Monthly Archives: March 2009

MacLovers Unite: Vote For The Woz!

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It’s Time To Geek The Vote!

Steve Wozniak, Apple co-founder, found himself grossly criticized by the "Dancing With The Stars" judges last night.

Wozniak and Karina Smirnoff performed a chachacha ands smiled through downright cruels barbs from the judges.

"I don’t know if it was hilarious or delirious," Italian judge Bruno Tolioni said, prompting audience members to boo him.

"It was like a Tellytubby going mad at a gay pride parade. You should have kept the boa on because it distracted from the feet."

- quoted from Yahoo News Article: Apple co-founder panned in television dancing debut

 

Despite getting only 12 out of 30 possible points, Wozniak and Smirnoff will have another opportunity to perform next week.

Woz is quoted as saying, "I hope everywhere in the little computer world that the people who use Macintoshes for creative work, for photography, that they are all rooting for me," Wozniak said in an online interview while preparing for the show.

"I hope they are going to vote too. It means a lot."

There is a good chance that getting 6% more viewer votes REGARDLESS of the jugdes’ score acording to Al Luckow on Woz.org.

To vote for the Woz go to http://votewoz.com/

Visit The Woz’s Facebook page to read his plea for support.

For Voting Information go to Dancing With The Stars website

So next week, on Monday, March 16 at 8/7c, call 800-868-34-10 (800-VOTE4-10). The phonelines open at the beginning of the broadcast and say open for 30 minutes after the end of the show.

If you are on a AT&T cel, you can text "3410"  during this same time period.

Onbline voting stays open until noon 9Eastern time) the day after the broadcast.

If you prefer to vote online, go to

http://abc.go.com/primetime/dancingwiththestars/index?pn=index

 

 

Watchmen (the movie)… meh

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I wish I could say it was brilliant but it wasn’t. I wish I could say Watchmen sucked, but it didn’t. It was just meh.

The best thing I can say about it is that it will probably make a gazillion dollars.

It’s not The Dark Knight.
It’s not 300.

It is better than V for Vendetta.
And as the bard would say, therein lies the rub.

The real problem is the nature of storytelling. Zack Snyder may have given the world 300 (the movie) but the narrative was classic Frank Miller. His vision is very clear cut and his narratives always hammer away at the concept from all angles.

Alan Moore ‘s genius lies in telling a story through a series of meandering relativistic vignettes, the equivalent of tugging on a loose thread to unravel a sweater, then choosing another thread to continue the unraveling.   It  is brilliant in print but I have yet to see anyone successfully translate this style onto the big screen.

There is a subtle difference between non-linear multi-thread narrative and an episodic narrative. In the case of Watchmen, the short but constant deviations from the central story – ah hell, I couldn’t really hang on to a central story long enough to care. The whole concept might have worked better as a mini-series.

While Dan Dreiberg banging Laurie Jupiter in Archie may go down as the best Super Hero soft porn yet, I really didn’t need to see that Dr. Manhattan was circumcised.

(did I miss Alan Moore’s name? Or did he not get credit?)

 

What The Font

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The Ubiquitous Font Match. The scourge of all graphic artists. And quite possible the most tedious part of being a designer. We send emails and browse through endless font libraries in existence in hopes of matching a client’s logo font.

Font nuances are many and, unless you are a font expert, it can be very difficult to recognize the subtle combinations of elements as a specific type face. Sometimes it’s an easy match. If the original artwork is mine, i usually have to depend onmy memory or dig up the original files. If I am adapting a logo for web use, I usually start with the usual suspects:


In the case of a recent client- SleepytimeStore.com/blog- I had to resort to asking the client for the original logo file. And I still didn’t know which font was used.

What The Font

Recently, my morning coffee reading brought me to Taylor Loran’s Blog- I’m A Designer. 

I like this blog. I get to rediscover websites I used to visit on a regular basis (like Coudal Partners ) and remind me I have stopped receiving the bi-weekly Photojojo newsletter.

So when Taylor recommended What The Font I was intrigued.

How It Works

It is actually quite intriguing.

First, upload an image containing the font to be identified.


 

In my case, I placed the white logo text on a black background for a sharp contrast. The upload page has some recommendations to speed up the process. Of course, I uploaded the logo text as big as I had it- which really wasn’t very big. The body of the lowercase letters were approximately 16 pixels high.

 

After uploading, the site requests your help to identify each character.

 

Then it gives you its best guess.

 


 

 

Did I mention its free?

Visit the site at http://new.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/ and check it out.

WordPress, ModSecurity & Polurnet

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The importance of choosing the right webhosting company.

We moved Digitalapplejuice.com to Polurnet.com within one month of launching our site as a result of a 5 day outage with our previous webhost. I chose Polurnet  because of their stellar reviews at webhostingjury.com.
In the last 10 years, I have worked with a number of webhosts: Interland, Cyan Global, AN Hosting/Midphase, MacHighway, GoDaddy to name a few. While I wouldn’t consider myself an expert, I am certainly no shy wallflower noobie when it comes to web servers and website management.
 
Therefore, when all the images for DigitalAppleJuice disappeared last Wednesday I didn’t panic. Not that I noticed initially. The problem came to my attention as an all-together-different problem.
 
That day I was in a holding pattern, waiting for a client to email me the new FTP login for the project I was working on. While I waited, I decided to upgrade and schedule DigitalApplejuice, starting with updating to WordPress 2.7.1 from 2.7.
 
As always: first the backups- I used the server’s backup wizards , plus I copied the root folder to my hard drive using my FTP program.
 
Then I upgraded to WordPress 2.7.1 manually. I copied all the files over leaving the wp-config.php intact. Continue reading →