Tom’s Graphic Design Journal

So I've been looking at the Western Digital Passport external self powered hard drives for a while. Very nice looking. Great price. So I thought! Today I found at Best Buy a Simpletech self powered hard drive. 320GB for about $150. Holy crap! It also looks real sexy too in red.

So I was skeptical. I figured it's a cheap drive or something's wrong. I figured it was a coin toss and just got it anyway. Glad I did! It's actually a western digital drive inside! I thought who the heck is Simpletech? Never heard of them before...but looking in the device manager I saw a familiar looking name "WD..." I know Western Digital drives are named like that and so I looked up the numbers...Sure enough it's a WD Scorpio 320GB SATA Drive...wow!

This is much better than paying the same price for 120GB or maybe 200 some...plus I think the case looks nicer. We'll see if I run into any issues, but so far it's great. I find it really interesting how all these hard drives you see have wacky prices. You aren't really paying for the size anymore...I think it's just a matter of how many were made and what was left over. Who bought how many, etc.

So first off I finally found, cleaned up, and posted the source code to the little demo/tutorial on CakePHP and AMFPHP I posted a while ago here. I didn't write the most comprehensive tutorial, I highlighted on some key points. However, getting CakePHP to work with Flex is quite easy.

Also note that since this tutorial which used CakePHP 1.1 and AMF0 (I believe you can still switch that out for AMF3) there has been some new things going on. First off, there's AMFEXT which is much much faster than AMFPHP because it's a server extension. It also makes things easier for you as far as programming is concerned. There's a CakeAMF project that implements AMFEXT in CakePHP. I have yet to try this, but am very eager. The only downside I should note is that you have to install the server extension, so that pretty much cuts most shared hosting sites out.

Then there's SWX, which is a native data format for Flash. So that of course has been implemented in CakePHP as CakeSWXPHP which can be read about on the CakePHP Bakery. I personally didn't have much success with that at a first quick try, but it's also apparently very easy to use and setup. It also appears to be less code work involved than AMFPHP. I am unsure about the speed though. Here's a little tutorial about using flash remoting with SWX and CakePHP to make a Flash blog written by wouter.

So there's a few options for flash remoting and CakePHP. Now, I'm going to say the same thing I always tell people. Be CAREFUL how, when, and where you use Flash. You probably should not make a blog done completely in Flash if you write a lot and want it to be picked up by search engines. First off, it takes longer to load...but that aside, you're really missing out on what blogs are so great for - getting traffic. Search engines love text and hence crawl and list blogs a lot. So if they can't see the text in your Flash blog...you're in trouble.

I'm of course working on a media blog that will utilize both HTML/CSS and Flash to get the job done. Making it not only load more efficient, but also reach that maybe 10% market that doesn't have Flash and also be better optimized for search engines. More on that later, or go back and read some of my blog posts. I'm kinda at a point where I need to clean up some things to move forward with it - but the major functionality is done with that. You can also see Minerva blog in action...and kinda unrelated to this post - it doesn't use flash remoting, it uses RSS feeds...because I felt they were more universal and can be used for not just the galleries but also syndication. Aside from, perhaps, the most important reason: there's no writing back to the database using Flash with my blog. See how planning goes a long way?

So to follow up to my previous post which was taken the wrong way by some...I guess you'd have to be on the same page as me (or be talking/following my theories and thinking) to understand that the right way...

I wanted to post some examples of quality. Some sites that are more positive and hopeful. See, I'm not always negative =)

My point was more to the affect of how things in general are falling apart. It's just the way of the world. I mean again, I don't mean to be negative. So...check out some of these great sites for inspiration if you also are feeling like things are looking gloomy.

Phirebrush - A great site that features wonderful work done by artists/designers/photographers/writers/etc. (also linked on the left of my blog because I really support this site, and have for years).

Deviantart - Always that classic site.

CSS Beauty - A great site that showcases some good design with CSS. 

FWA - Of course, as mentioned by some angry fellow on my other post. Shows off a lot of Flash stuff.

The Webby Awards - Been around for a while, good contest. 

Some non web things:

SPD - Publication diesgn annuals...available at Borders, Barnes and Noble, etc. If you're into magazines, LOOK at these. Been around for a long time.

Of course there's also other really good design annuals, shows, competitions, etc. that come out from the ADC, AIGA, TDC, etc. Also great magazines that show off great talent like HOW, Print, eye, I.D., and more.

So there is good stuff out there. REAL good stuff...I wasn't trying to be too negative, but we do have to accept the fact and realize that there is this infiltration of poor quality going around. Is it from people who want to hop on the bandwagon of design? Is it from the increasing number of tools that make it easier? I can't imagine how designers felt when computers first started to be used in the design industry. Who knows. I just hope it goes away. It's just this attitude I guess. It goes right along with Apple. Sure there's nothing wrong with Apple, good products...sure I think overpriced, but that's beside the point...my point is the few people who buy these products and then declare themselves special. If you own a Mac laptop...it doesn't mean you know how to design. It's that misconception. It's that fake image. 

It's disgusting. I'm disgusted. It almost makes me want to jump and find a completely different career. The quality in the graphic design (web and print at least) is absolutely horrible. I'm sorry, but I take pride in what I do. It's not just some job. I went to the best college I could find and I'm still paying for it. It wasn't easy. I have loans and I sucked it up. I did what I had to do. I taught myself a ton of additional information to do what I need to do for my job and do it right.

So, my question is...why can't others? I never fault anyone for not knowing something. I'm not trying to say people are stupid. I'm saying people are lazy. Everyone makes mistakes too, but not caring and being lazy is just completely different.

I just saw a meetup group for Drupal. Ha. First off, this isn't saying anything negative about Drupal...though I could go on for hours about my issues with Drupal, all in all it is a good CMS. It's just not able to do what I need it to do and it's not the right choice for the project I'm working on with it...and no I didn't choose it. Anyway, the point here is they mention about some topics they were giong to cover that include the Google Blueprint API for CSS...Sound familiar? It should, scroll down a little bit.  1. It's not Google's (it's merely hosted on Google Code) and 2. It's not an API...it's a (self proclaimed) framework. It really is just CSS. Nothing fancy. It's not an API. Now. This is a group of "professionals" making this kind of mistake. Come on. Really? ...Worst of all, they probably make money and get paid for web design.

Ok, like I said, we make mistakes. It's not hard at all to confuse the verbiage on things. Especially for those using canned CMS', I'm not really going to be surprised at all. It's just part of a point I'm trying to make.

Another great example would be different materials that design firms produce. Take a close look. We often give some people or firms too much credit because of popularity, connections, etc. The truth is, they have absoultely no clue what they are doing. The only reason why they are successful is because of their connections and because they've been fortunate enough to sell to those who also don't know what their doing. That's not hard to do of course because if their clients did know what they were doing, they woudln't be hiring a firm, now would they?

So it's a really rough deal. It's like going to a doctor and getting poor treatment. You easily might not know.

I know this won't stop and it's around in any industry...but what I'm more concerned about here is that in the design industry, we have these attitudes. People start getting all cocky about their iPods and Mac laptops and how "good" they are. Give me a break. It gets so rediculous that people assume you "need" a Mac or an iPod to be a designer. What? How can you design on a PC? How can you be a graphic designer if you don't have an iPod?? That's just impossible.

So I guess I'm just venting here...but what really disgusts me is how these people and firms get away with it and make all the money, while I'm still sitting here working my ass off for next to nothing. Sure, I like my job and the pay is good...but it doesn't make things easier when there's all this poor quality out there. People start to actually believe that this poor quality work is good...and that REALLY makes my job harder.

Of course my design isn't the most amazing stuff out there, but at least it's technically correct. Ok, minus some of the kerning on the titles for my blog posts...Sadly that wasn't able to be helped due to limitations of technology. Still looking for a solution. So there's one example of how it's different...but if I made actual graphics for the titles manually -- there'd be no excuse.

So when will it just stop?? I'd almost like to start a web site that showcases poor work...but I don't want to just blatantly insult people...especially if they don't know better...I just want to make it a little bit more fair for the honest hard working professionals out there that just get overlooked.