From A-HAA!: “Remember those matchbooks that said ‘Draw Me!’ on the front? They advertised a correspondence course called ‘Famous Artists’. Everyone made fun of ‘draw Binky the Skunk any size but the same size’ – but the truth of the matter was that the Famous Artists Course was no laughing matter – it was one of the best art instructional courses ever created…”
Read the entire post for some great background info on Chad Grothkopf, one of the great animators. Here is the link.
Here is the link to a wonderful video from the 60s, advertising THE moped of the hour, called the Lambretta.
Apparently there are problems with the new MacBook Pro, such as overheating, loud cooling fans and whining sounds from the CPU/circuits. It doesn’t happen in all of them, and people are pretty happy with the machines that are working fine. But this is something to watch out for, in particular if you are thinking of plunking down some hard-earned cash for it. To their credit, Apple is doing what they can to fix the defective machines. I suppose glitches are to be expected when one switches to a smaller form factor AND an entirely new CPU. Here is the link.
I do web design and development consulting in my free time. I always strive for quality and originality in my designs. It never fails to amaze me how people always fall for cheap, imitative designs, simply because they’re flashier.
These “web designers” promise more traffic, more exposure, better looks, more and better everything, and of course they don’t deliver on any of those things, except on the surface. Yes, the designs may be flashier, and buttons might move, or the top banner might be in Flash, and it might do something that’ll make the site owner go “Wow”, but that’s all empty. It doesn’t do anything for the site’s substance, nor does it do anything for the search engines, because the site hasn’t been properly coded for them. Or, they’ll design the site in Frontpage… The telltale signs are easy to spot: _vti files are everywhere, the page weight is large, and the graphics just aren’t that good. But people fall for this stuff!
It never fails to amaze me… It leaves me speechless, really. I compare the bragging with the product delivered, and I can see the wide gap between what’s been promised and actually created. Yet the site owners don’t see it. How can I make them see where the real value lies?
I’d been having problems getting my Dell Inspiron 8500 to go into suspend and hibernation modes lately, and attributed it to yet more glitches in Microsoft software. I had been installing and uninstalling various software, and I figured the OS had gotten out of whack, although things were functioning just fine otherwise.
It wasn’t until I decided to unplug my Apple MightyMouse from the USB port that I discovered the problem was with Apple hardware, not Microsoft software… I had to smile… Here I am, an avid Apple fan, and the hardware’s failing me. Granted, I am using it with PC hardware… But it is funny nonetheless, and I wanted to share this in case any of you out there are having the same problem. What I do now is very simple: every time I need to put the laptop into hibernation, I unplug the mouse, and things work just fine.
Updated 5/9/2006: I’ve found out since that just about any external mouse plugged into this thing will cause it to stay awake. Unless the mouse is unplugged, it’ll stay on through the night. Not very good design…
Raoul Pop 