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 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.

Ok so this is my prediction. It's not really far fetched and I'm sure I'm not alone on it...but all TV will be through the internet. Television programming that we watch will come through the internet. We already are seeing this so it's not that big of a leap. I felt this way for a while though - but after AppleTV and Windows Media Center (or should I flip those to be correct), the potential is quite apparent.

We see podcasts too. They now have had video podcasts for a while too. This is what feeds things like AppleTV.. eh does it? Well it does Windows Media Center and XBox. Also your computer (iTunes, that Lemon thing, Winamp and more). Actually, winamp has been streaming video for many years. Aside from Real, Winamp was the pioneer of this stuff and that's ultimately when I knew the future of TV would be over the internet. Think about those...those were still with dial-up in some cases. The video quality very very low. Naturally. Now, we have free streaming HD quality content available to us.

Pretty crazy. In fact, I find more (quantity and interest) content in HD on the internet than I do on tv. There's many steady internet "tv" stations or podcasts. For example; diggnation, rocketboom, techtonic, rawdio, and more. Now some of those right there are in HD resolution. There's literally hundreds (I think) of "channels" available to you through TV Tonic's plugin for Windows Media Center. That's a VERY important plug-in. Everyone should have it and everyone should have windows media center. If not - all is not lost, iTunes picks up podcasts and if you have an XBox...you're set too.

XBox can be used as a media center extender - which totally kicks ass.

Also note how we can store our movies and even get some of our movies now. There's services like Vongo out there that let you download and watch movies straight from the internet. XBox LIVE also has services. Also (though illegal) there's many ways of downloading movies from the internet. Why? Because we have grown acustom to watching them on our computers...or if you have a handy (and they are cheap, like $80 when I got mine a year ago) DVD player that can play divx and such, you're in awesome shape. There's even people who have ripped HD and Blu Ray DVDs.

So do the math and add up the following factors:

1. Drive space is becoming incredibly cheap. A 500GB hard drive is reasonable. Hook that up to things like network storage (also affordable) and you can have two drives in a wireless enclosure ($100 device at Circuit City, I'm sure cheaper elsewhere) and you have a ton of space for media. MP3's, movies, etc. You're spending less than the cost of an expensive blu ray player too here ... then go download HD movies. Ok that's illegal - scratch that.

2. Network entertainment solutions are becoming popular. Things like Windows Media Center, AppleTV (even though I think that bombed), XBox, and other devices are out there and are affordable. Also take note of some of the services out there to share media...sling box, orb.com, and some of the more obvious and less hi-tech sites such as youtube and so on. Also note cheap youtube clone scripts like PHPMotion and Clip-Share. We are sharing a TON of media on the internet now more than ever and there's many ways to do so.
3. Look at services out there like the iTunes store, Rhapsody/Real, Vongo, etc.
4. Now we have the means. Let's get into the rough points. First, the writer strike. Well before that, hold up, there's been a downward trend in quality television shows. More and more crappy reality and game shows. Granted the new game show with people hooked up to a polygraph looks cool - I'm sure the novelty will wear off fast...but yes the strike is hurting television BIG.
5. Lack of HD content. There's not many stations with HD content. ABC, NBC, CBS, etc. have it but not too many shows in HD. Bummer. HBO, etc. also have it but you have to pay on top of your regular cable for premium channels.
6. Costs. Cable sucks ass. Whether it's Comcast, Time Warner, or whoever else...It's super expensive. Paying for the premium channels to get movies in HD sucks too. The cost of HD DVD players and Blu Ray players is also expensive right now. Also don't forget production costs. Any yahoo with a video camera can put up video in a podcast on the internet. Things like Amazon S3 also make for cheap solutions for handling high demand too. HD quality filming costs? Well look at things like the Red camera. While it's super expensive, it's certainly MUCH cheaper than other cameras out there that you'd need...and for most things you don't even need that. You can get high quality video cheap these days.
7. Rules, laws, ethics, and commercials. TV is so limited. Your web server is not. You can put all sorts of content up on the internet if you have the right host in the right country =) So I'm sure at some point there will be some sort of system put in place for adult content and such, but that's so extremely hard to sensor anyway. Kids are gonna get through any security measure. It's a game to them and good training for the future if you ask me. They gotta learn about computers some how...oh and yea that stuff too haha. Anyway, less commercials is a bonus as is less rules.
8. Talent. Quality. The number one thing that's gonna determine if internet tv is a success or not is quality. If there's nothing good to watch no one will. Same can be said for regular tv too though. I'd wager television is less watched these days anyway due to just people getting news off the internet and more hype on movies (especially HD quality movies). I must admit a lot of internet tv is bad...but as I sit here now typing on my laptop and watching an HD feed of a music video channel (ok the commentary is HD - but music video quality is high, I think computer videos stretch better on an HD tv than normal tv but for the most part this must be above 480 anyway)  I feel satisfied. It streams nice. Sometimes it gets stuck, buffers for a min and we're good...but this is less frequent than tv commercials. I only see one tv commercial every so often for wave express or microsoft. No big deal. It doesn't interrupt my show either. It's AFTER it. When commercials should be.

So those are the points I'd like to make to the world. I hope someone else out there gets it and I hope there's more and more content out there soon. Windows Media Center is the best thing to happen to us people. Who'd a thunk it? A Microsoft project that REALLY REALLY works well. Of course if you can hook your computer to your tv (hey, there's wireless vga adapters) or like watching video on your computer anyway, you don't even need media center.

If I had the time I'd setup a video podcast and support the internet tv movement. We all should. Think about how profitable it can be for the earlier ones in on it all. The money in advertising, the power of having many viewers, airing people's shows and content, etc. Basically, history is starting a new chapter and anyone now could be the head of something as big as a network television station. We're starting from scratch here pretty much. Get on it!

Despite what some of my co-workers think, I do like both PC and Mac. The whole one is better than the other rarely gets my attention these days. I've used both a LOT. I've logged more hours on a Mac than many Mac "lovers" and even more on a PC. So what?

Here's the thing. They both have issues. The most important thing to remember here though in my ranting is the operating system. When we talk about Mac vs. PC, we're talking about Windows and Mac OS. Guess what? BOTH have their problems. What? Don't believe Mac OS X has issues? Come check out the computer I work on all day long...the dock bar is stuck. Only a restart fixes it. Hiding it and showing it again doesn't work. Oh what else? Hmmm let's think, applications can get frozen and won't even force quit...again you have to restart...hmmm...How about Firefox disabling the keyboard? Yea, there's a fix, display the help and close it. Weird huh? Mozilla's issue and not Mac's huh? Maybe. Still an issue.

So I'm not gonna sit here and point out where the pitfalls are, anyone using a computer long enough knows where they are for both Windows and Mac OS. However, what caught my attention just this past minute was a Mac/PC commercial where it claims a Mac runs Windows Vista faster....

Perhaps there was an article somewhere of computers tested that it did. However, there's equally as fast PC machines. It's simple logic...why??? Glad you asked...The answer is because both Mac and PC are using the same hardware these days. Intel Core 2 Duos exist in both PC and Mac. The RAM again is the same type. What else? Oh graphics cards...and? Should I go on? There's slight differences, I'm sure many in the motherboard, but don't think for a minute one runs one operating system faster than the other.

You know...You can get a PC running Mac OS X? Yea, there's hacks made (no emulators yet?) so you can install OS X on a PC. So how does a PC run Mac OS X? Well I bet my Core 2 Duo would run it a shit load faster than an Core Duo Mac and I'm going to guess about the same for a comparable system.

Those Mac commercials are absolutely pathetic. Of course most commercials trick people into buying their product by lying, but it's getting out of hand. You don't see any PC manufacturers attacking Mac which I think is interesting. Dell, HP, Sony, etc. all hold their integrity. In fact Dell and HP are up on commercials lately and I think it's amazing that they don't blatantly lie or bash Mac. Hmmm...Guess they don't need to when the market share for PCs is higher than Macs.

Again, I use both and like both.