40 Hours of Illustrator work

Chad Pugh put this really cool video together showing 40 hours worth of Illustrator work.  Very cool!

Science Machine from Chad Pugh on Vimeo.

On the move again!

So we have been out here in NC for a few years now. We have met some awesome people, made some close friends and we lost some friends. We've had our ups and downs with working, PinkKoiFish.com and other ventures. Ultimately we have decided to move back to Texas. It's just so much cheaper. No state income taxes, no vehicle taxes, higher pay, better benefits, it's a lot less conservative, closer to family, etc. The downsides? No real scenery, it's HOT and HUMID, allergies. You don't know humid until you have lived in Texas. From Houston to San Antonio it's super humid. Even 80° can feel miserable. And it gets way hotter than that. Well over 100 in the summer. The winters are bone chilling even though the temperature isn't that low. The humidity just cuts right through you. My allergies go nuts in Texas. It's like Ragweed city. All that being said, I still think it will be worth it. We gave it a shot out here and it didn't work out. I have questioned if we made the right decision when we moved out here. But I'm glad we came out here. It forced me away from an job that didn't really challenge me. The limited availability of jobs out here forced me to do more production work rather than just supervise. Which refreshed my skill set. My wife and I were forced to rely more on each other and I think it ultimately brought us closer. And best of all, we had our daughter. So I would say it was worth it. I have been applying to jobs in TX but haven't had any bites yet. My guess is that I won't really get any interest until I'm physically out there. I'm looking forward to getting there but not looking forward to moving. Packing is never fun. Garage sales are never fun. Selling your house in the middle of a mortgage meltdown is never fun. But hopefully all the stars will align and things will work out.

The Real Father of Multi-Touch Interfaces

A few weeks back I read this story on Gizmodo.com. Which says that some people would call Jeff Han the "father of multi-touch". In fact, Bill Buxton formerly of Alias Research was doing this in the 80's and established the grounds for which Jeff Han's research is based. He created all sorts of unique input devices and enhancements. You can view his old research videos here. There are various articles on his site that are specific to multi-touch input. Including a timeline history of such devices.

My new iSock

I had my wife sew the top of a sock as a temporary case for my iPod Touch. It works great. The shiny back is still nice and new. The sock also acts as a cleaner.

iPod Touch in the house!

I know I said I was going to wait but on Monday my wife called and said she just bought me the iPod Touch 16gb. The verdict? It's one sweet device. I love it. I can't put it down. Browse the web while sitting on the couch or in and around the office at work. I have to say that it is a "watered down version" of the web. No Flash support. Many sites don't display properly. You can only send plain text emails from Gmail. No blogging directly on Blogger.com. I had to send them to my blogger email address in plain text via Gmail. No support for Meebo.com for web chatting. You can't select text on a page or download images to the phone. On and on. But overall it's pretty slick as a browsing experience. My eyeballs did hurt by the end of the night from reading Engadget.com and Gizmodo.com on the tiny screen. Zooming via the pinching motion only helps to a certain extent and depends on the paragraph width. The lack of apps was disappointing but I'm counting on the hackers out there to unlock this and move apps from the iPhone over to the Touch. Syncing seems to happen at light speed. I put a bunch of my favorite music, some videos, lots of photos (including my portfolio) and only put about a 1gb dent in it so far. I plan to use a lot of smart playlists to manage content and stay within the 16gb. Especially once I start putting apps on it. There is one strange thing with Photos. I put a few high res photos in the sync folder and they made it to the Touch. But then when I zoom in on them they only go to a certain point. And the image seems to have a reticulation texture. I'm not sure if iTunes automatically resizes the images or what. It did create a new folder on my computer with lots of subfolders. I will have to check those to see if they contain resized images. All in all it's been a great experience so far. I haven't seen any of the poor black or negative effects on my screen. Although I would bet that the first software update will fix it for everyone.

iPhone or iPod Touch? That is the question.

The iPod Touch has showed up a few weeks early at Apple stores around the country. And in recent Apple fashion there are some glitches. It seems something is up with the displays. Even though it is supposed to be exactly the same as the iPhone. Users are complaining that the iPod Touch is having trouble displaying blacks and even resembles a negative in some instances. Combine that with the fact that they have crippled or removed many of the applications that existed on the iPhone. Now let's also remember that it has no camera, no bluetooth and of course, no phone. It sounds like the iPhone is a better buy. Even if you don't plan to use it for a phone. The only issue is that it costs $100 more for an 8gb iPhone vs a 16gb iPod Touch. Also, people have already managed to copy iPhone apps over to the iPod Touch. There are however still some glitches to be worked out with that. All said and done it sounds like the iPhone is still a better buy. So what to do? I think I will wait it out a little longer in hopes that either a 16gb iPhone or a better iPod Touch is released. My guess is that I will have to wait until January for them to dump all these old versions by Christmas before releasing something new. Possibly even longer.