PixelGrinch | Bert Austin - Blog

MacUpdate Promo Bundle for $49

PixelGrinch — 2009-05-29T03:09:48+00:00

MacUpdate is offering another Promo Bundle of several useful applications for just $49 which is a saving of 91% compared to the regular price of all applications added up separately, which would be $521.71.

Since my switch to MacOS X in 2007 I have never looked back. Almost all software I have used under Windows is also available for the MacOS X platform. There were just a view applications I for which I have not found an alternative for.
I heard of the application Parallels which basically allows you to run Windows in a window under MacOS X. This was the solution to my problem, now I was able to use MacOS X to also run my Windows applications. This application by itself sells for $79 and is part of this bundle. Parallels is an absolute must have for any MacOS X user looking to run their Windows applications under MacOS X. What a better way to save money and get many more applications on top of this application for just $45. Can’t really beat the value that you get for just $49.
I went ahead and purchased the bundle, even though I will probably only use a view of these applications.

Following applications are included in this bundle for just $49:

TechTool Pro 5
Comprehensive tools for your Mac and hard drives. ~~$98.00~~

Parallels Desktop 4
Run WIndows, Linux, and more alongside Mac OS X. ~~$79.99~~

Circus Ponies Notebook 3
Organized your digital life. ~~$49.95~~

NetBarrier X5
Robust firewall and intrusion detection. ~~$49.95~~

DVDRemaster Pro 5
Backup your DVDs and put them on other Apple devices. ~~$49.99~~

Multiplex
Your Mac is your new DVD player. ~~$35.00~~

RipIt
Get your movies off DVD and onto your Mac. ~~$18.99~~

MoneyWell
Manage your personal finances. ~~$49.99~~

Paperless
Digital document manager. ~~$44.95~~

Posterino
Create posters, postcards, and more. ~~$24.95~~

BetterZip
Create and manage compressed archives. ~~$19.95~~

Jets’n'Guns Gold: New version of the hit classic.
CuteClips: Clipboard manager.
First 15,000 buyers get both apps for free!

Deal Breaker of Blogo is it’s HTML weirdness

PixelGrinch — 2009-05-26T21:48:03+00:00

I came across Blogo - Version 1.2.7 (3085):

Developer Description:

Easily publish text, images, videos, slideshows and more. With a simple, intuitive interface and support for Wordpress, Blogger, Typepad, Typo, Drupal, Joomla, and Expression Engine, Blogo is the best way to maintain your blog and spread the word with Twitter, Ping.fm and other supported services.

It is easy to install and the UI is quite nice and easy to operate. I used it with my ExpressionEngine based blog and thus like control of the HTML. For some reason Blogo adds additional markup to the HTML, which can not be turned off at all. The preferences offer some settings but are absolutely limited in regards of HTML. A simple switching from ‘Rich’ to ‘HTML’ added additional markup. It is annoying and also ruined already existing blog entries I have created within Expression Engine, not only by adding unnecessary markup. I would expect a setting to completely deactivate HTML and just use plain text input.

Unfortunately, due to the HTML weirdness, Blogo is unfit to maintain my ExpressionEngine blog.

Old-School Tunes is my Coffee!

PixelGrinch — 2009-05-20T20:07:23+00:00

Following a view tunes I love listening to when doing my daily work:

MacBook Hard Drive Upgrade

PixelGrinch — 2009-04-19T15:53:43+00:00

The lowest priced aluminum 13-inch MacBook shows the following configuration:

2.0GHz, Intel Core 2 Duo, 2GB DDR3 Memory, 160GB hard drive, NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics, Standard keyboard, Aluminum unibody, $1,299.00 (without tax).

160GB hard drive space is not really a lot these days, even for notebooks. For what I use the laptop I definitely need more hard drive space. So I decided to upgrade the factory installed hard drive (Fujitsu) with a 320GB hard drive (Seagate).

So far I had great experiences with Seagate in regards of all my internal hard drive needs.

The factory built in hard drive is a Fujitsu MHZ2160BH (160GB/8MB Cache/5400rpm) and currently available for about $60 (without tax). I replaced it with a Seagate Momentus ST903203N3A1AS-RK (320GB/16MB Cache/7200rpm) which is currently available for about $130 (without tax). Besides having the double amount of memory I am hoping for a slight speed increase due to higher cache and rpm number. I am also hoping that this hard drive will not be much louder than the factory built in one and doesn’t have too much effect on the battery consumption.

Focus:

- Clone content of original hard (Fujitsu) drive to new hard drive (Seagate).
- Replace Fujitsu with Seagate
- Create a backup strategy for the new upgraded hard drive.

First I attached the Seagate to an available USB port of the MacBook through a SATA dock. I then initialized the hard drive and used the application “Super Duper” to clone the Fujitsu hard drive to the new Seagate hard drive. For some reason I can, for the life of me, never remember the application name “Super Duper”. I guess it is because the wording “Super Duper” does not contain any hint that would indicate the functionality of the application.
This process took a view hours. After all has been cloned and the new hard drive has been set bootable by “Super Duper” I went ahead and replaced the Fujitsi with the Seagate.
I booted up the computer and all worked well. I adopted the same backup strategy for my MacBook that I use for my Mac Pro. “Super Duper” is my preferred choice for my backups. I actually bought 2 x 320GB Seagate hard drives. One to upgrade/replace the smaller Fujitsu and the other one to backup the new Seagate I replaced the Fujitsu with. To this day I do not use Time Machine for any of my backup needs.

MacBook Screen Dim Options

PixelGrinch — 2009-04-07T15:03:00+00:00

Working with the new 13” aluminum MacBook on a daily basis turned out to be one awesome addition to my office Mac Pro. It is small enough to carry around virtually anywhere and it surprisingly is powerful enough to do my daily work on it on the go or away from the office.

Working on it on a daily basis there were two things that really started to annoy me. It has two dim options activated by default. I decided to turn both of them off. Looking through the internet it seems I am not alone. I decided to put this in the tutorial section of this blog to visually show how to do it.

Both dim settings can be accessed through the System Preferences:

The first one is easy to find. It is accessible though the Energy Saver icon of the System Preferences. It particlarly annoyed me when I was reading something on the computer, like an e-book, or looking at the art work I am working on. After 3 minutes on battery the display dimmed significantly. I understand this is a energy saving setting but in my case I like to decide when I want to dim the screen especially when I am working. That is why we have the nifty F1 and F2 keys to adjust the brightness.

The default setting is shown above, it is set to 3 minutes. Just adjust the ‘Display Sleep’ setting accordingly. I pulled it all the way to the right where it shows the ‘never’ setting. First dim problem solved!

For me the second dim option was not as easy to find. Since the built in iSight is functioning as a sensor to adjust the dim of the screen I looked for anything iSight. I was on the completely wrong track and finally found it though the ‘Displays’ icon of the System Preferences. It particularly annoyed me when I had a light source behind me and moved my head. Almost every time I moved my head the screen dim adjusted. On the other side I have to say I am always impressed by the way Apple invents new things to improve the overall user experience. For me I rather have it turned off.

Above you can see a screenshot of the factory settings. To turn the ambient light function off just uncheck the ‘Automatically adjust brightness as ambient light changes’ option.

Flash Animation Advertisement for chillingo

PixelGrinch — 2009-03-23T06:35:00+00:00

My friends over at chillingo contacted me to cook up a 300x100 Adobe Flash animation, 300x100 gif animation of the Adobe Flash animation and a 728x90 JPG banner.

Briefing:

Some ideas/phrases I want to convey:
Chillingo
Developing for iphone?
Publish through Chillingo
Want to maximise sales?
The most successful publisher——maybe follow with a flash-up image of Zen Bound and iDracula (like blipverts)

Since it was about iPhone i thought about integrating user interface elements of the iPhone. Since the space was quite limited I decided to go with the top bar of the iPhone user interface, which shows the carrier, time and battery status. Instead of the carrier I choose the company name chillingo. I replaced the time with the chillingo slogan, Innovate, Publish, Play.
Since this was a longer animation, I thought about integrating something that would show the current status of the animation. I choose the battery meter for the flash animation to reflect the status of the animation. I wanted to give it a nice dynamic by increasing the overall speed of the animation. All elements have been created from scratch.
Following the result of the Adobe Flash animation:

This animation turned out larger than I thought. It ended up being 148kb, too much for my taste. So I was working on the same animation and skipping the screenshot part which resulted in the following light weight version of 52kb:

After that I was working on the GIF animation which is shown below:

The final piece was a static 728x90 JPG version and no animation. The result below has been made smaller to match the dimensions of this blog:

My friends at chillingo were happy, all I care about.

Logo and Business Card Design for Pixel Heist

PixelGrinch — 2009-03-09T20:46:00+00:00

Briefing:

Create a logo for Pixel Heist
Create a business card for Pixel Heist

For me as a designer it is always a challenge to create something for myself. I personally do not like designing for myself and usually pass on projects for myself to fellow designers. The reason is simple. The self criticism and try to create the perfect design for myself is at best impossible. Over the years I recognized the following symptoms when designing something for myself:

Very rarely am I 100% happy with the result.
Just when I though I was finished with a design I keep changing things around.
I spend way too much time on any given design.

This time I tried to come up with a logo and a business card for myself. I was close to passing it on to a fellow designer but I decided to just give it a shot.
An effective logo is a simple logo. That is my experience and that is how I approached the process. I tried to not spend too much time and avoid continuously changing things around. I fixed up a few sketches:

The idea was to integrate a pixel into the logo. Also some interaction of that pixel with the font itself. I am not a friend of taking the easy way of putting the object, in this case the pixel, as the dot of an i. In my eyes this is a valid practice but quite overused in logos. Even though I tried it within the sketching process, I actually took it a bit further and replaced the i completely with an object. I tried to add the scientific background I posses and been drilled with before entering the world of design. So a little lab gadget with a pixel coming out of it. I tried many variations and wanted to integrate something like an eye within the pixel. Building a relation between pixel and the eye. Sketching for quite some time I was happy with the lettering and the object hovering above the X.

I went into Adobe Illustrator and started to transfer my ideas into the digital vector world.

I played around with fonts and I was NOT happy with any of them. As a designer I accumulation/acquired a virtually infinite amount of fonts over the years.
So the decision was clear, I am going to create my own font. This is a very time consuming process but well worth the time investment if I can reach the desired vision I had for the logo.
I tried to integrate an eye within the pixel but it turned out to be not as effective as I thought. Still keeping the idea in mind I came up with the following result:

As shown above I decided to go with black and red as the primary colors, which I personally find quite powerful.

At this point I finished the design/creation of the logo. Now it is time for the business card part. For the text information on the business card (other than the logo) I used a standard font. To loosen it up a bit I used round background elements following the black and red color scheme. Following the final result I sent off to the printer:

UPDATE: 03/10/2009

I picked up the business card from the printer today I am surprisingly pleased with the design for myself :) ..

If you would like me to design your logo, business card, etc. feel free to fill out a contact form and let’s talk.

Lightscribe on a Mac

PixelGrinch — 2008-12-07T16:54:01+00:00

I added a second DVD writer to my Mac Pro which also supports HP’s lightScribe. I wasn’t really interested in the lightScribe feature as much as just adding a second optical drive to the Mac Pro. At time of purchase I wasn’t sure if LightScribe is even supported by Mac OS X Leopard (10.5.x).

My test hardware:

LightScribe DVD Drive: LITE-ON DVDRW LH-20A1H LL0A 136
LightScribe Media: DVD+R Memorex (label is gold colored)

I came to find out that there is indeed support of lightScribe for Mac OS X. Drivers and two application can be downloaded free of charge at:

Driver:
LightScribe System Software for Mac OS X 10.3.9 and higher

Application:
LightScribe Simple Labeler for Mac OS X 10.3.9 and higher (Very basic application)
LACIE LightScribe Disc Labeling (Offers many more options than the LightScribe Simple Labeler)

There are many commercial application available for Mac OS X that support lightScribe.

The LightScribe Simple Labeler is very easy to use and guides you from the beginning up to the lightScribe process. If you like to add image/photo resources to your label and/or like to place text yourself, you would need to use LACIE’s LightScribe Disc Labeling or one of the many available commercial lightScribe applications out there.

All of these applications have one thing in common, which is the use of the same lightScribe drivers. Following are my findings about the lightScribe feature/experience:

Pros:

- Water resistant.
- Very crisp and clean results.

Cons:

- Very SLOW, depending on the quality it can take up to 35 minutes.
- Even at best quality, the result seems quite washed out in color. It might me possible that it depends on the media brand but I don’t think it would be significantly different from what my results were.
- At this point lightScribe only creates monochrome labels.
- At least double the price compared to regular writable CD’s/DVD’s.

Personal Opinion:
I am personally not impressed by this technology. It is too slow. If you need to create a label quick, which usually is the case for me, then LightScribe is not an option. To print a label takes little time compared to lightScribe. And the good old Sharpie beats both of these methods :) ...

Move into New Office and how Verizon Lost my Business for Life

PixelGrinch — 2008-12-03T14:51:00+00:00

I moved into my new office. This also the reason that there were no new posts about my work. The major part of the move has been completed and the equipment is ready for action. I am still waiting for the internet service to be activated. At this point over a month has passed by since I placed the order at Verizon Highspeed Internet Services. They determined that there are problems with the line and they need to send out a tech which I have to wait for almost 2 weeks from now. What a shameful demonstration of Verizon and horrible customer experience.
There is a Wifi point available in this building but it is so unreliable that I can not effectively use it for my daily work at all.

Update: December 20th, 2008

I will spare you the details, all I will say is I haven’t seen such carelessness and ignorance towards customers in a long time. Every person I talked to, up to management had a different story. All it was a simple activation of highspeed internet. The lines where already in the office. On the phone for hours, calls mysteriously dropping when placed on hold, and so on.
1 1/2 month have passed by and Verizon has not managed to get me online. My patience has run out and I cancelled the whole thing. Verizon lost my business for life. As a matter of fact I also cancelled everything Verizon. I cancelled my Verizon home internet and wireless plan. Good bye Verizon!

Visiting Germany for Two Weeks

PixelGrinch — 2008-11-12T00:46:00+00:00

It is time to see the family again. I will travel to Germany for the next two weeks. Not a lot of time but better than nothing.
I am looking forward to see my family and finally get to eat my favorite foods and sweets.
I will report back from New York in two weeks.

Follow Up: 11/23/2008

Time has gone by way to fast. I will be flying back to New York on Monday morning.

Congratulations Manuela You Have Been Tooned

PixelGrinch — 2008-11-06T00:00:00+00:00

I have just finished another toon. Thank you Manuela for having me toon you.

Do you want to be tooned by me? Feel free to check out my service at iToonU

Congratulations Katja You Have Been Tooned

PixelGrinch — 2008-11-03T23:57:01+00:00

I have just finished another toon. Thank you Katja for having me toon you.

Do you want to be tooned by me? Feel free to check out my service at iToonU

Recreating Logo and Making it Web 2.0 Design Compliant

PixelGrinch — 2008-11-01T17:45:00+00:00

Briefing:

- Create a scalable version of our Logo as close to the original as possible. Referenz image:

- Keep the same look as current logo but change it to give it that web 2.0 effect.
-The Logo is trademarked and also used as a brand at partner sites so it is important that the over look stays the same.

This was a simple job and it didn’t take much time to accomplish the requested work. The only time consuming process was to recreate the logo since the client had no other art work frm it than the referenced website screenshot.
Following the result I created. The work has been done in Adobe Photoshop CS3 and the logo is sizable just like a vector without loss of quality.

The client was happy, all I care about.

Congratulations Daniela You Have Been Tooned

PixelGrinch — 2008-10-31T23:54:00+00:00

I have just finished another toon. Thank you Daniela for having me toon you.

Do you want to be tooned by me? Feel free to check out my service at iToonU

Another Seagate Hard Drive Incident and a PixelGrinch.com Shock!

PixelGrinch — 2008-10-31T15:48:00+00:00

I have already posted about the crash of one of my four 1TB Seagate hard drives. It seems the saga continues with another 1TB Seagate Barracuda hard drive.
Every time I started my local journal application my system froze for 2-4 minutes showing the ball of doom, you know, that little colorful twisting ball. Every time I would backup the hard drive in question it would have the same result during the backup process. I figured I am dealing with a corrupt file which causes the system to ‘freeze’ temporarily, when accessed.
I ran the Disk Utility and click on the Verify option. Following the screen with the results of this hard drive:

Looks like a more serious problem. I don’t really know what to make out of this. Is it my Mac Pro (first generation) causing these drives to fail or is it the hard drive? All other drives I have up to 750GB work without a hitch for over a year now. Just these (4 weeks old hard drives) cause a huge headache.

As if this morning didn’t give me enough problems, I saw the following screen as I tried to pull up my website at PixelGrinch.com:

Can this morning present anymore ‘positive’ surprises for me? Judging by this screen I assumed all files are gone and lost. My last backup dates back over a month. You know what that means if you are talking about regular blog entries. I connected to my server and the files seemed to be available. I contacted my webhosting specialist and there was an issue with the ip address assigned within the Apache configuration file. No clue on how this happened. The website is running fine again and I am happy.

But what a bad start in the day. Both these issues wasted 4 hours of my day.