLife 04 from apple and here are my initial thoughts:
iPhoto
The import process from my iPhoto3 library somehow found 56 "recovered" files. Huh? 34 of them were apparently completely transparent and had no relation to files on disc. Odd. Performance was kinda spotty. I was expecting speed, but it was kinda choppy. Will be giving it another spin tomorrow. It did let me browse all 25000 songs from my iTunes collection in no time at all. First time I tried loading that bad boy up in iPhoto3 i thought my machine had crashed. I will post more about iTunes stupid XML format later.

iTunes
Ok. Nothing changed. See above comment on stupid XML format.

iMovie
Again, same zippiness with the iTunes library, plus the extra basic features are nice. I often use iMovie to capture troublesome miniDV tapes that final cut balks at, and the extra trimming features are a welcome addition.

iDVD
This program is sooooooooooooooo wonderful. The included themes are superb, but I could do without the apple logo on them. (that is a preference, and a dumb one at that. I did see an artist at last year's Art Chicago that forgot to turn it off. He/she was selling DVDs for lots of money with the little logo on them. ;) ). The DVD map feature looks neat, but I haven't tried it. I should learn how to make templates for iDVD.

GarageBand (iRawk?!?!)
GarageBand is very, very nice. A friend of mine has already laid down 11 tracks in it! I just dabbled and recorded some "twinkle, twinkle little star" on the keyboard. The sound synthesis is excellent and it is very easy to use. And ya gotta love the wood borders. ;)

Ok. Enough apple praise. Look for a rant tomorrow.

Posted by at 10:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I was having coffee upstairs at a party with John Flansburgh of They Might Be Giants when he invited me to build something for their website. I was flattered and accepted the job instantly.

He pointed something out to me on an orange iMac (in a yellow room, no less) and i replied, "Cool."

Posted by at 9:18 AM | Permalink

Since Ava has been with us, i have been watching more movies. Seems weird. Baby = more movies. She likes to sleep on my chest though, and it is hard to program with a 1 month old occupying your left arm. So i fire up the tivo and see what goodness awaits.
This is a partial list:

• The Big Heat, by Fritz Lang


• Before Sunrise, by Richard Linklater


• Tape, by Richard Linklater


• Wave Twisters, by DJ QBert & ????


• The Hidden Fortress, by Akira Kurosawa


• Sanjuro, by Akira Kurosawa


• Rhapsody In August, by Akira Kurosawa


• Dial M For Murder, by Alfred Hitchcock


• The Birds, by Alfred Hitchcock


• Spirits of the Dead, by Roger Vadim, Louis Malle & Federico Fellini


• No Such Thing, by Hal Hartley


• Hype!, by Doug Pray


• Night On Earth, by Jim Jarmusch


• Stranger Than Paradise, by Jim Jarmusch

More to come...

Posted by at 10:16 PM | Permalink

Now, I love Apple. I have been happily using their Keynote software and am very happy that they are supporting open standards and XML throught OS X.
I have to say that I was a little disappointed with the Keynote speech this year by Steve Jobs. After watching a presentation that was simply stunning in its robotic dullness by Roz Ho from Microsoft, a slide came up that took my breath away.

Umm. Yeah. Come on. I think he did this last year, too. This slide introduced the video about the massive new supercomputer at Virginia Tech. This could have simply been skipped. Fade into the video and be done with it. That is not the most impressive way to demonstrate your great presentation software. ;)
Update: here is another winner.

Posted by at 11:05 PM | Permalink