Free is the Top-est Shelf of All

alternateorg on November 14, 2003

When you think “hip, happenin’ new nightclub,” what do you think? Warehouse district? Downtown? A 100-year old church converted into 4 floors of dancing heaven? No, dummy, you think of a mall, in particular, a mall in the suburbs, nestled in among the movie theaters, chain restaurants and Home Depots.

Yes, friends, a few of us related to Alternate got to go and witness the VIP night before the opening of Avalon, Denver’s – er- Lone Tree’s – newest nightclub.

Well, I guess it’s not that new, as a club used to be there before. And before that I think it was a roller-rink. And before that I seem to remember it being a giant JCrew store.

I think above anything, it was the lure of free wine, beer and well that drew us down there; we were all pretty wary of a 9,000 sq ft nightclub set in a stripmall. And maybe it’s just really easy to impress the Press (haha) and whoever the term VIP represents, but this place was nothing short of very boring. The DJ was awful and played a ridiculous mix of wannabe-hiphop to a crowd of admittedly beautiful but seemingly bored people. By the time the drinks ceased being free, we were headed back to the Big City to find someplace open to eat.

Next time you feel like driving 30 minutes on a freeway that has traffic at all times of night, drive west on 6th and end up at Colorado Mills Mall. I hear they have ice cream there.

Cure 182

alternateorg on November 12, 2003

I understand that both Blink 182 and The Cure are bands that make me a loser. I’m over it, you should be too.

Anyway, the latest Blink album, imaginatively titled “blink 182” includes a bizarre cameo. From Robert Smith:

Partially inspired by lifestyle changes–all three members became fathers recently–and side projects, this new untitled CD sports a spoken word piece, plus guest vocals by The Cure’s Robert Smith on “All of This.” “We don’t have any joke songs or anything like that on the record,” says bassist Hoppus. “On the other albums, we’d have 12 songs on them and two of them would be the joke songs.”

Does this seem just a little odd to anyone else? And I gotta say, the album is pretty good, for pop-punk. Is it Ned’s Atomic Dustbin? No. Is it over-produced? Yes. But the emotion is back, and the songs actually sound different from their other songs, unlike the last album which was basically a re-hashing of old riffs with new lyrics and slicker production.

Anyway, the Robert Smith cameo was one I was not expecting and it’s a relatively welcome clash of two worlds for me. Hits kinda closer to home in couple ways. I wonder if David Proulx is still hanging around them these days…

Doug switched

alternateorg on November 4, 2003

As we have common friends, I read Douglas Bowman’s weblog every few days. I have to say that I’m happy he’s switched back to Mac. As a designer/developer-ish kinda guy, I’m not surprised. MacOS X combines everything you need for most tasks involved in that kind of work in a very nice and fun-to-use package. So in an attempt to offer you some more fair and balanced look at how people move to the Mac and how they feel once they’re there (frustrations and all), check out that link. That’s the kind of post/comment combo I’m happier to see these days (check out my comment here for what I mean.)

Command-Tab Mayhem

alternateorg on October 30, 2003

Wow. Who knew two little keys could create such mayhem in the Mac world, within minutes of Panther’s release?

The latest blathering of spite comes from the normally vanilla Kottke:

Here’s what I propose. Ditch the existing clunky Exposé behavior (perhaps except for the “Show Desktop” keystroke) in favor of a combined Cmd-Tab/Exposé behavior. Hitting Cmd-Tab would bring up a palette of all the open windows (not just applications) and would also Exposé all open windows. Continuing to hold down Cmd and hitting Tab would cycle through each icon in the palette (which would need to be smaller to not overpower the Exposéd windows) but would also highlight the corresponding Exposéd window. When you reach the window you need, you let go of the Cmd key and the window pops open.It’s like they never open the System Preferences and check out what you can actually customize about Exposé. What I’ve found is that the mouse gesture-enabled Exposé is much more easy to use than invoking it via the keyboard. After all, in order to use the default F9-F11 keystrokes, you have to take your hand off of the mouse, which is pretty much an annoying idea.

And if you combine using the bottom-left corner to invoke Exposé with command tab, you end up with something very similar to what Kottke suggests – minus the window-centric Windows idea of having Command-tab show every window instead of every application. That would be problematic and way too Windows-ish for most Mac folks to stand.

And then, if Kottke read MacOSXHints. he’d know that if you:

  1. Invoke Exposé via a mouse gesture
  2. Hit command-tab and
  3. Select an appliction with it, that
  4. Then, you’ll end up with an Exposéd list of every document in that application. Click the window you want.

Sounds complicated, but it really isnt, since it uses mouse gestures (very easy to work into your workflow) and a keybaord shortcut already in use. If you really wanted to get fancy with it, you could use the arrow keys once you have one application’s windows open to select a window, and spacebar to select it. Again, sounds complicated; isn’t.

Is this exactly what Kottke’s whining about? No, but it’s the closest Mac-native implementation he’s going to get. Don’t hold your breath for Apple to dive into a window-centric behavior like the one he’s describing. Exposé’s ‘Show all windows’ feature and this use of it, is the only way for Apple to do it (built into the OS at least) due to their HIG, which states that the MacOS is document and application centric, not window-centric. You use an application to edit documents, not your operating system to edit your windows. I’m not doing a very good explanation of that concept. I’ll see if I can try to find something a little more concise…

Southern California Fires

alternateorg on October 27, 2003

This is right in San Diego. Now, San Diego is huge, but this is in the middle of a populated area, near where my father used to work. Photo from the Union-Tribune. I thought it was strange that my iChat buddy list was so low lately. I’ve called cellphones but have had trouble getting through. I hope you guys are all ok. I bet Scott’s working overtime.

Update: I hear he’s been working since Sunday morning. It is now Monday evening. He doesn’t expect to go home any time soon.

Sing it

alternateorg on October 15, 2003

Apple actually cares about this sort of thing. Which is odd. Which is rare. Which is why they deserve gushing adulation now and then. They actually put the time and energy and labor into creating a gorgeous package most people will toss anyway, and why they include a first-time welcome experience, with subtle music, with flowing lush clean graphics, one that will never be repeated, just because.

This is the point. Detail and nuance and texture and a sense of how users actually feel, what makes them smile, what makes the experience worthy and positive and sensual instead of necessary and drab and evil

These are the things that are nearly dead in our mass-consumer culture, things normally reserved for elitist niche markets and swanky boutiques and upscale yuppie Euro spas and maybe cool insider mags like I-D and Metropolis and dwell. They are most definitely not to be expected of mass-market gadget makers. This is why it matters. This is why it’s important.

Aw. Look at that. His first Mac. Welcome to the real world, child.

Slow and busy

alternateorg on October 14, 2003

Yeah so working hard and having not much else happen in the world has kept Alternate pretty slow.

Although, the other day I halfway had lunch with an old boss/friend of mine who sent me to his site to check out some of his video he’d been taking all around the world since selling his half of the company I used to work for. My favorite is the one on top, Tokyo Trains. It’s a little long, but watch it like you were watching Koyaanisqatsi, as I’m pretty sure that was the inspirtaion. Very sure, actually. Hopefully, you’ll just watch the patterns and the movement instead of wondering why you’re watching Japanese people getting on and off of trains.

The first time I typed onMouseOver, I was 14…

alternateorg on October 4, 2003

Did you know that HyperCard is still sold by Apple? HyperCard! Christ. I was trying to explain it to my brother the other day; he’d never even heard of it. How about you? Did you go to a computer/math/science magnet junior high school too? Did you use HyperCard to create interactive games based on *cough*Dragonlance*cough* ? Sigh. Apparently now, HyperCard can use embedded QuickTime movies and can be exported to the web. And can have color. Them’s the upgrades. I used this thing like maybe 11 years ago and that’s all that’s new. It’s version 2.4.1. The page on Apple’s 2003 website suggests hosting it on WebStar, an OS 9 webserver.

This all comes because John Sculley thinks HyperCard should have been used better by Apple. Gee. Ya don’t say. It was great technology for the time, if they’d just given it network ability it may have lasted longer. Yet another thing Apple did right before anyone else. And then figured wasn’t that important. Can you say Newton?