Timberfish Today

World of Warcraft

email@timberfish.com (Shane Elliott) — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 17:11:22 -0800

I've heard the endless talk surrounding this gaming phenomenon called World of Warcraft for some time now, but I'd just blown it off before. That is until a friend started talking about it and I started asking questions. Being a D&D player in my childhood, I should have known better than to expose myself to this, but in the end curiosity got the better of me. I'm not going to bore you with a long explanation of what it is. In brief WoW is a massive multiplayer online game. You create and build a character and venture out on quests. The interesting thing is that you play in realms with thousands of other people. You can help each other or fight each other and it's just plain addictive. The really appealing part of the game is that you create your own character and then you live with that character for months, even years. Right now level 70 is the pinnacle of where you can get and it takes hundreds of hours of playing to get there. I've been playing for about a month now and I've just hit level 38. With every level up, it's a little harder to reach the next, so me being this far after a month doesn't mean I'll hit 70 in another. I'll admit, this isn't a particularly interesting post to most of you, but for those of you involved in WoW, I may post my character name in the future. Right now I'm a little hesitant to open myself up to a lengthy friends list. I'll continue to write about this for all of you uber nerds out there.

Vista vs OS X?

email@timberfish.com (Shane Elliott) — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 15:10:02 -0800

I'd like to think I'm completely over this debate of what is better, OS X or Windows, and for the most part I am. However, when I came across this article today, I was driven to respond. I find it to be one of the worst posts ever written in terms of accuracy and common sense. Ugh, and now I have to take his claims point by point and respond. Reason #1: Vista runs more software This always makes me laugh a little until I pee. Even if this were true and even if this were provable, what benefit would there be when both platforms already run so many apps? Does the user really care if they can choose between 950,000 or 1.2 million available applications? "Oh, fuck that Mac shit, I think my killer app is going to fall in those extra 300,000 shareware apps that were made for Windows 95 in the early 90's." First off, with the built in X11, Macs can run a huge number of Linux apps that Windows can't touch. Then of course there are the Mac only apps and the fact that you can run Windows apps by paying $79 for Fusion or Parallels. That's "if" your company runs some Visual Basic app made by a kid fresh out of trade school. The truth is, most of the apps we rely on are on both platforms or have equivalents that match nearly every feature. Think about it, video editing, graphic design, audio production, web development, email, productivity, etc... It's all pretty much the same on both platforms. Even though I believe there are better quality options for the Mac, that's just an opinion. Reason #2: Vista is safer Absolute lunacy. Preston uses a recent hacking challenge to support this claim. But the details of that challenge don't really represent anything scientific. In fact, if you look at the challenge, they eased restrictions on day 2 and the first person to sit down at the first computer was at a MacBook Air. He hacked it in a few minutes and no one else attempted any hacks on the other systems after that because the contest was over. So we have no idea what would have happened with the other systems. Preston then sites a statement by a security expert who mentions 10.4. Which of course is an older version of OS X. Now I don't know if 10.5 is more secure or not, but the point is that his sources are hardly thorough on the matter. The most important thing to bring up here is not even mentioned by Preston. His claim is that Vista is safer. But in the real world, that's fatually untrue. Blame market share, blame anything you want, but it is a fact that you are "safer" running OS X than it is running Vista in the real world. Period. I've seen arguments on both sides saying "Oh, but Vista is actually more secure" or "OS X is actually inherently more security focused because of its Unix core" etc... None of that matters. What makes an OS "safe" is how likely you are to have your machine infected or compromised while you use it. There's no doubt that Vista is less safe than OS X in actual use. Reason #3: It's the money, stupid Oh boy, the worst of all the arguments anyone can make against a Mac. Instead of regurgitating ramblings from my past, I'll simply defer to this very thorough article I wrote on Zerologik a while back. It outlines two very thorough examples over nearly a year that prove this statement is a misrepresentation of the facts. ( Mac Haters ) Reason #4: The Mac is closed; Vista is open This point is all about building your own computer and putting Vista on it. Why is an OS running on anything better than one running on hardware it was made for? This is all about preference and Apple has never tried to or claimed to serve this kind of user. If you want to build a computer and put your own OS on it. Use Linux or Windows, definitely. This comes with its own set of problems though. Because Vista tries to support so much hardware, drivers are often poorly written and used to be the cause of most BSOD situations. That's certainly been reduced since MS got smart about catching those things and making driver requirements strict, but I prefer having the OS maker control the drivers too. Don't get me wrong, I see the argument for either, but it really is just preference, nothing more. There's nothing inherently better in either approach. Just a series of tradeoffs. Reason #5: Two words -- Steve Jobs What kind of reason is this? Does Steve show up at my house with my Mac and slap me in the face? Preston's point here is that Steve is vindictive and sues people. Uh, have you heard of Microsoft? There was a whole scandal among developers (which I am) where Microsoft sued a dev who made an extension to their Visual Studio software. The guy used their free version to make the patch and MS claimed that was impossible and that he made a free patch with paid software which was a violation. The dev then proved that he did what he said he did (all online) and MS sued him anyway. Look, these are corporations. They sue. They suck. I don't buy Apple products because I drank the Kool Aid. I buy them because they work better. If you're happy with your PC, keep it. I don't give a shit. And if you're buying anything because of the spokesperson or the "cool factor" then you're an idiot. I don't do that, and most of the people I know who work on Macs don't either. I can site very specific cases where Macs work better for me than a PC. That's all I need. Hopefully this puts the issue to rest once and for all? Oh who am I kidding.

Back in the Game

email@timberfish.com (Shane Elliott) — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 13:56:53 -0800

Okay, I have returned. I'm not sure how many of you are still around after such a long hiatus, but I'm here anyway. I took a lot of time off to find another company name to replace Timberfish. I wanted something fresh that had some meaning and that represented me as an artist, but nothing seem to fit the bill. Until I heard some words of wisdom from both Marc Hershon (who was helping me rebrand) and another friend. The basic message was that everything I'm looking for already exists in the Timberfish brand. The name didn't have meaning when I created it about 8 years ago, but it has grown to become a brand of its own. There's also something kind of nice in knowing that Timberfish has no real meaning at all. It's a completely unique word that has been forged into meaning. So blah, blah, blah. The end result is that I've decided to stay with Timberfish and continue to build around it. So if you're still around, you'll be hearing a lot more from me and thank you for sticking. Or maybe I'm thanking you for not clearing out your old feeds that don't update. Either way.

Life 2.0

email@timberfish.com (Shane Elliott) — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 14:10:04 -0800

It's time for a huge sweeping change to... well, sweep through my life. It's not that my life is bad by any means, but just like a good application or the first draft of a script, you have to upgrade every now and then. I've had a 3 month stint of chaos with all of my projects. Now that a few of those things have come to a close it's time to re-evaluate how I'm spending my time and make some changes. And they're going to be big. First of all, Timberfish as you know it will be gone. I'll keep the domain name because so many things are tied to it that are too hard to change, but I won't use the identity Timberfish any longer. Right now I'm working with Marc Hershon of Simmer Branding Studio to come up with a new name to act as my umbrella identity. Basically I want a unified name/brand to represent my philosophies about creating. Whatever this name ends up being, it will replace Timberfish as the outward facing identity that I'll use from this point on. Poor old Timberfish will cease to exist. That's the biggest change as I'll be converting everything over to this new mystery name. Here's a list of some other things I have planned...

Using the GTD approach to email and consolidating all emails into one Inbox
Creating a process to manage all my incoming taks and appointments
Having my apartment cleaned and getting new furniture
Making room in my daily routine for exercise and healthier living
Putting aside time again for ZeroLogik
Focusing on improving Fries on the Side and taking that to a new level
Signing with a new agency to represent me as an actor

It's a lot of change and it'll take some time, but I think it's worth it. After I'm done, I'll have a life that offers many new features and improves on the old life a great deal, hence the 2.0 major version upgrade. This will be my last post on the official Timberfish.com. I hope you continue to read my ramblings when I move over to the new name. I'm looking forward to some serious change.

Safari 3.0 on Windows and My Observations

email@timberfish.com (Shane Elliott) — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 20:35:30 -0800

Big news today as Steve Jobs announced that Safari (the default Mac browser) is now available on Windows. Yet another Apple announcement that I didn't see coming. At first I was surprised, but I can't say I cared all that much. I don't use Windows much anymore except to test my projects in IE7, and I already have Safari on my Mac of course. Then as I started reading people's reactions to the news, I started having more opinions. I understand that we live in an internet age and people with little to no information will spout off just to watch themselves type (not me of course), but some of the things I hear are so entertaining. The best place to find a good range of comments is on Digg (see the post yourself). There were a few that stood out and represented many voices.

I'd call it an Alpha, instead of Beta. It behaved very erratically while I've used it.

I wonder if this person knows the meaning of Alpha vs Beta. Most Alphas mean they're adding features, while Betas are typically feature-complete and trying to work on bugs. Hence erratic behavior, because Beta means pre-release, which this most certainly is. Look back at the IE7 betas or Firefox betas. People love to get "testing" software and complain up and down. The purpose of releasing these publicly is to let "enthusiasts" and "developers" test the software and report bugs, not post blogs about how crappy the software is. I'll say it again, this is PRE release software.

Regardless of that, this will really be a good way to see how "Secure" Mac products really are...

Uh oh, here we go. Ammunition for the wanna be programmer to spout misinformation and believe he has fact backing him up. God forbid a virus or malware will infect someone through Safari on Windows - then of course it must be the browser. Software can't be more secure than the OS it runs on ladies and gentlemen. While Firefox is inherently better off than IE from the mere lack of ActiveX holes, it's still less secure than its Mac counterpart because of the Windows APIs it runs on. A lot of the security holes are "related" to the OS, so let's not make sweeping judgements about the Mac OS based on software Apple ports to Windows, shall we?

(User tells Apple to...) Design and code to Windows standards for interfaces.

Why? I mean they have the three basic Window buttons along the top in the same place, so now why would Apple want to just make a Windows app and give the user no taste of what life may be like on a Mac? I think the point here is to let Windows users get a feel for what a Mac app could be like. Whether they like it or not is subjective, but the point is not to make an app that looks like IE with a different engine inside. Let's lock Firefox out of being skinnable why don't we?

I have 3 basic tabs open, one being this page and no other digg pages yet it's using close to 200MB's of RAM... for what?!?

The perfect example of someone thinking they know something while really being completely in the dark. The KHTML engine focuses on speed. To do that, it caches everything it can into RAM. This means that it has a large memory footprint and performs amazingly well. It's a tradeoff, but not a big one. Just because an app uses a lot of RAM doesn't make it evil. I guarantee that it's not using any RAM that other apps are trying to use. This is where something called "memory management" comes into play. If you have nothing else competing for that RAM, then why not eat it up so it can perform well? This is by design. But if you've got some idea stuck in your head telling you that a good app has a tiny memory footprint, then by all means move on. I hear Lynx calling your name. By the way, Firefox has similar priorities, hence it using a lot of memory while in use and this is what makes these browsers perform better than IE on the whole. I have Vista running via Prallels and so I decided to install the Safari beta there to try it out. I'll say one thing, it launches and loads pages notably faster than IE and Firefox. So at least those claims seem to be accurate. I'm curious to see how Safari turns out when it goes gold. Right now I see features in each browser that I like better than the others, so there's no clear winner on Windows or Mac. I also downloaded Safari 3.0 Beta for the Mac and it's "much" faster than the old version. Odd thing though... no unified interface. Isn't that odd? The Windows version gets it, but not the Mac one? I know, just beta, but so is the Windows version. Oh well, I'll just let SafariStand do the unifying and enjoy the engine improvements. Oh, and the inline search is very well done. It's the little things. Carry on.

Apple's Mac OS X Leopard gets ZFS

email@timberfish.com (Shane Elliott) — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 17:22:44 -0800

Sun Microsystems' chief executive Jonathan Schwartz announced (intentionally or not) that the next version of OS X (10.5) will be sitting on the ZFS file system, which was developed by Sun. I've heard rumors of this for several months now, but I honestly didn't believe they could be true. Moving an OS onto another (completely different) file system is no small thing. Microsoft tried to move from NTFS to an advanced relational database file system known as WinFS and failed miserably. In fact, it was one of the huge "features" that was supposed to make Vista the OS to have and it simply went away in favor of keeping the antiquated NTFS. But in true Apple fashion, they will apparently pull off that feat and release Leopard in October, complete with the ZFS move. But what's so special about ZFS anyway? The list of advantages is quite impressive. It's hard to explain each one (I don't even understand some of them) but the ones I do get are here:

Self-healing file system. Each write operation uses a checksum to ensure that there's no data corruption. Claims indicate that this prevents all data corruption unless the hard drive is physically damaged in some extreme ways. If corruption occurs, the file system auto heals itself. No need to scan your drives for errors or for you to buy expensive disk repair software in case of corruption. Wow!
As the world's first 128-bit file system, ZFS offers 16 billion billion times the capacity of 32- or 64-bit systems.
ZFS is based on a transactional object model that removes most of the traditional constraints on the order of issuing I/Os, which results in huge performance gains.

After talking with some engineers, I kept hearing the same thing, "This is 20 years beyond most of the major file systems in use today." Since HFS and NTFS are both quite old, this basically just means that ZFS is a modern file system and doesn't suffer from 20 year old technologies. All in all this is an exciting announcement and will certainly solidify Leopard as the top OS in the consumer market. At least that's where the evidence is pointing right now. More about the ZFS announcement: ZFS on Wikipedia

A Neat Picture Thingy

email@timberfish.com (Shane Elliott) — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 12:48:00 -0800

No compelling story or thoughtful viewpoint to share on this one. It's just a really fun photo to interact with. Yeah, that's right. I said interact... http://www.games4work.com/games/swf/supercoolpic.swf

Web-based Operating Systems: But Why?

email@timberfish.com (Shane Elliott) — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 10:53:48 -0800

Lately there's been a lot of talk about web operating systems. EyeOS is the one I hear about most often and it seems they managed to release version 1.0 a couple days ago (whatever that means). After reading their announcement and visiting their web site, I was left with one question lingering in my head; "Why?" The best answer I could find was in a video on their about page that shows the OS in action.

Here are the selling points they mention:

You can take your life everywhere.
You can share your files with friends.
It's all free and open-source.
They then show someone using the OS.

After watching the video, I then though, "But why?" Their are other players on the field, most notably Google with their rumored GoogleOS, then there's Goowy, Desktop Two, Xin, and YouOS. With all this activity, there must be some compelling arguments for working so hard on such a product. I just can't see them.

I think the work Firefox is doing that will let you take an online application and use it offline is much more useful. I'm able to use a system I'm familiar with and it takes the light-weight sharing aspect, which to me is the only benefit I really see. I mean how powerful can an OS really be when it's running in a web browser which runs on top of another OS? If my browser can do enough to simulate an entire operating system, then let's just cut out the middle-man and make online apps that can run on my browser. Oh wait, we already have that.

Don't get me wrong, these things are pretty cool. But only as a novelty. I don't see any usefulness here. In my tests of EyeOS I couldn't even press the delete button to remove an appointment - instead it defaulted to my browser's use of that key and took me back to my last page.

I remain open to input though. If anyone can convince me why this would be useful or make something in my life actually easier then let's hear it.

Revisiting the set of 'Monk' on USA

email@timberfish.com (Shane Elliott) — Sun, 03 Jun 2007 13:16:01 -0800

On Friday I shot an episode of Monk with Tony Shalhoub and Traylor Howard. This was my second time on the show, the first time being in the episode entitled "Mr. Monk and the Employee of the Month" I shot a little over 2 years ago. Friday' role was quite a bit bigger than my first and equally as fun. The cast and crew were just as friendly and fun as I remember them being the last time. Then of course Tony and Traylor were great to work with. They're both quite focused and generous actors. And then my fellow co-stars made the long hours fly by. Tim Bagley who plays Harold Krenshaw (Monk's nemesis) was a lot of fun too, even though he only had to lay there while I hold him in my arms (you'll have to see the episode to understand). We all had a bit of fun with the fact that one of my lines was, "Hang on fella" since the use of the word fella may stand out and feel a little dated these days. It created one of those situations where when the take ran long we just tried to hold it together without laughing. One of the more exciting parts of the day for me was having Jonathan Collier direct me. He's written a lot for The Simpsons and King of the Hill, two of my favorite shows of all time. I'm looking back on this post wishing I had some dramatic story to share, but really everyone was calm, professional, and fun. So there you have it. Nothing super exciting, but certainly a highlight for me, working with some great people that I've always been a fan of. The name of the upcoming episode I'll be on is "Mr. Monk and the Daredevil" so keep an eye out if you want.

Apple's 1987 Vision of Computing in 2010

email@timberfish.com (Shane Elliott) — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 12:58:06 -0800

I absolutely love looking back 20 years or so and seeing a prediction someone made about what life would be like today. In this old video Apple makes some pretty wild predictions about how we'll talk to our computers using natural speech instead of the old keyboard and mouse. I'll admit that if I saw this back in '87 I'd have believed it was possible. However, reality is rarely as exciting as our visions of the future, so here we are in 2007 and we're not even close to having a computer experience like the this. It's too bad though, because I think this is exactly how computers should work. But I'd still want my keyboard.

"On the Lot" with Trever James

email@timberfish.com (Shane Elliott) — Mon, 28 May 2007 22:14:34 -0800

If you didn't see the new show "On the Lot" on FOX tonight, it's a show like American Idol, but it's Spielberg's search for the next great film director. So tonight they featured the 1 minute comedy films and Trever James (a friend of mine) delivered a great film, which I was of course in. Trever's a talented director, so I'll be supporting him throughout this contest. To show that support, I'm asking anyone reading this to please vote whether you watch or not. And hell, maybe you'll even feel inclined to watch more int the future. You can go to www.thelot.com and click VOTE, then enter your info (it's not a login) and scroll down to vote for "A Golf Story" - of course you can watch it too. I just love that Gary Marshall and Princess Leia saw me act.

Silverlight Competes With Flash: This is a Big Deal

email@timberfish.com (Shane Elliott) — Tue, 01 May 2007 22:48:39 -0800

I've been a Flash developer for a long time. Since Flash 4 actually. Although, scripting using drop-down menus isn't exactly development, but still. Obviously Flash has evolved a great deal since then and ActionScript 3.0 is looking really cool so far. Then Microsoft comes along and the fun begins.

Microsoft® Silverlight™ is a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering the next generation of .NET based media experiences and rich interactive applications for the Web. Silverlight offers a flexible programming model that supports AJAX, VB, C#, Python, and Ruby, and integrates with existing Web applications. Silverlight supports fast, cost-effective delivery of high-quality video to all major browsers running on the Mac OS or Windows.

Essentially Silverlight competes "directly" with Adobe Flash in every way possible. And it's doing some things better already. Much better. Here are the things I find interesting about Silverlight:

Silverlight supports video (cross-platform & browser) up to 720p with native full-screen capabilities. That's already better than what Flash can do. Microsoft also launched a Silverlight Streaming that allows developers to host their apps and videos. Best of all, it's free. So you can create an entire streaming video content solution at no cost. Compare that with the Adobe solution which requires a server license for video streaming and you can see that Microsoft's already throwing their weight around. As a developer, that's an appealing "free" option.
Silverlight applications can be written in C#, Javascript, VB, Python, and Ruby. Not only do developers get a choice, but C# is a complete programming language, not a scripting language. Developers can even take existing Javascript, plop it into Silverlight and watch it work. And they can watch it work faster in orders of magnitude.
Silverlight applications can be build using an extremely powerful IDE - Visual Studio. I've complained about Flash's IDE for some time. I've often said that they need a "real" IDE for developers and a true separation of code and design. They're moving in that direction, but from what I can see Microsoft already has them beat on the very first release of Silverlight.

I know I sound like I'm drooling all over Silverlight and there's a reason for that. Cause it's incredible. If Microsoft can come close to matching Flash's penetration then we have a true competitor to Flash on our hands. Silverlight isn't something a developer has to learn. It's just an extension of what they can already do with C#. Flash doesn't draw in as many developers because there's a learning curve to understand timelines as well as a new language (ActionScript). Look, I'm not saying that Flash is dead or anything nearly as dramatic. What I am saying is that Microsoft has done something right here and Adobe should take notice. Obviously MS has a long way to go before they really start competing with Flash, but if you're a Flash Dev and you dismiss this release as no big deal then you're in major denial. I know a lot of Flash "developers" who are self-taught or have never really done any other type of development. For those people this signifies a true threat. If traditional developers can do what you can do and they don't need to learn the "mystical Flash" to do it, then you may face obsoleteness. Fortunately I made my living writing .NET (C#) and Java apps long before I ever found Flash. And if you are one of these devs, then you should consider learning some true OO programming. Even Adobe is moving towards creating a development environment for Flash and if you can't keep up with this shift back to traditional programming, you might find it hard to survive. Needless to say, I'm very excited about Silverlight and I'm looking forward to getting involved with it, but I still love my Flash.

Woman Denied Degree Because of MySpace Photo

email@timberfish.com (Shane Elliott) — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 21:45:26 -0800

Stacy Snyder charges that Millersville University brass accused her of promoting underage drinking after they discovered her MySpace photo, which was captioned "Drunken Pirate."

After finding the photo, the University refused to grant Stacy her teaching degree and gave her a different degree instead. You can see the photo in question here and even though it has a caption that says "Drunken Pirate" - Stacy is of legal drinking age, the photo was taken outside of school and work hours and she's doing nothing illegal whatsoever. You can't even see what's in the cup. Nevermind that Pirates of the Carribean (a Disney movie for kids) shows nothing but drunken pirates throughout. Then take a trip to Disney-land, hop on the Pirates ride and once again, drunken pirates. Let's sue Disney for making my 4-year old into a drunk. No, let's sue Will Ferrell for being a party to making a child swear. Better yet let's put all that aside and as a school, let's enforce some obscure morality judgment on a person who is doing nothing illegal whatsoever. Needless to say Stacy is suing the University. Let's hope logic and common sense prevails here. What is it with MySpace being the stomping grounds for the morality police? It seems like so many stories are coming out about people being fired or otherwise punished for personal photos posted there. Original Story

.NET Infringes on Someone's Patent

email@timberfish.com (Shane Elliott) — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 21:03:57 -0800

Continuing in the long line of software patent lawsuits, the Internet software company Vertical Computing has sued Microsoft, claiming that Microsoft's .NET software violates its patent.

I know there are those people out there who write this off right away as just another company going after the big bad Microsoft, but I'm getting sick of this lawsuit happy tear companies are on. There are actually companies that are formed for the sole purpose of filing patents that use vague language so they can sue large companies and settle. Yes, that's their business model. To describe these people another way, they're racketeers. Here's the technology the patent is apparently protecting... "a system and method for generating computer applications in an arbitrary object framework."

The patent involves creating "objects" in a web-based application. These objects are managed throughout their life cycle in an object library and put together to create complex, interactive web applications. The whole mechanism separates design, function, and content so that each can be developed separately.

Of course if you're any sort of developer then you'll notice right away that what this company is describing is just a typical content management system, or any good development process for that matter. These concepts go back far beyond the release of .NET. To put this simply, imagine a company came out and demanded developers license "If..then" statements or for loops when writing code. What's really beautiful is that this company has a product called "SiteFlash" and to me it sounds a lot like Flash (the web animation technology now owned by Adobe). I truly hope Microsoft comes out on top of this one. We've all seen what happens when someone enforces a vague patent and it effects everyone's lives. Just look at what Eolas did to every web developer on the planet when they sued Microsoft over how Internet Explorer used plug-ins. I'm not saying I have a suggestion for how to handle copyright, but there has to be a better way or some more stringent guidelines that will protect inventions and not be absurd at the same time. Doesn't there?

Adobe CS3: Initial Thoughts

email@timberfish.com (Shane Elliott) — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 13:40:26 -0800

My copy of Adobe Creative Suite 3 Web Premium finally arrived yesterday. As a MacBook Pro user, I was among those who have the most to gain from this upgrade since CS3 means Flash and Photoshop will now run natively on the Intel chips instead of through Rosetta emulation. I immediately removed Studio 8 and CS2 and CS3 installed in about 30 minutes. I chose to leave off Acrobat (don't need it on a Mac), Version Cue (crapware), and Contribute. What I did get: Flash CS3 Professional, Fireworks, Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, and Bridge. The installation process was straightforward and easy, but for those of you who were wondering, the requirement to activate CS3 remains. Once installation was complete I began by opening Flash and Photoshop first. The first thing you notice on a MacBook is a significantly faster startup time (especially for Flash). The next thing you notice is the new flexible interface Adobe has employed. It makes it easy to create simple and flexible workspaces and it's a huge improvement over both Adobe and Macromedia's old interfaces. Next I launched Illustrator, Dreamweaver, and Fireworks. Illustrator has the same interface as Flash and Photoshop and yet still looks quite familiar. So at this point I thought I'd finally be getting a consistent interface across an entire software suite. Nope. When I got to Dreamweaver I found the same old interface that I've seen for the past couple years. When I dove deeper I found several new and useful features, but I haven't spent a lot of time in real-world situations yet, so I can't be sure. Regardless, I don't understand why Dreamweaver couldn't benefit from the new interface that Flash got. Fireworks was next and once again, it's the same "very old" interface that has plagued the app for years. In fact, the new Firefox interface isn't even as smart as the old Flash interface was. If you open, close, and re-open the panels or move them around too much you'll find the layout logic breaks down easily. Unless I find some new features with huge impact, I simply don't see how Fireworks is even an upgrade at all. Then besides finding the old interface, I was further disappointed when I drug 3 PNGs (totaling around 600K) onto the new Fireworks CS3 app and it took 8 minutes for them to open. Yes, minutes. These are not obscure PNGs made by some freeware app, they were created using the last version of Fireworks and still open fine and quickly in it. Overall I welcome CS3 with open arms and it's certainly a great suite of software. However, I can't understand why Adobe would put so much time and effort into each of these apps only to ship a couple with old interfaces and some relatively severe bugs. So far I've had limited exposure to CS3, so consider this review a mere list of first impressions. I'll write more about each app later on. If you have any comments on CS3, please feel free to share.

Giuliani Pushes Partisan Politics Forward

email@timberfish.com (Shane Elliott) — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 17:32:51 -0800

Score one more for partisan politics. I was surprised at Rudolph Giuliani's comments during a town hall meeting recently. (Original Article)

If any Republican is elected president - and I think obviously I would be the best at this - we will remain on offense and will anticipate what [the terrorists] will do and try to stop them before they do it. America will be safer with a Republican president.

Didn't we have a Republican President (Bush) and a Republican Mayor of New York (you) at the time of 9/11? Is that the degree of anticipation and safety we can expect from Republican representatives in the future?

If we are on defense [with a Democratic president], we will have more losses and it will go on longer.

Longer than it already has under Republican leadership?

They hate us and not because of anything bad we have done; it has nothing to do with Israel and Palestine. They hate us for the freedoms we have and the freedoms we want to share with the world.

Someone needs to do some reading. The reasons, "quoted by them" for hating Americans has an enormous amount to do with our support of Israel and many of our foreign policies. No, it's not justified, but to say they just hate us because of our freedom is naive at best.

They came here and killed us in 1993 [with the first attack on New York’s World Trade Center, in which six people died], and we didn’t get it. We didn’t get it that this was a war. Then Sept. 11, 2001, happened, and we got it.

"We" didn't get it? Weren't you the one who decided to locate the Office of Emergency Management headquarters on the 23rd floor inside the World Trade Center after it had already been attacked once? Look, I don't like partisan politics. If this were a Democrat I'd be just as bothered by these kinds of claims. The mere hypocrisy here is almost laughable. The largest terrorist attack in US history happened on this guy's watch and he's saying the "only" way to be safe in the future is to elect him because of he'll keep us prepared. It's sad, because up until this point I actually liked Giuliani.

Bank Of America - Worst Policy Known to Man

email@timberfish.com (Shane Elliott) — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 16:20:33 -0800

This story may surprise a lot of people. Then again, a lot of you will just nod your head and say, "Yep, fucking Bank of America." I haven't written much about BofA in the past, this will be the 4th time they've majorly screwed me in the past year. Yes, I'm planning to close my accounts and change banks. I finally decided to move some of my money into mutual funds and I decided to use electronic transfer since it's the quickest option available. I went through the brokerage's web site and it was simple. Account number, routing number, account type - that's it. So I carefully fill out the form and submit. Three days later I'm notified that my account was credited, funds purchased, and then the transfer was reversed. I call the brokerage and they say the transaction was denied by Bank of America, so I call them. I go over the information I put in and they say the routing number is incorrect. How can this be, I typed exactly what was on my checks. Here's an overview of the conversation....

BofA: Oh, well there's a different routing number for electronic transfers. Me: Where is this listed? How was I supposed to know or find that? BofA: It's not listed anywhere. You'd just have to call in.

At this point I'm frustrated, but I let it go and get the correct number. I go back to the brokerage and setup my bank info again with the mystery routing number. I re-buy the funds and again 4 days later the transactions are reversed. This time the brokerage says BofA says the account number is incorrect. Another call to BofA and this time they have me recite my account number. The agent notifies me that I should drop the 2 leading zeros on the number. Here's how it went...

Me: Drop the first two zeros? But when I looked up my account online it showed my account number "with" all 3 zeros. BofA: Yes, but in California you only use 10 digits, not the first two. Me: So my account number is incorrect online? BofA: Well, it won't work, no, but it's not technically incorrect. Me: So where is my correct account number listed? BofA: On your checks. Me: This is a savings account so I don't have checks. BofA: Oh, well then you'd have to call us to get your correct account number. Me: So I'm supposed to assume that my account number shown on your secure site is incorrect and call in to find this out? Why can't you just list it as it should be. BofA: I'm sorry you feel this way and I do apologize.

See that last response? Doesn't quite mesh with what I said does it? This is when she went into robot mode. So I asked her to pass along my complaint (I'm sure she won't). This wasn't just an annoying problem, I actually lost money. The funds I was trying to buy went up about 10% in the 2 weeks it took to get this taken care of. So they lost me money as well. The BofA agent also admitted that a lot of people run into this issue and yet they still haven't found a way to accurately report the 10-digit version of the account number to California residents. When I log in to BofA's site, it asks me what state I'm in. I guess that's just for fun. Must be too hard to drop two zeros if the user chooses California. So in the end Bank of America requires an unlisted routing number for transfers, but lists an incorrect one on any check you have - and it lists your full account number incorrectly in the secure area of its web site. How would you know any of this? According to the agent, there's no way to know unless you call them and check. We'll see if Wells Fargo can do any better. If you have Bank of America, may you have better luck than I did.

Apple Delays Leopard

email@timberfish.com (Shane Elliott) — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 12:51:51 -0800

I'm surprised by all the people talking trash in the wake of Apple announcing a "4 month" delay in shipping Leopard. This one's my favorite...

If I were Microsoft, I'd launch a "Cupertino, start your photocopiers!" (just like Apple's "Redmond, start your photocopiers!") campaign. Microsoft could say: "Who's copying who now, huh? We thought of the not-enough-engineers excuse way back in 2004!" (Original Story)

It's kind of laughable don't you think? I mean for one, what's in Vista that OS X could copy? It's all shit they have had in their OS since Tiger over a year ago. I certainly don't want to see that glassy UI anywhere. Widgets, Windows Mail, IE7? No thanks. The only thing they can really copy is their launch delays. But they have a long way to go before they stretch that 4 months into over 2 years. I'm guessing that feature will be left out in the end.

Tech Support in the Middle Ages

email@timberfish.com (Shane Elliott) — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 11:53:30 -0800

IT people have always had to deal with a certain element of stupidity in their jobs. It seems now we know that this has been going on for centuries.

Time Warner Cable: Will They Ever Get It Right?

email@timberfish.com (Shane Elliott) — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 00:16:17 -0800

I've had a few dealings with Time Warner Cable in the past that weren't so great. Let's face it, cable companies have pretty poor reputations when it comes to customer service. However, one might think that having one's story personally highlighted in the Wall Street Journal would help to improve things, no? No. Several months after they explained that my previous problems were due to their buyout of Comcast in my area, I call them again about some OnDemand problems. Here's how it went. I explained that OnDemand simply didn't work - at all. They reset my box and told me to wait 20 minutes. It didn't work. I called back. They tried something else, then said another 20. Still didn't work. Another call results in them wanting to send a technician out. Their first available time is 12 days from when I called. We set the appointment, I choose a time frame and that's that. Sixteen days later, no show, no call, nothing. Guess what I get to do tomorrow? Yep, call them back "again" ask for my $20 credit "again" because they didn't show up "at all" yet "again." Yes, I'm stressing those words with just a twinge of irritation. I mean seriously. At this point it's sad and funny all at the same time. My advice? Avoid Time Warner if you can. But since there's usually only one option in any area, that won't be possible for many of you (like me).