OSX Leopard Icons

One very small upgrade to Leopard (but one that has not gone unnoticed by this designer), is the ability to use larger icons. OSX Leopard now uses icons that can be up to 512px big. This update is especially important now that coverflow browsing plays a big role in day to day operations. Coverflow shows icons and photos of any and every file residing in a specified folder. Having icons that span up to 512px large makes for much clearer images and a greatly improved GUI. I have been wanting to design my own icons for sometime, but never have taken the time to learn the process from start to finish. Well tonight I did!

Using the tutorial provided at TutorialDog.com I was able to successfully craft my own Leopard-compatible icons. I did however tweak the tutorial a bit. Instead of using CandyBar, I used the free program icns2icon to implament my finished product. The only other programs you need are photoshop and program called IconComposer which is included as part of Apple's Xcode package (this should be on your OS disc or is available for free download at the hyperlink provided).

I also discovered MAC's official human interface guidebook for designing all sorts of add-ons for OSX. It's a great read and really shows you why OSX just looks and feels superior to other operating systems on the market. Apple has set a benchmark in the aesthetics department which is huge to their product line. They've discovered that form indeed plays as equal a role as function in the marketing process. What's more, the MAC community has rallied around the good looks of the OS and has made qualified attempts at maintaining certain standards in the design and feel of their products/projects. Very cool.

I created icons tonight for myself and my wife to use on our separate document folders. In keeping with the MAC style guide, I gave them an apple-esque bubble flair. There is actually quite a bit of thought that goes into designing icons and logos like this. If anyone has any questions regarding the process I used for this, please feel free to post. I hit a couple snags when I was working on this, but was able to get through it fairly quickly.

My Brief Take on OSX Leopard

I was recently able to upgrade to OSX Leopard on both my work and home graphics stations and am really enjoying it! There are some cool new features that Leopard adds to the mix and I've been taking advantage of those quote a bit these past few days. My favorites so far are the advanced network capabilities (thank goodness we finally have networking capabilities that can compete with a windows machine out of the box... in my opinion this was MAC's weakest point in past releases), the ability to stack items in the dock (my dock no longer overfloweth...), time machine (this is amazing and really much better than I expected), cover flow (hooray- now I can browse files AND look cool doing it). to name a few. I've been much more impressed with this upgrade than I originally though I would be.

One option that I'd love to get working, but am still somewhat skeptical about, is the Back to my Mac ability that Leopard boasts. I was just approved to work from home one day a week and this option would be really helpful to me! Using this function I would be able to, in theory, access my work computer from home and control it. If I'm missing a file or need to grab something from the company servers, all I'd need to do is log in and drag-drop it to my home workstation. This is all fine and dandy, but tapping through the ports is something that should prove to be challenging. I'll post more on this if I am able to get this to work properly in the next month.

Fun on the Golf course...

I'm in the process of editing a short reel of film I shot at FH's Million Dollar Golf Challenge this past Monday. Here's a short clip of me and Elgin messing around while we were waiting for one of the groups to catch up...

Political Quiz

My wife and I have been taking online quizzes in an effort to better understand how our views translate to the political realm. While I was fairly sure that I knew the finer points of my own political views prior to taking the quizzes, I did discover some unique quiz tools online. Both Celeste and I agreed that our favorite test was taken at: http://politicalquiz.net/. We liked this one the best because it doesn't give you the generic, "Your a Republican/Democrat!" answer. This test assigns you a 4 digit numerical value which tells you about the specifics of your political views. It is apparent that how you prioritize your values in politics makes a huge difference in how you vote. After completing the test, you can plug the numbers you are assigned into a 'voting match-up' section of the site that will pair you with a presidential candidate. Pretty nifty!

Documentary Blogs

...I'm going to be posting them. I haven't figured out all the details yet, but I'm planning on doing a series of semi-weekly blogs that contain documentary videos on specific topics. This a) gives me a chance to blog with a purpose, and b) allows me to put to use all of the learning I've been doing over at hv20.com. Forums can be an incredible way to pick up knowledge- I can't believe how much info I've picked up from this awesome community of do-it-yourself filmmakers. Lynda.com has also been an invaluable resource for quick assimilation and training on this subject.

I can't remember the last time I've spent so much focused time on one subject... I'm getting addicted to video again. I'm finally starting to understand the cinema tech heads and all of the jargon that they spew... its disturbingly fascinating and also... (lets just call it what it is, okay?) incredibly geeky. Not too many people can appreciate talk of inverse telecine pulldown, the importance of deinterlacing your video footage, or how to dequagmify your rotothermonuplex (okay so I made up that last one).

Still... the video bug is in the air and I'm hooked. Look for some more short films and abbreviated documentary pieces in the not-so-distant future.

First HV-20 Test Footage

Test footage with JES Deinterlacing Applied from Stephen on Vimeo.

Here is some test footage that I threw together last night from my new HV-20 camera. Hopefully this helps for those of you wanting to see examples. Two items to note: 1) Please click on the title to go to Vimeo and watch the full HD version- the version listed in the blog is not as high quality as the source one is. You can download the source footage by clicking here. 2) I have not yet mastered all of the export features here at home, consequently, this Vimeo clip is not a completely accurate depiction of what the camera can do... yet. You'll notice that (especially in full-screen mode) there is some artifacting and 'lining' occuring in some of the footage. This is a result of my export settings, and not from the camera itself. I am working on fixing this and setting up an HD video worflow that will allow me to upload seamless HD videos to Vimeo in the future. Enjoy the random test footage!

Have a small fortune burning in your pocket?

Then why not buy your very own man-made island? In fact, while you're at it, why don't you buy one that is a chain of islands designed to look like the world. Located off the coast of oil-rich Dubai, 'The World' is the perfect place to blow all that extra money that you just happen to have laying around...

Okay, so seriously- this is a pretty crazy concept. Celeste and I had a lot of fun loooking at this site and viewing the videos they have posted. I still can't believe that this is actually real. What a concept- and I thought terraforming to this degree only existed in sci-fi world.