iStab is a must have accessory for all iPodders who are paranoid, living in the US, want to defend themselves against muggers with good taste or homicidal maniacs.
Ooooh! Check out the new icons for Mozilla Thunderbird by the same guy who did the gorgeous Mozilla Firefox icon over at Hicks Design.
Finally something to compliment the Firefox icon. I can’t wait until this baby is sitting on my desktop at work!
Apple releases new hardware and software:
Newer, faster G4 PowerBooks
Newer, faster iBooks
New motion graphics software
Hmmm…
It’ll be interesting to see how Motion stacks up to Adobe After Effects, and even more interesting to see what other apps Apple has up their apparently very long flowy sleves.
Hmmm… web page editor? 2d animation package? One might even go so far as to speculate that a drawing app not unlike Illustrator would be on the cards what with the Inkwell built into OS X+.
Okay that’s probably quite far fetched.
Nice snapshot of the influence Nirvana (the band), has had on music: Searching for Nirvana
Whether you loved or hated them, they were a band to be reckoned with in the 90’s. Yeah Kurt went and did himself in and he’s a dickhead for it, leaving poor Francis Bean completely under the influence and guidance of Courtney Love, but the music is still a big deal.
My mid to late teens and also formative guitar learning years coincided with Nirvanas reign. Some how I managed to get through this decade without buying a single Nirvana album. Okay so I taped heaps of it off the radio, (yeah taped! Cassettes were still in vogue then!). I did however spend a lot of time with fellow aspiring musicians at high school playing and performing Nirvana songs.
Yes, school talent shows and formals were the appropriate place and time to grab your axe and start shredding away, while some guy in a beanie, (imaginatively dubbed beanie boy
), donned his best flanno and grinded the lyrics out in front of a highly pubescent crowd of angst ridden youth. In school uniform. Well they weren’t always in uniform.
You know a band has truly left their mark on a generation when their songs or riffs become part of the standard musician repetoire. In the 90’s, fumbling new guitarists learnt these classics or the easier parts thereof: Smoke on the Water
(Ozzie!), a smattering of Stairway to Heaven
, Enter Sandman
, The Unforgiven
(yes Metallica scores at least 2) and Purple Haze
. I’m sure there are others but I can’t remember all of them off the top of my head.
Then we begun to add some. No prizes for what would be considered the most played to death riff in the 90’s. Yep, Smells Like Teen Spirit
. Hands down. Followed in no particular order by: Polly
, About a Girl
, Come as You Are
, In Bloom
and yeah, basically the entire Nevermind
album. Then all of In Utero
. Then all their other albums.
You could be locked in a room with teen musicians you have never met and start banging out just about anything Nirvana and you would all bond instantly, or at least everyone knew the songs. It was fantastic. Other songs and riffs that had this effect (and still probably do with the right generation), are: anything by Pearl Jam, I cannot stress how much fun it is to play the intro to Alive
. That 8 or so fret slide at the beginning rocks. I defy any guitarist to tell me that doesn’t feel good to play and doesn’t rock. Almost anything by The Smashing Pumpkins, particularly from the Siamese Dream
album is also up there, Cherub Rock
is also another of those classic rock/grunge songs that just feels good to play, and was therefore constantly played in high school music rooms in the western world.
You cannot be an impressionable female guitarist in the 90’s and not like or play Hole. Yes, Kurt’s wife Courtney’s band. White trash femme rock topped off with a tiara. It was fantastic. All guitar playing Hole fans in the 90’s knew at least Doll Parts
, it’s shit easy and even easier to caterwaul along with. Miss World
and Violet
are also mention worthy and of course Olympia
.
The 90’s grunge scene was also subject to go all unplugged as soon as it had plugged in. The MTV unplugged performance Nirvana did was worshipped by all, and of course others followed such as Alice in Chains and Hole. Hole’s performance was particulary memorable if not for the dolls strung up by tule and the way Courtney straddled
her stool. If she opened her legs any wider she would’ve swallowed it. The cameras were quick to pan away, thank god.
Okay, one more tangent, remember the article I linked to way up top? Yeah, well they put The Darkness in the same grouping as Kylie and Australian Idol. No, this is wrong, very wrong. The difference, The Darkness are fucking good. Yes, okay it is a matter of opinion, yadda yadda yadda. I don’t know if they are manufactured like Kylie or Idol, but if they are, it’s not obvious and I don’t care. Yes they are 80’s cock rock and they’re incredibly good at it. Classic solid rock arrangements, structre, solos, vocals and rythyms. And costumes. Coupled with fucking hilarious lyrics, but somehow not straight away seen as purely comedic or bleedingily, obviously self mocking. Well in any case, they’re good in their own way but also in a classic way.
The iPod is a device with some splendid uses, Mp3 player, portable hard drive, calendar, address book, note book and weapon:iPod Used In Domestic Homicide.
Or at least that’s what the guys at liquid generation thought. They also wrote the funny following:
Segway Used In Drive-by Gang Shooting
Looks like they found a way to improve Nokia phones too: Nokia announces cell phone stun gun
I just stumbled across liquid generations smutty 404 error page too.
Ha!
Michael McDonough’s Top Ten Things They Never Taught Me in Design School
Nuff said. Good article. You can even just read the sub heads and you get the idea. Some of my fave sub heads from this are:
- 1. Talent is one-third of the success equation
- 2. 95 percent of any creative profession is shit work
- 3. If everything is equally important, then nothing is very important
- 7. When you throw your weight around, you usually fall off balance
- 10. The rest of the world counts
Limited edition Emily Strange Epiphone guitar
I want one. You can win one now or buy one from the web site in April.
Check out the specs on the Epiphone site
www.apple.com.au/accessibility
Finally, Apple Speaks to the Blind
You can talk to your Mac
The next major-ish release of Mac OSX could feature built-in assistive technologies such as screen readers, spoken items and QuickTime: Closed Captioning just to name a few.
Yeah so what! You say, you can get this software for Windows! You whine. Yeah well it ain’t free with your OS like the mac solution will be! Ha! It’s built into the OS, not some add on! Ha, again!
The You can talk to your Mac article also has an interesting rumour on the one button mouse front. The rumor is that Apple is working on a mouse with an iPod like circular touchwheel, damn nice. Hmmm… that could mean a circular mouse. Could this be the puk mouse revisited and actually good? Only time will tell.
Design portal www.designinteract.com is featuring an article entitled Giant Sites: Designing the Un-Designable. The article talks about the pros and cons for working for a boutique web design agency with smaller clients, and firms who produce sites for larger corporate clients.
This quote is taken from a creative director: Everyone knows the best work comes from boutiques
. This article challenges this attitude, which is nice. I myself mostly do web design for larger corporates with far more attention focused on producing intuitive interfaces and layouts to help consumers get the information they want, perform transactions, etc. There isn’t always much room for creative abandon in these projects, and you do have to think about how this is going to be cut up into templates. Most of these sites deal with large amounts of dynamic info and you have to tailor your designs to accommodate this in the most elegant, code efficient way possible, while still maintaining an existing brand, and catering to your target audience. Phew!
There is of course the fact that mostly with larger corporate clients, there are many decision and stakeholders, who invariably can’t decide on a particular design, and most of the time will go with what is the safest
, or something similar to what their competitor has done/is doing. Which is understandable from a business perspective, if you know a particular solution already works well, then why not look at the core of what they’ve done and change it to your needs. It’s gotta work out cheaper in the end?
So boutique agencies have it easier? Depends on the projects and their individual needs (client temperment?), not just the size of the agency. I’ve often felt that in general they get more creative freedom, because of the nature of work they seem to get, like more brochure ware sites, newsletters, mini promo sites, etc. So do you equate creative freedom with easier? No you can’t. More enjoyable? For me yes, but depends on your personal tastes, like PC or Mac.
Corporate blandness doesn’t always have to be so bland though. You can get a bit creative if only through small subtle elements. Sometimes if you present a corporate client with something more interesting as well as bland version no.112, they can start to comprise. But only a little, and only if you change it brand X blue. But it’s a start.
Boutique design though seems to be where you want to be if your a designer. When you’ve decided to make a living as a designer, it’s super sexy slick sites/designs that woo you, the ones with pages of cutting edge graphic, photography and typography experiments bordering on art more than design, topped off with exquisite embellishments and more style than you can poke a cursor at. I can’t say that the Microsoft or Amazon sites inspired me so.
Sigh!
Yes Strong Bads 100th email is truly an acheivement worthy of widescreen WOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!
Also contained in this momentous e-mail is how Strong Bad and Homestar Runner met and the birth of The Cheat. Stick around after Strong Bad says ’email’ 100 times and see well wishes from Marzipan, Homestar, Ye Olde Strong Bad, freaky Strong Bad and Limozeen!
Fashion according to Lucie.
Rule 1: You can NEVER have too many skull shirts. NEVER!
Rule 2: Skull shirts need to be BLACK! Red, deep purples and very dark greys are also acceptable, but NEVER under any circumstances is the shirt to be white! White skull shirts are right up there with white Metallica shirts, fucking wrong!
Reducing the cost of iPods, Aluminum displays?
Aluminium display to compliment your shiny G5 hey? Yeah that sounds like something Apple would bring out. As for the size, yeah 24 inch also sounds quite believable. I drooled over a G5 in person on Monday. It’s a huge beast truly worthy of an equally huge display, I mean the 20 or 23 inch cinema display (I can’t remember which one it was. ‘Twas big ‘n’ shiny) it was hooked up to was actually looking a bit small! (Nah man, for real! Yes I know a 20 inch display certainly dwarfs my piss-weak 17 inch Phillips thing running some mediocre graphics card at work, but… yeah…).
Anyhow, the lovely translucentness of the cinema displays don’t quite compliment the G5 as much as I’m sure it could, or at least that was my feeling after seeing this setup in person.
XServe and iMac G5s, Mac OS X 10.3.3, notebook displays
iMac G5s? Lets get the Power Books happening first shall we? But then again, Apple might want to hurry along the roll out of the Intel based G5 chip. Hmmm…
Sources comment on Power Mac, Power Book updates
Stop teasing already!
Chiko Space Cadet could possibly be made into a tv cartoon series. Woo hoo!
You can check out some more info on characters and plot background.
Like Scary Girl, Chiko has a feline sidekick, Minkie, who is orange and has a screwdriver that comes out of it’s chest.
Let’s hope Chiko and Minkie out of red tape land soon.
The Exorcist in 30 seconds, re-enacted by bunnies
‘Nuff said. Nothing sounds funnier than having the phrase the power of christ compels you
said over and over again in a helium bunny voice.
US-Australia price disparity stirs debate
Hmmm… yes macs are expensive especially if you’re in Australia. Here’s a quote from one of the readers:
Is Apple obliged to cut prices so it cannot benefit from currency movements? If the Aussie was weakening, Apple would not necessarily raise pricing, but prefer to take a hit so it could maintain sales
Apple Australia actually did raise raise pricing due to a, at one stage, very weak Aussie dollar. I know, because I was just about to purchase a top of the range iBook, only to realise that this was no longer financially possible about 2 weeks later when I had all the money together. The year would’ve been 1999 or 2000-ish, so yes, not necessarily being the operative phrase here, and I don’t recall them dropping them back yet now that our dollar is a bit stronger.
On another note, the Apple’s WorldWide Developer’s Conference (WWDC) is happening in San Francisco in June. Apple are offering scholarships to students of Australian unis to attend. Which is nice.
Of course with a WWDC looming soon-ish one can’t help but wonder what next big slickly designed consumable beasties are awaiting to be unveiled.
My plastic heart is an online toy retailer carrying some very cute figurines. There are some delightful kitty variations well worth parting with money for. Not a badly designed site that uses pink, not the highly trendy shocking magenta you see a fair bit around boutique design sites
Some ZDnet mac articles I found interesting:
Some dual 1.8GHz G5’s have been beeping and hissing when used with some external audio gear. Certainly not something creative pros want to hear after spending thousands of hard earned bucks on one. Good news is Apple have fixed this in the production process now, so new machines rolling off the production lines are spiffy.
Will Apple bite on Motorola’s PowerPC chip?
What with Apple using IBM chips in G5s these days, you gotta wonder 2 things:
1. Where this leaves Motorola? Will Apple eventually phase out Motorola chips in favour of IBM ones?
2. Where the hell are the G5 laptops!?
The article suggests the G5 laptops aren’t far off. As for Motorola and it’s new speedier than previous Motorola chips, who knows, I mean 1.42 GHz isn’t that much faster than 1.33 GHz, even for laptops. You do the math, that’s 0.9 GHz. Big fucking whoop.
www.davidandgoliathtees.com have some funny t-shirt designs. You gotta love the crude-toon-smart-ass-style.
This article about a particular style being pulled from some stores has been brought to my attention.
Did you read it? Of course not you’ve got the attention span of a boy! See if you read the article that anecdote would’ve been extra funny.
Talk about some hyper-sensitive folk who like to over analyse and over intellectualise. It’s a funny sarcastic piece o’fashion, get over it! Oh well at least it’s some great publicity for David and Goliath Tees, and damn funny ones at that.
Some design ranges in particular:
Eve L, for aspiring dark mistresses.
Trendy Wendy, for trendy chicks.
And of course the Boys Are Stupid range, containing many words of wisdom.
Be sure to check out the creative genius behind the designs.
Neon Genesis Evangelion – Resurrection: Director’s Cut will be released on the 16th March. This DVD will contain episodes 21-23 in both director’s cut and original broadcast versions.
Ok, question: why couldn’t they put the director’s cut versions on the original DVD releases? Isn’t this one of the great things about the DVD format, you know chocking it up with extra bits? Surely they could’ve at least released it with the box set!
GRRRRR!!!
I am guessing it’s something to do with getting permission to do so, and money, and knowing they’re are many Neon Genesis suckas out there, and blah blah blah!
Well I’m a sucka. I’ll be one of those people buying it in the next week or two along with the final and 4th Futurama series box set.
Some entries so far in The Iconfactorys annual Pixelpalooza Contest.
My favourites so far are ‘Geezers’, however ‘One Of These Days’ is not without it’s charm. ‘Baggies’ and ‘Reenex’ are also kinda cool, and ‘Paperface’ has a very cool simple anime-stationery cuteness about it. I can see plush talking dolls made out of this set.
Speaking of plush talking dolls, go buy a Cheat from Homestar Runner, or at least checkout the demo.
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