Category: Blogging

Download time causing my downtime

Posted on by ARSpaulding

It has been quite a long time, and a whole lot has gone on in my life to keep me away from this lovely blog.  I can’t say that I’m officially “back” because I feel that will doom this blog back into silence, but I will conservatively say that I think I will be posting a bit more often. 

We shall see 🙂

In any event, I’m currently downloading expression suite 4, the demo.  I’ve read a wonderful FAQ which tells me that I don’t have to purchase a new one since I already have a licensed copy of Expression Studio 3.  I just need to download Expression Studio 4 and bing-bam, it’ll be a full registered version.

Yay!

So I am now downloading the trial for Expression Studio 4 – and kind of excited about it.  I had dread towards the coming of Expression Studio 4 because I had only JUST obtained a full copy of 3 the week prior, when suddenly there’s talk of a soon to be releasing 4 with sketchflow.  If ever there was a time to shake my fist at someone, I surely was struck by the desire at that moment.

In any event – here I sit – 28% downloaded with 72% to go.

Tacky scented envelopes

Posted on by ARSpaulding

just a quick note: This has nothing to do with Expression Blend, Design, or anything relevant aside from a personal victory in hard times

Long time no post.  I’ve been debating if I’m going to use this as a true blog or hold true to it being a design blog.  Jury is out on that, but today I want to post as if this is a normal personal blog, so here’s my blog.

Its now been 4.5 years, my lovely truck, I love you so much, you have 1 more payment to go and that’s IT!  You’re officially MINE!

But I have 1 thing that I want to do.  The envelope. 

The last envelope . <— (imagine that sentence in scrolly looking font)

 I feel the urge to go out and purchase some of those seriously tacky envelopes which are prescented for the feminine in you – just for the use of sending this very last check.  Can one do that?  Send a sarcastic envelope?  Do you think it’d be recognized as such or just end up in the pile of envelopes which the billing dept likely puts in some sort of waste basket (recycling hopefully?)

 I’m debating on this, but I think I may just have to see if I can find some of those dang things.  Never in a million years did I think I’d ever be contemplating the purchase of scented envelopes… but then again, the sweet sweet act of sending the final payment on a truck which still mostly feels like new… perhaps the time is prime for some smelly paper.

UITrends.com hits it on the nose

Posted on by ARSpaulding

Warning: This blog post is more a rant than useful design/blend related

I was reading a site that I’d stumbled upon (ok, not quite stumbled, I was directed there by someone on the IxDA  discussion boards) and decided to read more than the person had posted their discussion thread about.

A few blog posts down, I find something that hits home for me pretty hard.  Updates on software.

In my every day work, I have updates coming at me from every direction.  iPhone updates, iphone app updates, Windows updates, winamp updates, windows media player updates, Adobe (everything) updates, quicktime updates, flash… ARG!

The “remind me” button is pressed on a few occasions – and by a few, I mean a few occasions a day.  I need to move forward with my work, but everything from iphone use to computer use, there are updates all over the place. 

Heck, on occasion I actually feel “punished” for updating as suggested.  One day, my iphone’s skype works great, and my twitter application is awesome.  I update, and suddenly, I can no longer make calls on skype from my iphone and my twitter now has advertisements along the top and sometimes it overlaps different people’s tweets requiring me to exit and reload the thing just to see everyone’s tweets.  I understand the need for the application development group to make money, but don’t break the app for the sake of advertisements, for crying out loud!

There has been one occasion where the updates were so entirely intrusive, that I just absolutely stopped using the software.  That’s you, Firefox.  That’s right – I stopped using you because every other day, you wanted to update.  Again.  and again.  – if I asked for a “remind me later”, then every time you loaded up, you’d have a pop-up starting firefox wizard that I had to go through just to use your dang browser in “safe mode”.  Bloody hell!  I just want to use the dang application already! 

Shocking as it seems, I switched to IE8, which I really never thought I’d do.  I have a completely illogical reason as to why I refuse to use Google’s Chrome.  In my opinion – choose a better name and stop confusing people.  Chrome is the dang thing around a Window’s … window.  Ever try having a conversation with multiple people where each one may have a completely different thought as to what you’re talking about?  Thanks google for adding greater levels of confusion.  So I litterally will not use it because of its name.  Perhaps that’s the worst reason for not using an app, but there it is.

Ok, so you get it – I’m frustrated about these dang updates and perhaps a little less logical than I’d like to believe myself to be.  Usually I’m the type to see a problem and come up with multiple scenarios that could be used/taken to understand the issue – which often leads me to find alternative means to reach a solution for the issue or at least a less intrusive meeting ground.  I’m a solution finder – drives some people nuts when all they want to do is vent.  (That’s what blogs are for!)

Unfortunately for this particular frustrating issue, I just don’t know if there is a good solution.  Perhaps if the team at Microsoft gave permission for 3rd party vendors to have their updates checked and added to the windows update catalog, that might help.  I’m  fairly certain it’d be a very chilly day in hell before that happens, but that is the only solution I can see that may actually pull back on the intrusiveness of the showering of update application requests, and even then – it would only take care of a percentage and might put Microsoft at risk if the updates aren’t managed by the 3rd party vendor well.

So like I said, I don’t really see a good solution to the issue, but it is an issue, and its seriously irritating.

The original blog that spurred my blog post can be found at –> UITrends.com

*rant off*

It Keeps Me Awake and Drives Me Out of Bed

Posted on by ARSpaulding

In a recently published article on BNet.com, they say that the most important lists are the ones that answer the two questions:

1) Things that Keep Me Up All Night

2) Reasons I Get Up in the Morning

To answer the 1st and the 2nd, I just recently had been thinking on this very subject.  Number one on this list used to be gaming.  I used to be able to play a good engaging problem solving type of video game that was done well that challenged me for quite a long time – sometimes through to the next day, but times change – I’ve changed.

In 2004 I discovered something that drove me like nothing else that I’ve ever experienced and nothing else since.  Design – not just graphics design, but the entire implementation of it.  I know, this seems a little pointed given that this is my blog site about my experience in design, but it was then in 2004 that I spent 3 days non-stop creating web interfaces for a website that at that time was pretty huge with hundreds of millions of visitors a day.  I’d spend days without sleep, forgetting to eat or even to go to the bathroom, designing and implementing “Skins” as I called them back then, to the forums, image galleries, and front page layout of this popular gaming network website, and it wasn’t just the graphics.  The layout, the typography, the implementation of the logo in creative ways while still maintaining a signature style.  It was my kung fu and… years later now – I look back and really don’t consider much of that work to have been all that good compared to what I can do now – but back then I thought it was brilliant.

That feeling hasn’t gone away.  Any time the company that I work for puts me on a new project, I get that “zing” where my brain is churning on a never ending cycle of problem, solution, problem, solution until I find the optimal pattern to go with and then I go after it and make it happen.  The design comps, the excruciating waiting process while I mentally rehearse the various ways to present the comps and explanations for the various implamentation methods, then once the business decides on what they want to go with, the sitting down at the computer, cranking up the perfect music that I will almost not even hear, but is required regardless – and then the implementation to markup and making it come to life and the entire brain-sucking mind-trance enducing work and joy of seeing everything begin to come together.

That is the good stuff.  That’s what keeps me awake, and when I go to bed, I dream about the work and wake up and am immediately in a mental state of problem solving and project planning.  What needs to be implemented next?  What can’t I wait to get to and to see come to life?  What is still fuzzy that I just know will gain clarity as the project gets closer to completion?

Its good.

The design, the project, and the entire process and discussion and implementation.  I just don’t know anything else that can keep me so whole-body focussed.  I love it.