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Wednesday, July 20th, 2005 at 1:49 AM

I’m not big on movies. I go to the movie theater maybe 4 times a year, if that. I’ve never even written about a movie on my site. However, one upcoming movie caught my eye and it is one I will definitely be seeing. A Scanner Darkly looks to be a killer mix of Waking Life, 1984, and The Matrix (and I say that not because of Keanu Reeves, but because of the “world you never knew existed” type speak). Debuting on March 3rd 2006, the animated live action film directed by Richard Linklater (of Waking Life) looks to be a huge hit. I can’t wait to see this. I’ve never read anything by Philip K. Dick, but I might have to start. Besides the novel version of this, which I’ll read anyway, are there any other suggestions for some summer sci-fi scanning?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 20th, 2005 at 1:49 am and is filed under Misc. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Wednesday, July 20th, 2005 at 1:06 AM

Phil Torrone has written a fantastic article on creating iTunes-ready enhanced podcasts, covering everything from recording the audio to adding images and URLs using Apple’s ChapterTool utility.

While I’m on the subject of iTunes and podcasts, I’d like to share my two cents on the whole RSS extension debate. For those who haven’t been following this story, iTunes 4.9 introduced some new tags to the RSS format. Contained within these tags are various podcast related elements such as show duration, description, summary, explicit flag, and others. While I’m far from an RSS expert, I think it’s the right move for Apple and for the community. Some have complained about the added tags, saying that some are redundant or that they don’t follow standards, but the idea is to create a separate chunk of information in the feed which applies only to iTunes (or other “podcatching” utilities, should they choose to). It should be noted that all of the iTunes related tags start with “itunes:”, for easier identification. These tags are there for the sole purpose of enhancing the user experience, and do not exist in the RSS standard. While Apple could have asked the RSS community to consider these additions, that could have taken eons and most certainly delayed the release of the iTunes update. The choice was clear: create a block of tags specific to iTunes, and leave it at that. And despite Apple effectively taking over the podcast arena and “forcing” these changes upon people, having support in one of their flagship programs is the absolute best way to get listeners’ attention. Swift and widespread consumer adoption of a new medium isn’t force; It’s technology done right, folks.

Standards arguments aside, there are still some undeniable bugs in iTunes 4.9. Mark Pilgrim points out that iTunes does not support, among other things, ETags, Last-Modified, gzip or zlib compression. These bandwidth-saving features are extremely common among websites, and their absence from the iTunes update is obviously an oversight on the part of the engineers at Apple. Podcasting is still quite new, and I’m sure bugs will be ironed out. John Gruber has a thorough (as always) article on the update, and I highly recommend reading it.

That said, I love the user experience Apple provides for podcasts. Other services exist, like Odeo and PodcastAlley, but I can’t be convinced to use them regularly because I enjoy the simplicity of keeping the entire process (from searching to subscription) contained within iTunes. This is part of the reason that the iTunes Music Store is so popular, and it’s one that Apple has touted since the release — you don’t have to keep jumping between programs to get your content.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 20th, 2005 at 1:06 am and is filed under Mac, Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Monday, July 18th, 2005 at 12:13 PM

While working on a print project, I needed a large version of the iTunes Music Store icon from iTunes’ source list. Since the one that exists is only about 16×16 pixels, I had to create a new one from scratch. Here is the result of my effort, in Photoshop form for you to enjoy. See the full size preview image, or download the layered Photoshop file.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 18th, 2005 at 12:13 pm and is filed under Photoshop. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Saturday, July 16th, 2005 at 3:39 PM

I finally gave in and bought a Flickr Pro subscription. The main reason being that they only allow you three photosets on an unpaid account, whereas pro members have an unlimited amount. Now that I have a pro account, I’ve sorted my photos into my newly acquired photosets, and the results can be seen in the updated gallery here at Command-Tab. I’ll be adding photos to a new set each time I do a project, as well. If you would like to keep up with my photos, you can subscribe to my Flickr RSS feed (or Atom, if you prefer).

Despite how long I managed to put off purchasing a Pro account, I really do think that the services Flickr provides are great. Not only do they have a community on their site, they allow you to access all your photos programmatically via an API, allowing to share them with others on your own site. The API also comes in handy for other projects, as well. I’m quite happy with what they’ve pulled off in a fairly short time, and I’m sure I’ll be a paid member for a long time to come.

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 16th, 2005 at 3:39 pm and is filed under Misc. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.